He's Here!

Yes, that's correct! We are proud to announce the arrival of our second son. Tobin Skofield was born Wednesday, March 5th at 1:29pm. He weighed in at 7 lbs 13 oz and tapped out at 20 in long.

We just arrived home Friday and are thankful to be out of the hospital. Fortunately, this delivery was much shorter than last time and Tobin has Joshua to thank for paving the way. Joshua has enjoyed checking out all of his fingers and calling him "Toady".
Many have asked where the name comes from. Tobin is based off the name Tobias from the Old Testament. It means "Pleasing to God" in Hebrew. Skofield is a family name from Susan's paternal grandmother.
We are doing well despite lack of sleep. Joshua developed a cold/cough on Thursday night so we are having to keep him away from Tobin. Please pray for quick healing for Joshua and protection for Tobin. We are blessed to have Susan's parents in town until later this week; They are taking very good care of us.
Big Brother Joshua checks out all his fingers and toes.

Ready to head home!

You can check out more pictures at www.picasaweb.google.com/zebfamily

Let's Go Fly a Kite

Sunday we went to the annual Zilker Park Kite Festival. It was a fun day and amazing to see so many kites. It was exciting to have my Dad there since he loves building his own kites. For as long as I can remember he has had the tradition of building a kite when we went to the beach. It was always fun to get to pick out the paper for it! So, it didn't take much convincing to get him to enter the contests for homemade kites. He did his favorite design in which he uses the Wall Street Journal Stock report, "To make the stocks fly high." However, this time was a bit difficult as he had limited time and used a little different design.

Garage prep the night before...

On the site prep...
Joshua "Helping." It was a bit of a challenge to keep him from touching the kite in the several hours before the competition.

Hanging out

Joshua's first kite from Papa.

Sadly, things didn't work out so well for the "Wall Street Special." It was SO windy that the kite actually broke before they even attempted to get it in the air. A valuable lesson was learned to not use Balsa wood for his kites. He says he'll be back with a vengeance next year.

False Alarm #2

* I didn't want to share too many details, if you want the nitty gritty you can click on the links....

Well, it looked like Kurt was going to get his leap year baby. Last Wednesday I went in to see the doctor and did a procedure to encourage labor. She told me I had a 50/50 chance of going into to labor in the next day or so. Thursday around noon I had another sign that labor would likely be within the next few days. I woke up Friday morning at 2:40 with contractions. I timed them for about 30 minutes before waking Kurt up and they were about 7 minutes apart. We started slowly moving towards mobilizing, but took our time since they weren't really intense. The doctor told us to call when they were at 7 minutes as opposed to five since I'm already "5 cm dialated." After another 30-40 minutes of regular contractions we made the call to the "doctor" (I don't think they ever actually contacted the doctor) and called Mike and Jodi to have one of them come over to stay with Joshua. We swung by Walgreens on the way for snacks and cold medicine for Kurt and made it to the hostpital about 5 AM. My contractions were still regular and as we walked into Walgreens started hurting more. We got all checked in and the nurse did her thing and said she thought I was only 4 cm dialated. They kept me for an hour and a half to find that I was no further along in dialation. So, despite still having contractions that were consistently 5 minutes apart they sent me home. She explained that I needed to wait until they were painful enough that I could walk or talk through them. Um, isn't that when I should be getting the epidural??? We were both disappointed so we went to drown our sorrows in pancakes from Kerbey Lane. She said we were probably in early labor, to go home and walk and we would probably be back soon. Well, here were are and still no baby!

Later that day, my dad and step mom made it into town. We are glad they are here and it takes the stress of what to do with Joshua when it's go time. I've been having to keep tabs on our friends that are lined up to help, knowing where everyone is and what they are doing everyday. I'm sure they'll be happy to have their privacy back too!

So Wednesday the 5th should be the day. We decided to go ahead and be scheduled for induction and feel very at peace about the decision. We will keep you posted!