Eliot Spencer Quinn

Our spring blossom has sprung! It's a boy so I don't know how welcome the analogy is, but we'll go with it.

The labor went well, below are the cliff notes from my perspective, for full details you can call and chat with Sharon, she would love it.

Name: Eliot Spencer Quinn
Weight: 8 lbs. 15 oz.
Height: 20.5 inches



Tuesday April 3rd, 2012
4:30 AM - About the time early labor started, this is when Ira woke up and Sharon couldn't get back to sleep.
10:00 AM -We already had an appointment with the midwives so we went in for that, they said it could be labor, but contractions weren't consistent enough to warrant staying. Probably still early first stage labor.

So we went to Costco and stocked up on food and treated ourselves to a Costco lunch.

~ 3:00 PM - Contractions became more consistent at about 5-6 minutes apart, Sharon got more focused. Del and Mary Lou arrived from PA to help out with Ira. - Perfect timing.

~ 6:45 PM - Checked-in to the CT Childbirth and Women's Center - They are amazing! Sharon described it as 'Heaven'. The midwife was supportive as was the nurse on duty that night. - Dilated: 5 cm
~ 9:15 PM - Waters broke (literally burst) - Dilated: 9 cm
~ 9:30 PM - Second Stage Labor started - big pushes
~ 9:50 PM - His head came out slow and after a few pushes the rest of his body was not following. The midwife sternly commanded Sharon to flip out of the sitting position she was in and to get on her hands and knees. One of the babies shoulders was stuck against her pelvis, known as shoulder dystocia. We had an anxious few seconds, that seemed a lot longer, as the skilled midwife did a few maneuvers and the baby was born.

9:54 PM - Official birth time.

He didn't look good after coming out, you can see he is still getting all his color.
The flash didn't help either.

Cheers to mom! Sharon did really well.

Happy new father

We are all home, healthy, and happy.

Ira has been taking well to the new addition. He was a little hesitant at first, but he now affectionately calls it 'My(his) Baby' after some bonding time this afternoon.

Ira was his usual observant self when we first got home, not sure what
to make of the new baby.

He warmed up fairly quickly after he was able to get some alone
time with one of us.

A proud older brother.

Ira loves holding Eliot.

Some good bonding time...
may he always be so gentle and protective...

Thank You Mary Lou for being here with us! 

Ira and Eliot have taken well to Mary Lou.

Celebrating Eliot's birthday with a yummy cake.

She has been a huge help as we start to adjust our lifestyle for a family of four.

I don't know how Sharon is going to survive the three of us.

February Family Visit

It was great to have a visit from my parents and my youngest brother, McKay, while he was on his 'ski break'. We love seeing family and having time to catch up and talk. It snowed while they were here but we didn't get any skiing in.

Ira loved uncle 'kk', Papa, and Grandma

Sharon tried out some new recipes for us. These lemon pudding cakes were a nice treat.

My cousin Josh and his family came down for a day from upstate NY.

Ira also loved their visit. (He's a social kid). He was pretty goofy while they were here.

Kennedi, Ira, & Libby were excited they all had the same kind of pajamas. 

Ira was so sad to see them leave, he couldn't stop crying. We look forward to getting

together with them again.

Danbury Railway Museum

Happy March everyone!

We're all settled in our new apartment here in Danbury, CT and are having fun in the same ward we were in a year ago.  It's good to see familiar faces and know the territory.  

We had a blast when the Quinns came out to visit last week.  Having family around is the best.  Hint hint. For those of you who have slept on our floor, we just got a second air mattress!

Here are some pics of our visit to the Danbury Railway Museum, otherwise known as Ira's Dream Come True. 

Ira followed Grandpa out to the train yard...

and almost immediately biffed it on some slippery ice.  

Ira calls this the "Thomas Train."  I keep thinking the Thomas shows will bore Ira out of his mind, but since he got scared out of his pants watching Veggie Tales last week, I guess boring is a-o.k.  

We tried to replicate some train yard super model shots they had in the museum with Mckay.  

So majestic. :)

Ira with Grandpa and Grandma.

I'm not a huge fan of having my belly-shot taken, but I had to show off the Pennsylvania car.  

I can still get the top and bottom buttons together on my coat, but nothing else.

Speaking of being pregnant, I'm feeling good and have been nesting like crazy!  Now that I've got less than 4 weeks till my due date, I'm suddenly packing hospital bags, organizing cupboards, setting up babysitting, and reading up on birthing.  I feel like I've just sprinted a few laps after bending over to put on shoes, and can't stop checking out books for Ira about becoming a big brother.  We're really liking our Bradley class, and love the birthing center I'll deliver at if all continues to go well. Here's a link if you're curious. http://www.ctbirthcenter.com/

Work is keeping Anthony busy, and being a few blocks from a library and park are keeping Ira busy.  Spring can't quite decide if it's begun or not, but we try to get out when we can. 

More Quinn photos and updates from Anthony are pending.  

Have a happy Sunday everyone!   

Ira Moving

Despite some health concerns with Ira he was a gem during the move.

Of Course he loved the boxes

He was really cute. He would curl up inside the box and close the
top and yell, "Where is Ira" 

He would then explode out of the box.

This hat caught his eye while we were moving and he
won't let us take it off. He even slept with it on a few times.

Back East

Our move back to Connecticut is over and we are getting comfortable in our new apartment. Leading up to the move everything seemed to be falling perfectly into place, but that was too good to be true. The movers came on Thursday and packed our lives into boxes and left, giving us what we thought would be a week to say our goodbyes and travel. However, later that afternoon we got a call and they wanted to deliver our stuff that Sunday. We went into scramble mode to leave the next afternoon. That evening we did all our apartment cleaning and as we crawled into our sleeping bags wearily made plans for finishing up work, returning items our friends had lent us, and saying some quick goodbyes then heading out. We woke up the next morning to find some blood in Ira's diaper, the final piece of evidence to confirm our growing suspicions that something was off with Ira (He had recently started to refuse to use the potty, even with good incentives). All signs pointed to a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). We added 'Go to the Doctor' to our list of things to get done before we left.

Sharon was the lucky one that had to deal with most of this while I tried to get my projects at work wrapped up. The list goes on and on as to the challenges she faced. President Obama was giving a speech in Ann Arbor that morning, so she got stuck in stopped traffic while they closed the freeway. She got stuck at a train crossing because the train stopped. Her phone and GPS to get to run the last few errands ran out of battery resulting in getting lost a few times, she got pulled over by the cops, and risked a guys job to break into my work to pick me up. Sharon is amazing though and miraculously worked it all out and made it back to pick me up at work. After hastily throwing all our stuff into the car and turning our keys in we grabbed Ira's prescription and headed out of town.

We made it to the Romero's in Niagara Falls that evening after an uneventful drive through Canada other than the border patrol giving our stuffed car a few weird looks and asking a couple of times to verify we hadn't stopped somewhere along the way to buy anything. It was great to see the Romero's again. It felt like it had been a long time and was defiantly too short of a visit before we were back on the road. We made it to our new place Saturday evening and our stuff was delivered Sunday.

Ira's antibiotics seemed to be working well until Thursday when his temperature was up to 102 and didn't want to do much of anything but snuggle and grump.  Friday we took him in for a very long and traumatic doctor's visit with his temperature down to 100.5.  The pediatrician couldn't do much to find out what was wrong since Ira was busy kicking and screaming and punching the nurse.  Saturday, we finally got a urine sample from him at home and took it in.  His temperature is back to normal and it looks like the infection is clearing up, though he still says it hurts to use the potty.  It's been frustrating since he's been refusing to drink very many fluids or use the potty regularly, but other signs are pointing to recovery.  Thanks for the prayers!

In the midst of our first week craziness, Sharon made it to the Connecticut Birthing Center, which is a few minutes away and looks great.  We're signed up for a Bradley class (since Sharon may want to become a Bradley instructor someday), and are happy to find old friends at church.  This has been one of the more stressful moves, but things are falling into place.

Thanks to all our friends who helped us out.

Winter Wonderland

Before we left Connecticut was getting more snow than usual. It felt like we had a major snow storm every week. The schools haven't had a full week of school since they got out for Christmas break. I took the train to work the other day and ended up coming home early because no one was in the office and work was slow as I wrapped up my 1st rotation work.
I snapped some pictures on my way home. Quantity wise, it really wasn't that much snow compared to what I grew up with in Park City, UT; however, the city doesn't know where to put the snow or how to plow it and people don't know how to drive in it  so it just makes for a bad situation. We also were getting a lot more 'ice' storms with the temperature oscillating between freezing and not freezing.

Enjoy the pictures.

 Messy Intersection at the train station

 Snow piled High

 Downtown Danbury

 Getting away from the main street the snow paths get a little more interesting

 They really need to learn how to use their plows more effectively, sometimes I can hardly tell the streets have been plowed.

 Getting closer to home, I'm the one making fresh tracks through the snow.

 Our house, new car, and the moving van waiting to be loaded. Who moves to Minnesota in the middle of the winter?

Ira's First Birthday

Friday we celebrated Ira's first birthday! I can't believe a year has gone by so quickly. His latest tricks are:

• Standing without holding on to anything
• Making a Growling/ hocking a luggie sound
• Feeding himself more than we feed him
• Signing for more food (Instead of squawking and flapping his arms)

To celebrate his birthday we blew up some balloons, which he loves playing with, and wrapped a few presents. We wanted to give him chocolate cake for the first time and let him get all messy so we could take some cute pictures, but our attempts failed as demonstrated in the video above (If you are reading this in email you might have to go to the blog to see the video). We couldn't even get him to eat the berry pie. I guess we can't really complain that he refuses to eat sugar. If the video wasn't enough I've put on a few other pictures from the happy day.

Playing with his balloons, probably the one present that's kept him the most occupied.

 He's still figuring out the 'present inside the wrapper' idea.

He likes his new block toys, especially knocking towers over.