Alan – Home at Winshaw

In February and March, Marian and Alan each had their birthdays. Jordan and I have talked quite a bit about what traditions we want to begin in our family for birthday celebrations. We considered what would be special and memorable to the child on that day. So, starting this year we began a new tradition – the birthday child will get to spend a day out (or in) with just one parent. This could be anything from a wilderness hike to an afternoon scrapbooking – I’m sure it will look different with each child each year with their personality and preferences. But the underlying idea as they get older is to create an environment conductive to unhurried conversation, and truly finding out where the heart of the child is at this new beginning.

This year I suggested Jordan be the one to take the kids out on their birthdays, since Elsie is still so tiny, it would be hard for me to give the others undivided attention. He took Marian to a cute local lunch spot for a ‘daddy-daughter-date’ (as Marian delightedly told everyone she met) . She was thrilled to get to eat out at a restaurant (a rarity for us) and had a wonderful time! She hasn’t stopped talking about it since.

When Marian returned from lunch, we blew bubbles in the evening sun rays, and decorated her petti-fours. (pound cake I made previously and cut into circles with a cookie cutter)

They were iced with cream cheese tinted pink with beet juice.

Marian is happy to be 3 now, and is already talking about when she will be 4!

Oh dear….haha.

We love you, Marian! Our big girl.

Alan on his 2nd birthday got to go fishing with Jordan for the first time! He loved catching ‘baby’ fish, and both of them had a great time.

He choose to have a chocolate cake, an insisted we bake his portion in this teeny tart pan! We love our ‘big-little man’!

What traditions do you have for birthdays in your home?

Early in the morning on March 5th we welcomed our new baby boy –

Alan Jordan Goodwin

He came 9 days before his due date, so let me back up a little bit to tell the story of his birth…

On March 1st I had a checkup with my midwife.

This is Marian ‘helping’ with the check up. She was very interested in everything, and enjoyed hearing the baby’s heartbeat. For many weeks I had been telling her about the baby inside me, and she would pat my bump and say ‘baby’ with much excitement, especially when I showed her pictures of what newborn babies looked like. (I don’t know how much she really knew or realized, but I tried to let her know about her new sibling as best I could!)

On March 4th I had a very busy day – we were having company supper that night, and I also had to go into town with Jordan’s mom to pick up our monthly Azure Standard order (a natural food co-op) and run some errands. By that evening I was pretty exhausted. The next day I decided to take it a bit easier.

So, that morning I organized the pantry and put up our co-op groceries, gave Marian a bath, climbed the ladder into the attic to pull out some baby items in preparation for the upcoming birth, changed the sheets on our bed, cleaned cobwebs off the ceiling, sorted through a bunch of clothes to take to the thrift store, and got several of our miniature beds ready to ship…

Looking back I’m not real sure how I thought doing all that in one morning was ‘taking it easy’!! (apparently the nesting instinct must have been setting in strong!) Meanwhile it had been raining hard most of the night and day so far, and our creek was flooded and up pretty high. We have to cross this creek to get to the highway, so when it floods it means we are pretty much stuck at home! When we woke up that morning and saw we wouldn’t be able to cross, I was joking with Jordan that if the baby came early he just might have to deliver it. (little did we know how close of a call we would have!)

Early afternoon I thought I might have lost my mucous plug, but wasn’t sure. Just to be on the safe side I decided to sit down and rest until evening. Since the creek was a up still I was a little bit nervous. As the evening progressed I started having what turned out to be minor contractions, but they were mild enough I wasn’t sure they were contractions, or just me tired from doing too much in that past few days.

As we got ready to go to bed, they were getting stronger, but once we laid down things seemed to calm down a lot, so we both tried to get some sleep. I never could sleep, and the contractions were getting pretty hard – so I finally realized this might be the real thing, and woke up Jordan and said we had better call the midwife. We were both pretty scared at the prospect of having the baby without help. Jordan got dressed and went outside (where the rain had turned to bitter cold wind and sleet) to look at the creek, thinking perhaps he could fell a tree over the creek creating a temporary bridge to at least get the midwife across.

While he was gone I called my Mom and talked to her about 20 minutes. During this time my contractions were hard enough I couldn’t talk through them and about 5-6 minutes apart. Finally, looking out the upstairs window, I saw tractor lights coming through the dark! The creek had gone down enough that they were able to safely drive the tractor across – praise the Lord! Many people were praying for us that night.

Jordan was able to get both the midwife and his mother across the creek. The roads were so icy that the midwife almost didn’t get there! After they got to the house it was about an hour and a half of pretty intense labor until we got to meet our baby! Total labor was three and a half hours, and he arrived at 3:39am. Everything happened so fast and so much earlier than we expected, that we were basically in shock after the fact – but very happy!

Our sweet baby boy!

Alan weighed 7lbs 10oz and was 19.5″ long.

Marian was very brave through the whole birth, and didn’t seem very worried at all. She was very interested in the new arrival and kept pointing to him and saying ‘bay-ee’ which is how she says ‘baby’.