Emma at birth

These next few posts are strictly pictures and videos, done in pieces. Some are animations, so if you have any trouble viewing, just email me and I'll send it to you in a different way.

This is Holly after about

9 hours of hard labor pains, when she'd just begun pushing. Doesn't

she look happy? She did extremely well...at one point she looked at Christina and said, "I don't know, I guess I just thought it would hurt more." We all laughed, her included. I've pointed out Christina in the picture--we love her devotedly, and she is a supremely pro

fessional, skilled midwife who has earned my respect. Holly would probably do anything for her.

This is Holly a little farther along in the

pushing, which truly only took a couple of hours at most. Nichole is a doula--she has nothing to do with the actual

delivery of the baby. A doula is there to provide emotional and physical support to the mother (and the birth partner!), and she is usually someone who's been through natural childbirth and can therefore truly understand what this mom's going through. She is another person we cherish--she went WAY above and beyond what was necessary, even to the point of staying up almost 2 days.

And at last, here was little Emma! Everyone who sees this picture says, Oh, my goodness, look at those beautiful Angelina Jolie lips!

We think she's much prettier than AJ.

Holly did pretty good, huh?

These last two are Emma, still at the birthing center, after they put the ointment in her eyes. She's about 1 hour old in these.

Finally got a CAMERA!!

It has been forever (and a day) since I last posted here. I'm not really sure anyone really looked, because I never got much feedback. But I am going to give it a go again. And since I love the power of the internet, I've made everything I think might interest you into a link, so that you can follow it and learn something about each thing.
My granddaughter (still seems weird to say that) was due on 09/15/09. If things go as we hope, Holly and I and our doula Nichole will soon trek up to the Birthways Birthing Center in Sarasota, which is only about 15 minutes up the interstate, and we'll have ourselves a baby. You can take a look at the website for the birthing center if you want, and I have a little video of the room below.

I've been so proud of Holly; she's taken good care of herself as you'll see in the videos, and she's done a bit of growing up that was probably much needed. She's done a lot of reading, and she's taken the reins on her own pregnancy. She decided that barring any true complication or emergency, she wants to have a waterbirth, without pain medications and with as little intervention as possible. I'm sure many of you wonder why anyone would want to do that without an epidural or some sort of medical relief. If so, I encourage you to

For those who don't know about birthing centers or midwives or natural childbirth or any of that, I encourage you to read up. Natural childbirth does not just mean that you get no pain meds. There are a whole slew of reasons to give it a go, and a whole lot of reasons not to do this at the hospital unless necessary.

And you can see the trailer for a video called "The Business of Being Born" (we're going to rent it, but haven't seen it yet).

First I'll give you a very short video tour of the room at the birthing center where Holly will be giving birth (hopefully!):

Looks like any old bedroom mostly, but comfier than mine. The big teal tub will have a brand new, one-use-only liner in it. Right now, Holly thinks she may actually do the birth in the water. I bet she won't really have a preference at that point.

Here is THE VERY FIRST VIDEO OF EMMA (undercover, of course):

I plan on keeping that and showing it to her later, of course, so I just decided to talk to her.

Taking these videos has me thinking I always sound a little disgusted...something about the tone of my voice, especially at the ends of my sentences, makes me a little nuts.

Here is a video Holly took of Emma moving around, from her perspective:

And I took these, and caught some impressive movement.

I couldn't have planned the next one any better if I would've tried:

We also took some video of a huge bunch of ducks in the tall grass near the lake at the birthing center. This little snippet reminds me of that Whack-a-Mole game because of their heads popping up.

Onward to the remainder of the family...

Devin is really enjoying his automotive technology class (an all-afternoon class for college credit taught at Sarasota County Technological Institute-SCTI), so much so that he is talking about wanting to get a 4-yr. degree in it and become a master mechanic. He would like to eventually go to University of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH), which is supposed to be the best in the country for that. I certainly hope he can do his first 2 years here Bright Futures scholarships to help), and I wish him luck with the rest. I wish I could help him, but I figure he'll find a way.

Savanna is a level 5 gymnast now. She has practice 3 days a week from 4-7 pm. She also has a bars class the other 2 days until 5 pm. These videos were shot just a week ago. The little hop you see her do at the ends of the flips she does on the floor is intentional. They teach them that as a first step to learn how to connect one trick to the next.

Eric is still working at Crawford Communications in Atlanta. It's pretty difficult, and we hope we don't all have to be apart forever.

So that's about all that we have going on.

Congratulations again to Mandy and Jay on their wedding. I bet it was beautiful.

Gymnastics Update

Savanna's first gymnastics meet was last weekend, and the camera battery was dead. Savanna had a pretty good experience, and didn't seem nervous at all. At her level, they are more learning what to do in competition than competing with each other. She has a medal and four ribbons from the meet, and we'll get them scanned in and post them soon.

Today, though, she went to a gymnastics clinic, and she was able to meet and work with three Olympic gymnasts: John Macready, John Roethlisberger, and Carly Patterson. Carly won the gold medal for the all-around at the 2004 Olympics. I saw the other 2 numerous times, and they were all quite entertaining. The guys run a camp up in Crossville, Tennessee called Flipfest. Looks wonderful, and of course they do these clinics mostly as advertising. Far out of our price range, but what a great experience that must be for the kids that do go.

Below I'll put some pictures and video from today, but the server's too slow tonight. I'll try again tomorrow!

My new (used) dining table

I'm really proud to finally have found a good dining table--it expands more with 2 leaves, and the ends fold down.

Savanna's video clips

Savanna has only been doing gymnastics since April of this year, and considering that, she's doing great! We first wanted to post a few of her best stuff so far. This is only the tumbling part of what she's been doing. She also works on the balance beam, the bars, and a bit of vaulting. Her first meet is in January.

(You might have to click once, then click again to get them started.)

Then there are the times when she messes up...which are usually cuter than when she doesn't. I can't wait to show this to her boyfriends when she's older.

(This one may start on a black or blue screen.)

I also shot these two photos of her this afternoon. She's a ham...