We arrived in San Diego on Tuesday afternoon.  We had been on a very full flight, but Noah did great with just a few fusses as he took his naps.  The ecstatic grandparents were at the airport to pick us up, and Noah took to them very quickly.  He loved all the attention.  They took good care of Alisha, too, making sure that she got her fill of In ‘n Out before they even made it home.  Later that afternoon, he was visited by his great-grandparents and his Uncle Loren.  He talked a lot to them all.  His cooing is sooo cute!

On Wednesday, we went to visit Noah’s great-great-grandmother and got five-generation pictures. Can you see the resemblance?

That evening, we went up to San Clemente to visit Uncle Nate’s apartment and to spend the evening with all of Alisha’s immediate family. The boys all coordinated clothes (oh, how embarrassing!), but it made for a great picture.

Thursday, I got to see some friends from the church that I grew up in. It’s just amazing to me how much things have changed since I attended there over 6 years ago. I guess that’s what happens after time. I guess I didn’t think about how much a baby changes your life and what you think about.

On Friday, my parents left to go to a memorial service in Michigan so Noah and I went up to the Biola area to visit friends there. We began our trip by going to my old workplace at Biola and having Noah meet many of my former co-workers. It was hard to believe that I worked there a little over a year ago. I wasn’t even pregnant yet, and now, there’s Noah! It’s amazing.

We then had lunch with the Gorras at one of my favorite fast-food places, Rubios. Their son, Sam, was a newborn when I left a year ago, and now he’s talking and walking and so cute! We had a great time catching up and sharing stories of our boys.

That evening, I spent with my cousins, Kelly and Jason, and their now active daughter, Aubrey. It was great to see them again. They still live in the apartment complex that Phil and I used to live in, and they are just amazing hosts. Aubrey and Noah were able to meet, and Aubrey learned to call him “Noah” instead of just “Baby” in the short time we were there.

On Saturday, I travelled up to Pasadena to visit a high school friend, Kara, and her husband.  They just had had a baby three-weeks prior, and were learning what life looks like with a toddler and a newborn.  It was interesting to see how the new siblings interacted.  Right now, it is hard for me to imagine what life would look like with more than ONE kid.

On Sunday morning, we had Lem take a bunch of professional pictures of Noah.  He’s still touching them up, and we hope to get them soon.  Noah did great, and he seemed to enjoy all the attention.  We then all went to church at Grace EV Free in La Mirada.  I put Noah in the nursery, and was SURE that I would be called out to come get him.  Halfway through the sermon, I knew that my pager must be broken since it hadn’t gone off yet.  However, after the service was over, I went to the nursery, and he was doing great.  Once I picked him up, though, he immediately fell asleep on my shoulder.  He was exhausted, but happy.  It was relieving to know that I could leave him for a while.

After having lunch with Kelly and Jason, we went over to the Guenthers to make it to the end of Grace Group and spend the rest of the day there.  We had dinner with all the guys from Phil’s old accountability group and their wives or girlfriends.  It was great to see them all again, even if they did enjoy tormenting my son!

We spent the night there, and on Monday, we had the pleasure of hanging out with Katie all day. We cruised around the Biola area and got some much needed Frappaccinos since it was sooo hot there that weekend. We also learned that there is a nursing room in the Talbot building. Who would have thought?

We travelled back down to San Diego that evening and spent the rest of our time with my parents. We did get to see Nate one more time on Wednesday night, and we saw his girlfriend, Sheila on Tuesday. Loren was around a fair bit too, although he was working a lot on an art test for a company up in Seattle area. (He got the job, and is now living with us for a while - yay!).

We definitely enjoyed our time down there. It was especially great to see my parents and watch them be grandparents for the first time. They’re naturals!

We got back on Thursday afternoon, and Phil picked us up from the airport.  He had carnations waiting for me in the car (my favorite!) and it was wonderful to be home.  It snowed the next day which was a welcome relief from the 90-100 degree weather we had in L.A.  I still miss everyone down there though.  Can’t wait to visit again!

Of course, Noah wasn’t able to stay awake for very long, and soon he was fast asleep. He used to fall asleep to the sound of waves crashing, but considering that there are no waves on the Sound, he had no real excuse this time.

On Sunday, we enjoyed our time at church, and then headed down to Graham to visit with some of Phil’s family. Although it rained the entire day, we had a lovely time with his grandma, aunt, uncle, and cousins. We always enjoy our time down there! We still need to teach Noah the response to “He is Risen!” (”He is Risen Indeed!”)  I guess we just need to be a bit more patient.

Another noteworthy fact is that Noah is now 3 months old!  He’s still growing a lot, and is now wearing 6-9 month clothes.  He grows about 2 inches every month, but I’m hoping that he will slow down soon or else he’ll be in 3T by the time he’s 9 months old.  He’s a very happy little boy, and we are enjoying every milestone.

In other news, check out Noah’s movies.

He’s also been developing in other ways as well.  We are enjoying all of his coos and giggles, and he’s been sleeping at least 5 hours pretty consistently now.  (Mom is SOOO glad!)  On Monday, he began to roll over from his tummy to his back.  The first time he did it, he looked at me with big eyes that seemed to say “What happened?”  It was great.

Noah and I also now have tickets to come down to Southern California in April.  We’ll be with my family in San Diego for a lot of it, but we should be in the Orange County/Los Angeles area from April 11-14.  Unfortunately, Phil won’t be able to join us, but I can’t wait to see everyone and show off Noah.

Lem picked us up from the airport and graciously took us to Hercules to where we would be staying with our family.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend a lot of time with him, but it was still wonderful to see him.  Also, tragically, we didn’t get any pictures while we were with him!  Of all people!  Lem, you failed us!  =)

We had a great time with Alisha’s family as well.  It was fun to show Noah off to them, and we discovered that he loves ceiling fans and Great-Grandma’s piano playing.  He calmed right down whenever those were around.  Here are some great photos of our trip:

With Great-Grandma and Wally

With Great-Aunt Rickie

Family Photo at the Park

Well, we finally have our baby boy here: Noah Obadiah Augustine Hagelberg. He really doesn’t look like the above; I just sketched that the week before he was born. He’s actually more like this:

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story’s kind of long, so grab a cuppa tea. We were planning on inducing through natural means on the 20th last week, but I was pretty sick as was our midwife Cindie, so it got pushed back to Friday. The natural inducing caused a lot of contractions, but they died away over time. So we planned on heading to the hospital to start inducing the normal way. Unfortunately the hospital was booked solid on Saturday and couldn’t take on any inducing patients.  We felt a little like there was “no room in the inn.”

Finally we made it in Sunday morning. Once we were all set up in the hospital, they needed to put Alisha on an IV for the Pitocin.  Unfortunately, she has extremely small veins so they had to bring in an anesthesiologist just to put the needle in her hand.  He used a size 20 needle which is normally used for young children. Finally, the drugs started flowing. They flowed and flowed, but the contractions just didn’t want to start. That evening, we were trying to decide whether or not to have an amniotomy.  While we were deliberating, Alisha’s water broke a little bit.  Since it didn’t start contractions, they decided to break it completely since they had to treat her carefully anyway since it had already started to happen naturally.  After then amniotomy, she was taken off Pitocin in order to get a good night’s sleep.  In the morning, she was put back on the IV.  Alisha officially entered labour at 11am on the 24th. The contractions were coming, but they weren’t making the labour progress any.  An epidural was then suggested to see if that would help the labour.  At this point, we were just eager to have our little boy arrive, so we decided to take this advice.  The epidural worked.  That evening, she finally dilated to 9.5 cm and was instructed to begin pushing.  The labour went on all night. She started pushing and pushing, but after three hours he hadn’t made any progress downward at all. So we ended up having to do a cesarean section to get him out. When he finally was delivered at 3am Christmas morning, we found out that his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck three times! So he never would have made it out if delivered naturally. We had a hard time making the decision since we wanted to keep things natural, but in hindsight it was very clear that was the only safe thing to do.

He was 8 pounds and 12 ounces and 21 ½ inches long at birth. (That’s 3.975 kg and 55 cm in base ten numbers.)

We were lucky enough to have both sides of the family in town for his birth. We spent Christmas in the hospital, but we were able to celebrate with them. We haven’t had the whole group together since our wedding, so that was a welcome treat. We were able to get a lot of help around the apartment cleaning up and getting food for us that really helped.

He’s five days old now, and he’s slowly getting into sleep patterns. We’re pretty happy about that. If you want to see the latest pictures we’ve uploaded, they’re always available at http://noah.hagelb.org.

Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven’t you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children—and the dogs? They know what snow’s made for.

— Arthur Denniston in CS Lewis’s That Hideous Strength

We thought that we’d be done taking pictures for a while after last week’s prolific extravaganza.

How wrong we were.

Neither of us has ever lived in a place with snow before, so this is quite a treat for us. We’re still glad to have a fireplace though. Hopefully the snow will start coming down again when our families come up to see Noah.

This weekend we had a great Thanksgiving followed by a visit from Lem and Luke! We had a wonderful time showing them around our new home city, and the weather cooperated admirably.

We got to take a hike along the Lake Washington waterfront in the Washington Park Arboretum. It was a bit chilly, but the sun shone out. We also got to introduce them to the wonders of Vivace, which could possibly be the best coffee shop in town or in the country. Plenty of sight-seeing was had, and we enjoyed a chance to catch up with old friends.

One interesting thing about the weekend was the way each of our photos tied together. We were all taking pictures the whole time we were outdoors. (Apparently Lem’s enthusiasm for photography is somewhat contagious.) But this meant that our weekend together was perhaps one of the best-documented times of my entire life. I ended up taking a hundred pictures (not all of them worth keeping), but I was far outpaced by the prolific output of both Lem and Luke. The total came to well over 600. (Update: 705 total) So after each day we could go review everything that happened that day from three different perspectives during our Flickr organize-fests.

I also got to see firsthand how much work goes in to touching up photos when Lem uploads. I don’t do nearly as much tweaking as he does, but I got to learn some smooth moves for sorting out color issues and stuff. (He makes it look so easy!)

The group pool of all our efforts is available for browsing.

It’s feeling really quiet up here now, but life goes on. We’re very ready for Noah to come, and it could happen any time now. But don’t assume if you don’t see any posts for a while that’s why.

Until next time: happy holiday season!

Your thoughts on:
- What day and time he will arrive
- How long/heavy will he be

Only 4.5 weeks until the due date! Yay!

Last week I got back from the seventh annual International Ruby Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. I had a great time as I always do at the conference, but this time was a bit different since I got a chance to give one of the talks. I spoke on “Tightening the Feedback Loop” about improving your efficiency as a programmer, and it went really well. I posted a more in-depth account on my other blog which you can read if you are so inclined.

Yesterday we got to take a hike up around the north part of Washington Park. We had been making a tradition of taking hikes in a new park practically every weekend soon after we moved in, so this was a chance to go back to that. We’d visited the park before, but we’d worn ourselves out hiking around the southern half and hadn’t explored the waterfront area. The marshy islands and floating bridge walkway make a thoroughly enjoyable trek.

In closing, Lem and Luke are planning to make a trip up here to visit! We’re really looking forward to showing them around the area and making them envious of all the beautiful greenery and excellent coffee we have access to up here.

Our bed & breakfast was beautiful. It was surrounded by acres of farming area that had cows, horses, dogs, peacocks, and an occasional raccoon!

It was called “The Phoenix,” and it had a very interesting history. Phil really enjoyed the grounds surrounding the home and took some really amazing photos.

This one was taken in the front yard on our first evening.

The horses

One of the cows

We also went to Poulsbo, located about 10 miles to the south. We were shocked to find the city so enraptured by its Norwegian roots! Everything was Viking-themed. The streets were even named after the kings of Norway; for instance, we saw King Olaf V Vei (I’m guessing that Vei means “street” in Norwegian).

Down by the marina, there were a lot of little shops and places to go walking. We visited Boehms Chocolate Shop where we were able to see one of our friends from SoCal, Natalie, who now works there. We also found a cute boardwalk where we were able to get some cool pictures.

It was a wonderful birthday weekend. In closing, here is a picture of the three of us!