So -- anything going on lately?

A lot can happen in a week, y'all ... here's the story so far, with pics to follow as soon as R. shows me how (I ... can't ... process .. . the, like, Internets? right now?). Enjoy!

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We were scheduled to be induced on Tuesday, as you know, but I could not get to sleep Sunday night, and by 3:30 Monday morning it was clear we weren’t going to need the induction appointment. At around 6:30 a.m. I was admitted, and yada yada yada GIVE ME DRUGS, MAN. Which they did – your basic injectable heavy-duty narcotics – but very shortly thereafter, the epidural, at my single-minded and increasingly loud request. Many hours of labor followed; we watched the frickin Yankees go dead once again, which at least provided some distraction (one doc just about died laughing when I came up out of the pain + druggy haze to say something like “Jeezus, 0 for WHAT in the series? That asshole can’t BUY a hit!”). Pitocin-aided progress was slow but constant until I stalled out at “nearly there,” where we stayed for a long time. Finally they told me I could push … which I did … for three hours.

At last, lil’ stubborn came out into the world at 5:44 a.m. on Tuesday, October 9 – 8 pounds, 4 ounces, 21 inches long, a baby girl with a full head of dark hair and the sweetest dark blue eyes you ever saw. She had a lot of fluid in her lungs, so R. went down the hall with her to the NICU to get her lungs suctioned out. Couple hours later, there she was again, and seriously – this is going to ruin my gangsta rep here, but – LOVE, y’all, nothing but love. My mom arrived around 7:00 that night, and stayed with us overnight in the recovery room; baby girl spent part of the night sacked out in her grandmother’s arms, allowing us almost four hours of sleep, bless her. Aunt A., Sonic and Babygirl visited Wednesday afternoon, and brought cookies (thankyou thankyou thankyou, A.!) The kids were a little wary of such a tiny thing, but we're sure the cousins will get along like gangbusters in a few years.

It took us another whole day to narrow down our list of names to one of our longstanding Scandinavian front-runners, and when we realized (thanks to several of y’all!) that October 9 was John Lennon’s birthday, which she had apparently waited two extra weeks to hit, we had a winner: Annika Lennon M.!

Anyway, we brought Annika home Wednesday night, as soon as we were allowed; we could’ve stayed an extra night, but she was doing great, the fever I had spiked had disappeared, and as awesome as the Kaiser people were (every doctor, nurse, anesthesiologist, consultant, aide, and random person we saw was FABULOUS, I mean it!), it just felt like time to get on home. She was (and is) mesmerizing – we just couldn’t take our eyes off of her. Still can’t. In fact, gotta wrap this up – gonna go watch her sleep some more. Best show we’ve ever seen – she’s worth every minute of the wait.