Tucker found his thumb

This had to be the cutest thing ever. Tucker is starting to be alert for a lot more of his day. He found his thumb a few days ago.

Diaper Count

Current diaper count: 158

Our little burrito

He looks like a little russian man ... or a burrito.

Baby looks good on him

Ryan has been glowing for 4 days. He's going to be a terrific Dad.

New Mommy and Baby

They let us take him home!

Here's Tucker ready to come home from the hospital. I kept thinking they'd come running and tell us that they weren't actually going to let us take him home or I would wake up from this crazy dream that he came early. Even though he was over 3 weeks early, he's perfect. Aside from a bit of trouble keeping his body temperature in the first 48 hours, he had no problems.

Tucker comes early

Early Tuesday morning, my water broke, and at 8:58 pm, Tucker Franklin Thomas arrived. He was 3 and half weeks early, weighed in at 5 pounds, 13 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. He's the cutest baby on the planet, don't you agree? I'll post a few of our favorite shots, but I'm sure we'll also be sending periodic email updates.

Watching the kids play

I realize I may have been a little sneaky when I told Ryan "they do better in pairs" when we got the cats. That being said, we get some of the greatest joy from playing with them and watching them beat each other up. I completely understand the studies that show that people with animals are happier and live longer lives. It's just hard to be in a bad mood watching the animals jump, beat and bite on each other. Watching them run into the wall chasing a laser pointer is pretty funny too. I'm glad they have each other for company since we're gone most of the day.

Chief really likes the baby. He's almost always on Ryan's lap if we're both home, but for the past 3 weeks or so, he really likes to lay on or near my belly. It should be interesting to see what happens after the baby is born.

Swollen

I'm officially huge. At this point, everything is swollen. The nurse at my doctor's office even pointed out to me that my ankles are swollen (which was very nice of her, I might add). I'll definitely take this stage of pregnancy over the 5 months of puking I did, but dude, I'm ready to have my body back. Next week, I am officially considered a "full term" pregnancy.

I've been bumping into people with my belly, since I'm apparently still not aware of the extra padding I'm carrying around. They feel bad and I feel silly.

Friday is also my last day of work. I have a lot to get finished up, but I am really excited to spend some time at home, getting the nursery ready and catching up on sleep (since I'll be quite sleep deprived for a while afterwards). The nurse also told me I need to spend more time laying down with my feet up (that swelling thing again), so not working will help with that. Hooray for maternity leave!

Fanya Kaplan

My soon to be brother-in-law Brad is an aspiring (and talented) filmmaker. His short film, Fanya Kaplan just won the Best Picture award for Georgia for Campus Movie Fest. My sister is the star of the film, and learned how to speak Russian phonetically for the movie. Take a look here: Fanya Kaplan

RIP little car

Last Tuesday, I got a call on my way into work from Ryan. We had an ice storm a few days before and he was heading down a hill about 3 blocks from our house when the car started skidding. Apparently, it did a 180, hit the guard rail and did another 180, leaving most of the passenger side of the car mashed up. He's OK. He's also very very sad. The car is 13 years old, and the collision center stopped adding up the damage when it reached $4288.

When I arrived onsite, I saw Ryan picking up pieces of the car from the road. Sad. The damage looks mostly superficial, but when he started to drive away, I saw green liquid (which turns out to be normal in a car) gushing from the underside and black plastic (which turns out to be a fan) falling under the car. We don't really know how much the damage was, since our insurance company considered it a complete loss.

It's one of those situations where no matter what the insurance offers you for the car, it's not enough to replace it. It was a great little car. We knew it had been well taken car of and Ryan loved that car. Sorry little car, you were well loved.