Behind the Scenes: The Real Lily Denison

Don't be deceived by all of the cute, peaceful pictures--this is Lily's true character.



Though she has been getting better at being a good baby, she still likes to keep us on our toes trying to appease her and keep her happy.

Christmas Morning

Christmas did not start early in the Denison household this year. Lily decided to give Mom and Dad (mostly Mom) a great Christmas present by sleeping for 7 straight hours the night of Christmas Eve, followed by another 3 1/2 hours. Hence we woke up sometime after 9:00 a.m. It was heaven! We tried to help Lily feel involved that morning but I don't think she fully appreciated our efforts. Doesn't she look excited? :)



Since it was just the three of us, Christmas was very subdued, but we had a nice time. We opened presents that morning and lounged about for a while. I spent the day baking and we watched a couple of Christmas movies. We got to talk to our families (that makes it sound like we're missionaries or something), went for a walk, which turned into a drive because Lily was bawling, and enjoyed a nice Christmas dinner.




Note the picture of Adam holding Lily while he eats--she has uncanny timing to wake up and start crying just as we sit down to eat. I thought I would throw in a picture of our "amazing" Christmas tree--we now have a grand total of 5 Christmas ornaments, apart from the cheap, little ball ornaments we bought so it wouldn't look so sparce. One strand of lights burned out a couple of weeks ago, but we didn't bother to take them down.



We hung some candy canes on it to dress it up a little--there were around 20 at first, but they began to disappear from the tree to fulfill the greater purpose of serving as hot chocolate stirring wands, hence there are now about 5 on the tree. My favorite part of all is our homemade tree topper....Behold! Maybe we'll get a real one next year. We hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Ready for bed

After a few harrowing days and nights of little to no sleep, we found that swaddling Lily tightly helps her to sleep better. We read a book on colic, crying and sleeping that instructed us on how to do a very tight swaddle. It even mentioned that one couple would tape the blanket, once their baby was swaddled, to prevent it from coming loose. We tried it and it worked great. Lily's nightly ritual now is to get her diaper changed, swaddle her, tape her in, eat, then go to bed. It was about 3 a.m. when I tried it for the first time--Adam, who had been sleeping, was a little confused when he saw me standing over Lily, with a strip of packing tape in hand.

2 weeks old!

Lily is officially 2 weeks old today--she just had her 2 week check and the doctor said she looks great. It's been an interesting 2 weeks, that is for sure. We've been getting used to the baby's schedule which consists mostly of eating and sleeping, though she manages to get in some good crying time each day--usually when I want to go to bed. :) Adam says she's definitely my daughter because she likes to take mid-morning naps--one of my favorite past times. That's actually when she does her best sleeping, which means that's when I get my best sleep. We were happy to have Adam's family drive up from Virginia to visit us for the Thanksgiving holiday, and we had a lot of fun. Adam went back to work yesterday and I was a little apprehensive at first, but Lily and I did fine. Below is one of Adam's favorite pictures--this is what we call her "Rocky stretch". She will raise on or both of her arms with her hands in little fists to stretch, and then she gets what we call the "Jimmy arm", where she jimmies or shakes her fist around mid-stretch. It's so cute. Anyway, I happened to get this picture just at the right moment as she was waking up from a nap (and yes, she is in her carseat--below you will see the sleeping arrangement that we've found works best for her).

Please, sir, may I have some more?

Well, we've had some interesting fare at the Denison household lately. We have tried experimenting with making two types of soup, but neither turned out like we thought they would.

Black Bean Soup


Looks good doesn't it? Ok, maybe not, but this one was actually really good. Tiffany just got a little carried away with the pureeing. I felt a lot like a child in an early 1900s English orphanage. I couldn't help but quote the famous line from Oliver Twist as I ate this: "Please, sir, may I have some more?

Homemade Cream of Broccoli Soup


Remember that show on Nickelodeon called "You Can't Do That on Television"? Yeah, this soup reminded me alot of the slime from that show. Neither Tiffany nor I were very fond of this soup, so I made a quick dash for a Hot-N-Ready pizza from Little Caesars. We felt alot like the family in this commercial as we a tried to eat the soup.

Adam's Real Birthday

As already posted, we celebrated Adam's birthday last week since we didn't know what his real birthday would hold as far as the baby being born. It was a pretty subdued day--we took Lily to her pediatrician so they could weigh her and check her for jaundice. We spent the day hanging out at the house--as you can see, Adam had fun with Lily watching Lord of the Rings. I told him he had to do something fun or at least go buy something with his birthday money on his actual birthday, so what did he decide to do? He went to Hooters to get some hot wings! He called in the order for pick up, but I told him it seemed he was gone longer than it should take to just pick up some hot wings. :)

THE BEAN ARRIVES!

We are so excited to announce the arrival of Lily Mae Denison on November 14, 2007 at 12:03 a.m. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 12 oz. and is 20 3/4 inches in length. She is absolutely beautiful.

Tiffany started experiencing semi-regular contractions about 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning, but we weren't sure it was anything we needed to immediately go in for. The contractions continued throughout the day, but started to taper off leading us to believe that Tiffany may have just been experiencing some false labor. When we went to her regularly scheduled doctor's appointment, however, we were surprised to find out that she was between 2 and 3 cm dilated! The doctor told us we would probably be going into the hospital that night. We were to go in when Tiffany's contractions were five minutes apart for an hour.

Sure enough, from about 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tiffany started having contractions every three to seven minutes. It all seemed a bit surreal as I started loading up the car with our bags and other stuff we needed, but got even more surreal as we were driving to the hospital. I wanted to turn on the flashers and drive really fast to get there (like in the movies), but Tiffany wouldn't allow it. She's a spoil-sport. :)

Once we got to the hospital, we found out she was 5 cm along and they admitted her right away. By this point Tiffany was experiencing some very strong and very frequent contractions. Though it was really hard for me to watch Tiffany go through this, I'm sure it was nothing compared to what she was going through. When Tiffany was fully hydrated the anesthesiologist came in and gave her the epidural. Tiffany has yet to stop lauding the praises of epidurals!

Things began progressing very quickly after they broke her water. She went from 5 cm to 8 cm in a matter of minutes. 9 cm followed very soon thereafter. I learned quickly that 10 cm is the max and this is the time to start pushing.

About 11 p.m. Tiffany started getting overwhelming urges to push, but the nurses and doctor told her to hold off. Finally, they let Tiffany start pushing and not a minute too soon. 11 minutes from the time she started pushing, Lily Mae Denison made her mortal debut. It came so fast that the doctor was barely able to get his gown on before she came! It was an intensely overwhelming experience to see Lily for the first time. Both of us really lost it when she came out. She is absolutely the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Now we were are in our post partum room and our enjoying our new friend, Lily. She has been a little fussy tonight, but I think she's asleep for at least a few hours now. She is an immense joy to have around.

We have posted our other pictures of Lily on Flickr and on Facebook. There will be more to come.