Smashed potatoes and peas

For the second year in a row, Logan has requested "smashed" potatoes and peas for his birthday dinner. I think I'll file that under Not Normal, and also Adorable. I expected a request for pizza, or perhaps McD's (Big Ron's Steakhouse), but nope...potatoes and peas is what we're having.

Last year, I asked him about his birthday request a few days before his birthday, and that night I made green beans with dinner. When he saw his plate, he protested, "I wanted circle peas, not rectangle peas!" (Also filed under Adorable, p.s.)

Even though his birthday's not until tomorrow, we'll be celebrating at our house tonight since he'll be at Ed's tomorrow night. I took him to pick out his cake from the store last week and he chose a spider cake, which I'm not thrilled about since it comes with a ginormous plastic spider on top. But I did tell him to pick what he wanted so I couldn't really say no. Next year, I'll add a "no creepies" clause.


"Five years ago today" (and all that crap)...

We were spending the day in the hospital, having an amnio done (unpleasant watching that long, long needle poke into your belly, btw), and preparing for the impending arrival of LP. I really wanted to have an October baby so I felt ok about being admitted the night of the 30th with the plan of Logan removal the next morning. Little did we know things wouldn't go as anticipated and instead of having a leisurely birth the next morning (ha!), it was to be a middle-of-the-night affair in which Logan was pulled out in the wee hours of the morning, barely an October boy.

The conversation with the nurse before we went to the operating room went a little something like this (I'll sum up for time, and please keep in mind that I was heavily sedated) -

Nurse: So, every time you're having a contraction, the baby's heart rate is dropping. That's not good. We're going to have to do a c-section instead of following through with the induction as planned. Your doctor has been notified.
Me: Oooookaaaay, so what time will he be here in the morning?
Nurse, giving me a confused look: Um, he's on his way. He'll be here in about 10 minutes.
Me, all of a sudden noticing the flurry of hospital staff doing various things to and around me: Oh.

About that time, Ed walked up to me, dressed in the scrubs they'd given him. The shirt was about 2 sizes too small, so he had the uncanny look of a stuffed sausage and was moving fairly stiffly. The nurse took a glance at him and quickly went to get him a more comfortably sized top. We didn't really have time to panic or worry too much, because we were off to the OR shortly after. The c-section itself was fairly uneventful except for the fact that the doctors spent their time talking about golf or cars or Things Doctors Talk About Other Than Doctoring which gave me the distinct sensation that my c-section was not nearly as big a deal to them as it was to me, and when they pulled Logan out of my body, they loudly counted one...two...three as they unwrapped the umbilical cord from around his neck. As it turns out a cord around your neck three times can inhibit your breathing during contractions.

After he was born, Ed went to see Logan get cleaned up and came back to me on the operating table, excitedly telling me that the boy was just perfect with ten fingers and ten toes and red hair (which I was not expecting). Unfortunately I was pretty drugged up, focused mostly on how Ed looked with the surgical mask on his face and how it made a perfect tent over his mouth because of how it unfolded, so my first words after the birth of Logan were to Ed saying, "You look like a duck."