Graduation

As I was looking through my pictures, I realized that I never posted pictures from Caleb's graduation. Here he is with the masses of students in his fun gown! He wore the fancy-dancy kind

Here's a family pictures...one of the few ones we got before Hannah started to protest (in the form of crying really loudly)

In the dorm, one of Hannah's favorite activities was to climb into the cupboard and shut herself inside. And we would say, "where's Hannah?" and she would swing the door wide open and smile...and then do the whole thing again. Here she is inviting Noah to join her. (Side note: As I was looking through pictures to post Hannah saw a couple of Noah and for the next 10-15 minutes she loudly said "Noah, Noah." I think she misses him...I guess that means Lauren and Nathan will just have to come and visit us. :-p )

Here's Caleb and Peter napping. In great Hug tradition, Peter is an excellent sleeper and eater (like his father)

Gorgeous Seattle

About 5 minutes ago the comcast guy left after successfully installing our internet. Yay!! I don't know how one can survive without internet...somehow we managed for over a week.

Anyhow, after less than a week of being in Seattle I was reminded of why I love the Pacific Northwest. The weather has been amazing. It has been in the 70's and 80's most days and the mountain has been clear. We've gone swimming in the lake most days. Hannah has become quite the dare-devil in the water. Pretty much every day we are at my parents she goes straight for her swimsuit and starts putting it on. She has adjusted very well to our new location and home. Peter is also doing well. Unfortuately I haven't taken many pictures of him lately, but this week I have shifted him into 3-6 month clothes because he is just that big! Once we get fully moved in (and we find our camera) I will post some more pictures of Peter, our new place, and our "new" furniture.

Anyhow, here are some scenery pictures that Caleb has taken.

Here's a picture of the mountain (aka Mt Rainier, for those of you not from Seattle). Mt. Rainier is over 14,000 feet tall and is called "the mountain" because it stands alone. As you can see, there are no mountains around it, and that's one of the reasons why it is so beautiful.

The mountain with Boeing in front

On the way home from the Hug family reunion, we drove over Chinook pass. This is a picture from our drive.

Seattle is close to two mountain ranges; the Olympics and the Cascades. One a good day you can see both. Here's Seattle with the Olympics behind.

Here's a picture of me and Peter from 3 weeks ago.

This is the cake that Caleb made me for my birthday. It was epic!

Here's Hannah looking all innocent...hoping we won't notice she has the ice cream.

Alright, so now that I have internet, I will *try* to make one blog post a day to update the few readers I have left with what we've been up to since we've been on this coast. Be prepared for some great pictures. :-D

Recovery

I am a pretty healthy person. Before giving birth to Hannah, the longest I had ever been in a hospital was about the hour you spend each year (or two years) for your annual check up. So this C-section has been my first major or minor surgery ever (besides having my wisdom teeth out).

Anyhow, it has been quite the experience. I had no idea that the recovery was such a process. With Hannah I was out of the hospital in 2 days and going for walks within a couple days after that. With the C-section, I couldn't even get out of bed by myself the first night I was home. It is such a weird experience not being able to do things on your own. Lucky for me, I had tons of loving family in town that didn't mind waiting on me. Everyone was totally willing to get things for me and give up the nicest chair for me, etc..which was great.

There have been 2 really difficult parts to this recovery. The first is not being able/allowed to pick up Hannah. It's really sad not being able to play with your daughter. That was really hard on me the first week. Lucky for me I had tons of family around to keep her entertained and active. I can't imagine what she would have felt like if I had come home from the hospital with a new baby and then I "refused" to play with her. As I get better, I can carry her short distances when necessary and I can sit on the floor with her. However, I am still alittle afraid that she will randomly hit or kick my belly on accident...it's been known to happen.

The second difficult part, as mentioned earlier, is not being able to do things by myself. But even harder is to ask for help. Even with such a loving family around, it's still difficult to ask people to help pull you up, or to carry your daughter to bed for you. My tendency is to try to do it by myself. This is not always the best thing. I have had to learn to just relax and enjoy the fact that people want to help me out and do things for me. There is such grace involved in accepting help.

I think this is what old people must feel like. At one point, you were totally self-sufficient, and now you're not. I think one of the keys to aging well is learning to accept help with things that you used to be able to do on your own; realizing that there are people out there that are more than willing to help with everyday things as long as you let them do so. Lucky for me, I am coming out of my dependent stage and am slowly able to do things on my own. Hopefully I can practice accepting help with grace so that as I get older it won't be so hard.

Anyhow, not all recovery has been bad. I can now see my toes...and they are back to their normal size again. I can also tie my own shoes. Also, I weighted myself the other day (dangerous, I know), but I have lost 30lbs...granted about 11 of that is Peter-weight, but still. My goal is to loose another 30 so I am back to my pre-Hannah-pregnancy weight. Hopefully I can get there before I get pregnant again. We'll see...

We Made It

Just wanted to give a quick shout out to all my readers to let you know that we made it to Seattle. Due to some strategic planning on our part, we managed to have a whole row on the airplane. Peter sat next to the window and slept the WHOLE plane ride (except for the one time I woke him to feed him). I occupied the next two seats; dutifully getting up every hour to walk a couple laps up and down the aisle. And then dad, Hannah, and Mom occupied the three seats on the other side. Mom and Dad did a great job entertaining Hannah for most of the flight, since she only slept for a small portion of the 6 hours. Yay mom and dad for being such troopers!!

Since we've been here things have gone well except for the fact that Hannah has decided to test her boundaries. Yesterday she decided she didn't want to nap and cried for a long time. However I think she learned that it doesn't work so she might as well just nap because today she only fussed for about 5 minutes. Hopefully we can get her into a good routine soon.

Peter is also doing pretty well. Last night he went back to sleep after all of his night time feedings, so that is really nice for me. I am also recovering quickly and feeling more energetic every day, so that is a blessing.

So that's it for around here. We are excitedly anticipating Caleb's arrival on Friday.

Side note: apparently our truck is packed up and will leave Boston tomorrow morning. Yay for Caleb, Caleb's parents and siblings who did all the heavy lifting!!!! What would we do without such a helpful and loving family?!?!

Peter Isaiah Hug

Our son was finally born on Sunday, May 31st! He was in no hurry to come out. I think he may have been concerned he wouldn't fit. He's rather large, weighing in at 10 lbs 11 oz, and measuring 23.5 inches long with a head circumference of 39 cm!

Here he is:

Here's Caleb lifting Hannah to get a glimpse of Peter through the nursery windows. Hannah didn't really know what to think of him...but she could tell something was going to be different. Caleb said he has never seen her focus on something for such a long time.

Here's a cute picture of Caleb, Hannah and Peter shortly after he was born.

I will post more pictures soon, so stay tuned!

Hannah and Noah

As promised, here are some pictures of Hannah hugging Noah. Hannah is a super hugger, but she doesn't always have the most appreciative recipient. Most of the time Noah is not as enthusiastic about getting a hug as he should be, hence the face below.

Here are Hannah and Noah sharing cheerios. And when I say sharing, I mean Hannah is the cheerio distributor. She makes sure Noah gets as many cheerios as she sees fit. It's a good thing Noah isn't too much older or have too many more opinions about the matter otherwise we would have some issues.

Side Note - pregnancy update: Today is day 13 (that is, 13 days over due). I called the hospital at 8 and they said they would have a room open in a couple of hours. It is 10 now and I still haven't had a call...no surprise. So the waiting continues...

No room in the Inn

So I always sorta felt bad for Mary that when she and Joseph arrived at the Inn there was no room for them, so they had to stay in the stable. But after a fresh look at the story, at least there was a stable to go to and they weren't sent home.

We have had quite the hospital saga. Today we called at 7am and they said they were full and that they would call back at 9. At 12:15 they called and said they had a room. So we got there and they were cleaning our room. But by the time they were done cleaning our room, some one else had taken it. I understand that people in active labor get priority, but it seems like they could have told us that the room had been taken, instead of having us wait around for an hour and then only telling us because we kept asking them about it. They said that another room should open up within the next 2 hours and we could wait around for that. Luckily we decided not to wait around because here we are 3.5 hours later at home waiting for their call. I don't really trust their time estimates. The only thing I can think of is that God has some sort of plan for this labor because otherwise the events of this week would just be too bizarre. So hopefully in a couple of days (or months) we can look back at this whole situation and finally understand what God has been up to. Until then, I guess we wait...