Mel's Fantastical Insights

Wednesday April 15, I woke up around 5am with some light contractions. I thought, oh this will be easy. By 8am we had called my sister and told her to come over to watch Daniel but to take her time, no big deal. 8:17am I told Jason to go get a neighbor because we needed to go to the hospital NOW! So we were ready to leave by about 8:45 and of course it took awhile to get there. Jason was awesome and yanked the car off the road every time I had a contraction which was like every three or four minutes and by the time we got to the hospital, it was just not fun. But we were glad we got there when we did because Alice basically came like this: 9:15 actually made it up to labor and delivery 9:45 checked in and moved to a room and promised an epidural as soon as the anesthesiologist was done with the three other women all trying to escape pain like me 10:30 am was feeling much better after the epidural finally kicked in. We started to get comfy thinking we would be there awhile 11am

I know that everyone believes their kid is really funny and cute. I think Daniel is just one of those kids who is ridiculously funny because of the things he is trying to say at the moment. Poor toddlers, they want so much to express themselves and know so few words to do it in. Jason started this new blog where we've been recording conversations with Daniel. Click here Check it out if you want. Other than that, still no baby yet. We are waiting fairly patiently at the moment but I have a feeling toward the end of the week might not be as good if we are still waiting. We also have still not decided on a name. I think it is down to Alice, Ruby, or Matilda. Any opinions? Daniel however had his first meltdown over the fact that we went to the store to buy something for the baby and not for him. I think it might be hard for him to have a new person in his little "me" world but hopefully he will like the baby well enough. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I took many classes in college. Most of them were history or history related. Jason teased me immensely about all the Latin and classic (which is the study of ancient Rome and Greece) classes I took always saying that they would be of no use to anyone. Due to this, I have multiple copies of Homer's Illiad and Odyssey (only in English), and numerous copies of Virgil's Aeneid in both Latin and English. Daniel loves to pull books off the bookshelf like any good two year old and his favorite one to find is one he calls "the mask book." That mask book happens to be my favorite translation of the Illiad and when Daniel finds it he insists that we read it. So needless to say we are in the end of book two of the Illiad and Daniel loves it for some reason. I could not believe that he just loves hearing about Achilles and Agamemnon and all the others. I even try to read other things with him but when he finds the "mask book" we have to read it. This is the

I guess I have taken a blogging vacation. Probably because I would rather clean my house right now than do anything else. But I wanted to share some funny pictures of Daniel's birthday before I have a new baby to blog about. Daniel's birthday was March 19th and he got a small train set which he loves. Then on that Saturday we had a small party for him at the park. He didn't want cake so we had muffins for dessert and yes I was wrong, most people wanted the chocolate muffins instead of the ones I picked out. My parents came and manned the slide with the kids which was awesome considering all the other moms that showed up were pregnant and that just makes playing on the playground with your kids kind of miserable. Daniel is concerned that I can't go down the slide with him anymore, he always wants to sit in my lap and go down but there is no lap to sit in at the moment. Needless to say none of the kids wanted to stop playing and eat or open presents. I can't re