Petra Arden Mehrdad

Our little baby girl has finally arrived! Petra Arden Mehrdad was born September 18, 2009 at 2:03 am. She weighed 8 lbs 3 oz and was 20 inches long.

The week before I had gone to the doctor and had made no progress, but Petra was in position as she had been flip flopping every week. At this point, I was pretty sure she was probably going to be late, but decided to try to get things moving by going on walks and trying to keep active. So every night leading up to her birth I had gone for some walks in the park. The night before, Shay and I went to see the Killers where I did my best and trying to dance.

(Side note: we met Ronnie back stage where, of course, he had a gathering of guests. One of whom was Dave Grohl. Ronnie introduced him to us and started immediately giving Shay daddy advice as Dave had just had his second daughter a few months before. It was very entertaining to hear his words of wisdom. He and Ronnie later rubbed my belly and congratulated us).

Thursday, September 17 I was too tired to do another walk, so I took it easy. I finished packing my hospital bag and I went to bed about 11. Soon after, Petra started moving around like a maniac and I sort of thought to myself, "my water's going to break." A few moments later, it did. It popped like a water balloon. We jumped up, scrambled to collect everything and off we went to the hospital.

Once we got there and checked in, the nurse checked me. I was dilated to a 3 but they couldn't feel a head, so they ordered an ultrasound to find out where she was positioned. Of course, she couldn't stay still and we discovered that this little girl was breech...which meant c-section. We weren't thrilled about it, but, oh well, we were excited to meet our new daughter. So, they started prepping us for surgery and moments later, we were in the operating room i was getting all numbed up and then Shay joined me.

A c-section is very strange compared to natural birth. I could feel the pressure of them trying to get the baby out and then, she was here! And she was gorgeous. I got to hold her for a few moments and then she went to the nursery with Shay and I went to recovery where I had to wait several hours to hold my sweet baby again. We stayed in the hospital until Monday and so far, I think I've been recovering fairly well.

She's amazing. She looks a lot like Carmen. So far, she seems like a pretty chill baby. And we just love her.

Carmen has been such a great big sister. She's always so sweet to her and wants to hold her all the time. So far, it's been pretty great and we are really enjoying the new addition.

Old Pictures

I downloaded my camera the other day to download the new pictures of Petra, and discovered all these gems I had failed to upload. So, here's a little smattering of some great pictures.

A couple months ago we went to Sea World and Carmen got to meet one of her favs, Elmo:



I had been doing something in the kitchen, when Carmen called out to me, "Look mom, I made a 'J'."



Just an adorable picture of Carmen and my sister Janna:



Everybody has these, but here are my babies, sleeping so cute together:

Last weekend of summer

Sadly, I had to work a lot this holiday weekend. But, I still managed to spend some QT with the fam. And sadly, the stress of work has not induced an early labor. So, we still wait on that. Shay, Carmen and I managed to go to a park to day and play and run and hang out. There are several parks that overlook the ocean on the Palos Verdes pennisula, so we decided to go to one of those parks. It was so nice and cool as it has been really hot for the last couple weeks. It was a lot of fun. Carmen played on the playground while we chased her around. I managed to get some fun pictures of the day.









This little boy just grabbed her hand. The little boys like Carmen. I think we're going to have to ground her for her teen years. But the boy was cute and i loved that he was wearing a Ramones shirt and he had the cutest little afro.



Below are some pictures we took of us. I probably need to have my sister do a family shot of all three of us as it will probably be the last of just the three of us. sad and happy. i can not wait for the arrival of Petra, but it is





In other happenings, we decided to stop letting Carmen watch Princess movies for a little while. We had Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid in constant rotation. This weekend Carmen informed Janna that, "She could not wait to get her crown." And we also caught her kissing her reflection romantically in the mirror and really admiring herself. No more princess movies for a while. We're now onto Jungle Book and Alice in Wonderland.