Seven years ago today I woke up with pretty strong contractions. As with all of my pregnancies I was quite overdue. But since this was baby number 3 I wasn't too concerned. In fact, the first due date my doc gave me was March 8 and so I told myself we would be getting a St. Patrick's Day baby! Expectations are everything! (I'm devoting a whole post to that soon).
Anyway, my excellent friend, Sarah came over aroun 10am because I was in my bedroom in serious labor. Since my first two babies were posterior I expecting a lot of back pain and thought I would be depending heavily on Curtis to help me deal with it. But this labor was different. I found that sitting on a birthing ball, leaning over my bed in a dark room helped me to get through every contraction. Amazing.. especially since with my first two labors I had to stay on my hands and knees for almost the entire time!
Everything was going along swimmingly, my contractions were pretty irregular, sometimes 5 minutes apart but often 9 or 10. Suddenly I had this crazy massive contraction. I knew we had to leave immediately and have a vivid memory of Curtis helping my down the stairs. I was sobbing (a sure sign that I was in serious labor) and poor Sarah had to watch. A little too close to home for her since she was pregnant too.
The 20 minute ride to the hospital was torture. Curtis was racing as quickly as he could, which meant lots of slamming on the brakes at intersections- arghh! It took a few minutes for the hospital staff to realize that they needed to seriously expedite the check in process. I remember a nurse yelling- she's at a 10! Daniel was born 15 minutes later.
We spent an hour this morning watching home movies and it was fun to remember how sweet and mellow Daniel was as a baby. He spent lots of time smashing play-doh and playing in the dirt behind our home in Minnesota. This past year has been a big one for Daniel. He learned to ride a bike, shoot a basketball into a high hoop, got his big boy front teeth and started reading. I love finding him engrossed in a book. His loves "Bad Kitty" and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." He was reading excerps from "Bad Kitty Gets a Bath" to me the other night and I was crying. So funny!
Daniel is definitely my most imaginative child. Give him a few toothpicks and a bit of dirt and he will be happy for hours. It dawned on me today that I don't ever recall him coming to me complaining of being bored. He has a terrific sense of humor, which unfortunately gets him into trouble at church. We're still working on that one. So far the school has him sufficiently terrified of "getting a mark" so his behavior there has been very good. :) Daniel has agreed to be on swim team again this summer. He is a great swimmer and has some good buddies on the team- hopefully this year will be a good one. He continues to be a great playmate to his brothers and a very kind and entertaining older brother to Lucy.
We love Daniel and are so happy he's part of our family!
