More pictures of Will

Will is now 6 weeks old and sweet as ever. We feel very, very lucky to have such a content baby since we're well aware this isn't always the case. He still sleeps a whole lot and I hope that lasts even a little bit longer! None of the kids have lost their fascination with the baby so we still spend a lot of our time taking turns holding him.

Here he is the day of his blessing at 5 weeks old. And of course all the kids holding him.

Whenever Cali isn't sleeping in her crib, Will gets to take his naps here. And it is his favorite place! Whenever he is tired I just go lay him in the crib and he puts himself to sleep. After having really crabby newborns, this is crazy to us! We both remember pacing all over the apartment with Lincoln and Cali just begging them to go to sleep. Hopefully I'm not jinxing Will's good habits!

Our last Berkeley Thanksgiving

I can't believe that this is our sixth Thanksgiving on our own. My amazing friend Britney invited us to their great house down in San Jose for Thanksgiving. It was so much fun and the food was all incredible. This Thanksgiving I thought of two huge things I am very grateful for. First, getting a job in Utah, and second, the lifelong friends we've made in Berkeley. Brit and her family are definitely one of them. Thanks for the wonderful day, Brit!

Here are the girls... all pregnant, might I add. I gotta admit I was feeling a little leftout. ;)
(Rachel, Ela, me, and Brit)

Brit did up a fancy adult table, and then the kids had their own table next to us. My kids came and ate one at a time... they never wanted to stop playing!

We had a really relaxing day since the kids basically stayed on the tramp the whole time. I think it will be the first thing we buy when we get a yard!

This is Brit's mom with Will. I just love this sweet lady!
Here we are before heading back to Berkeley. You can tell by Max's and Lincoln's faces that they were definitely done with their big day.

Will's first month

This has been a pretty busy month so I have not posted near as much as I should in honor of this sweet baby. He has been absolutely perfect and we have all loved every minute with him. He's a great sleeper and a great eater and you can't ask for more than that in a newborn! He is a month old, and only the past couple of days has he started to cry more and want to be held, so we've been pretty lucky.

Here are some pictures of him when he is one and two weeks old.

First of all, my mom came and spent a week with us to help with the baby. She flew here straight from Hawaii where she was tending grandkids and I couldn't believe how much energy she still had for my intense little clan. She cleaned, entertained the kids, took them and picked them up from school, got up in the morning with Cali (super early, might I add), and she took the kids on all kinds of adventures. All while I got to stay home and recover with just the sweet baby. :) We were very sad when she had to leave... but she was heading straight to Alaska to help my little sister with her brand new baby! I think she was gone from home for a straight month. Thanks Mom! You're definitely one in a million!

Thought we better get a picture of Will's bed... he sleeps on the couch all bundled up every night.

And of course I don't need to say how much the kids love him. All they want to do is hold the baby any chance they get. Max is definitely a natural with him and has been so helpful to me.

Cali is little less natural but she adores this little baby and always wants to just squeeze him out of pure delight.

BIG NEWS!

It's official... Dan got a job!!! And as if that isn't exciting enough, the job is in UTAH ... Clearfield, in fact, which is right where we're from. He will be a Systems Engineer at Northrop Grumman. There's really no way to express how happy we are about this... words just won't do. We feel like it really is a miracle! The less exciting part of it-- Dan trying to work 80 hours a week to finish up while I'm still adjusting to life as a mother of five! They want him to start in January, but it will probably be closer to March when his dissertation will be done, so we'll see. I can't believe how sad I'm going to be to leave this crazy place! This has been our home for more than five years and we're all really going to miss it. But we are so thrilled to be moving back home where our family is. Just wanted to share the happy news!

New Moon!

These girls' nights mean even more lately when I know I won't have too many more. :( We of course all went to New Moon opening night and it was so fun. I really liked the movie, but don't take my word for it, I'm super easy to please. :)

Here are the gals...

Waiting in the line:

The best vampire face I could come up with:

In the theatre with our funny teeth:)

Will's baby announcement

The picture is Will at one week old. Thanks Dan for making the cute baby announcement for me.

Halloween part II

Is it too late for Halloween pictures? Obviously I was tied up at the hospital all day, but of course the kids got to go trick or treating! After my friend held down the fort with the kids all day (thanks Kelli!), Dan went home and took the kids to a Halloween potluck dinner in the village and out for trick or treating. Here they are:



Dan says their favorite part was handing out the candy when they got home. Max would run out and try to recruit trick-or-treaters. Here's the little video Dan took of the kids for me to watch. :)

Will's home!

We all made it home and are doing great! I'd been so nervous about this labor being too fast to get to the hospital. And I was especially preparing myself for the fact that I wouldn't be getting an epidural. But things couldn't have gone better! My water broke which was awesome because it gave us time to get to the hospital before I was even having regular contractions. Once we got to the hospital, they got us all settled checking in, giving me the IV, putting in my epidural, and voila... two hours later Will came out in just one push. It was heavenly. :)

Having Will in the NICU helped balance out how easy delivery was. :( We really should be getting used to this, but the NICU is such a pain. I hate it. I couldn't hold or feed Will for a couple days which was so sad. His platelets wouldn't stabilize so they had to keep poking him and giving him IVIG treatments. They're still trying to figure out why our babies have this problem, but basically something about my antibodies kill my babies' blood platelets and then my antibodies stay in his blood and keep at it. Hopefully by next time we'll have some preventative treatment to do during pregnancy to avoid this again. Luckily he's just fine now and we're so happy to be home.

Finally, thank you, thank you, thank you to all my dear friends who helped make this so nice for us. We've never needed or gotten so much help. People slept over, took care of the kids, brought dinner, and it was all just amazing. Dan was able to spend lots of time with me and Will at the hospital and I am SO grateful. And today my mom is coming! We feel very blessed to have gotten so much help with this baby.

Okay, so here are a few more pictures!

The very proud Dad.

Love Dr. Schleuning! She delivered Cali and now Will and she's awesome. She didn't even have time to change from her street clothes... she just threw on some gloves and caught the baby just in time. Love her!

Loved our labor and delivery nurse, Nora... she was hilarious!

And then to the NICU for a platelet transfusion. So many tubes and wires! This time they were able to hook up everything through his umbilical cord, so no IV!

My first time getting to hold Will while he was in the NICU... and my good friend Jen, his first visitor. :)

We made it home and everyone finally got to hold Will for the first time. They all adore him of course!

We got a little costume for him just in case he was born before Halloween. We couldn't put it on him while he was in the NICU, but since he was born on Halloween, we just had to get a picture. His yawn kind of looks like a little roar. :)

Baby Will is in the house!

It happened. Our baby was born on Halloween, early this morning. Karen's water broke while we were watching Monk, at 8:45 p.m. Friday night. We hurried as fast as we all could, but the little guy didn't make it out in time. Happy Halloween, baby Will!

Name: Will James Briggs
Weight: 8 lb 5 oz
Length: 21 inches
Time of arrival: 2:10 a.m., October 31, 2009

Will has three great namesakes to look up to. He is named after two of his great-grandfathers, William Halls and Wilmer Barlow, and after his Grandpa James Barlow.

We were hoping for better news, but we were not surprised that Will was born with a critically low blood platelet count. So he is stuck in the NICU for now, and hopefully the platelet transfusion goes well. We'll post an update with more pictures later.

Here are a few pics. Does my girl even look like she's in labor?

No baby yet...

I went the Dr. again today, and we're not going to get induced (for now, at least.) I hope we can wait one more week for when my mom can come. Now we just need to get past Halloween!

Sweet Cali Anne

Today just might be the last day that sweet Cali is my baby... kind of bittersweet. She has definitely been a spoiled little girl at our house for the past two years. I hope she does okay with the new baby!

Hooray for FALL!

You know the feeling you have right before you have a baby that your life is pretty much going to end? I know it's not really that way, but the past couple weeks I've felt like I had to do everything on my to-do list for the rest of the year. That must be the reason for my sudden blog burst this weekend... cramming before the baby.

Anyway, today was the first time it really felt like Fall for me... warmer than the brisk ones I grew up with in Utah, but still, the Fall feeling all the same. It started with watching Game Day LIVE from Provo... very cool. Then we headed off to the Village for our our pumpkins, free pumpkin pie, then back home for carving. The house still smells like pumpkins! I wish the lovely day didn't end with watching us get a big loss from TCU. :(