Meet and Greet the Animals

I've been wanting to introduce you to a few of the animals we have up here on the mountain, but I thought I should start with the ones that have come from inside me. The digital age was just beginning when we had Claire, my daughter, in February of 2002. My older brother, my only sibling, flew all the way from San Diego to Philadelphia to witness his first niece or nephew being born. He came with one of these cool, new, super small cameras that you could see the picture you just took! It was quite a phenomenon. All I remember of the camera, because of all the morphine I was on, was how excited Paul Bunyan was to get great shots of my innards sitting on my chest in the operating room. Claire was a planned c-section because she was upside down and sideways, tucked up into my rib cage, as far away from the world as she could get. They had to rip her out of me, literally. We have some great shots of my intestines though! But I will spare you those details, because I'm just not that ready to get too personal yet. Despite Uncle Chris' great new special camera, any photos we have of Claire are in a pile in my bedroom waiting to get thrown into an album. Do you remember those days? Anyone?? I have, however, over time, scanned a few into my computer. I'll share a few of Claire from the pre-digital age:

Here is the family before we all got fat:

Here is what Paul Bunyan did to his wrist 2 weeks before the boys were born:

Yea, I definitely said to myself when I was watching him at the top of an extension ladder with the chain saw fully extended, "That's stupid."

But despite a broken wrist, and surgery, we still made it home with these two thingies:

And here's me all morphed up again, just so you can visualize what I may have looked like the first time:

I don't know, I've heard labor is overrated, but I guess we'll never know because Paul Bunyan got the good old snip, snip. Yea, he's fixed for sure. But I love my children. I love them all. I've loved every minute of being a stay-at-home mom; well, that's not true. But lots and lots and lots of moments I've loved and I'm really excited to write about the ones that are yet to come because these animals are growing so fast. Too fast. I mean look at them now:

And look at her now:

They're, like, almost ready to drive!