Introducing.....

CHARLIE!

Charles Connor Marzinke was born February 14th, at 7:15am, weighing 7lbs 15oz and was 21 inches long. Labor turned out to be just that, labor! And the three of us have spent this last week recuperating as best we can.

Now that we are home from the hospital, Charlie sleeps hanging from the ceiling,

prefers being rolled up like an armadillo,

has very long toes, has already smiled at each of the important people in his life, and finds most conversation topics an occasion for solemn taciturnity.

Theology really seems his thing. This makes his father and grandfather proud. (If you listen carefully you can hear his comment close to the end of this conversation)

In the past six days of life he has acquired several vital skills, including a suck reflex strong enough to plaster his mother to the ceiling, being able to fill three diapers in quick succession before leaving the changing table, and the ability to sleep for 5 hours at a time, for which both his father and mother are profoundly grateful.

It is such a mysterious thing that God does bringing these little ones into the world and into life. Half the time Jonathan and I feel like we are waiting for his parents to come pick him up after a week of babysitting, and have to remind each other that we are actually Charlie's parents! The other half of the time we are blown away and so humbled that we have been given stewardship of this precious and beautiful gift.

God is Good, All the Time
All the Time, God is Good.

Nest-Craft-ing...

All righty now, here's the scoop on crafts around here.

The nursery corner...
Because we needed our second bedroom for Jonathan's office and guest bedroom while my parents are staying here after the baby is born, we decided to set up the end of our bedroom as baby land. This actually worked out even better than we hoped. Here's Jonathan bringing in the glider chair. It was a really big box!


This corner has become my favorite spot in our house. The chair is so comfortable, and I could spend many hours in it...which I guess I will be doing soon!

We moved the baby dresser into our room too. (Also pictured: the little radiator that could, the diaper pail from the diaper service, our bag ready for the hospital, and our changing pad, which will go on top of a table my Dad plans to build to fit the space where the suitcase is, once he and my Mom get here in a couple weeks.)

Thank you for the toys and books you've sent our way!

We put the baby basket on an antique traveling trunk for now. My Dad has promised to figure out how to hang it from the ceiling when they get here!


The baby basket.....
I sewed the sheets with elastic around the ends so they just fit over the mattress. We sleep with a duvet, which meant that I had all sorts of flat sheets hanging around from our sheet sets that we never used. I just cut up the ends of two sheets and now the baby has four of the softest jersey knit sheets to sleep on. I think there is enough left over to make sheets for the crib too, when we set it up later. And they match our bed. Though I recognize that the fact that this excites me is really corny, I just can't help myself! As, my friends Amanda and Sarah decided, we're all dorks anyways...so might as well enjoy it!~

There are a few soft friends waiting to become acquainted with the baby. Thank you Hartmans, and Cheryl and Judy! The beautiful quilt was made by my friend Jen.

Moby wrapping....
This is me trying to explain how a moby wrap works to Jonathan. Unfortunately, I only had about 3 feet of fabric to work with at that point. What with the size of my belly, I'm afraid the demonstration did not really go too well.

Things went much better after I had all 18 feet sewn together.

Mama Bear and Baby Bear were kind enough to demonstrate the baby's role in this.
(Mama Bear and Baby Bear are very special, by the way. The Mama holds onto Baby with Velcro paws, but when I was growing up baby got lost for about 12 years. We miraculously found him two houses later, in a fold of a suitcase when I was packing up to move to the US for college. They have been together ever since!)


Thus ends news on nest-crafting for now.
I do have a few more things on the sewing machine...but the essentials are taken care of.
I guess that means we are ready! Yikes!

Making Cindie Proud--39 weeks and one pound of rasberry leaf tea consumed

One of the very sad things about leaving Seattle during this pregnancy was having to leave behind our midwife Cindie. We love her very much and I've had to work hard at letting go of my desire to have her at our birth. She is kind and wise and knows a lot about natural preventative remedies. So, she sent us off to St. Louis with a few such suggestions, one of which was to drink lots of raspberry leaf tea. It helps the uterus in many ways which I don't have the expertise to go into here, but you can look it up if you are interested!

Today as I am celebrating using up an entire pound of rasberry leaf tea during this pregnancy ! (which, if you know how light the stuff is, is a LOT of rasberry leaf tea)

As I made this pot of tea with the end of the bag, I thought "Cindie would be so proud of me!"--a happy thought to have in sunshiny morning before breakfast.

Snow Play Day!

You can imagine how excited we were to wake up the first day of this semester to see this out our window!

It is amazing how being in school makes inclement weather an extra joyful experience.

We slept in and made Dutch Babies for breakfast...it was rough!

Then mid-morning we invited our friends Jake and Cassie out for a walk in the snow by throwing snow balls at their windows.

It worked--they came out to play!

There were many more snowballs thrown, a few snowy bushes which found sudden friends shoved into the center of them and one pregnant snow angel...

...who needed some help getting up!

Then we all went inside and had hot chocolate! Fun, fun, fun!

Noooooooo....!!!!!!!

This little sweater was going to be a competitor in the the 'going-home from the hospital outfit vote.' However,

. . . it turns out that knitting and carpel tunnel (even when it is brought on by the very same little person you want to knit for) are sworn and feuding enemies.

This latest development has put a serious wrench in the knitting. And so the sweater is going to have to wait until my body becomes reasonable again about how much water it thinks it needs on hand. . . So close, yet so far!

Ice and Warmth

It is 8 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now and supposedly feels like -2. I'm certainly not going out to see if they are right or not. The last three days we have have had ice around the window seals, on the inside. It is COLD!

Here's what is keeping us warm:
1. "The little radiator that could": Purchased with our Christmas money, it rolls around from room to room with us, providing economic heat.

2. Projects: I have slippers for Jonathan, a baby sweater and a blanket on the knitting needles. There are baby sheets and a car seat cover in various stages of production under the sewing machine. I've been cooking meals to freeze for later. And Jonathan finishes his translation of 1 John from Greek to English today, so we've set a date to pack our bag for the hospital this afternoon!

3. Presents from friends: Thank you to all of you who have sent things to us for the baby! Every time I see a package at the door, it makes me feel so loved and warm. Here's a piece of art sent to us by my good friend Ella.

Notice how well she painted us, and that the baby's hair color is even mixed between my hair and Jonathan's hair....now that is the kind of attention to detail worthy of the daughter of a medical research scientist! I love it! Thank you Ella!

....aaaand the BabyZ craziness commences

Be warned. I am now done with school, my legs hit the underside of my belly when I try to climb stairs, and I've started grunting unintentionally when I get out of the car (something I said I would never do when I was pregnant!)---all another way of saying "35 weeks and counting...."

And oh boy, are there things I am doing! I had been daydreaming about baby projects during all of last semester, but of course had no time to put any of them into action. (To think that a month ago I couldn't stay awake to read, now I have so much energy for the little tasks I want to do that I have to remind myself to eat!)

Here's the first sparks of my exploding pent up desire...and there will be much more to come!

Baby Laundry!

Of course this task will not always be gloriously fun, but I must admit the sight of all these tiny clothes hanging out with ours on the drying rack made me very, very happy! I knew I needed to post this so that I could remember the joy when I am haggardly doing yet another load of laundry in the future!

Baby Onesie!

I made this onesie out of Jonathan's old junior high swim team t-shirt. The logo didn't totally fit, so I put the remaining part on the hat, which I sewed out of the sleeve.

I love the idea of using this recycled clothing, and giving our new little one something of Daddy's to wear!

Baby Basket!

OK, this is really the best. And for you to understand how best it is, I must tell you the story my Dad told me:

"When you were a baby, you slept in a fishing basket that your mother and I hung over the foot of our bed. We tied a rope to it and put that down the middle of the bed between us. When you woke up in the middle of the night, whoever heard you first would grab the rope and twitch it so that your basket would swing and rock you back to sleep without us needing to get out of bed."

Doesn't that sound like the perfect bed for a baby? Doesn't that sound like the perfect baby bed for tired parents?

As soon as we found out we were expecting, I asked my Mom and Dad to find me a fishing basket in the Philippines. They kindly fulfilled my whim by bringing the basket back with them on the airplane--which I'm told involved a few lengthy conversations and re-tellings of the story to customs officials etc. along the way. But I did get my basket. And yesterday I made the mattress for it.

Here is the plywood insert that strengthens the bottom.

I cut out a couple layers of batting and some 1-inch foam a little bigger than the board.

Then I assembled all the pieces upside-down. The "pillow top" for this mattress was cotton quilted backing I found in the fabric store. That went down first, followed by the batting and foam with the plywood on top.

Using a staple gun I wrapped all the layers snugly and tacked them in with the mattress "pillow top" using staples secure it to the back of the board.

Ta-da! Baby basket with cozy, yet firm mattress in the bottom.

Isn't it inviting?

...stay tuned for sheets and a bumper, z knitted sweater, the going home from the hospital outfit vote, the home-sewn moby wrap, the re-made sweater-fleece bonanza and perhaps even a Christmas re-cap all coming to my blog near you...soon!