We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog...

Some of you may have noticed that our blog hasn't been updated quite as frequently as you'd expect from a couple of techie first-time-parents. We apologize for the delay (we were a bit overwhelmed with life after Sophie arrived), and assure you that blog posts will now resume, and will hopefully be coming fast and furious from now on.

Sophie's remarkable progress

Wow - being new parents, we had no idea of the kind of progress babies were capable of making in the first four days! Here are a few of the things that Sophie has surprised us with!

* She smiled and laughed at an funny, obscure literary reference that Holly made.

* She learned to snap her fingers - amazing manual dexterity!

* She crawled on day 2, and shortly thereafter, started toddling around on her own two feet. We expect wind sprints within the week.

* Thankfully, she is now potty-trained. I don't know how many more diapers I could have handled - we almost reached double-digits!

* She turned down her first scamming telemarketer (with the phrase "I wasn't born yesterday, you know"), and was polite, but firm.

* She memorized the words to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven". Her delivery still needs work, though.

* Oh, and early this morning (before the telemarketer call and the the poetry), she said her first words... "What day is it today, again?"

Happy birthday, Sophia!

The big day has arrived - Sophia Emily Broadland (Sophie for short) was born precisely on her due date, March 28, 2007 at 6:52pm. She was 9 lbs, 1 oz, and has a fair bit of dark hair. Holly did a great job with the delivery, and we were well supported by one of our midwives, our two midwives-in-training, our doula, and Sophie's grandma, Star. (And, of course, by everyone who has been wishing us well!) We'll write more later, but for now, I can't think what else I should mention. Holly and Sophie are both doing fine, and here's a (fuzzy) picture of the newest Broadland!

39 weeks, 4 days

As I'm getting daily calls to see if I've had the baby yet, I thought I'd offer some proof that I'm still pregnant! This photo was taken on Sunday, March 25th, three days before my due date. Not much to report, other than the fact that the torrential rain stopped yesterday and enabled me to waddle to the library with Dean. He was very kind and tried not to laugh in my face about how slow I was going. What a guy!

No news is no news

Hello all! Holly here, with a brief update. Slipper is still happy where he/she is and I'm happy to wait until the baby decides to make his/her debut! We've had our last prenatal visit with our doula, we've bought our last minute baby supplies, and we're feeling as ready as we're going to be! My due date is only five days away, but the baby could easily be born in April rather than March. I'm still going to my prenatal yoga and strength training classes and I'm feeling fit and strong, albeit fairly awkward.

I finished teaching last week on March 13th, and have been enjoying my time off! I've gone out to lunch and dinner several times as well as to a movie and a play.

I know there are many people out there waiting for news of this baby's arrival and I promise we'll let you know as soon as we're able! Thanks for all the good thoughts and excitement about our baby!

Baby pool stats online

We just posted some stats on the baby pool - take a look if you're interested in percentages of people who chose boy vs. girl, what the most popular date chosen was, that sort of thing.

The dresser escapade

We just finished filling up a new (to us) dresser with baby stuff - diapers, clothes, blankets, shoes that look like lions, the whole nine yards. It was quite the interesting time, going from no dresser at all, to a dresser filled with stuff...

We figured we'd go looking for a used dresser at the thrift shops, and find something that suited us that would hold a schwack (technical term for a plethora) of baby gear. We found a couple dressers at the store below us, but they were priced pretty darn low, and for pretty good reason - one was generally beat up and mangy, and the other was from Ikea. Like someone later told us, Ikea can sometimes be fine the first time around, but on its second life, it's usually just on the verge of collapse, if not well past that point. So we decided to think about it, and carry on to the next store, where we found a couple good solid dressers, solid wood, good drawer openage, all that - but a bit pricier than the first store. (Still not at all bad, though.) We hummed and hawed and finally decided on one of these nice dressers - but had no way of getting it home. The co-op truck nearby was booked, so we booked a car for later in the day - little did we realize how barely wrong-sized that car would turn out to be. (That's called "blatant foreshadowing".)

Anyway, on the way home, we walked by that first store - which had kindly decided to place a new dresser in their sidewalk display - a beautiful looking dresser with cute little-kid plastic numbers as drawer handles. The clouds parted, the light shone upon it, and lo, Holly's eyes did tear up. With a curse to the thrift store gods, I hustled her on past, up to our apartment. (This turned out okay the next day, when I went to inspect the dresser, and found it to be of extremely dubious quality. Phew.)

Where was I? Right. The car. I picked up the car, drove to the store, and found that the dresser was approximately an inch from fitting into the car, no matter where in the car I tried to put it, no matter how I swivelled it. (And I'm a world-champion car-fitter-in-er, I once got a boxspring into the back of a canopy truck that was a good 6 inches too small for it - the trick is to bend time and space with your mind.) So, I had to leave it there, return the car, and return at lunch the next day with the co-op truck. That worked. The dresser was in our place!

And just now, we jammed it full of stuff - I'm still a bit fuzzy on how we actually got this much stuff - we only bought one onesie and a package of diapers ourselves, as far as I remember. We certainly have generous family and friends. Thanks, all!