Family Visit Photos

Jon
Jun 13 |15:57

A good chunk of the extended family visited Ella yesterday – looking forward to another group today.The twins were in classic Janae and Corinne form, asking funny questions and being cute (check the twitter sidebar for quotes). We had a fairly good night. Ella is was a party animal until around 4. She’s been asleep almost five hours now. Eating well still. Stacey is eating and working on getting off the IV. And I got COFFEE!!!

I finally got the photos from yesterday posted on Flickr and here on the site. Here are a couple – and here is the link:

http://arnoldgirls.net/photo-feeds/ella/

Ella and Mom

I find this all very amusing....

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Enter Ella!

Jon
Jun 13 |01:33

We are officially a family of six! I will be signing up for Brad and Leah Fox’s next class on “How to Survive Four Young Children.” I have been trying to post an update all day but it’s been chaotic – it always is. Here’s the rundown:

5:30 am. Alarm goes off. I shoot alarm with .44 Magnum. In my head. In real life, I drag my sorry carcass out of bed. Ugh.

6:30 am. Stacey’s Mom arrives to take over twins and Maya duties for a few days. Thanks Grandma!

7:30 am. We arrive at the hospital and get checked in. We learn that despite my assurances to the contrary, the c-section is scheduled for 9:15, not 9am. I still think I was right. Its the rest of the world that got it wrong.

9:10 am. We head to the OR. When we arrive, we are told there is an emergent case before us and we will be delayed. We head back to our room for another hour.

10:10 am. Back to the OR. For reals this time. Stacey gets a spinal anesthetic. It doesn’t take. It has to be redone a second time.

10:47 am. Ella is born! There was much rejoicing. Yaaaaay. She is 7 lbs 8 oz (our biggest baby yet). She is 20″ long. Apgar is 8/9. She is having a bit of trouble breathing. After seeing that her sats drop into the 80s on room air, the special care nurse is recalled. She decides to take her up to the Special Care Nursery.

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Cleared for Takeoff!

Jon
Jun 12 |13:01

At long last, the day has come! No more tests, no more hurdles. The c-section is scheduled for 9 this morning, June 12, 2010. Ella should be welcomed to the world about 10 minutes later. Read More…

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Final Photos as a Family of Five…

Jon
Jun 10 |00:10

From our combined Father’s Day / Grandpa’s Birthday Celebration. Special thanks to Rachel-B, who serves as the official family photographer. Amazing shots!

Last photo as a family of five. Read More…

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Does Reblogging Your Own Blog Count?

Jon
Jun 9 |18:24

I mean, in terms of building your Google ranking. Cause I am quite sure these pages will be so popular they will provide for my retirement…

Needed some content for the front page, so I thought I would re-post my own post. That should fill up the space ’til I get the swimming videos edited…

Here are some posts (with excerpts) I have done about our journey becoming a family of six:

It didn’t look like it was headed that way…

Happy Father’s Day, y’all. I write this at the end of the day – the kids are in bed (sleep comes much later than “in bed”, but eventually…I hope). A great day of getting gifts, eating food, and some “time off” to take in a movie, then a webcam call with my father (he’s such a techie – that’s where I get it, I think).

For some reason today I kept thinking of Jerry Seinfeld. I remember seeing Seinfeld one Leno on night. It was the first time I had seen him do anything since the end of the show Seinfeld. He had gone back to stand-up, and was on the show doing a set. He began by saying that he had recently gotten married and had a baby. His first laugh line was something to the effect of, “I know this comes as a shock to many of you, because it really didn’t look like things were heading this way!”

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Sarah Laughed. I Get That

As I told you before in this post, our family walked through ten years of barrenness before we finally had our first children. We have three now, all conceived with the help of doctors. We needed doctor help because of some specific medical conditions that made it next to impossible for us to conceive.

I say “next to impossible”, because, yes, we are now officially expecting child number 4 (next June)!

It’s fairly cliche, really. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard this story: “Our friends tried for years, then they all of a sudden got pregnant.” Whenever I mentioned to friends that we were all done having kids after three, they often poked me back with “Hey wouldn’t it be funny if you all of a sudden got pregnant?”

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A Consistent Ethic of Life

As I prepare to share the story of how our family came to be this Sunday at Redwood Hills, I am thinking about one of the main questions we get asked a lot: are fertility treatments consistent with Christian ethics (or more like “are Christians allowed to do that kind of thing?”)? It’s a great question, and one we have spent plenty of time wrestling with. I won’t have time to go into any detail on Sunday, so I thought I would blog it here for you three readers (yes, we are up to three now :-) ). Let me first lay some ground rules.

This is not the Law from Heaven on fertility treatments. It’s also not my attempt to help you circumvent the process of wrestling with this question. If you are facing it, you need to. To me this is not a political issue or a morality tale, it’s simply an intensely personal choice we had to apply our faith to. We hope we got it right. We did our homework. We prayed for wisdom. We believe we were heard.

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Father to Daughter

Okay – one more post about Dad angst before I go back to broader topics…

One week from tomorrow, God willing, we will welcome a fourth girl – Ella Rae – into our family. I was thinking tonight about the years we ached for just one child and the task we have now undertaken – raising 4 girls. It’s more than I ever hoped for, but now I’m praying (as I think all parents must) that it’s not more than I can handle…

As I think tonight about the mysteries of fathers and daughters, I randomly remembered this music video from our old pal Lindsay Lohan, back when she was a young starlet with a bright future. I don’t know how much of this is embellished and how much is autobiography, but I do remember how I felt when I saw it for the first time: physically ill. And maybe a little angry. And I am thinking now about the tragic turns her life has taken, and thinking that maybe we should have seen it coming back then.

I dream of another you, one who would never.
Never, leave me alone to pick up the pieces.
A Daddy to hold me, that’s what I needed.

Haunting. Especially for us father-types. When I see LiLo in a news story, I don’t see a hedonistic Hollywood celeb or a cautionary tale or a target of ridicule. I see the scared, angry, hurting little girl in this video. And I think two things:

One: Lindsay, you do have a Father dying to hold you, whole will never leave you alone, who will pick up the pieces. And He’s close. And it’s never too late.
Two: Dear God – make me like You so I don’t mess up my girls.

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