This year Aidan ‘got’ Hallowe’en.

He picked his costume out with his mother several weeks ago while they were at Old Navy … he wanted to be a bat, but they didn’t have any in his size.  Instead, he chose to be an elephant.  And, was quite happy to be an elephant.

Nana and I took him down to the False Creek Co-op to Trick-or-Treat since our neighbourhood here in Fairview is *awful* for Trick-or-Treating.  Case in point: we got a total of 4 kids all night long.  Listening to some of the people down at False Creek, by 7:30 pm some of them had gone through 150 or more.

Anyway, Aidan had a grand time, knocking at the doors (yelling “Knock knock!” each time) and mostly greeting everyone with a “Trick or Treat!” and a “Thank you!”.  There were a few occasions of raiding the candy bowl before the person actually offered the bowl, but it was pretty good.  And, he was pretty excited to be getting candy, often telling me “Look at all the candy I got!” as he left houses.

The rain held off and it was pretty warm to boot.  By the end of our hour out, he was getting tired and spooked by some of the costumes and decorated houses.  The excitement was wearing off and his toddler mind was starting to process some of what was happening around him.  There were a few houses with ‘scary’ music playing that he shunned, and by the end of it, any moderately sinister pumpkin was enough to disqualify a house in his mind.  No matter, he had plenty of fun and got more than enough candy.

The door of last house we went to was answered by a cute little girl about his age wearing a bee costume.  He just stopped and stared at her.  I don’t think she even got a ‘Trick or Treat!’.  She looked at him and happily gave him some candy.  He continued to stare.  She gave him a big smile and asked “Want more?” and proceeded to give him more.  I had to pull him away.  After the door shut, he turned to me and said “That was a very pretty bumblebee!”.  We headed back to the car for a short drive home and in addition to admitting he was tired (he never does that!) he also told us about the pretty bumblebee.  Very cute!

One week ago, Quinlan made his entry into the world.

The day started off pretty hectically.  Gwen was trying to get to a conference down at the Wall Centre for 9am and Aidan was supposed to go to the Preschool Curiousity Club at Science World at 10am.  Gwen’s mother was scheduled to fly in at 1:30pm.  It was shaping up to be a busy day, but we didn’t anticipate just how busy.

As we were getting going in the morning, making sure all the bodies were up out of bed and on their way to being presentable and less hungry, Gwen came to me with one of those looks on her face.  Immediately I knew what she was going to say:

I think my water just broke.

That was 8am.  With Aidan, Gwen’s water broke the night before she actually gave birth the next night, so we didn’t know how much time we had until things got interesting.

She tried to convince me that she could still go to the conference (she had won a free pass) but I wasn’t having any of that.

At 9:30am, she tells me:

I think I’m having contractions, but I’m not sure.

With Aidan, the contractions were pretty obvious.  And painful … a lot of back pain.  The idea of not being sure about contractions was confusing at best.  So we started timing the contractions.  And we called our friends Tomer & Carla to put them on notice that we might need them to come and watch Aidan while we went to the hospital.

Now, I’d been stressing out over this for the past week.  It was literally keeping me awake at night, worrying that we’d have to go to the hospital in the middle of the night and scramble to impose on someone to watch Aidan while we were there.  We had a list of people to call, but I was hoping that we wouldn’t have to call anyone and instead Gwen’s mother would be able to watch him.  Of course for that to happen, the hospital trip had to happen after 1:30pm on the 25th.  Which was 5 days before Gwen’s due date.  Aidan was earlier than that and I’d heard that the 2nd came quicker.

Which brings us to 11:30am on Saturday the 25th.  Gwen’s contractions were coming at 8 minute intervals.  At 11:40am, that had shrunk to 5 minutes, the magic number for going to the hospital.  I called Carla and asked her to come, and um, could she come quickly please.  By 11:50am, the interval had shrunk to 3 minutes.

We rushed to the hospital (a pretty short drive up the road) and entered the maternity admissions of BC Women’s Hospital at noon.  It took us an hour to get through admissions and assessment, the whole time with Gwen’s contractions coming a mere 60-90 seconds apart.  Assessment judged her 3 cm dilated (10 cm is the magic number when the tell you to PUSH!) but the baby’s heart rate was dropping (and recovering) with each contraction so they decided to not take us to the Cedar maternity ward with its primo private rooms where you deliver and recover in the same room.  Instead we were taken to a standard delivery room on the maternity ward.  At 1pm.

The nurse got us to the room, and started to get things sorted out.  Then she checked Gwen again.  8 cm, and Gwen was involuntarily pushing.  So much for the epidural.  So much for the doctor that was supposed to deliver the baby.  Instead there was a flurry of nurses and a resident paeditrician (the doctor made it for the very end).

At 1:10pm, Quinlan was born.

I knew #2 was supposed to be quicker, I think this was extraordinary.

For the next hour, the doctor busied himself with suturing.

And, keeping up with the theme, we were released the next day and were home less than 25 hours after leaving for the hospital!

Announcing Quinlan James Floyd, born at BC Women’s this afternoon at 1:10pm PST, 7lbs 5oz. Mother and baby are healthy and happy!

On Monday we had our friends over for Thanksgiving.  I know it seems a little silly for some one a couple of weeks from her due date to host Thanksgiving.  That being said, I love dinner parties.  Having the dinner at our house means that we can have a good time with our friends and still get the boy to bed close to his bedtime.  He went to bed a little later than normal but he had a long nap in the afternoon.

We decided to have it buffet style with as many disposable parts as possible to make the clean up easier.  There was still quite a bit that need to go in the dishwasher, but without the plates and roaster it made clean up a lot easier.

What does this have to do with a baby pool do you ask?  Well, I had been joking about a baby pool with Tammy for a little while.  She is the only one convinced that this baby is a girl.  So we decided to start a pool.  Three things were needed, the date of the birth, the gender of the child, and the weight.  The one that gets closest on all three wins a bottle of wine and we get some guilt free babysitting.  If we have the baby before my mom comes one of these lovely people will be taking care of Aidan while we are at the hospital.

So to keep everybody honest we are putting their predictions on the blogs.  We will announce the winner when we announce the birth.  If you would like to get in on the action (well with a hearty congratulations instead of the wine) put your guesses in the comments.  You need to guess the date the baby will be born, the baby’s weight and whether it is a boy or a girl. The information everyone guessing had was this:  My due date is the 30th October.  Aidan was about 10 days early.  The ultrasound technician didn’t actually say boy, but (after an hour of trying to get all the measurements that ususally take 15 minutes) she said things get in the way so I would say 80% and looked at Aidan. ( She wasn’t supposed to say anything because I was only 19 weeks 5 days instead of 20 weeks.)  In the latest ultrasound there was no room to see.  According to the last ultrasound the baby is short and has a solid body and a very big head.  Care to guess?

Here are the friends guesses:

Tammy: 25 October, Girl, 9 lbs

Carla: 27 October, Girl, 8lbs 5 oz

Chris: 24 October, Boy, 8 lbs

Tomer: 23 October 8lbs 1 oz

Ali: 26 October, Boy, 8 lbs 14 oz

Noushin: 28 October, 8 lbs 6 oz

Anthony refuses to guess.  I just want it to be soon.  Good luck!