Pics from November

Happy Holidays!  I wish I had more time to blog here, because there is so much to report.  Sebastian is 6 MONTHS OLD!! What??  His 6 month checkup revealed he is 28 inches (94th percentile for height).  Doctor Henry loosely predicted he could be about 6'1" some day.  WOW! 

Here he is meeting Santa. 

Pics from November can be found here:

http://gallery.me.com/theendlessband/100714

I hopefully will find some time to post more wonderfulness soon.  We are so looking forward to this Christmas with our little one.  It's hard to fathom but it's already here.

Hallowe'en!

Sebastian had a lot of costumes to choose from for Hallowe'en, as he had hand-me-downs, free stuff from David's work, and used items in the closet. So he wore all of them at some point this weekend!

I'm sure Sarah and James will remember this little outfit. He wore this Saturday.

Sunday started with his "This Is My Little Black Dress" onesie, which made everyone laugh.  It was awesome.

Next we put him in the Scarecrow costume David got from his work the other day.  We thought, "oh, it won't fit him, it's for 12 month old babies." WE WERE WRONG.  It was perfect.  He wore it all day at the zoo!

 

EXTREME JOY AND ADORABLENESS!

We had the best weekend because Aunt Maria and Uncle Don were visiting and we got to just be happy and have fun together.  What a blessing.

Then it was on to Aunt Victoria's house and the lobster costume I got for him only four weeks ago that would have fit then, but now DIDN'T FIT AT ALL.  Because he is all of a sudden wearing 6 to 9 month clothing and his feet and legs are super long.  Plus his head...well, his head is huge.  I almost had to cut him out of this to get him out.

This month got off to a difficult start but baby is doing much better now and really thriving (as you can see by his humongousness).  We had visits from my dad and aunt and uncle and we were able to leave him with babysitters for the first time to go out, which was really, really nice (and needed). 

Here is the October Gallery Of Pics, including the beautiful family photos taken by Marisa Guzman-Aloia.

He is starting to get extremely hungry so I think that solids are in his immediate future.  We might start rice cereal any day now!  I am nervous about starting just because I don't know how to do it and it's another big change, but I know it will be fine once we get the hang of it.  We are especially excited to enjoy these holidays with a little baby.  What a huge change it is to have this little being to share with us in the joy!

September

Tomorrow, this baby is going to be 4 MONTHS OLD already.

I want to share some pics from this last month: September 2010 Gallery

It has been an incredibly intense, difficult, and beautiful month.  I actually have time to post this because the baby is ACTUALLY TAKING A NAP at the moment, which is a new and wonderful thing that's been happening.  Last night...oh god, should I even post this? I fear I'll jinx it...he slept for ELEVEN HOURS.  I am sort of in shock.  Maybe he is, too.  At any rate, keeping my fingers crossed.

Last weekend was our 12th wedding anniversary and we decided to spend the weekend at Huntington Beach.  We didn't know how it would be to have the baby there in a hotel but it ended up being just fantastic.  Calm, relaxing, peaceful, and just overall a wonderful experience.  Bastian got to have his first experiences with the ocean and with swimming in a pool!  He was utterly happy and zen about the whole thing, as you can see.

He is starting to talk and sing and laugh with us.

New Pictures! Three Months Old!

I finally have a moment to get to the computer. I uploaded some choice pics from the last two months.  I finished out the July gallery and added August, which took place primarily in New Mexico, where Sebastian was able to spend wonderful quality time with his family and loved ones.  It was so good to see him being held by so many people who love him.  I will always treasure that time that we were able to spend as a family together there.  For the new galleries, see below:

July 2010
August 2010

These pics are curated so you don't have to see all 1,500 of them, but if anyone wants more, please let me know and I'll make a gallery specifically for you.

We are back home now and David had to return to work last week.  It was a hard, hard transition.  There has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth. See how much this guy loves him?  We are slowly figuring out how to make it work, but MAN, we sure do both miss David terribly.

Today is my 36th birthday and I am spending it with my little son who is so beautiful and sweet I can hardly keep from weeping when I hold him.  I am so blessed, so grateful, so filled with love for this little being who has come into our lives. 

Everyone kept saying "wait until the three month mark, wait until the three month mark, it gets better," and BY GOLLY they are so right.  THANK YOU, advice-givers!  I think we all feel stronger.  He feels like a less shimmery, ethereal creature and more stable and solid and here to stay. It is hard to even fathom what lies ahead on this adventure but I cannot wait to find out.

Picture Galleries

I barely have time to post anything, which is frustrating, but here is a link to two picture galleries of the baby's first weeks.  These galleries will be updated and ongoing, so check back often and please feel free to upload any pictures of your own you wish to share!

Sebastian - June 2010
Sebastian - July 2010

I've redesigned this site a little and will continue to change it as we go along.  If anyone knows how to somehow make a blogger widget that will show a slideshow of a mobileme gallery, please let me know.

Sebastian Felix Róze

Please join us in welcoming our sweet baby boy, Sebastian Felix.  He was born on June 5th, 2010, at 5:27 PM at the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.  His weight was 7 lbs 6 oz and the labor was 37 hours long.  You read that right.  I'll save that for another post.

Here he is on his way home from the hospital.  David made the shirt for him.

Here he is at his one month birthday.

He is five weeks old today and this is the first chance I've had to post.  We will be posting more from Sebastian's life here as we go along, as soon as we are able.  In the meantime I will be trying to post little updates on his Twitter page.  

I want everyone to know that we've received your beautiful gifts and cards and emails and outpourings of love and support, and we appreciate it so much.  We have taken all of it to heart and when we get a chance will be replying.  Much love to everyone.

Baby Shower

Here are some pictures from Saturday's shower here at our home, hosted by Tifanie and Mary.  More pictures can be found here.  If anyone has pics from that day, you can upload them to that gallery as well.

Yummy foods

 There was a box to write wishes/prayers for the baby that he can read when he is older.

This is the hilarious cake that Aaron made.  It had jawas and trucks and baby parts and the back said "It's A Roze."

It was a wonderful affair and we are so grateful to our friends for their support and love for our little one.

Sadly, I have managed to get a cold, so I am trying very hard to be extremely restful and still and recover as quickly as possible.  I have asked the baby to please wait to come until I'm better and rested.  As much as we'd like to meet him, I hope he can wait a little bit!

All Is Full Of Love

Still no word on who sent us that gift but I shore do hope they re-send it!

So, in the last week we have:

• Finished our awesome birthing classes
• Took an infant care class at the same awesome place
• Took a breastfeeding class at the same awesome place
• Met with pediatricians and found a group that seems really fantastic
• Toured the Cedars Sinai labor and delivery department and got a sense of how they operate
• Took another infant care class, this time at Cedars (a VERY DIFFERENT perspective, very mainstream but still informative/helpful)
• Had a great checkup today with the doc.
• I went on disability, and boy are my arms tired.  And my back, and my front, and everything in between.

No seriously, I've been EXHAUSTED.  Like can't raise an arm tired.  But it's getting better as I am finally able to rest and I'm still getting to yoga and stuff, which helps.  I am aware that I owe SO MANY PEOPLE phone calls, and I will slowly be able to start doing something about them in the next week or so.  Please be patient and know that everything is going at molasses pace and I'm unwinding after 9 months of going practically nonstop.

We will so miss our classes at Bini Birth but I'm hoping I'll go back for the Mom's group there.  Doctor says baby is doing great, next week we will have an ultrasound to make sure he isn't 25 lbs by this point.  On to baby shower on Saturday, can't wait!

The joy and the sweetness of all this is settling in and David and I both just wake up every day amazed and grateful and full of love.  How wonderful.

I totally forgot to post some pics from the office baby shower last month.  Here are a few:

 

Guitar pick cupcakes!

 

David and his work family

 The cool bag!

FRUSTRATING!!

So, someone out there ordered us a Baby Bjorn Babysitter Balance from our Babies R Us registry, and apparently UPS tried to deliver it this week and failed because WE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT UNTIL TODAY when someone put the notes on our door.  A day after they sent it back. 

If you are the wonderful patron who bought us this awesomely awesome gift (I called Babies R Us and they can't tell us who ordered it), we THANK YOU TREMENDOUSLY and ask you to re-order it, because apparently they are going to cancel the order and refund you for it.  We are sorry that it got returned!  Please let us know if you were the one who sent it to us.  GARUMPH!

Pregnancy Pics!

I'm just so happy with these beautiful pictures, taken by the wonderful Marisa Guzman-Aloia.  Go check out her website and see how talented she is.

She did a great job capturing us and we had such a nice day together taking these pictures (this was last Sunday so I was 33.5 weeks).

We shot in the carousel area at Griffith Park and then around our neighborhood in Los Feliz.  The entire album of pictures can be seen here (and downloaded if you'd like). We are getting some prints made, and it was really hard to choose which ones we like best, so we got a bunch.

I'm glad our little one will get to see these some day and know how excited we were to have him.

34 Weeks Ahoy!

We had our first ultrasound since January yesterday. Baby is doing great. He is head down and measuring about 5.5 lbs, which is in the 70th percentile so he's a bit big but nothing that anyone is concerned about.  Also these late ultrasounds can be wildly inaccurate in terms of actual weight.

Our doctor is so fantastic, can I just re-iterate that? We love her.

It was a lot harder to see this time because he's big now so the whole body doesn't fit in one shot and things were generally murkier, which just builds the mystery of who this child is.  Here is a profile shot.

And a spooky face shot.  ENJOY YOUR NIGHTMARES!

Today I am going to David's office for a baby shower they are hosting for us, which is very nice.  I will do my best to take some pictures.  On Sunday, we had a wonderful photo shoot with Marisa Guzman-Aloia, an old friend from the Unky's Music days in New York.  I will post those pictures as soon as I have the complete set but here is a sneak preview (we were punchy when we took this):

Diapering Decisions Made

So, after MUCH research and for reasons that could fill a book, we have decided to go with the one cloth diapering service in Los Angeles, called Dy-Dee Diaper Service for our diapering needs. They have nothing but glowing reviews and are extremely knowledgeable and helpful when speaking to them about all of our options.  It is cost-effective compared to disposables and we are willing to give it a try and see how it goes!  For those of you who have been asking, if you would like to make a donation of a week of service ($20.10), you simply call them at 800.803.9333 and tell them you would like to add to our account (it's under my name).

We will be using some diaper covers that we inherited from James and Sarah (via Lisa originally, I think?) but will probably need more than the few we currently have. I don't really have a sense of how many one needs.  I like the idea of something like the Thirsties Duo Wraps because theoretically they should last longer due to the snaps that change size, but I feel like we won't know what really works until we are in there doing it.

We have also decided that for the instances where we are not able to use cloth, we will be using gDiapers and Nature Babycare diapers.  This is the best we can do right now with our current setup and situation, and I'm feeling good about it.  We are flexible and will see how things work out as we go along.

Oh. Wow.

Today we had a tour of the Warner Bros Children's Center, which is the private childcare facility for the employees of WB and run by Bright Horizons.  HOLY SMOKES, I am just still in a daze.  This place is seriously the Rolls Royce of daycare.  It was amazing, just amazing.  The care and attention that is given to these children, from babies to pre-K, was just astounding.  The facility is gorgeous, and the staff are just incredible.  I can't overstate this! Incredible!

The sad thing is that you get what you pay for, and this place is super expensive.  However, so far it doesn't seem any more insanely expensive than every other kind of infant care place I've seen so far, and this place is right next to work and goes by the studio's work hours.  We also MIGHT be eligible for financial aid.  Might. 

We had to get on a wait list that sounds absolutely dismal in having hope of getting in, but you never know.  Maybe in a year.  Or two years.  I have no idea.  It depends on when our little bundle of love is born, because apparently there is a whole thing about them having to be born by the beginning of June to be eligible for when they take infants at 3 months (the beginning of September), and the moon under which they were born, and their blood type, and if they have 3 syllables or 6 in their middle and last names combined, and whether or not they have a birthmark on their left toe, and if they can levitate on command.  And then after infants, they generally don't tend to have openings until pre-K.  So there are a lot of factors here.

But the best thing, whether this happens or not, was just seeing the possibility of what can be done and what is available (if you are lucky and/or have money).  And the beautiful amazingness of these children in this place.  It suddenly made me realize on a different/deeper level: OH.  WE ARE HAVING A CHILD.  NOT JUST A FORMLESS BLOB THING.  The child is going to have all these beautiful discoveries about the world, and the people in it, and he's going to want to explore and learn and grow, and put things in his mouth, and meet other babies, and WOW THIS IS GOING TO BE A REAL PERSON.  Hard to describe this feeling but I got really excited and choked up about it.

Off to research other daycare choices now, but man, once you see the best, it's going to be hard to settle for anything less.

2 Months To Go!

I haven't posted in quite a while because I haven't had a lot to report (unless you like hearing me complain about this or that pregnancy-related illness/discomfort), and I also have no pictures of me.  Like, seriously no pictures.  We've really got to get on it.  We have been so busy trying to get so much done in such a small window of time that the days are just flying.

But I just wanted to check in and say that yes, everything's fine, the baby is doing great, and it now two months from my expected due date.  I now go to the doc every two weeks.  We also started an absolutely fantastic childbirthing class on Wednesday which will run for another 5 weeks.  I am so happy my doc suggested this class and feel really good about what she is offering us. Hooray, hooray!

I am connecting more and more with the Rozebud on a deeper level and as he is moving and growing bigger, he is making himself more known to me.  I am working to clear a path for him (in many ways, physical, spiritual, emotional).  We do our best to sing to him and play music in the room as much as possible, and David is very good about talking to him in his sweet way.  Invariably, if the baby is kicking around and David puts his hand on my belly, he calms down and stops kicking right away.  Magic hands!!

Hopefully I will have pictures soon.  In the meantime, I have been tweeting little updates when relevant.  We have two baby showers coming up: at the end of April, David's office is throwing him one, and on May 22nd my LA friends are hosting one.  It's going to be great (and of course, very much appreciated).

Also, a big Happy Birthday to my niece Sophia, who turns 1 today!  You are adorable and sweet and we wish you joy.

Baby Shower

Shannon and Isabella hosted a beautiful baby shower for us this weekend in Albuquerque! Here are some pics from the event (thanks to Rebecca Heckendorn for taking a lot of the pics while I opened presents):

We got some awesome and very important things from our registry and some very thoughtful handmade items as well.  It was really wonderful to be surrounded by such support and kindness from our family and friends.  The decorations were sweet and the food was great, just an overall wonderful experience and we are so, so grateful.

Our little baby is going to be so taken care of!  He's sure got a lot of cool outfits to wear and blankets to be wrapped in.  We are looking forward to setting up the nursery soon so we can display some of this great stuff.

I was also able to go through a lot of my old stuff at my parents' house and pass on a lot of things I won't need to my very sweet little niece, shown here wearing an old knitted cape of mine:

Excuse me, this is adorable!