Nothing Every Day

................................................... {this moment} a friday ritual. a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. a simple, special, extraordinary moment. a moment i want to pause, savor and remember. ..................................................

I love taking time to hang out with my good friend Jolene and her beautiful daughter Stella. There's something about a great friendship that always leaves me feeling thankful and grateful, yet undeserving. I somehow ended up getting some of the best friends a person could ever ask for, and Jolene definitely makes the top of the list. Jolene and I have been friends now for 5 or so years. She and I teach together at Gilcrest Elementary and found, after getting to know one another, that we have quite a bit in common in terms of love for art, creating, cooking, and now having GIRLS! Today we met for coffee at a local shop (Your Place Coffee) and just enjoyed being around each other. She was corralling little Stella, who is constantly on the move now, and I was feeding Amity the majority of the time. It didn't matter. Just being able to sit, talk, or not talk was so peaceful and welcome and I love having a deep friendship with her in which we can share that together. We can...

As many of you are well aware, Aaron and I are often found peering through lenses of all sizes, trying to capture life as we see it creatively, artistically, and as it's happening. We love doing portraits, weddings, etc. and it was so exciting for me to finally have a baby of my very own to capture on camera! I have been dreaming up all the cute things to do with her first pictures for months now and couldn't wait to have my dreams come to life. Well, as life would have it, Amity had other plans. She surprisingly, or not, decided to be a super stinker when it came to the night we were going to do her pictures. Never before, or since, has she been that cranky or out of sorts with anything, but that night, she definitely was not having it! I handmade a banner with her name on it and Aaron and I had found the perfect basket for her to show off her cuteness. Fortunately, despite her efforts to cry, fuss, and have stinker faces, we did get some gems, however, I'm thinki...

................................................... {this moment} a friday ritual. a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. a simple, special, extraordinary moment. a moment i want to pause, savor and remember. ..................................................

Yesterday was quite a day. I think we changed more diapers, faster, than any other time. At one particular point we slammed through 4 of them in rapid-fire succession.  It went something like this: Put baby on changing table because of dirty diaper Place clean diaper under baby Remove dirty diaper Watch baby poop on wisely placed clean diaper Discard previously clean diaper - Put new clean diaper on baby Hear baby soil clean diaper Change diaper a final time Wait 45 minutes and go to step one Amity was pretty good-natured about the whole thing - she just hangs out on the table and waits for us to get our act together. Also, this made me thankful that we're going with cloth diapers. The whole thing would've been a lot more frustrating if it meant we just burned through $5 worth of diapers. Instead it just meant that we needed to do a load of laundry slightly sooner.  Also, we went ahead and did one of our first "official" photo shoots. I'm s...

Around 5:30 on Saturday, it finally happened. We held her. It seemed like the nurse (Megan, who was fantastic) might have made an exception for us and let her try to breastfeed, because we really hadn't expected to be able to and it was an awesome surprise. That had been a huge concern for us because we had heard so much about the health benefits and so many horror stories about how hard it was for a lot of women and their babies. They say that starting within the first hour is really critical, so both Kim and I had been stressing about whether it would be a huge roadblock since it had been over 15 hours since she had been born and she hadn't really been held at all. Turns out that our fears were unfounded. Amity got right to it without a single problem, and it was a massive relief on a couple of levels. First, because of the aforementioned anxiety, but second and more importantly, because a healthy appetite is one of the best signs you could hope for of a healthy baby. A...

{ With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts }  Eleanor Roosevelt  It has meant the world to me to have so much support from our family and friends during this time. As you may have seen thus far, I haven't been much of a contributor in the writing department on the blog, mainly due to time, but also because it's been a difficult process for me to transition into Mommy-hood and I'm doing alright with admitting that. Our families have been beyond wonderful during this time. We've had several visits from all sets of Amity's grandparents, aunts, and even great-grandparents. They've showered us with food, love, a chance to take a nap here and there, AND even taken care of household chores. It's truly been wonderful and saying "Thank You" on here doesn't begin to cover the magnitude of gratitude I feel towards them in this moment. Here are some shining moments of Am getting held for the first time by the people we care deepest a...

Interesting things today. We had quite a night with Amity - the pediatrician is wanting her to put on more weight so we spent last night being up for an hour feeding her, and then asleep for an hour, and then repeating ad infinitum. So, this morning, when an amorous woodpecker decided to broadcast his intentions to the neighborhood by jackhammering on the house right outside of the bedroom, I started mentally casting about for different mechanisms by which I might end his noisome existence. It sounded something like this: Thankfully, he flew off to bother someone else before I was able to decide conclusively that I was willing to accept whatever legal consequences might attend a woodpecker slaughter. Also, this afternoon, we decided to run to Wal-mart for some various necessities. The Wal-mart on 23rd Avenue is closer to us and attracts a more entertaining clientele in our experience. During a notable previous visit, we witnessed a mother sauntering through the parking lot...

................................................... {this moment} a friday ritual. a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. a simple, special, extraordinary moment. a moment i want to pause, savor and remember. ..................................................

Enjoyed taking some pictures while Kim and Am were hanging out on the couch yesterday evening. Little fingers and little toes are always fun to watch. What I've found really interesting (and pretty cute) is what our friend Tiffany called the "Monkey Reflex".  All newborns share a certain set of more-or-less predictable responses to certain stimuli, and these are called reflexes. In this case, if you tickle the foot right on the edge near the toes, a baby will wrap their toes around your finger, just like a little monkey foot. You can see that starting to happen in the second picture there. So there you have it. The Monkey Reflex.

That first day in the NICU was the hardest. We weren't able to hold our girl, she was hooked up to a lot of lines, and we were pretty unable to do anything for her except just sit there and talk to her. She was hooked up to a status monitor which we would develop a love-hate relationship with. It provided a certain amount of comfort because we could observe all of her vital signs at a moment's notice, and see without a doubt that everything was checking out just fine. We also knew that if anything started to go wrong multiple nurses would be there within seconds to check on her. However, whenever one of the values would go out of the acceptable range, an alarm would go off. It wasn't bad as far as alarms go - fairly soothing and benign, really. It was just the knowledge of what it meant that became stressful. Not all of the sensors were 100% reliable 100% of the time, so occasionally the alarm would go off for no good reason, and every time that happened there was a momen...

Our church, Atlas, is in the process of building a coffee shop, in part to provide a place for insomniac college students to hang out during the late hours when everything else in Greeley is closed up. I set up the camera at the beginning of the day to shoot at intervals of 30 seconds while different volunteers helped out with the framing. After about 7 hours this is the result! I'm hoping to do more of this and put a bunch of footage together into something more substantial once it is all together. Anyway, here's the link: Atlas Kitchen Timelapse 1 from Kim Adamson on Vimeo .

For those of you who would find it useful: you can subscribe to the blog in a few different ways, which means you don't have to check in every day to see whether there's something new or not. The low-tech way to do it is subscribe via email, by scrolling down a bit and looking on the right for the box that says "Follow By Email", and then entering your address. You should then get an automatic message any time that there is something new to read! The fancier way is by clicking on the Atom feed at the bottom of the page, which I've listed here as well:  Atom feed . If you click on it, it should let you add something to your browser that will let you keep tabs on things with a little drop down menu or link or something. Hopefully this has been helpful to you! Comment or email or something if you have a question.

At some point while the nurses were tending to the baby, I realized that I hadn't even checked the gender. I walked over in the midst of everything, saw that it was a girl, and barely managed to tell Kim before we both got choked up about it. I think I had honestly been expecting a boy, but now I don't think I could imagine it any other way. After the nurses had been working on the baby for a few minutes, they wrapped her up in a blanket and brought her over to Kim. The baby was really pale, and not very active. Kim was only able to hold her very briefly, and it was pretty emotional. I was faced with a big decision - I felt like I really needed to stay with the baby, but I didn't want to leave Kim in what was going to be a really hard situation for her. I started to ask her what she wanted and she told me to go with the baby before I even finished. The baby was loaded up on a crib/table thing and I followed the nurses as they wheeled her down to the NICU. I remember t...

................................................... {this moment} a friday ritual. a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. a simple, special, extraordinary moment. a moment i want to pause, savor and remember. ..................................................

A while ago I got an old book of British poetry, and since then I've always had ambitions of reading poetry to my kids - so I broke it out last night, and I thought this poem was absolutely beautiful and timely as well. You might guess that I change the word "sister" to "daughter" when I'm reading it. You also might guess that I am a big softy all of a sudden. In both cases you would be right. To My Sister - William Wordsworth: It is the first mild day of March: Each minute sweeter than before The redbreast sings from the tall larch That stands beside our door. There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees, and mountains bare, And grass in the green field. My sister! ('tis a wish of mine) Now that our morning meal is done, Make haste, your morning task resign; Come forth and feel the sun. Edward will come with you;--and, pray, Put on with speed your woodland dress; And bring no book: for this one day We...

Here's the playlist we made to play to Kim's belly through headphones while she was pregnant. We really like it. Name Artist Heysátan Sigur Rós Sweet Afton Nickel Creek Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch Chicago (Acoustic) Sufjan Stevens Falling Slowly Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová Hold Me Near Karla Adolphe Hymn Jars of Clay I Will Follow You Into The Dark Death Cab For Cutie New Year's Eve Tim Coons Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel) Billy Joel Over The Rainbow Ingrid Michaelson Parachutes Coldplay The Park Feist After the Storm Mumford & Sons Sleep [Instrumental] Kimya Dawson Such Great Heights Iron & Wine Before I Wake I Fight Dragons Let That Be Enough Switchfoot http://c.itunes.apple.com/us/imix/baby-adamsons-songs/id5092673...

We had some pictures posted here, but we figured out how to get the instagram feed going - so click through on the right to check out the pics - we'll have more adding all the time.

After we got the epidural done, things started getting better almost immediately. After 30 minutes, it had gone from something traumatic and distressful to a place where Kim was almost napping, she was smiling, and we were actually able to talk together and be excited again. It actually worked well, because Kim and I had time alone together, we could talk, and we had a reprieve from all the chaos for a few moments. After an hour and a half or so, it was time for Kim to get checked again. She was feeling contractions getting stronger, and she was starting to get the shakes, and I thought that the epidural had really gotten things going - and it turned out, Kim was almost entirely dilated. Karen (our midwife) told us that she was at 9.5 cm - we got things arranged, myself and Laura (the nurse, who reminded me of Megan Lawson and who was amazing) held Kim's legs, and Karen decided it was probably time to push. One of the most interesting things to me was how the process ...

I am a father. Our daughter was born March 3, 2012, at 2:13 in the morning. 3-3-12 @ 2:13. Interesting symmetry there - 3312213. We had no indication on Thursday night that Friday would be different from any other day. We thought Kim's water broke during the day Thursday, but she went in and got checked, and it was a false alarm. I had been stressing about grading and a lesson observation that I had scheduled for Friday morning, so I ended up staying up until midnight (as late as I've stayed up this semester). I was up early and out the door, and I got to Berthoud with a bit of time to spare. I got stuff set up for my demos (I brought in a bass guitar and some other stuff for wave demonstrations), got my printing and lesson plans set aside, and then about 2 minutes before the lesson started Kim called me and said that her water actually  did  break, and that yes, she was sure. Her contractions weren't bad and she hadn't talked to the midwife yet, so I said I w...