In his Easter basket, or rather under it, Magoo got a gigantic illustrated Lego Star Wars encyclopedia. In a plastic sleeve on the bottom corner of the book was a tiny Lego Luke Skywalker. So Sunday night he’s talking to some friends of ours about his Easter and he says, “You wanna see the awesome thing the Easter Bunny brought me?”

“Sure,” they say. What else can they say? The entire evening’s been a frantic show and tell, the likes of which only a second child with a captive audience can pull off. I am a second child. I would know. They know that he’s gonna show them the present whether they say, “Sure,” or, “Why don’t you take your pathetic Easter present and shove it where the sun don’t shine?” so they might as well be gracious.

At this point they’ve already seen his gaping tooth orifice and the way his tongue can slide through it, heard all of his jokes, learned how you can amputate the legs from multiple Lego guys to make stilts for one lucky Lego guy, and been subjected to detailed descriptions of multiple video games. What’s one more exhibit? Besides, we’re holding them hostage and if they want pie, they need to play along. Also. He is adorable.

So he brings out the tiny Lego guy and goes off about all of its many amazing properties (hair, moving limbs, painted-on medallion, relation to Star Wars) and its deficiencies (lack of light saber or weapon of any kind, representation of a part of the movie that involves kissing). He loves this Lego guy and is so glad that he got him for Easter.

“Oh, yeah,” he adds as an afterthought, “And he comes with a book.”

I love the part a few seconds in when she points to herself in the mirror and then points to Magoo as if to say, “Did you see that? Did you see that? I did that. That was me!”

We were sitting down to a tasty hot-dog dinner a few nights ago, and Magoo was having a difficult time with the mustard. He simply could not squeeze it hard enough to get it to squirt.

“Let me help you, Buddy”, I said, “this mustard bottle is really hard to squeeze”.

“I know!” exclaimed Laylee. “When I put my mustard on, I had to use both hands and squeeze the bottle against my forehead!”

May that mental image remain with me forever.

As we sat down to breakfast this morning, Laylee expressed her happiness with her situation in life:

“Everything is going great for me right now. My hair is turning curly, I have a loose tooth, and I brushed my teeth with my timer this morning.”

Right on, sweetie.

Wanda yells… a lot. And when she does, she sounds quite a bit like Dr. Horrible practicing his evil laugh. We captured a bit of that as we recorded some of her first clapping. She is the cutest baby. There is no other.

If you’re prone to vomit when exposed to extreme cuteness, please do not watch this video of Laylee singing in the Elementary School Musical. It’s like High School Musical but Laylee’s way cuter and more talented than Mr. Zachory Efron and she has more facial hair.

After less than two months, Baby Daring, aka Wanda, aka Baby Dolly, aka Baby Lolla, aka Princess Lolla Dolla, has effectively killed off any future attempts at tummy torture time.

Around our house, this is how we roll.

She doesn’t need to be coaxed by a crazy lady with a squeaky high pitched voice but I think she likes to be and I’m happy to provide that service.

I’m not sure why I’m giddy about my almost 2-month-old being able to roll over every time I put her down. My other kids didn’t do it until 3 months of age and with Magoo, I dreaded those milestones because they meant he would get into stuff sooner. For some reason, watching her do this tickles me to no end, except for the part where she smooshes her face into the mirror and cries. That is obviously totally un-fun and also un-funny. The rest is gold.

When she was in utero and she made my abdomen feel like a rubber bag full of ninjas, I sort of had a feeling she’d be a mover and a shaker. I was right. I wonder how long until she’ll be able to fix her own breakfast and get dressed on her own. The other kids can. She just needs to show a little initiative.

I already tweeted this and put it on Facebook but I really think it needs to go on the blog. Dan is a lover of Call of Duty and I am a lover of how well he fulfills his ultimate call of duty as a dad. This picture combining the two is priceless to me. I love how his big fat gamer headphones are practically as big as the baby in his pouch.

The delivery was awesome. Many of you followed on Twitter as I took my geekishness to new heights by tweeting one of my family’s most personal and dramatic moments. It was such a great way to keep our family updated all at the same time. I’m glad we did it but I’ll be deleting the tweets and moving them here so as not to leave a permanent record of Baby Wanda’s birth date up on the interwebs. (yes I know it will still be up there somewhere but I’d rather not have it on my active Twitter page.)

So, from some “mystery” date a while back, here are my birth tweets:

- 11:12 PM: No baby yet but my mom’s here to play. Get to start calling and begging the hospital for induction tomorrow. This should be fun.
- 6:20 AM: No room at the inn yet. Call back in an hour.
- 7:14 AM: AAAAHHHH!!!!! Headed to the hospital.
- 8:33 AM Just signed the forms that say “I may die here but I don’t mind.”
- 8:36 AM: Wearing the bracelet my friends made me with beads and good wishes given at my shower.
- 9:57 AM: Came in dilated to a 2 and 75% effaced. Waiting for petocin. Suddenly busy here so we’re napping till it’s our turn.
- 10:22 AM: Petocin started. It’s go time.
- 11:19 AM: Listening to old CarTalk podcasts and watching Wanda’s roundhouse kicks. No major contractions yet.
- 12:22 PM: Moved on to This American Life. Contractions picking up.
- 12:24 PM: Nurse must read same parenting books as us. I asked if I could have pudding. “Sure,” she said, “As soon as you have the baby.”
- 1:23 PM: Nurse just came in to check ma vitals. Said “Oh dear” at one point for apparently no reason. Back to CarTalk. Aye! Contraction!
- 2:25 PM: Oww. Mom. Very slow progress for the ouchiness. At least the nurses are cool.
- 2:49 PM: West Wing Season 1 is like a warm blanket to my heart. The epidural coming in 45 mins will be like a warm blanket to my uteris.
- 4:12 PM: I should have gotten that epidural two months ago.
- 4:25 PM: Water hath been broken which is normally painful but it’s okay because it feels like my lower body has taken a bath in Anbesol.
- 5:20 PM: Gonna push soon! Will update when baby is here!
- 7:04 PM: Thick dark hair, 8lbs 10oz, 20″, 15 mins pushing, so gorgeous!
- 8:27 AM: Here she is un-blue. So sweet. Slept all night (unlike the rest of us) and is eating well. Still no real name

The delivery went really smoothly. After the epidural and the water breaking, I went from a 4 to complete in less than an hour and it only took 15 minutes of pushing before she was born. She came out fist first, our little Ninja, causing us to briefly add “Norris” to our list of names in honor of his venerable Chuckness.

The doctor said, “I’ve delivered an arm,” and I said, “Oh good. Her head is out?” And he said, “No, just her arm.” But her head came out next and then the rest of her and that sweet squawky little cry and she went from being a bulge in my abdomen to a living breathing person whom I get to love, take care of and repress most cruelly for her own good for many years to come.

We did pick a name before we headed home from the hospital, put it on the birth certificate and everything. Here’s a list of the names we were mulling over on our giant spreadsheet in the hospital. You were all so good to share your ideas with me. This list includes all the names we seriously considered at some point during the pregnancy. One of them is the name we chose. So if you’re looking for baby girl names, have at it.

Anne, Jane, Ivy, Josephine (Finn), Eve, Lucy, Adele, Violet, Eden, Ruth, Gail, Estelle (Stella), Lynn, Daisy, Jean, Nina, Kathryn, Robin, Susan, Ruby, Amelia, Nora, Sally, Jill, Leah.

She is gorgeous and sweet and we love her, an amazing sleeper and a champion nurser.

There have been a few little things to work out, as there are with any baby. First, I’m working to find my emotional happy place, working with my people to get me to where I need to be mentally. It’s not the most fun but not nearly as hard as it was with Magoo when I didn’t know what was going on.

The emotional transition to third-time motherhood was complicated by the fact that 2 days after birth she developed some moderately bad jaundice and we were set up with a light box in our house that we needed to keep her strapped into whenever she wasn’t eating. A nurse has been out here every day since to take her blood and check her vitals.

It’s amazing how something seemingly small like that can send everything out of whack. Just watching her lay there on the florescent lights and not being allowed to pick her up or comfort her when she cried unless it was time for a feeding was much harder on me than I would have guessed. I guess I got the smallest taste of what it’s like for mothers whose babies end up in the NICU and they don’t get to bond with them in the typical way.

Holding and cuddling Magoo was one of the only ways I could soothe and calm my anxieties during his early life and sitting next to her light box, smoothing her hair while she screamed had just the opposite effect.

They also asked me to wake and feed her every two to three hours, take her temperature each time and record how many minutes I fed on each breast, what her diaper looked like and how many minutes I had her off the lights. They also wanted me to pump after each feeding and then give her a supplementary bottle for dessert, which meant I then had to wash and sterilize all the pump and bottle parts before going to bed before the next feeding, so sleep was rough.

My mom and Dan are here and doing everything they can to help but I want them to be at least somewhat fresh to make things seem normal for Laylee and Magoo during the day as I lay around and heal, nurse, and question my every thought, feeling and emotion to determine whether or not I’m “O.K.”

But today Wanda’s blood had improved a ton and the nurse called this afternoon to tell us we could take her off the lights and hold her as much as we wanted. This was good news, sort of tears-of-joy ecstatic news. This gives me hope for more restful nights and emotional calm in the coming days. I still plan on waking her up every three hours to feed just to make sure she’s pumped full of enough to get all the bilirubin out of her system.

So that’s where we stand. Newness, weirdness, sweetness and family. Everything feels very fragile and every minute very important. Her squirks and squeaks fascinate me and her gassy smiles melt my heart the same as if they were real smiles. I can’t get over how soft she is or how much her siblings adore her. I can’t get over how vulnerable she seems or how scared I am that I’ll never be able to keep this little person safe through adulthood. Suddenly the other two seem so fragile as well. There’s nothing like bringing a new baby into the world to make you wish your world was just a tiny, well-padded, time-proof bubble.

Rain is pouring down on our new roof but we’re safe and dry. The big kids are asleep. The baby is passed out on my mom’s chest and Dan is puttering on the computer. Ours is a good little bubble. Here’s to hoping you’re all staying dry and warm in yours.

The kids didn’t die on the Titanic but you couldn’t tell that to look at them on Sunday during church. Both of them fell asleep during the first hour of the meeting. Magoo was sitting bolt upright between my parents in his little bowtie, snoring with abandon.

Laylee had flung her body face-down across my lap with the statement, “It doesn’t hurt me when you rub my back.” I took that as an invitation and began rubbing back and forth in what was apparently a sleep-inducing rhythm because when the meeting was almost over, I pulled her upright and she flopped over coma-like into Grammy’s arms.

It’s been months since Magoo last fell asleep in church and years for Laylee. My parents joked that they must be the most boring grandparents on earth to cause both kids to conk out like that. I think it had more to do with over-stimulation, days of constant attention, gifts and activity and late nights spent staying up until it was dark enough for Papa’s glowing spinning psychedelic plastic flashlights to have maximum mind-bending effect.

I was practicing doing Laylee’s hair for her ballet recital and Magoo was wearing a bowtie in anticipation of his aunt’s upcoming wedding. They both kind of look like they passed out after the mini-prom. At any rate I was grateful for a camera with a silent shutter. Wouldn’t want to disturb their slumber… or you know… annoy the other church goers who were still able to pay attention over the sound of Magoo’s snores.