Noah Has Arrived!!!

Today we brought Noah home from the hospital. He is SO SMALL! Ammon hasn't gotten home yet from my mom's house, so we are anxious to see how he reacts to having someone else to compete with for our attention...

Sunday night we got home from Maple Valley with my sister in law Tasha at about 11:00pm. Rachel went to bed about as soon a we got home, but Tasha and I sat up talking for a while afterwards. Rachel got us both up at about 1am Monday morning and said that it was time to get ready to go to the hospital, and so we didn't get much sleep. We called the midwives that Rachel has been seeing and they said to wait for a while before going to the hospital until the contractions were more regular and stronger. My mom got to our house at about 3am and when she arrived, I went back to sleep. They all got me up to go to the hospital at about 4am and we got there at 4:30. Real big contractions started at about 6:30 and Noah arrived at 7:54 am Monday morning. He arrived in good health, which is a blessing. He came out with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, but it ended up not being a problem. He also came out face down, which is normal, and also a surprise since he was face up when we got to the hospital. The contractions must have moved him around, I suppose. He came out at 6lbs 5oz and 19.5 inches long. Not a very big baby, by Alldredge standards, but he had ten fingers and ten toes (five to each appendage), and everything else in the right places.
He kind of looks like a little old man.

Anyway, we are very excited to finally have him here in our home after nine months of waiting. Also, just so you know, we decided to name him Noah Benjamin Alldredge.

Time for another post

I have deemed that it is once again time to grace the internet with another blog post. This time I am feeling political. We have a primary election coming up here in Washington state in a week or so, and I just got my absentee ballot in the mail. We have come up with yet another way to make things interesting in this state when it comes to the election process. In the last election, I had to declare my party preference (Republican) in order to vote, and then I had to only vote for the party I declared. I never thought that that was a fair way of doing things, because what if, on some remote, unlikely, improbable chance there happened to be a guy on the OTHER SIDE that I thought was a better candidate? I wouldn't have been able to vote for that person! It just didn't seem very fair. On the other hand, it did prevent the OTHER SIDE from coming over to our side and racking up a lot of votes for a person who couldn't win. Which I think we tried to do a while ago to the OTHER SIDE, and it back-fired in our faces (i.e. Maria Cant(think)well)... Anyway, this year they have come up with another way to make things interesting. I got my ballot and opened it up and read that I could vote for whomever I wanted! Hooray! But then as I read further, I saw that we have what is called a "top two" primary. This means that the top two vote getters from the primary will advance on into the general election. That means that we could potentially have two candidates from the OTHER SIDE in the general election, and no one from our side to vote for. I think that I will enjoy seeing how this will play out. PS, just so you know, I voted for Dino Rossi. Again. Lets hope that he doesn't have the job stolen from him like last year. All you OTHER SIDErs in King County, just remember that the Primary election is on August 20th and the General election this year is on November 5th. Don't forget to VOTE!!!