Mason Lee Yates

Thank you everyone for all of your offers for help, phone calls, texts, and prayers. We have certainly been blessed and have felt surrounded by support.

Our due date was February 14, (Sunday), so we got a scheduled induce date for Thursday, February 18th. I wasn't looking forward to that, because I heard being induced is pretty intense. On Wednesday afternoon, then, I was surprised when all of my pre-labor contractions that I had been having that week started becoming stronger and more regular. By the time we checked in to the hospital on Thursday morning at 7:00 AM, I was already 3 cm dilated and our doctor said to just see how things went! Things just were a little slow though; although they broke my water and I kept trying to walk around and keep moving, by the time 5:00 PM rolled around, I had only made it to 5 or 6 cm. I asked for an epidural and pitocin at that point, and David and I were sure things would pick up, but I was only at a 7 by midnight (although the baby was slowly dropping lower and lower). More pitocin! Finally, by about 4 AM, the nurses felt I was about ready. The doctor was doing another surgery at the time, so by the time we were all set up to push, it was about 5:30 AM.

Mason was born on Friday February 19th, 6:33 AM, weighing 7 lbs 14 oz, and 21 1/2 inches long. We were sooooo grateful to have a healthy little boy! It was a very long day but it was all worth it and we love him so much already. We feel we have been blessed in so many ways throughout the whole ordeal.

Chinese New Year! (And Valentine's Day)

I guess we didn't have any reason to try to celebrate Valentine's Day early, because this our "due day" is going to come and go like any other day. Here I am at a still-pregnant 40 weeks:
I went to my doctor appointment on Thursday and he told me I was still carrying Way too high. So now we're working on it! I've been walking a lot and I bought an exercise ball from WalMart to sit and bounce on whenever I am sitting to try to get the baby to move on down.
Some other projects I've been working on while waiting for baby:

Sewing scout badges onto David's scout shirt

Making curtains for the kitchen

I also finished all our scrapbooking from when we started dating to the end of 2008! I've been putting that off Forever.

And here is a table runner that I made; the flowers and teddy bear are from David to me for Valentine's Day. We are also going to make sugar cookies and have a nice dinner tonight to celebrate the holiday. Maybe something spicy.

We did go to PF Chang's last night for dinner (we got the mongolian beef and chicken lettuce wraps = soooo good). I guess I can count that for celebrating the Chinese New Year, which is today--it's the year of the Tiger.

Celebrating Vday a little early

This past weekend David and I SPLURGED and saw Avatar in 3D at the IMAX. It was a good movie to see that way--I've heard a lot of hype about all the special effects and amazing-ness of the movie, and although I'm no movie buff, I wasn't disappointed (although it DID take my eyes a few minutes to get adjusted to the depth difference). I also heard that the story line was wanting, but I didn't think it was too predictable or shallow. I thought it had a strong pro-strong-marriage message, and respect for deity, hooray! However, I once again wished for a Clearplay that could filter out just a few scenes and some of the language. Other than that, I'd highly recommend the movie.

We also watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs a few weeks ago and laughed really hard. Great movie.

Happy Groundhog Day!

I'm trying to be better at making holiday goodies for my piano students. This month I wanted to do valentines sugar cookies and I made them yesterday, which happened to also be Groundhog Day. Sooo I decided to make a few heart cookies (which were way easier to shape with the cookie cutters) AND some groundhogs.

Cute, huh?!!

(PS Thanks for the extended winter, Phil! I'm really enjoying winter.)