ready or not...

i told bryce that adele was growing up too fast.

he laughed.

i guess she is only two weeks old.

but still.

i guess the past few week's whirlwind, dizzied me up enough to feel like much more time has passed.

now, i promised you all a story over a week ago and the longer i make you wait, the better the story has to be, so before more time slips by and your expectations rise anymore, here goes...

it all started the sunday before my due date. bryce was in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher when emaline came up asking for a snack. he turned to give her a rice cake and forgetting that the dishwasher door was open, backed up into it, tripped, missed catching himself and landed straight on his ribs on the corner of our kitchen counter. he fell so hard that he said he felt them bend inward. all i could imagine was bryce in a rib brace while i was delivering my baby. selfish? maybe, but only one day from my due date, all i could think of was baby and me. so you can imagine my panic when the following day along with sore ribs, bryce came home from work with a sore throat and a full fledged cold and fever. at this point i was just past my due date and was no longer ready for baby... not until bryce was fully recovered and his germs contained. but of course, it was only the beginning. the very next day, as he was lifting a case of water, he turned a little funny and felt a surge of pain run up his back.

he was falling apart, at the worst time ever. didn't he know that i needed him?

i tried to do my part, keeping me and the girls healthy, massaging the pain out of bryce's back, and ignoring the fact that his ribs might be more damaged than we thought. by thursday, his cold seemed to be on its way out, his back feeling better and his ribs less sore. and thankfully, baby decided to hold out a little while for daddy to heal. but it wasn't daddy she needed to wait for... that afternoon, that all too familiar and uncomfortable feeling began in the back of my throat... i was getting sick. no. no! i wasted no time at all and began taking something immediately to try to prevent the inevitable.

but that was the least of my worries.

as bryce returned home that day, he noticed a pool of water by our front porch. and after digging a 3 foot deep hole, he found the culprit... a busted joint on a water pipe. by then it was after five and the few plumbers we called were not going to be able to come out until the following morning. so bryce turned off our water and called my hero dad. they spent the rest of the night repairing the broken pipe and by 11pm they were finally done. to ensure that the glue was fully cured, my dad recommended that we wait 'til morning to turn the water back on. perfect, i thought, as my very pregnant, tired and sick self crawled into bed. bryce and i laughed at our week of misfortune as we laid in bed that night but avoided talking about the real possibility of this baby coming at any minute.

sure enough, one hour later the contractions began. i literally laughed to myself between contractions.

my poor parents headed back to our house for the second time that night to come stay with our girls as we headed to the hospital. by this time ava had awoken, claiming to have a sore throat. i laid in bed with her, and between contractions comforted her and blew her nose, while bryce gathered things up for our hospital stay.

we drove off headed for the hospital around 2am, leaving my parents with our sick kids and house with no running water. and as i blew my own nose, and popped a throat lozenge in my mouth, i thought to myself, what timing.

i don't recommend delivering a baby with a full-fledged head cold, nor handling your delicate newborn while completely contagious, but her arrival into our lives was still perfect. and fortunately, by some grace, she managed to avoid the virus that passed through our whole family during her first week of life.

oh adele, welcome to our family. your entrance has definitely gone down in the books.