Kalira's First Birthday Parties

Happy BIRTHday to Kalira!  Sabrina was thrilled to have a birthday party for Kalira when we brought her home from the hospital.  We had candles and everything!  We had one party with Nana and Poppy on Sunday and another on Monday with Uncle Kurt, Aunt Nat, Celia and Della once they returned from California.  Already a lucky, spoiled baby!

Kalira Teal Halsey joins the family

Kalira joined our family early the morning of Saturday, April 28th, which was six days past her due date. I had a very good labor with Kali (approx. 14.5 hours) and she was born at 4:22am (coincidentally, she was DUE on 4/22 - she just got confused). She was a perfect, and very average, 7 lbs., 8 oz. and 20 in. long. Right when she was born, she came up to my chest and we sat like that for almost an hour before we weighed her, cleaned her up, or tested her Apgar scores. It was a wonderful and amazing hour. Brent and Nana (Annie) were in the room along with our fabulous midwife, Kala. Kala had brought in white Christmas lights for the delivery room along with small paper cups of lavender oils that gave the room a relaxing, spa-like quality (it was exactly the kind of atmosphere I love!). We celebrated with the traditional post-natal drink from the Bradley course which is orange juice. After our scary seizure event with Sabrina's birth, we decided to avoid the alcohol and stick with the recommended juice! Sabrina spent the night with Poppy over at their house and she came to meet her sister mid-morning on Saturday. She had a very serious reaction to Kalira when she first walked in and she immediately started telling us what to do. "She needs a blanket" "She needs a hat." When I told Sabrina that the baby had finally come out of my tummy, she looked at me and said "I think there's another one in there." HA! She's lucky I love her so much! Sabrina was very concerned that we didn't have a cake and "fire" (a.k.a. candles) for Kali right away. She is really into birthdays right now, so to hear that it was Kali's ACTUAL birthday and we didn't have cake and candles for her was pretty hard for Sabrina. We had to explain that you can't really have fire in hospitals, but she was unconvinced. To make up for it, we had a great birthday party WITH FIRE on Sunday afternoon when we brought Kalira home from the hospital (photos forthcoming). During our hospital stay we were lucky enough to have visits from Lea and Justin as well as Lee Carmichael (Cara, Casey and Cody made it as far as the parking lot, but the kids had other plans besides coming up to meet Kali!). Nana, Poppy and Sabrina made frequent visits and Sabrina got to know her way around that hospital like a pro. She told everybody who would listen that she was a big sister now. Here are our first albums of photos of Kalira's birth, right up to the point when we brought her home. (there are duplicates...oops...we didn't coordinate this very well) https://plus.google.com/photos/100534016372617912115/albums/5736837205219138785

Happy Easter!

The Easter Bunny arrived in full force this year. Sabrina really "got" the holiday and had a lot of fun with easter egg hunts today. We spent a nice morning at home where the Daddy Bunny set up a couple of egg hunts in the living room and Sabrina did pretty well finding the eggs. She got distracted fairly easily though with the plastic eggs that had treats in them. She kept opening them and saying things like "Dried cherries? Thank you Easter Bunny!" Plus the Easter Bunny brought her a large, hollow, chocolate bunny and that was a big treat for her.
Next we went over to the Yellow House (known to Sabrina as "Liam and Logan's house") where we had a huge egg hunt on their big front yard. There were eggs everywhere! Perfect for little hunters. Celia and Liam definitely had a jump on the "under 3" year olds as they ran out to the yard, but everybody had a great time and ended up with full baskets and full tummies. We filled up even more on delicious eggs benedict, fruit salad and mimosas. We came home mid-afternoon completely sunned out! Brent and I were a little jealous of Sabrina's nap in a cool, dark room all afternoon. But, more baby prepping for us! We're doing very well on our preparations and feeling as ready as we can be. Now just trying to keep up on laundry, picking up around the house, and trying to get ahead on the yard work. Brent is also taking a course on Natural Language Processing through Stanford this semester and he's trying to work ahead in that so he can spend time with the baby (and Sabrina!) once he/she arrives. We're keeping busy, that's for sure.

Liz Connolly and I looked longingly at Cara's wonderfully flat tummy and beautiful little boy all day today...we're both still about 2 weeks away from our due dates and we're ready for the next phase! Baby Cody (Carmichael) is adorable and sweet and spent the day snuggled inside the Moby wrap with Cara or enjoying the shade inside the house. I'm sure Casey and Celia shared all their good "Big Sister" tips with Sabrina and Lily while they were egg hunting. They're the experts now! Sabrina will get her chance soon enough. Although hopefully not until after Wednesday, the 11th, when Nana (aka our birth doula) gets back from visiting Tim and Erica's new baby, Lindsey, in Boston! Thankfully Poppy has agreed to stick around to watch Sabrina in case we go into labor early. Having had a conversation with Gnocchi, we think he/she understands not to come out until at least later this week. Here's hoping!