William Ellis Hartley

Welcome to the world!!! William Ellis Hartley was born Saturday (4/24/2010) at 10:53am and weighed 7 lbs 9oz and 19.5" long.

We were very fortunate to have another GREAT delivery. I barely had to push at all. We did our regualr pushes, the nurse asked me to stop half way through one and called the Doctor in. Dr Bennett came in and was putting on her gown and gloves when she looked over and hurried over because Ellis was apparently already coming out (I wasn't doing anything). He was just ready and slipped right out. It really was another awesome birth.

Mike and also realized that Ellis' birthday is 4/24 and Tessa's birthday is 5/25. Kind of neat. In another funny little twist, we were at the Hospital during a shift change and when our nurse came in in the morning, she introduced herself and Mike and I both started laughing. Her name was TESSA! It was so wierd talking with and asking Tessa for help when I'm so used to Tessa needing help from ME! She was great and we were once again so lucky to have a great Piedmont Hospital delivery nurse.

Below is a link for some pictures.



Click here to view photos

Chopped Liver

Ms Princess is the most popular toddler teacher at Tessa's current day-care. I'm not trying to sound racist, but she looks a little bit like Aunt Jemima. She's slighly larger, with the real dark skin and short hair. She has a wonderful personality that the children absolutely love. If she is in the room, no one else matters (not mom, dad, Opa, Omi, or anyone).

This morning when I dropped Tessa off Ms Princess was not in yet, so she went into the Infant Room with Ms Laura. Tessa know Ms Laura very well, as she was her teacher for almost a year. Tessa was in the room playing with one of the babies, Jesse. As I do every morning, I told Tessa "Alright, I have to go to work, bye bye I love you." She started to get really upset and didn't want me to leave. Laura and I tried all kinds of distraction techniques that normally work in this situation (bubbles, books, music, etc.) "No mommy, no mommy, don't go. I carry you (meaning pick me up)." Since there was only one baby in there, Laura suggested we go for a walk and look at the fish (they have a large fish tank at the front with a bunch of colorful fish). This seemed to calm her down, so Laura picked up Jesse and I grabbed a sniffeling Tessa and we walked out of the room to go see the fish.

Just as we walked out the door Ms Princess rounds the corner and Tessa lights up like a Christmas Tree and takes off down the hall suealing with excitement and runs right into her arms. Ms Princess picks her up and gives her a bigg hug and a kiss and Tessa turns to me and says "Bye Bye Mommy" and waves and blows me a kiss. Ms Laura and I died laughing. Two seconds ago, she was all upset and begging me to stay and now that Ms P was there, I might as well have been chopped liver. She is such a GOOBER!

Big Girl

She looks so grown up in this picture. She had lunch outside after her nap on Saturday, partially because she was really dirty from playing in the yard.

Mike insisted on getting her this PINK Lawnmower. It's supposed to blow bubbles, but it hardly ever does. She still like to play with it, though. Lawnmower is one of her new words. With all of the nice weather we've been having, more people are outside mowing thier lawns again. When she says it sounds more like Mawnmomer.

Coolest Pic Ever

This has to be the coolest picture. It's from the Volcano eruption in Iceland. Also, here's the link so that you can blow it up and get a better view. It's a REAL picture, I got it from NASA's web site.





http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Dirt

With the weather finally warming up, we have spent the majority of our time outside in the yard. Mike and I finally planted our vegetable garden this weekend and planted some flowers (a minor melt-down at the nursery prevented us from doing any further shopping for the garden). THis is where my doubts set in. Tessa LOVES dirt. She loves playing in it, sitting in it, and burrying herself in it. We went through three outfits yesterday. She rubs it on her legs, arms, and face and yes she even eats it! She tries to feed it to the cat and the dogs. I struggle with letting her explore and discover nature versus tearing up my flowers. She always wants to pick the flowers, but she won't pick the Azaleas, which have a million blossoms on them. No, she wants to pick my ONE pretty Dahlia or the Diasy. What about my pretty purple flocks (sp?) there are a hundred pretty little purple flowers on that. Hell, she could pick my favorite Haliboris (sp?) we have so much of it.

It will be interesting to see how this summer goes once the tomatos and jalapenos start to grow. I bet she only picks it and eats it once!

Gina

Regina (or Gina as Tessa calls her) took Tessa up to Helen, GA last Friday. Tessa had a lot of fun with Keegan, Makayla, Regina and Marie. Now, included in her repetoire of who all should "Come Home Right Now" is Gina! (It started off with Opa, then Daddy was added and now Gina is on the board).

Visitation

So, currently they are not allowing any visitors except for spouses and grandparents at Piedmont Hospital. Not even siblings are allowed right now. This means I won't get to see Tessa at all after I have the baby. It will be my longest time away from my bug!

She's really developed an attachment to me that I think has to do with Mike being out of town. She gets upset if she thinks I am leaving her. She does great by herself with my mom, but the moment I'm around she's afraid I'm going to leave. She even gets upset if I go to the bathroom. I hope I get to spend enough quality time with her after the baby is born to assure her that Mommy still loves her just as much and will never leave her. I keep telling her that she's going to have a best friend soon who will be her BEST buddy for the rest of her life and they they are going to have so much fun together.

I hope all goes well.