Baby's here!

Hello!! I had a moment today to post the exciting news! :-) Joel and I had a big healthy baby boy born to us October 7th! Leif (we pronounce it Layfe) arrived in the world around 3 in the afternoon, born at home, and weighed a whopping 9lbs. 1 oz. What a fat little cutie he is! The kids are constantly hovering around him to hold and touch and laugh at his funny faces- grandma says she's hardly even got a chance at him because he is always surrounded! I am so sorry for the lack of pictures- we have redone and redone and REDONE our computer so much in the last 3 weeks that I am completely lost again as to where pictures are at. But I had to at least get the news out and I'll add photos later! (Maybe tonight when everyone comes home again someone with techno smarts can help me out....) But I'll just say for now that Leif was a completely different birth than any of my others- very slow and spaced out contractions. Usually I have my babies in a matter of a few hours- this time it was more like 13 hours! I woke up at 2:00 in the morning feeling like "this is it", so I cleaned the house and puttered around a bit, getting things ready for the birth. But contractions stayed very mild and 20 minutes apart and I decided to try and get a little more sleep. Morning came and I listened to the kids practicing their piano, got out their school stuff for my mom to do with them in the basement and I worked on some sewing projects until my midwife came at 12:00. Connie found I was at dilated to a 6 but contractions were still almost 15 minutes apart! Finally, we (Leif and I) decided to get down to business and he was born at 2:58 on a beautiful fall day. Yay!!! I think I hear him trying to wake up now, so I'll end this ramble and go feed my little man. :-)