Leif Douglas

In my last post I stated I HOPED Baby Boy would come in a week'ish even though he wasn't due for 2 weeks.  That's not exactly true though, he wasn't officially due for 3 weeks.  But what does "official" mean anyway when it comes to babies?  That's beside the point - Mr. Leif decided to bless us with his presence the very next day!  To say I was quite surprised is an understatement!  Urgent phone calls to Grandparents ensued after a very sure and certain indication that Baby Boy would be here within a few hours.  Of course there was 2 seconds to check Facebook to see if/who he would share a birthday with and I was quite please to discover he will always share his day with THIS special little lady.  I sent a quick note off to her mother with my exciting news, asked for "secrecy" as I didn't know how the day would go down, and off we went.  So, yes, outside of my parents, Darcie was the first person to know Baby Boy was on his way.  We dropped Jacob and Lia off at another friend of our's house until Papa and Nana could make it to town.  Then we were hospital bound.  I'll spare you the details of his birth, but at 6:00 PM we had a perfect, beautiful, healthy, 6 lb 9 oz baby boy.  With quite a set of lungs!  My experience this time was nothing but wonderful.  I couldn't have asked for a better on-call physician (mine was on vacation in Alaska - the nerve!), better anesthesiologist (that's where things went horribly, terribly wrong last time), better nursing care, and most of all a better husband by my side who calmed me down during the hardest part for me.  I'm so glad I have nothing but warm and fuzzy feelings when I think about this birth experience.  It is so differnt from my experience with Lia and I can hardly stand to think about the day she was born.  So, I don't.  Or at least I try not to.  But I can tell you I shed many, many tears before Leif was born terrified of what I knew was going to be in my future.  Now, my tears are tears of joy.  For that I'm very, very thankful.

Presenting...Mr. Leif Douglas S.

More (many more) photos to come later.  The blanket in the photo was made by his 94 year old Great Grandmother Hawkins.  A HUGE thank you to my Aunt Susan for getting it mailed to him just in time!

A little something you didn't know you didn't know.  David and I had a REALLY hard time agreeing on a name.  As in we agreed on nothing.at.all.  Back when we were expecting Jacob, we thought about naming him Leif, but I was afraid it was a little to "different" and wanted to stick with something more traditional.  Boy did we ever!  Then when we were expecting Lia, we decided that if she surprised us once she was here and was a boy, Leif would be her name.  This time Leif of course was discussed again from the day we found out we were expecting a boy.  I was the one that nixed the name though as I thought it was too close to Lia and would be confusing.  Five months and no name later we were still struggling and absolutely nothing else worked for us.  On Sat we finally agreed on a different name but after sleeping on it and thinking about it, it just felt like a desperate attempt to agree on something.  At 7:00 PM Tues, the 19th we finally decided Leif was the right name for him.  We have joked he was just waiting on his name and once we got it right he decided to come.  Whatever the real truth is, we're glad he's here and we love his name.  Douglas was my Grandfather Hawkins' (D-Doug for those of you who knew him) name, one of my Uncle's middle name, and my brother's middle name.  I highly respect each one of those men and hope that Leif's life can be as useful as their lives have been/ are.