Today we went to the first candidate for Avery’s school. He didn’t like the name “Oyster Bay-bies”, but he did enjoy the school and we eventually had to drag him away sobbing that he wanted to stay. Four more to go.
Meanwhile, Diana’s aunt Caroline has come to stay in our basement. The house is getting pretty crowded.
Back to the old problem. Tori (cocoa-bean) spent all night up crying. Looks like a formula problem. The doctor said a day on pedialite and then try the soy. If that doesn’t work, a day on pedialite again, the nutramagen. Only if that doesn’t work do we go with neocate.
Diana came home today. I picked her up at ten from the hospital, there were no issues. Everything went smoothly and before we knew it we were home. She slept soundly in the playpen, and my father dropped by for a while (we picked up Claire at the bus stop). Grandpa, Noni and Duke came for dinner, I cooked up the ribs and some hot dogs and hamburgers. All in all, a very nice introduction to the family for Tori.
The new computer arrived today. I’m pretty excited. The current computer isn’t bad hardware-wise, though it’s difficult to upgrade any more than it is. The big problem is that the software is a disaster. The new herd drive can’t seem to install Windows 2000, I’m not sure why, and our current install is flaky as hell. Diana often has to log into my account just to view web sites, which defeats the whole purpose of having accounts.
It was time to switch to Windows XP (Vista is still in beta, even if Microsoft is selling it) but it’s hard to get it at any reasonable price. My solution was to buy a Dell small business computer. I assembled the machine I wanted and balked at the price: $1300. So I went to newegg and price checked every extra. Eventually I even ended up downgrading to the cheapest processor and buying a new one (yep, Dell actually charges more for a processor upgrade than the processor itself costs).
Some of the purchased pieces were nicer than what Dell was offering (wireless keyboard/mouse combo, the 65W 4600+ which runs much cooler, 2.5GB instead of 2GB). The stripped down Dell machine was $525 and the add-ons were $450, for a total of $350 savings ($345 after I realized I needed to buy some thermal paste for the new CPU).
It took about an hour to install all the pieces and figure out a way around a bug in the Dell BIOS, but it works beautifully.
This morning I made the kids pancakes for breakfast, then we were off to church. I showed off Victoria’s picture. After church we walked down to Harborfest. Claire wanted to try the rock climbing, but the operator was so slow (and I do mean slow — he just sat there rubbing his chin and sighing most of the time) that we stood in line for an hour with Avery slowly melting down.
Once on the ride Claire climbed about two thirds of the way up before looking to me to see if it was okay to stop. Of course it was, she did great for six. We went to the food lines which were equally as nasty, except for the hot dog line, so the kids had hot dogs, period. After that we made bead necklaces and Claire did some sand art. The kids were pretty tired, but it was a long walk to the car so I had to keep them moving.
Before going home we went to the hospital to visit mommy (and cocoa bean). Victoria was asleep in the room, but we had a good time visiting until Avery started to melt down again. We were going to have ice cream afterwards, but the cafeteria was closed. I finally brought the camera back to the hospital, so we should have more pictures once everyone gets home.
On the drive home it was raining, so it looks like we left Harborfest at the right time.
Claire had a play-date with Ava today, so Avery and I went out to pick up a blanket for Victoria. On our way to the hospital to see Diana he fell asleep, but woke up cheerful when we got there.
Diana called the nurse to have Victoria brought in and Avery held her for a moment. I fed her for the first time (well, Diana had fed her earlier) and she is one hungry little kid. I had to burp her after every half ounce, but that was about ten seconds of bottle. She polished off all two ounces and kept looking for more (no crying, though). She did cry a bit when I changed her diaper, but that was it.
She also spent the whole time looking around, especially at Avery. She’s going to adore her older brother.
Victoria Staten vonRoeschlaub, born 6/1/07 at 8:30 AM. 7lb 13oz.
Overall the most uneventful birth we’ve had. We went in, an hour and a half later Diana was wheeled into surgery, twenty minutes later the C-Section was complete and we had a very alert new baby girl. During the post-op cleanup we got to hold her and, aside from the initial shock, she didn’t cry at all. She did keep opening her eyes until, by the time she was taken off to neonatal care, she had both eyes open constantly and was looking around at everything.
In the picture her hand looks a bit purple, but that’s misleading since in reality it was very very purple. The doctors assured us that was normal.
Diana is now in the maternity ward and I am headed to sleep for a very needed nap.
Perhaps sensing the pending change in his life, Avery had a hard time sleeping last night. He was up a few times, once because something in his room was going to eat him, the last time for the more mundane problem of his nighttime sippy cup being out of water. Needless to say down at eleven up at four is not a happy night for me, but the constant interruptions just made things even more difficult.
Still no solid decision on a name.