Reed and Michelle: Welcome Ava!

I know this is a little late, but here is the long awaited blog introducing the newest member of our family, Ava Michelle Reed, to the rest of the world! If I was a good dad this would have been written and published about a week ago and if I was an even better dad it would have been written even a few days before that! I guess my only excuse is related to the fact that we are still at the very bottom of the "parents of more than one child" curve - moving up at record breaking slow speeds. (One more reason to constantly admire John, father of SIX and diligent publisher of multiple daily blogs.)

Ava Michelle, better known in our house by those who stand taller than 3 feet high as simply "Ava" (and known by all others as EeeeAhhh), was born a few hours after her brother finished celebrating his birthday, in the wee hours of the morning on July 7th 2009. While missing a destination birth date prestigious enough to make Amber covet by only 20 hours (07/08/09), she obviously got her tips on how to make an early entrance from her brother who showed up roughly the same amount of time ahead of another date to make Amber swoon, 07/07/07. Alas, we were so proud of both Michelle and Ava for managing to delay the heavenly child-sending powers that be long enough to give our kids their own individual birthdays. It should also be pointed out that long before Ava tried to stake the 7th as her day, this day was previously claimed by our beloved Jonathan James Andersen Jr. about 9 years prior - so Happy Birthday Johnny - looks like you got yourself a little birthday buddy! At any rate, this is pretty good grouping on the Michelle and Reed side of things. Looks like all my dart playing on the ship must have paid off afterall. I guess you could say July is a good month for us - or perhaps it might be better said that October is a good month for us! :)

After a long day of partying hard with Fin and family, we crawled into bed sometime around 10:30. Michelle had been feeling contractions most of the day but was too busy focusing on Fin to realize that she was progressing in her labor. We decided sometime around 2:30 that it was time to start heading to the hospital. The late night/early morning drive to the hospital had an all-to-familiar feel to it from when Fin was born. When we were loading up the car I tried calling Mom to give her the heads up that she should start heading to the hospital. Five phone calls was not enough to wake our legendary (light)Sleeping Beauty Mother. (If I would have known Mom was that hard to wake up I would have tried to sneak out more as a kid!) Thank goodness Brett and Ashlee were staying the night at the house because it was Brettly who ended up waking up to receive my phone call.

Once again, one of my chief duties in the child-birth event is to play the dual role of race-car driver and crew chief, and at the same time pretending like I am the car in the old Buick commercial driving a speed course with a glass of champaign balanced on the seat of the car without spilling a drop. The likeness to the old Buick commercial was ironically closer than you think with the glass of champaign being represented half way into the trip by a sloshy orange puke bowl. Thanks to Fin for making us watch the movie Cars 2-3 times a day, I think I excelled in my duties.

We checked in to the Deaconess Hospital just before 4:00 and about 50 minutes later, at 4:41 AM, Ava was born making the official record weighing in at 8 lbs. 0 oz. sopping wet and measuring 19 1/2 inches. (I actually read the tape at 19 inches even, but convinced the nurses to list her as 19 1/2 in the program just to intimidate the other babies in the nursery.) Ava was greeted in the delivery room by both of her sweet Grandmothers, a very competent and professional midwife, a very proud father, and a beautiful and tired mother - all relieved and happy she made it safe and sound. Michelle was absolutely awesome! She just makes it look so easy, even though we know how difficult of a task it is to accomplish. She is truly amazing. Once again, it was a textbook delivery that will leave the hospital staff talking for days!

Ava is a beautiful and sweet little girl with such a cute personality. She seems to be more Johnson than Reed so far, but maybe that is just wishful thinking on my part. I think every Dad hopes his little girls look just like their Mother. She has delicate facial feature with hints of dimples, light hair, clear eyes, and a beautiful red "V" stamped just where it should be - right in the middle of her forehead! (The "V" was actually the deciding factor in naming her aVa. We kept considering other names, but every time we looked at her we just kept coming back to aVa! It was so organic!)