Our Baby Girl

Our new baby girl, Abigail Elizabeth Bailey, was born yesterday, October 27, at 12:11 in the morning. Although over a week late, we're very happy to have her here. She made a very vocal entrance, but eventually quieted down enough to give Kathryn a few hours of good sleep to make up for 24 hours of strong labor. She weighed 8lb 11oz and uncurled to 21.5". Mother and daughter are both healthy, happy, and eager to get home. Joshua isn't too sure yet, but he seems excited and will figure it out when he actually gets to meet her tomorrow morning.

Stay tuned...

A visit to "Daddy's work"

....but not for what you're all thinking.


After nearly 2 1/2 years of ER-visit free minor injuries for a very active little boy, we finally had to take Joshua in yesterday. He was playing on a park bench yesterday and fell, hitting his chin on the arm and biting into his tongue pretty badly. It bled pretty bad and looked like a deep and complicated laceration, so we decided we needed a "real doctor" to decide if it needed stitches or not. The attending agreed that it was a pretty good injury, but felt it probably wasn't quite enough to justify the trauma of an IV, sedation, repair and those annoying little suture tails in his mouth for a week-ish. So, in the end we got out without anything major, besides an hour and a half of playing with blue glove balloons after Joshua got calmed down enough.


Not quite as fun of a visit to "daddy's work" as it usually is for him.

...and no baby quite yet

A little bit of Fall

We have been trying to get out and enjoy our last fall in Vermont before the baby comes. Fall is my favorite season in Vermont. It is usually pretty nice weather, very few bugs, lots to do, and beautiful leaves. We have traveled around a lot since we have been here but I found a lot of neat mini hikes and waterfalls that I thought would be fun to visit with the fall leaves. I made a list of thes places I want to go in Vermont before we leave, so every Saturday until the baby is born we have been picking one of these spots to go and have a picnic or a little walk. A couple of Saturdays ago we went to some waterfalls called the Potholes. It was a very short walk and raining, but really pretty.

Joshua stood and threw rocks in the water for a long time.

Here he is trying to get a big rock. Notice the tongue out. One of my talents is being able to touch my tongue to my nose. Joshua inherited my extraordinarily long tongue, and Caleb and I both have a habit of sticking our tongue out when ever we are concentrating. So between being too long for his mouth and concentrating a lot Joshua's tongue is showing a lot.

He is very excited about his rock throwing.

My big tummy...and still growing. Yes I am sick of people asking me when I am going to pop, if I feel like I am going to fall over all the time, if I was due last week, if I am having twins...and anything else of the sort. I think I become extra sensitive to all the comments since I pop out so far and so fast that people start making those comments at about 22 weeks. I have cut down my public exposure...

Last Saturday we had a picnic on top of Mt. Philo. No, I did not hike. It's a mountain in name only (at least by western standards), so you can drive all the way to the top, and then hike around from there. It was a beautiful fall day and a great view.

Joshua has loves to ride Daddy like a horse. He has gotten very bonded to Caleb lately. Every morning he wakes up and asks "Where did daddy go? When is daddy home?" Then he consoles himself and says "mommy stay home with Joshua today?" He never wants Caleb to leave. Today I had a Doctor appointment. We picked Caleb up to come. When I was driving back to drop him off and Joshua realized that we were pulling back up to the hospital, he said " No mommy turn around, daddy no work today." It was really cute.

King of the mountain! He loves to get on things and say "I'm big big"

Joshua dragged Caleb all over the hill top climbing on rocks. He is such a little monkey.


The beuatiful fall view of lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains.

We have been playing outside as much as possible before the winter sets in.

My handsome little guy.

Joshua loves to swing from the pole above the slide. Notice the tongue again.

He likes to pretend to fall down and then he says " I fall down"

Joshua's Song

Joshua and I were hanging out today after his nap, and he wanted to sing songs. (He recently started to "sing" random songs to himself). I caught this one on my phone.



We watched that Veggietales video clip with him about two weeks ago, so I was suprised when he remembered it. In case you don't know it, here it is courtesy of Youtube.

Where in the world (or USA) will we be going?

Last night I finished preparing my residency applications, and got them all submitted. For all the family that has been asking, I'll give a rough explanation of the process. Now that they're in, I wait to hear back from the programs about invitations to interview. From this list, I'm hoping to do about 10-12 interviews, so November and December will be busy with a lot of traveling. Around the end of January we'll make a rank list of our preferences from among the places I interviewed, then wait to hear back. Every student's list is put into a computer against each program's list, "matching" so that each gets the best choice available. Match day, when the results are announced, will be on March 18th. Yes, yet another major family milestone happening on that day.

Enjoy the map. (Well I at least thought it was pretty cool...)

View Residency Applications in a larger map

Let's go fly a kite

We ate dinner outside today, and Joshua was really worried about the breeze blowing the tablecloth. He kept saying "it blow away, dad!" We kept trying to reassure him, explaining that it's just like flying a kite. Naturally, afterwards, we decided to go to the park with our kite.

When we came back, Joshua wanted to play with me and do chalk drawings. The blue one is a "boat on the water," and the yellow one is a race car ("Race car VRRRM VRRRM!") Maybe it's just me, but I thought they actually kind of look like it. You judge:

So normally we have a very pretty fluffy kitty named Figaro. She gets really, really thick fluffy fur in the cold Vermont Winter, and then sheds it all Summer long. While we were gone she was in the house with our neighbor watching her. We came home to house covered in long fur. The carpet had another carpet of fur on it, the lamp shades, couches...everything had fur hanging from it. It took a couple hours of very thorough vacuuming. I was so sicked out and upset with the fur that I took her outside and tried to brush it out. I brushed and brushed her and filled a full grocery bag of fur and it was still coming!! So I said forget it she is getting a shave. So I got the clippers but her fur was too thick and would clog them, so I thought well I will just have to use scissors. I tried to get it even like if I were cutting normal hair. Cat hair doesn't seem to work that way... long story short Caleb says we now have the ugliest patchiest cat in the neighborhood. My sister and Dad, who love Figaro, really wanted to see the poor disgraced kitty so I had to post some pictures.

Home at Last

Well we are home from our long Summer adventures. It is a bitter sweet return. On one hand I am so happy to be in my house, bed, routine and friends. On the other hand I really miss being with my sister and her boys, and basically doing everything together.

Here are the pictures from our last part of the trip. Caleb had the last six days in California off. So we were able to have a little actual family vacation time, probably our last for a while. Saturday, our last in California, my whole family came to Hope Ranch Beach for a farewell BBQ and get together. It was a perfect warm day, and we had so much fun. The cousins all played and boogie boarded. The three youngest babies dug in the sand together all day. I took about twenty pictures of them trying to get them all together and looking...this is the best I could get. No Ezra is not going to hit Joshua in the head with the shovel, all though they have both whacked each other once or twice. There is some definite love hate relationships amongst toddlers.

Braddock was getting really excited about all of us singing and shouting trying to get all the babies looking. As you can see he was the only obedient one, he is smiling and looking cute in everyone of my pictures.

Joshua got the prized "big" shovel for a while and went around "dig dig digging".

Tuesday ended up being our last day in downtown Santa Barbara. My brother in law Scott has Tuesdays off so we all went together to have a fun "touristy" day. We rented a big surrey bike for us and rode along the beach front path. It wasn't enough for us to just take a gentle ride we decided to do the whole ten mile stretch with big hills and all. My rear was so sore, but it was worth it.

After the surrey we walked out on the Santa Barbara break water around the harbor.

Elijah and Isaac walking out to the point. Everyday we have been home Joshua wakes up and says "Mom, where Elijah, Issac, and Ezra? We go to Aunt Pizzy's house?" (that is what he calls my sister) He loved hanging out with those boys.

Daddy and Joshua on the "secret beach" with Santa Barbara behind them. I love Santa Babara it is so beautiful and fun.

Caleb and Joshua balancing their way back from the point.

It was a great trip but it is nice to be home. We are all cleaned up and un-packed. Everything is back to normal and we are not planning on going anywhere until at least January. So we are back to normal for a while. Well almost normal...new baby coming in October and Caleb off interviewing for residencies who knows when or where :). So we will still be busy just living life.

California

We have been in California for almost four weeks now. Caleb has been down in LA at Southern California University doing an ER rotation. While Joshua and I have been staying up in Santa Barbara with my family. Luckily, we have been able to see eachother about once a week despite the 2.5 hour drive. Caleb has been very busy with his rotation, and has lots of interesting experiences working in LA county Hospital's ER. He says there is a 12 - 16 hour wait for most of the walk in patients. It is pretty active. Joshua and I have been just hanging out with my family. We have been going swimming or to the beach about 3-4 times a week, and lots of other things. I have been trying to keep things as normal as possible for Joshua. He loves being with his cousins, and always has something to do.

We have been going to the Beach every Monday with my sister and her kids and my sister-in-law and her kids. Joshua loves to just dig and dig in the sand, and unfortunately jump on his older cousins sand castles. I have had to try to teach him that he can't do that...he is still learning.

The boys love to make trains and when the older boys get involves the tracks become pretty elabrate. Joshua loves it.

My sister has a pass to the Santa Barabara zoo so one day we took a picnic there. The little boys of course loved the zoo train, which we couldn't afford so they had to settle for sitting on the little coin train. They both just watched and pointed at the real one go by.

Here is Elizabeth's boys and Joshua, he loves hanging out with these boys and we have been with them basically everyday.

The other day Joshua and I drove down to see daddy and go to the LA temple. I love the LA Temple. It was the Temple that we were married in, but besides that it is by far my favorite temple I have ever been to. It is so neat to drive down the busy 405 and get off and see the Temple so boldly placed on the highest hill above everything around. Then you drive on the peaceful grounds. There is such a sharp contrast between were you have been that it instantly reminds you of what a sacred special place the temple is. On the temple grounds is the huge beautiful tree that I remember as a kid. I had to stick Joshua in and get a picture.

After the Temple we went down to Santa Monica beach and pier. Caleb was amazed I had never been there. Growing up a few miles from quite beautiful beaches in Santa Barbara always made LA not seem very desirous. Growing up we avoided LA at all costs. Anyway, we had fun time. We walked along the bikeway and...

Caleb took Joshua on the giant swings.

We walked out on the pier and went on the merry go round, and looked around Pacific Park.
Joshua's favorite was to watch the roller coaster which he called a choo-choo train.

We walked all around the pier and chased pigeons. Joshua thought they were hilarious.

We had a really great day together. The best part was being able to be together on our own. One day of being our normal little nuclear family. It has been about 6 weeks and it was extremely refreshing and very needed. Caleb's last day in LA is tommorow. We have one week on a real vacation before we go home. I am so excited to just be together and have no more driving or going to LA.

Utah

After Washington Joshua and I flew to Utah and met Caleb. We spent two weeks there with his family. We had a lot of fun with everyone. Joshua loved seeing his grandma, grandpa and uncles. We swam a lot, hiked, tried out Frisbee golf, went bowling, walked around Thanksgiving Point, and just had a good time together.

Joshua loved bowling, and actually got a better score than Caleb or I!


Grandma took us to Thanksgiving Point gardens and showed us all the pretty flowers. Joshua had fun at the children s' gardens. Although, he was a little nervous about the Noah's Ark spraying water at him.

One of the days we hiked up to sliding rock in Alpine. Joshua had so much fun in the water.


He sat with Grandpa on a rock for about twenty minutes. He threw big rocks into the creek. Every time he would throw one in he would laugh about the big splash.


He loved their trampoline. Every chance he could get he would want to "bouncey, bounce". It was really warm and dry; which made for perfect static!