Per a cellphone text message from CASHMERE!!!

Owen Christopher was born at 8:54 pm at 8lbs 6oz, 20 in after 23 hrs of labor & an hour of pushing. Everyone is healthy.

[That must have been on April 11--Cindy]

Wheeee! Welcome to the world, Owen Christopher! Congratulations to our wonderful Cashmere, and her dh!

Crying now.

In the Continuing Adventures of Karate!Epic (now with Shuto Grip!):

Tested for, and Received, my Orange Belt on Saturday morning!

Thanks to all who vibed why-am-I-awake-and-working-out-at-this-hour-on-a-Sat.-morning test-ma to me ;)

We're glad to be home!

Thanks to everyone for the -ma (we needed it) and I want to thank Cindy for being our town crier of the interbunny.

Owen is damned near perfect and I feel like I've been hit by a truck but we're healthy and happy.

So far, so good. More updates when I have the time and energy.

Dashing in to say I had a lovely time in SF and was so thrilled to get to meet many lovely Buffistas (and occasional hangers-on). Special thanks to Java cat for organizing the hike on Saturday, Deb for hosting dinner that night, and Suela for very kindly putting me up and plying me with ginger ale when it became necessary.

I know I am basically a lurker and I have met no one, but I am in need of health~ma. My mom is in the hospital with kidney failure, they are starting her on dialysis, my 7 year old son is having a hernia operation in 2 weeks, and both my husband and daughter have colds. The stress is about to knock me out.

Even though I feel like an outsider, you are the warmest bunch of people and I am constantly blown away by the generosity of spirit exhibited from each of you.

Ehm.

Hi.

I'm incredibly nervous about posting in this thread after all the debate about what is Beep-me worthy and what is not...but...I've been online so frequently since I started posting here that I thought a few people might wonder what happened if I suddenly disappeared.

I will be going dark from this Friday night the 16th to sometime on Monday the 26th (when I will be skipping what is likely to be thousands of posts) because I am leading a group of 27 high school students to England for a 9-day tour.

I request not-losing-any-kids and no-major-disasters ~ma if you can spare it. Decent airline food and going the whole trip without hearing any of the kids shout "pip, pip cheerio" or something equally embarassing would be nice too.

Thanks!

I got accepted to my Wales program! Which I'm going to in the fall now for certain. Thank god.

Also not sure if this passes the current Beep Me threshold, but....

Milk-ma requested.

Annabel had her routine pediatric visit today, and though she is in most ways a very healthy baby, she's yet to regain any of the 7-8 oz. or so she lost in the first few days after birth. (The losing the weight is normal, and many babies lose more. What's not normal is that she didn't start regaining once my milk came in.) So there's concern about my milk supply, and I'm now supposed to feed her every two hours during the day and every three at night even if I have to wake her up, supplement each feeding with formula, and take various steps to improve my supply. Hopefully after a week or so of this regimen, she'll be gaining well and we'll be able to resume demand feeding, with longer gaps between night feedings.

I feel terrible. Here I thought Annabel was fussy and insistent upon constant feeding the past two days because she was about to enter a growth spurt, and it turns out the poor thing was hungry. And while the pediatrician reassured me that we caught this well before it could harm her developmentally, I'm having a hard time not thinking things like, "What if she could've gone to Harvard t or insert other marker of extreme intelligence here , but now I've screwed up her brain?"

I am going dark-ish with a range of houseguests and baby showers. I'll be checking e-mail if anyone needs anything F2F-ish.

(tosses glitter behind her as she exits)

Not the apocalypse. Not even an apocalypse. But, if anyone's got spare test-ma tomorrow (Really, anytime after 10 est as long as there's daylight, it's probably fair game. Either that or the Level 2 people are screwing with us.), I'm taking my first krav test, and would appreciate it.