Frances Caroline is here

Kristina labored for 12 hours with Edith, so we figured we'd have some time to get to the hospital when contractions woke us up a bit before 5 am on Wednesday, July 29. Turns out we were very wrong. Starting around 7am things became rather frantic. Frances was a three hour labor and she was almost born in the car (our blue '07 Kia Rio, known to some as "Pablo"). About 10 minutes after we arrived at the ER, Frances was born. The delivery room was packed with all kinds of people and machines. I felt a bit like the father in this video:

WARNING: THIS IS A MONTY PYTHON SKIT. IT IS SILLY AND RATHER GRAPHIC.



Fetus-frightenings notwithstanding, all went wonderfully and we are as pleased as can be with our tiny new addition. Once I have my feet back on the ground, I will produce some more movies and pictures. For now please enjoy Frances's Facebook profile. Non-FB users can still see her photos here.

Edith has been very sweet with Frances. This and she is stumbling about when it suits her (a max of 4 steps at the moment) and her spoken vocabulary increases weekly. She enjoys the words up, dog, woof and bye-bye (which she is starting to pronounce bye-byes which I think is to further differentiate it from baba which she uses to refer to Frances). She also stacks her blocks with speed and style, climbs up onto the couch and demands (through the use of sign language) that we read her books. In fact, we are currently using the reading of books as a motivator for eating her veggies and behaving well during nappy changes (she always tries to pat her butt when I change her diaper).

It's harder than I thought it would be, adding one more baby. Edith and Frances are far enough apart age-wise that they need to be monitored separately at the moment. I know that will change, but it doesn't seem like it will change soon. Kristina assures me it will be easier by the time she returns to work. I hope she is right. Then again, that's 5 weeks into the future and I'm the kind of person who has trouble planning more than 5 minutes in advance. I guess we will see when we get there.