The Rest of July

I signed Ever up for a couple of bible camps ("vacation bible school" or "VBS") this summer, one at New Song and one at the First Presbyterian church across from our neighborhood. The New Song one, especially, was rather raucous and flashy and not the way we're used to church, but she enjoyed it. In fact, she liked the New Song one better than the First Pres one.

At first she didn't have any friends in her group at New Song, but partway through the week, she got to switch groups and join a couple of friends, including Ellis Martindale. (Tons of Mormons do these VBS's because it's super-cheap babysitting and hey, the Bible.)

Really bad photo of a photo of her original group:

 

Pictures with Ellis:

 

Weeks after both VBS's had concluded, I heard Ever signing this song that she learned, I think, at the First Pres VBS:

 

Once or twice I heard her sing, "Through the brightest days and the darkest nights," but all the rest of the times, it was, "Through the brightest stations and the darkest nights."

Ever and Wren have both been totally sweet with Aardvark. We expected that from Ever. I was pleasantly surprised about Wren. No photographic evidence of Wren's sweetness here, but plenty of Ever's:

  

I did get a couple videos of Wrenzy visiting/talking to Tyna (from Tiny Baby to Tiny to Tyna*).

In this one, Wrenzy kept going over to Tyna; talking to and touching her; taking the play broom and sweeping until she was about 10 or 12 feet away; and then going back to Tyna and repeating the procedure over and over.

Tyna has been a really good sleeper, and she pretty much never fusses:

 

My sleep book says babies' sleep usually isn't "organized," with longer stretches at night, until they're three or fourth months old. Aardvark started sleeping longer stretches at night almost immediately. Hallelujah.

Also, I have to say, having a newborn you didn't give birth to is one million times easier. I had no idea it would be so different. With Ever and Wren, I never experienced postpartum or felt as if I had a particularly terrible time recovering (aside from the couple of days after Wren was born, because of the surgery). But apparently childbirth really wreaks havoc on one's body. I wasn't really well-rested before Arden was born, and I still had to get up at night to feed her (although less than is typical, which was amazing). Nonetheless, I felt great. No breastfeeding, no hormones, no having just put my body through the gnarliest experience imaginable, etc. I wasn't emotional. There were no tears. It was amazing. Night and day. When I realized that I was probably feeling really different because I wasn't dealing with the crazy hormones, I worried about Trish. She always claimed she was doing fabulously, but she did admit to crying one day because she had forgotten to thaw the meat for dinner.

Back to the summary of our lives. Tutu introduced Ever to Mary Poppins. First they watched clips and sang songs; then when Tutu was here for the baby they watched the whole (incredibly long) movie. Ever loved it, and I'm glad she appreciates those old, not-so-action-packed flicks.

 

The week after Aardvark was born, Wrenzy started to walk. This was the first big walking day, July 15:

It was fun that Mamo was still here to witness that. Wrenzonomous then took a break from walking for a couple weeks but finally became a real walker at 16 months. It has been so incredibly helpful. I'm so happy not to have two babies I have to carry everywhere!

There was not a lot of venturing out of the house, but we did make it to Hosp Grove one say. I admired Wrenny in the car. This age is so adorable.

  

 

Tyna, the Eskimo baby, got a bath (well, more than one, but only one was memorialized):

 

Wrapped in her sleep sack:

 

Wrenzo developed an insatiable appetite. The girl would eat almost anything, and she'd consume huge volumes of food. It was amazing, especially since she'd struggled with food for so long. She has to eat more frequently than Ever, and once she decides she's hungry, she has to be fed right then, or she loses her mind. She does the "more" sign to say, "Give me food now." Usually she insists on feeding herself, and the mess is tough.

 

Still a fan of the tongue:

 

Since we'd stolen Tutu away from the Deetrixes early in anticipation of Tyna's arrival, we let her leave us on July 18 so she could spend a few more days in Ventura before her flight home on the 22nd. We lunched at the train station Burger King since BK is Mamo's old fave. Wrenzy and Ever are incredible burger eaters like their father. Wrenzy enjoying hers:

 

She finished it on the platform while Ever played sassy ...

 

... and then sweet:

 

I'm a pro at the Amtrak since that's the train I ride to work. I told Jim and Mamo that the stops are short, but Jim probably had time to help Mamo on with her luggage. I failed to emphasize the brevity of the stops. I've seen people miss stops because they weren't fast enough. I really erred by not being clear. When Mamo's train arrived, Jim carried her suitcase on. The girls and I stood there watching and waiting. He didn't get off, and he didn't get off. "Where is he?" I kept thinking (and maybe saying, too). I saw the conductor pick up the little announcement phone, and I thought he was going to give a final warning about the imminent departure. But the doors closed right then, and Jim had never disembarked. I stood there going, "He never got off. He never got off!" Ever lost her mind and started screaming and crying. She seemed to think her father would never return. I tried to quiet her down. "Daddy is just going on a little train ride. He'll turn around and come back as soon as he can." Jim called, and Mamo was texting me. Mamo was in tears, she felt so bad. Jim was irate that they hadn't given any warning before taking off.

As for me, I was stranded at the train station with all three girls. My car keys were in my purse, which was locked in the car. I figured it could be up to four hours before Jim returned since there aren't a ton of trains running in the middle of the day. I wondered if I had enough formula for the baby, and what would we do all that time? I got the girls into the Amtrak office. Ever was still freaking out. Wren started to fuss. I called my visiting teacher, Melanie Oddou, to see if she could come pick up a kid or two. She wasn't available right then and suggested a locksmith. I hated to pay for that, especially if by the time I could get into my car and drive home I'd have to go back to pick up Jim. Shortly after I talked to Melanie, Jim called and said there would be a return train from San Juan Capistrano about 15 minutes after he arrived there, so he'd be back within about two hours from when the train left Oceanside. The girls settled down, and I realized we'd be just fine. By the time I'd corresponded with Jim, Mamo, and Melanie and changed a nasty diaper courtesy of Wrenzo, Jim was going to be back soon. Melanie was determined to help so came to pick up Wrenzo 20 or 30 minutes before Jim was due to arrive. Then he was back, and it turned out not to be a big deal at all. By the next day, Ever thought it was the funniest story, and she started telling everyone she saw about the time Daddy got stuck on the train.

Derrick Karner came to see the baby and pointed out that the strawberry on her face was shaped like a sideways heart, which I hadn't noticed before:

 

(Note: she's got a total of three of these hemangiomas. They get darker and bigger for the first few months and then go away - at least mostly - over a period of years. As I write this, hers are way darker than in the above picture but are already starting to get white spots in them as they resolve.)

Cute burper with fun hair:

 

Trisha gave us this onesie, which says, "Made with love (and science)":

 

Wrenzy spent a lot of time trying to open the gate Jim made:

 

(She got it open a handful of times, and then she learned to climb up the side by the piano. The gate's useful life wasn't as long as we might have hoped.)

Ever enjoys doing puzzles, and she's gotten good at them. Auntie Dawn sent some Frozen ones, and Ever did them over and over:

 

A week after Mamo left, Jim went on the high-adventure trip with Gary Oddou and the scouts, leaving me alone for nearly a week. In preparation for his trip, he decided to test my bear mace by spraying it into the kitchen sink. He has always doubted its efficacy. He also wondered if it had expired, as it's really old. Lastly, he wanted to make sure he knew how to use it. So he did the teeniest little spray into the sink - just pushed down until he heard it spray and then released. He did not consult me before doing so, and I didn't know what was going on. Arden and I were on the couch. I heard the little spray. Then Jim started hacking. He told me what he'd done, and Arden and I escaped upstairs. He opened windows and then came up coughing and sweating, eyes watering and snot pouring out of his nose. He went back downstairs to clean out the sink. I took this picture as the baby and I hibernated upstairs to remember the experience:

 

My throat felt weird, and Arden started fussing. When Jim returned from cleaning the sink, his hands were burning. We were a little worried about the baby, and Jim was beating himself up for his bad idea. "I can't wait to tell the ER doctor I sprayed her with pepper spray," he said. Pretty funny, as we were all OK.

Wren has gotten really into books. She loves when we read to her, as long as the books are short and picture-focused. She also enjoys reading alone.

 

She likes to take books off the bottom shelf in her room, slide between the rocking chair and the wall, and look at her books. It's cute.

Our week without Jim was mostly fine. We made it to Target once because we had to buy a gift for Ever to take to a birthday party for a preschool friend. We got a monster cart (Ever's favorite) and filled it with girls:

 

Ever had a great time at the birthday party, despite her expression in the picture below. You can't go wrong with a princess theme and four-year-old girls:

There was at least one really bad night while Jim was gone when these three tried to kill me:

 

(Wren looks like a serial killer in that picture, no?) I think Ever woke me once and the other two each woke me twice. Wrenzy just woke screaming for no reason. Aardvark needed to eat. Once I was up with Arden for over an hour because I couldn't settle her back down. Miraculously, I survived just fine.

Luc Oddou, who still loves Ever and plans to marry her, was eating Nutella one day and tried to put some on a plate to give to her. Susan suggested that he at least put it on something like toast. So Ever received a delivery of old toast with some Nutella smeared on it, and she thought it was totally delicious:

 

Before Jim got home, I texted him this picture of the biggest and littlest:

 

He responded from the car and said that Tyna looks like Eric Stonestreet from Modern Family:

Amazing parrelleling work by Jem. I'm bummed I didn't think of that one, as that is my special gift.

*With regard to the name "Tyna," and speaking of celebrities, the name evolved, as noted above, from "Tiny Baby." The spelling, however, is inspired by Blac Chyna, and we sometimes call Arden "Blac Tyna." I think it's hilarious that our baby is named (sort of) after this ridiculous woman who is currently carrying the child of Rob Kardashian:

I can't recommend that you Google her because nearly all of the photos of her are completely indecent.

Arden Was Born

Friday, July 8, we woke up at the usual time, got Ever and Wren situated with Tutu, and headed to Scripps Encinitas. Jim played folk Christmas music on the way down because getting a baby felt like Christmas. We weren't in a hurry because we figured it would be a while before Trish got checked in/medicated and anything happened. Periodically I got freaked out that somehow things were going to happen really quickly and we were going to miss the birth. We stopped at a donation center on the way down to get rid of some stuff, and I thought that would have been a really dumb reason to miss the birth of our baby. Jeremy texted before we arrived, however, to say it was going to be a while. Trish still hadn't really dilated, and we were in for a long day. There ended up being a fair amount of this:

Trish and I got a picture before the real action started:

Early on, the nurses predicted a 3:00 P.M. delivery, and things looked on track for that. Trish was progressing fine. Then the baby's heart rate dropped for a minute, and the nurses came rushing in to change Trisha's position and give her oxygen. It was a little scary. I kept telling myself that worse-case scenario, they could take the baby by c-section, and everyone would be OK. The nurses turned off the pitocin, and progress stopped. Eventually they got the meds cranked up again, and Trish got to 8 centimeters. One of the nurses called Trish's long-time OB-GYN, Dr. Grauer,who canceled the rest of her afternoon appointments so she could come deliver the baby. It took her a while to get down to the hospital, and Trish was still at 8 cm when Dr. Grauer arrived. Dr. Grauer hung out after she was supposed to go home to see it through. She said Trish had been having dysfunctional labor all day. The contraction pattern wasn't what they want to see, and it indicated the baby was in occiput posterior position (face up). The baby was also not lined up well and didn't want to move down. I was so worried that after a long and painful day, Trish was going to need a c-section. The nurse said babies can be delivered in OP position, but it's harder and takes longer.

Finally, around 6:00 P.M., Trish was ready to start pushing. We went to the cafeteria to get some dinner right before and ended up running into one of Jim's old co-workers who had left Kaiser for Scripps. There was a Jamba Juice machine in the cafeteria, and we made a poor snap decision to purchase a giant mango smoothie. We scarfed the food back in the hospital room but hadn't made much progress on the smoothie when the pushing began. Jim and I sat on the couch on the side of the room. I had the smoothie in hand, and it was just really weird - like I was watching a movie, with refreshments, of my baby's birth. I had to put the smoothie down and let it go to waste.

Trish pushed a bit, and then Dr. Grauer said she wanted to let her rest briefly and see if the baby would move down into a better position. Around 6:45 P.M., Dr. Grauer came back, and the pushing began again in earnest. It was really hard to watch. The epidural, although helpful, didn't prevent all pain. At one point, Trish said, in a tiny, high voice, "It hurts!" She asked repeatedly how she was doing and if we were making progress. In the beginning, Dr. Grauer wasn't super-engaged. She was standing a ways back during the pushing and left the room at one point. Trish asked if we were almost there, and Jeremy said, "I think when the doctor doesn't leave the room, that means we're almost there." It was awful seeing Trish in so much pain, concerned husband at her side, knowing it was all for us. I cried sometimes. Trish thought it would be easy - a few pushes, and the baby would pop out. They commented that she'd never had to push so long. I was off to the side going, "See? I'm telling you, Kringel babies don't come out!" I, irrationally, felt a little validated when even a professional birther couldn't get our baby out.

The nurses' shift change was at 7:00 P.M. The nurses who were ending their shift brought in the new nurses and were getting them up to speed. Things started getting exciting right around then. One of the outgoing nurses said if she heard a baby crying, she was going to come back in and see it; she didn't care if we saw her in her shorts. She and the other outgoing nurse ended up lingering long enough that all four of them were there, plus all the rest of the team, when the baby was born at 7:22 P.M. She was 7 lbs 14 oz, and I think 19.5 inches. I'll have to confirm. By the time she came out, she had flipped so she was face down. I thought she looked just like Ever when she was born, but by the next day the resemblance was gone. In any case, she was a healthy little girl, and we were so very grateful to have her safely here. She had dark hair and dark, ruddy skin. She looked like a little Eskimo baby. The nurses had me in a gown so I could do skin-to-skin as soon as she came out.

Trish said that when people were checking to see how dilated she was, they seemed to be petting the head of this baby. There was much talk of how much hair she had:

The nurses had me in a hospital gown so that I could slip the baby in for skin-to-skin contact as soon as she was born. Jim and I focused on the baby while Trish was getting cared for. Dr. Grauer said Trish didn't tear at all, "even with Big Head over there." (That's a direct quote.) Trish was bleeding, though. The nurses kept switching out pads. I got to see a placenta for the first time, and I saw the giant bag of blood and other junk get picked up off the floor and thrown away. Childbirth is so incredibly gnarly. It's a wonder anyone survives.

After Trish and the baby were squared away, the room cleared out and we started celebrating - "We did it! That was crazy!" I told Trish how bad I felt for her. She said, "I told you I'd probably yell at the end!" She claimed that she hadn't really been in pain; she was just uncomfortable. (Total lie.) I told her how I was just so scared that after that whole day, she was going to end up needing surgery. I was so relieved a c-section hadn't been necessary.

Jeremy had posted a couple updates to Facebook about the days' proceedings. A couple times during the day, he read the comments to Trisha, complete with capitalization and punctuation. It was hilarious. I videotaped one of his readings after Arden was born (hence the crying baby):

Not long after things had calmed down and the room had cleared, Trish needed to go to the bathroom. The nurses came in to help her. Next thing I knew, one of the nurses was saying, "She's pale!" and they were rushing her back to the bed to lay her down. She had lost a blood clot and was bleeding and bleeding. I'd thought we were out of the woods, and then we weren't. I thought, "Now is when the bad thing is going to happen." It was so scary. They quickly got her a medication that shrinks the uterus. That controlled the bleeding, thank heavens, and we were all able to move upstairs to recovery about 11:00 P.M. Jeremy and Trish had a room, and we had a separate room with the baby. 

That first night was rough. Nurses kept coming in to check the baby's vitals. Her temperature was low, so I had to hold her skin-to-skin for a long time. She fussed a lot. They would only give us a teeny bit of formula at a time because newborns' stomachs are so small, but she always seemed still hungry. By 4:00 A.M., I was exhausted and had not been able to sleep for one second. I wanted Jim to help (he'd been trying to sleep on the couch but had just been up for a diaper change), and he jumped up all bitter and said, "Fine! I'll just do everything! Give me the baby!" I yelled back, "Nevermind! I can't ever sleep anyway, so I'll just do it!" We were so very tired. It hurt, but we survived the night.

The next morning, I went home to fetch Mamo, Ever, and Wren. (Ever had cried when we'd called the night before and told her about the baby but said it was too late to come to the hospital.) It was nice to have all the fam together.

Jeremy and Trish came up to our room before they checked out. Mamo gave Trish a big hug and cried. Such an amazing thing she did for us. 

Poor Trish and her swollen face. Nice to know I'm not the only one who experiences that, although mine was always worse than this:

Team Baby, plus our other kids:

I took Mamo and Wrenbo home, but Ever opted to stay with us at the hospital until we checked out that evening. She was very good hanging out in the room for hours. She colored and did more baby holding:

During our time in the hospital, we surveyed all the nurses about the baby's name. Arden had been at the top of my list for a while. I think Lark is adorable, but I couldn't do a first name that ends with a "k" because of our last name. ("Lark Kringel" sounds like "Lar Kringel" unless you over-enunciate and pause between the names.) I also wasn't a big fan of becoming a weird bird-name family. We discussed Juniper, Sullivan, Rowan, and Auden. Jim was pushing for Curran, but I had to veto that one. Jeremy and I spent lots of time that long Friday researching the name options. Sullivan is used primarily for boys; Rowan is more evenly matched; Arden was used primarily for boys decades ago but is now used much more often for girls. (Jeremy found a website that told us how many boys and how many girls were given each name in recent years.) Every single person we asked, besides Jeremy, voted for Arden. When the birth certificate lady came in on Saturday, we asked her opinion. She said she sees lots of Rowans (a turn-off for Jim), and she loved the name Arden. Her friend from high school has a 13-year-old daughter named Arden. And so the deal was sealed. I have to say, with our other girls we didn't solicit opinions on names much, partly because we know our style is a bit unique. This time, however, it was helpful.

Arden Lark, ready for the car ride home:

Later we got a thank-you card from Trisha that made both Mamo and me cry:

Jeremy and Trish are incredible. What a gift they gave us! 

I wanted everything to go well so they wouldn't regret their decision to do this. Things definitely weren't as smooth as we would have hoped, beginning to end. After she went home from the hospital, Trish continued to bleed. She ended up needing a D&C weeks later. Something funky happened to her uterus. A little nodule where the placenta was attached to the uterus didn't fully heal, and the D&C also revealed scar tissue and a polyp. Ten days after the D&C - which was about two months after Arden was born - the bleeding finally stopped. These Kringel babies don't make it easy, but thank heavens Trish is all right. We are forever indebted to her and Jeremy.

* See http://itswilsontime.blogspot.com/2016/07/7-8-2016.html for Trisha's account of Arden's birthday.