three weeks

my mia (mee-ah. people have been asking so i am clarifying. not my-ah) is going to be three weeks old in about ten hours.

it's been a phenomenal three weeks! our little peanut girl has already gained about a pound and grown an inch and pretty much does not fit into any of her newborn-size pjs! this pretty much means that she is now the size of lily at birth. yowsers. my crotch hurts just remembering that... mia is pretty much still just eating and sleeping and pooping. but the few minutes that she is awake during the day, she smiles and stares and is just the sweetest looking little thing you ever did see! i love to stare into her big steel-grey eyes. they are so innocent and honest. mia has such a sweet temperament and easy-going disposition. i can't be mad at her even when it's 5am and i am changing the third poopy diaper of the hour- she's just too cute!

chris is STILL home from work (thank you scottsdale!) which means i am still living in a fantasy world and i do not know what life with three kids is really like. topher has reverted to acting like a baby for a few minutes everyday, but he's already toning it down quite a bit. mostly cause we ignore him when he whines and insists on being carried. but for the most part lily and topher have been INCREDIBLE and i feel super-blessed that i had them super-close together and that we waited quite a while to have mia. best of both worlds!

my parents have been here since saturday and they have been so great. they are beyond in love with their newest grandbaby, and thoroughly amused by the antics of their older grandkids. and my mother has been cooking and stocking up my fridge and freezer with korean food. yesterday chris, my dad, my mom and i all made homemade dumplings (aka 'mandoo' in korean, 'gyozas' in japanese, 'potstickers' in english...) funtimes!

today we went to Bass Pro for some winterwonderland funtimes. we met Santa, wrote him a letter, and rode the free little carousel twice. and looked at their creepy variety of creepy gigantic fish. so fun. i love love love our family.

and tomorrow our family is going to grow with the addition of one more member as chris' youngest brother gets married to the lovely miss alycia hall. we are THRILLED to be witnessing the union of two adorable, sweet, and loving kids (at 21 and 20- you guys are definitely still kids in my eyes!) yeah for family and love and marriage.

here's a smorgasboard of pics from the last week or so:

Mi amor

i started writing this post about a week ago. mia's 2 week birthday is tomorrow. it's kind of all over the place, but i just need to post it! if you can read this whole thing- you get a prize ;)

my mia is amazing. i cannot even believe how amazing she is. though i was very very upset with her when she would not come out to meet us earlier, she has proven to be a very good and obedient baby in her own way.

having a baby when you already have another kid is a pain in the butt to plan. because you can't really plan anything cause like the end times- you don't know when anything is going to happen. i asked mia to not come between the hours of 12 am and 6am. why? cause i really didn't want to have to call anyone to get out of bed and come to our house during those hours. sure lindsay and robert, and my friend grace who lives 2 minutes away from us, were more than willing to get out of bed for mia's arrival, but i just didn't want to have to harass them at such ungodly hours. and my wonderful mia started 'the process' at about 5:30am on thursday morning last week, and i ended up calling my midwife and lindsay at 6am. yeah! 6am is early, but 4am is earlier, so i think everyone was ok with getting the call.

so we got to the hospital at about 6:45am with my contractions coming about every 10 minutes. i was still on board with myself for this whole 'natural-drug-free birth' at this point. why did i want to do this? i'm not really sure to be quite honest. and would i do it again? probably not. but maybe. i don't know. the whole birthing without drugs is painful as all get out, BUT feeling everything in retrospect (and only in retrospect) is kind of amazing. like i could actually feel mia coming down the birth canal. very strange. and very amazing.

we got to triage at about 7am and i was already 100% effaced and 7cm dilated. surely i was going to pop this baby out asap styles, right? we got into our delivery room at about 7:30am, and i was kind of a hurting unit. chris was there, as was his mama, and my midwife, and a nurse. and that was my birthing team, unbenownst to me. i guess i should have talked more with my midwife beforehand to know what to expect. the only thing that i specifically talked about with my midwife was that i really really did not want to tear. i tore a ton with lily and almost not at all with topher. my midwife told me i was not going to tear with an uncanny degree of certainty, so i just went along with it.

basically, i don't know why i had this baby naturally. would i do it again? probably not. but here's the thing- i did not tear! it was amazing. my midwife was amazing. even though i felt like she didn't do anything for 80% of my labor- but apparently that's what midwives are there for- to not boss you around and let you do what your body is telling you to do. unlike doctors who are there to catch your baby and stitch you up. if for some crazy reason i have another baby- it will be via midwife with drugs. cause that's an option, and probably the best one out there. but my midwife also told me that recovery in general is much faster for people who don't have drugs, and though it is almost two weeks out and i still have some pain and discomfort in my back, i did feel 'pretty good' (considering a human being emerged from my body) hours after mia was born. the jury's out on whether we will have more kids and whether or not drugs are the way to go or not.

all i know is that life is good right now. chris is home and will be for another week and a bit. he has proven to be a ripe and mature seasoned veteran of a dad and husband. he is all over waking up with the older two so that i can sleep in every day. he empties and loads the dishwasher. he takes lily and topher to the gym so that i can hang out at home with mia. he also hangs out with mia and lily and topher so i can have moments entirely to myself. what a stud and a champ! i am surrounded by awesomeness and i feel so very very blessed.

people ask if i am sad that mia couldn't wait an extra 15 hours to be born on 11/11/11, but truth be told i really just needed mia to not be inside my body any more. and 11/10 happens to be the Marine Corps' bday, something that chris- a former marine, likes to celebrate every year. and every year i usually get him a gift, or a cake, or something to commemorate this special day. but i had nothing prepared for chris this year. until mia showed up! so happy belated Marine Corps bday my beautiful husband. and happy birthday to my sweet mia.

here are some of my favorite pics of my awesome husband and my awesome mia.

wait no more!

we had our 7 lb 2 oz baby yesterday morning at 8:52am. i'll blog about the birth story later (you can skip that post lindsay!) but today is just pics:

so happy to have our baby girl out in the world with us! welcome to the outside
Mia Joelle Sunju Watson!

still waiting...

ok. i just posted a post that i wrote five days ago. and nothing has changed.
except that i had a doctor's appoitnment on monday afternoon and discovered that i am 4.5cm dilated and 80% effaced. i was so excited cause i thought i was surely going to have a baby on monday. surely. SURELY! right? no. it's wednesday. still pregnant.

chris had been off of work since friday night. this weekend would have been a great time to have a baby. as we waited, chris and i went on two more dates on saturday- one luunch date for a friend's 39th birthday (thanks for watching lily and topher barb and jerry!) and then we went on a serious date- dinner and a movie, while our friends brian and carrie kept lily and topher overnight. thanks SO MUCH brian and carrie! (those are hobey's parents. i love them so much!)

but this morning he actually left for work, so i am home with the kids. i am going to do a while lot of sitting and hanging out. and then when he gets home i will probably do some jump squats and lunges and maybe find a trampoline...

mia is already proving to be a stubborn little monkey, much akin to her sister lily when she was in the womb. i have tried to ask her to come out very nicely, i have been walking around like crazy, i even did something according to doctor's orders to get labor started... and nothing. i have also been eating spicy food like it's going out of style, but i don't know if that counts being korean and all, and usually consuming a fair amount of spicy food on the regular. but i have to mention that chris 'made dinner' last night, which means he ran out to a korean restaurant and ordered kalbi (phenomenal short ribs), jap chae (noodles), and kimchi chigae (kimchi stew) all by himself! the korean lady at the restaurant was very impressed that he ordered without a menu and asked if he was mormon. interesting thing to ask another person, although not uncommon here in gilbert arizona.

oh yeah, i went to starbucks on monday night on my way to bible study/hoping to be on my way to the hospital, and there was a lady in front of me who told me i was so cute. very nice of her. she also asked if she could refill my drink for me (i had a almost empty starbucks cup, cause i had been in there 2 minutes earlier, but chris spilled 90% of his drink in the car so we turned around to get another one.) but the starbucks guy was nice enough to remake my drink for free. so much kindness and love in that starbucks! she then offered to buy me a pastry which i also declined, but it was my first 'stranger offering to buy me something' experience and it was so sweet! especially since this woman said she had 8 kids (EIGHT!) and that she loved being pregnant but was all done and therefore liked to live vicariously through other pregnant women. craziness.

anyhoo, i have been waking up a lot in the middle of the night to eat crackers, which has been so annoying, but i guess it's better than getting woken up 10 times a night to feed someone else. i know life is going to be very different and kind of exhausting once mia finally does decide to show up- but i just want her to show up already! chris is way stronger than me, and it's his turn to carry her now!

waiting. not patiently

today i am 37 weeks and 5 days. topher was already born by now. my friend erin, who was due a week before me, just had her baby on tuesday morning. i met the littlest dezago and he is amazing! congrats erin and co!!!

i was so happy for my friend that i thought i was in labor tuesday night. chris and i were out on a hot date to one of our favorite 'mexican' restaurants- abuelo's. i love it there. the food is never too greasy and it's always delicious. so great. but i was having contractions during dinner and most of our conversation that night revolved around- "wait? was that a real contraction? when was my last one? is this really happening?" and the answer was: "NO." this was not really happening. i prayed for lots of wisdom cause i did not want to go to the hospital and not have a baby, but the situation seemed so perfect because the kids were already at lindsay's and she was more than ready to have them spend the night. she is such a great sister-in-law! i really truly do not know what i would do without her!

anyhoo, we picked up the kids and went home and nothing happened. obviously. cause i'm still pregnant. but i am so thankful for the date that chris and i were able to have. in fact, i am so thankful for all the 'last' moments i have been spending this week. especially with lily and topher.

wednesday morning topher was in a picky mood and said he wanted banana bread for breakfast. i figured that eating cereal for breakfast everyday could get boring, so we went out for muffins! it was fantastic! extra fantastic cause we all got to wear sweatshirts! yeah for fall weather. my kids are so amazing and i am definitely soaking up these last days of ease and leisure with my two OLD kids.

halloween funtimes

there are some things that my awesome husband takes very seriously- his faith, his family, his health, football, and halloween. kind of in that order.

halloween has never been a particularly big thing for me. We had a convenience store growing up, so getting candy was never a big deal. My parents didn't have a ton of time planning out our halloween costumes, plus we lived in Canada so we always had to wear our winter jackets over our costumes anyway. Halloween was fun, but it wasn't a big event.

i'm not sure why it's such a big deal for my husband, maybe his parents made halloween a very special event for their family. or maybe it's just cause my husband is just a child at heart. at any rate, chris loves halloween, and when we decided to have a small halloween gathering, chris was very very excited.

we had a very small gathering with our friends on sunday night. part of it was as small as it was because i was a little afraid that i might have to cancel the party due to an early baby, but fortunately/unfortunately that did not happen. and even with just five families represented at the party, there were 10 kids (plus two baking)which made it feel like there were a lot more people in our house than there were. what a blessing!

i don't know what order these pictures appear in, but i know there is one awesome pic of the 10 kids- ranging in age from 3 weeks old to 4.5 years old. always a fun challenge trying to get 10 kids to pose for a picture together.