finn hadd fo. we call him that for short.

oh my word. finneas turns two weeks old tomorrow! i know it's only two weeks, and in the grand scheme of eternity (or even just in the grand scheme of 2012), it doesn't really seem all that significant...but still. it feels like a long time that has gone by really quickly. if that makes sense.

to everyone who has been praying for us - THANK YOU SO MUCH. i can really feel that we're being covered in prayer. everything has gone so smoothly, especially considering how worried i was. finneas started out knowing which end was up (and by that i mean he knows that dark = sleepytime), and i haven't had even the tiniest bit of baby blues, much less full-blown depressive stuff. please keep praying for that if you have been, since postpartum depression can wait a while before setting in, but so far i'm feeling really good about how things are going.

todd took the last two weeks off, and my mom is here this week, so i've had lots of time to rest, recover, and get to know the newest van voorst, whom i like to call 'baked potato' or 'poops pants.' or finneas. since that's his name. here are some things i've come to appreciate about him over the last two weeks:

..this child can EAT. and eat. and then eat. his biceps are starting to resemble eric booker's.

..his favorite activities include peeing al fresco and pooping in very fresh diapers. give him a brand new pair of pampers and thirty seconds and watch (and listen to) the magic unfold.

..he has already developed character bits for his future in improv comedy. let's see, there's The Dead Guy, Turtleface, The Wet Noodle, Naked and Pissed About It, and Schlumpy McBurps. i have a feeling his knack for truly becoming the character (think: joaquin phoenix, i swear he's that good) will someday fund the implementation of my dream for a fully pimped out retirement condo. (counter-depth mini fridge? comically small patio overlooking a dog park? oh yeah. but all in due time.)

..the sheer strength of will and determination to not succumb to the soothing effects of a pacifier. it's the principle of the matter, and he is nothing if not principled.

so that's finneas in a nutshell. it turns out it's pretty easy to sum up a life if that life is only 13 days long so far.

i'm a jerkwad. you're a jerkwad. and god knows it.

i think there's a common misconception that being a christian has anything to do with being a better person.  that's why there are so many christians out there who point the judgmental finger at others as though they're somehow superior, and so many nonbelievers who feel like they're not good enough for god or something.  (or, conversely, who think they don't need god because they're 'good enough' or 'at least i'm better than so-and-so.')  it's because we all make the mistake of thinking the two kinds of people in the world are 'bad' people and 'good' people.  the closer you are to 'good,' the better off you are in the eyes of god.

but the truth is that there are two kinds of people in the world: dirtbag sinners who deserve hell, and dirtbag sinners who deserve hell but have been saved by the work of jesus.  and you know what? god is not concerned with you becoming a 'better person' after he saves you, either.  he knows you're a dirtbag, he knows he made you out of dust, and the whole reason jesus had to die was because he knows that, as such, we would never be able to earn anything at all worth having - jesus had to do it for us.

but what god is concerned with is christians becoming new people.  not people who cuss less, or are nicer, or go to church every week.  he's concerned with people whose hearts are brand new because they used to be dead in their sin and now they're alive.  they used to be enemies of god, and through nothing they did to deserve it, they're now part of god's family.  as a result, they might end up cussing less or being nicer or going to church more - but it's because they are able to see that god is better than what they are and what they had, not because those things in any way make them better.

i am not a better person than i was before jesus found me.  in a lot of ways, i'm a worse person - i now know what i should do, and i don't always do it.  i now have the spirit of god in me that gives me the power to walk away from sin, and i still often cling to it.  but jesus died to make me new, not to make me better, and i can honestly say i am a new, different, alive person because of it.  and i'm forgiven for my dirtiness.  and that's better than being better.

if you're annoyed by people who spell it 'grey' rather than 'gray,' be prepared to be really annoyed.

i looked in the mirror the other morning and came face-to-face with my dreaded nemesis: the grey hair.  and not just one, but a little chunk of them right in the center where my widow's peak would be if i were christina ricci.  but i'm obviously not christina ricci, as indicated by my grey hairs and my lack of millions of dollars and also the fact that i've never been best friends with casper.

at first, i was in disbelief, so i called todd in to check them.  he reassured me he saw nothing, but after he left and i began examining my head again, it became clear that they weren't just light in color or catching the sunlight strangely or some of those weird hairs we all get (i assume) that just don't have any color to them for some unexplained reason.  no, these were very curly, very coarse and very grey.

i have been waiting for this for a while, but i must say i was shocked to just...wake up...and suddenly have grey hair.  apart from shocked, i was a little bitter that i had to be dealing with this now, what with a newborn in the house and also a three-year-old with the voms and also a postpartum body that won't quit.  apart from bitter, i was all, yeah that sounds about right that i'd get grey hair now.

i will say that there is a silver lining in all this:  within the month, the post-pregnancy hormones will set in (or, the during-pregnancy hormones will set out; i don't know the science behind it all) and all my hair will fall out.  so instead of ever seeing my grey hairs, you will get the opportunity to see a lot more of my forehead and scalp than you ever wanted to see.

sweet timing.


note: yesterday's video embedding code was a stinker.  i hopefully fixed the problem, so go here if you want to see the awesomest church diva of all time.  (the first time i watched it i was drinking a glass of water and did that classic 50's sitcom 'spray it everywhere when you laugh' thing.  no lie.)

video vednesday: not to, uh, make me look good or anything, but that's what happened.

random thoughts and tidbits about last week.

for the first time in three labors, i lost my mucous plug, which i can direly tell any skeptics out there is grosser than it sounds.

i am oh-for-three in pooping on the medical staff during labor.  which honestly, i'm pretty proud of.  (although, i DID actually hear myself screaming, 'i feel like i'm going to pee on you!! is that okay?!!'  i didn't actually end up peeing on the midwife, so her permission turned out to be unnecessary, but it was reassuring to have it granted.)

i really liked my natural birth experience, and would definitely consider doing it again, but i will not lie and say i thought it was necessarily better than my epidural with atticus. although todd really liked the way it played out this time, since i wasn't all 'sedated,' as he put it.  i could see that. 

i had considered that i might one day do a home birth.  i don't now think that will ever happen - i have to admit that room service, housekeeping and available overnight babysitting of my newborn are hard to pass up.  (although, i would say that the drawback of all the help at the hospital is that it becomes way overly helpful at times and you're all like, 'why are you in my room, representative from the library? and what are you doing here, professional photographer? have they just invited the entire population of ames to visit me and sell me stuff?'  at least if some sales guy or mormon evangelist shows up to your door after a home birth you don't have to answer.  or so i must forever assume.)

apparently finneas swallowed a bunch of amniotic fluid and kept puking it up overnight in the nursery at the hospital.  they said at one point he turned blue and they had to kind of pound on him to get him breathing again.  it made me glad that i didn't know about it at the time - i would have FREAKED. OUT. and then stopped sleeping altogether just to make sure he didn't die...one more reason to love the 24-hour surveillance available at the hospital.

the doctors told us that they suspect finneas was weighed wrong at birth - he was somewhere between 7 lb 9 oz and 8 lb 6 oz... which is kind of a big difference.  and i'm all, it's a digital scale.  if you don't hire illiterates to read it, shouldn't it be pretty fail-proof?  so we will never know for sure just how much kid i pushed out this time around.

the end.

a birthday party!

atticus has been obsessed with birthday parties lately.  i suspect it's because he thinks we need more thomas the tank engine toys.  whatever the case, he's been talking about them a lot lately.  so i thought it would be fun for them to bring cupcakes to the hospital to celebrate finneas' birthday - you know, make this whole thing less foreign and awkward and generally traumatic.

my mom baked the cupcakes with them and brought them along the last morning we were there.  i think it was perfect timing because it seemed the kids were starting to get a little worn out from the break from our routine life, and it kind of gave them a fun thing to do to keep their minds off of killing each other and destroying the hospital a la john bonham.  (apparently according to todd, who is consistently more accurate and also better looking than wikipedia so i haven't bothered to corroborate this factoid, he - john bonham, not todd - once even left a dead octopus in a hotel room.  and i'm all, 'what?')

anyway.  all this took place the second time the kids visited the hospital, meaning these are not photos of them first meeting finneas; for me to post photos in chronological order would be a) impossible at my current capacity for mental function, and b) inconsistent with the whole course of this entire blog, so maybe someday i'll post pictures of the kids meeting finneas, but not today.  at this point in time as captured forever on 'film,' finneas is old news and cupcakes are the main event.

'i hold it baby!'

ahh, young finneas, you will soon learn that this life is going to be rough for you, full of well intentioned but 'anaconda squeeze'-ing big brothers.

finneas looks thrilled rather cast-off.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FINNEAS!

all the gory details.

okay, so, labor details.  i promise there won't be anything graphic, but if you're someone who can't stomach words like 'dilated' and 'contractions,' maybe quit reading now.  pretend my labor consisted of me smelling a flower and then having a dove place finneas in my arms.

i woke up at 6:15 on tuesday with contractiony-cramps, but they were pretty far apart, not super regular, and not super strong.  so i went downstairs to tell todd i thought 'today might be the day' but that he should head to work and i'd call him as things progressed.  an hour later, as he was pulling into the parking lot at work, i called him again and told him this was definitely 'it,' but that it was slow going and that he could get some stuff done at work before heading home.

todd got home about 11:00, and my mom arrived about an hour later.  since both my previous labors were only eight hours start-to-finish, i figured i wouldn't have much more time to labor at home before needing to leave.

not the case.

my contractions never really got regular, and were still only 15-20 minutes apart after lunch, and sometimes kind of petered out all together.  todd and i went on a walk to speed things up, and contractions were around five minutes apart while we were walking, but slowed down again once we got home.  it was actually kind of nice, though, since my mom and sister were there, and the kids were running around, and all manners of 'normal life' were still happening, i was able to keep my mind off of things in between contractions and 'laboring' was actually relatively easy for a lot of the day.

around 5:30, i was starting to get really discouraged because we were coming up on twelve hours and my contractions were getting much stronger, but not necessarily closer together.  the midwife called to see if i thought i would be coming in yet that night and if it was 'real labor,' because if so, she'd sleep in the on-call room instead of going home.  the longer i was at home, the more i worried that she'd have slept there for no reason.  (maybe a silly thing to think at the time, but i was kind of preoccupied with it and pretty anxious about it.)

around 8:30 i decided i wanted to go to the hospital, even though we had decided to stay at home as long as possible.  my contractions were super intense, though still pretty far apart, and i just wanted to use the whirlpool tub and rest and know i wouldn't have to go anywhere after that.  so we grabbed our things, and on the way to the car, my contractions suddenly sped up and were happening with only a few seconds in between.

i was really worried about the car ride, since we'd have to drive 20 minutes to the hospital and i could only imagine how difficult it would be to have tons of contractions in the car where i couldn't stand upright or have someone push on my back (which was a HUGE help in managing up until that point).  it was a total God-thing though, because i only had two contractions the entire way there.

once we got up to our room (we checked in at exactly 9:00), i stopped at the end of the bed with a major contraction, and after that i could hardly move again.  every time i tried to even get my leg up on the bed, another one would come, and then another, and another. 

the midwife checked me and i was just praying she'd say i was at least dilated to eight (if not, i was pretty sure i'd get an epidural because i couldn't imagine doing this much longer).  she checked and was like, 'uh, you're at like nine and three-quarters.  next time you have a contraction you should push.'  so...i did.  twice.  the first push, my water broke.  the second push, we'd had a baby.  at 9:19.  and not sans SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS things like, 'somebody help me!' and 'i'm never doing this again!' and your basic, 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGG!'

it was insane.  after laboring so slowly all day, it was surreal that he was here and i didn't even have time to haul myself all the way into bed (i had only gotten halfway up into the bed before he was born).  i am so thankful that it played out the way it did, though.  my labor at home was easy-going and there were plenty of good distractions, and the hardest part (pushing) was over in five minutes or less.  i didn't have horrible contractions in the car, and we really did labor at home until the very last minute, but there wasn't any sense of panic in getting to the hospital.

i am SO GRATEFUL that this went so much better than it could have, and even that i imagined it might.  a huge, huge THANK YOU to everyone who prayed for us - we definitely felt it!