Olivia Ranae Gallery

Alrighty, it's high time that I post a few pictures of the Olivia. She's a sweet little baby that still doesn't know how to be sad. When she wakes up hungry in the middle of the night she squeaks instead of crying. If it weren't for Sara's ability to hear dust mites during the night, Olivia's wiggles would go unheard, and she'd starve to death. This little video shows how she spends most of her awake time:

Sara took some pictures of my Olivia and I by the window. She's all artistic and she knows that the best time to take a picture is dusk or dawn. Time in the hospital sorta melts into one big red-eyed pool, so I don't remember if this was a.m. or p.m., but Sara was proven correct, because I think this picture is awesome.

Here's our little family magnified to 4. I think we all look pretty good together, and we've decided to keep Olivia around since she fits in pretty well.

Here's one last picture of our newly-promoted Big Sister. Aside from the occasional accidental newborn couch tackles, Zoe is very good at being sweet with the new baby. She's a big fan of holding Olivia and tells everyone that she's a big sister to a little girl named Steve. Yep, Steve. We were hoping that Zoe would ditch the Steve calling when she saw the baby's real name was Olivia, but we were wrong. Thus, a nickname was born with the newborn. Part of me sorta hopes it sticks forever.

Olivia Ranae's Birthday!

Olivia Ranae was born this morning at 7:56. She's an absolute angel, and I can't stop holding and squishing her. After an action-packed morning she's fast asleep and we check that she's breathing every 5 minutes. We don't do that with our 3-year-old.

Sara's doing as well as she can be, considering she was just disected, and we're all in good spirits. We've got Diane running around the city picking up this and that, all the while Zoe is in the back seat very confused. Eventually things will get back to a new sort of normal, I'm sure. I hope I can remember how to take care of a little Olivia.

The hospital WiFi is being a big jerk and not letting us upload any pictures to anything, so you'll all have to be on stand-by for your first view. You gotta see the baby! You'll all soon find out that she's definitely worth waiting for, she's practically perfect in every way.

Grandpa Rudger - still going strong

I'm finally on the happy end of a massive work deadline, and there's no nasty actuarial test looming over the horizon, so I think it's time to reclaim my position as ruling overlord of my little blogsite. Hopefully my tens of readers have been able to weather my absence. Somewhere during my month and a half of blog silence, my little wife has metamorphosed from pregnant lady to "bring towels everywhere you go" as she is nine months pregnant. During our weekly trip to Home Depot today, the help asked Sara if she'd like a wheel chair or a glass of water. "No thanks", she replied, "but if you've got an extra epidural lying around, I'd take one of those." Okay so I made that last bit up, but those hardware guys thought for sure they were just a few waddles away from a very wet clean up on aisle 12. Anyhow, moral of the story is, we're about to enter into a new phase of our lives, which as I remember from the first time, includes a lot of late night infomercials, one-armed dinner preparation, and endless swaddling. Not to mention the frequent quandaries of whether or not our lives will ever be normal again. The answer is yes, in about 6 months. The C-section is scheduled for a week from Monday, there's no going back now!


Anyhow, I've been telling the tale of Summer 2009 for like the last 6 months, and we're almost to the exciting final chapter where we move to the Emerald City. But first, I need to finish up our little jaunt down south to Utah's Dixie. We all went to visit my dad's dad quite a few times while we were in St. George, and it was really awesome to get to know Rudger again. He's doing well and had lots of stories about his mission all over the Mid-West. It was interesting to hear how much and how little Chicago has changed since his time there so many decades ago. His stories all confirmed my life-long impression of him as a man of a deep and rich heritage of class and tradition. I'm sure I'd heard many of those stories when I was younger, but I was far too interested in the toy castle in his living room back then. Now I hung onto every word and wasn't in a hurry for him to stop talking. Zoe, however, was ready to go at any time, so our visits were short. My good ol' grandpas are such manly guys. They're excellent role models for me, and have given me great parents who have made all the difference in the world. I wonder if I'll ever measure up. I guess I've got 60 years to work on that.