Emily's first week

Enjoying Emily those first few hours


















The kids and Mom meeting Emily for the first time







Proud to wear the Big Brother and Big Sister shirts Granna helped them make






Nothing like holding a real baby for the first time!




And nothing like holding your fourth grandbaby for the first time!







Saturday--going home!









Glad to be home...


















Sunday morning at Emily's checkup, she had jaundice and had to re-admitted for 24 hours of photo-therapy. I checked into a hospital room to be close to her. It was hard not to be able to hold her except when I was feeding her, and hard to be away from the kids and David again. It gave me a whole new appreciation for people who have babies in the neonatal ICU!


The hospital became familiar territory for us, and I couldn't help but get a smile out of this every time I saw it... Snore clinic and psychiatric clinic on the same floor: Convenient for wives whose husband's snoring has made her insane! =)



Anyway, it's amazing how a couple of days of hospitals seems like a week! I enjoyed the kids' visits, though, and we made the best of limited space!

Monday we were home again

Enjoying Emily's "awake" time

4 days old...

Emily in her downstairs "bed" and Big sister in action...

No JCPenny Portrait Studio in Thailand, so this is Mommy's Home-made Portrait Studio!
Emily Grace, 1 week old

Introducing... Emily Grace Bondy

Seven weeks ago, on Thursday, February 6th, we met our precious Emily Grace for the first time. It all started with sporadic contractions the day after the elephant show adventure. Fifteen minutes apart, then an hour, then another one—nothing spectacular. But as the afternoon wore on, I began to feel that we’d be holding her in our arms within a day or so.
Sure enough, at my regular checkup that night, the doctor confirmed that I was in the early stages of labor. I was really hoping to go home, have a good night’s sleep, and then get up the next morning and have her, but that didn’t happen! Instead, we went home, finished packing the bags, and headed to the hospital.
We arrived at the ER at 11:30 pm, and two hours later, Emily Grace was born!
What an amazing, incredibly special time it was! For those of you who are parents, you know there’s nothing else in the world like holding your baby for the first time. It is an undeniably holy moment of pure joy, with no words that can reach the depths of love, awe and gratitude that you feel as you cradle the warmth, the life, the perfection all wrapped up in a tiny bundle—your bundle, the most precious little wonder you’ve ever known lying right there in your arms for you to have and hold and cherish. It truly is amazing… a miracle.

Before the big day...

So here I am, sneaking away again! Continuing from the last entry...

My mom arrived about 2 weeks before Emily was due, and at that point my nesting instinct really kicked in! For a few days, everything was a flurry of “get ready for the baby—she could come anytime!!!”

So we set up the baby bed, bought diapers and other baby supplies, put clothes and baby stuff in its places, packed for the hospital, went over our birth plan, etc.

I did have a few contractions during those few days, and they served as more incentive for finishing up the last few things!

We also took a few pictures to commemorate the occasion…and to remember just how big my belly got! Once things were ready for Emily's arrival, we relaxed and decided to explore a bit and have some fun. Our biggest adventure was the day before I went into labor. First we went to Maesa National Park and enjoyed a nice little hike and a view of several beautiful waterfalls.

There were several places for Caleb and Dave to climb and enjoy the rocks, and it did all of us good to breathe the fresh air and enjoy the peace of nature.

And of course, we were all careful not to do any sharking while on the overlooks... (whatever that means!) =)

Mom and I sat at a picnic table a little ways up and Dave took the kids on to explore the trail a bit farther. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and chatting in the morning sun beside the falls is one of my favorite memories of my mom’s time here.

After lunch, we headed to Maesa Elephant Camp to see the elephants perform. First they bathed in the river...
and then grabbed a little banana snack before show-time.

During the show, they danced, played harmonicas, played soccer, threw darts, stacked logs, and even painted pictures with their trunks!

Here are a couple of pictures that were painted that day...

...and you can click on this link if you’d like to watch a video of one painting: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5395904137314845364. (About halfway through the video, you can hear Susanna talking about the "e'pant pain'ing").

The artist my mom recorded was a young elephant, and here is her finished product.

I’ve seen elephant shows before, but this was by far the best I’ve ever seen. They seemed very healthy, happy, and well-taken care of, and I think that is what I enjoyed most of all.

Catching up...

Well, if I didn't have much spare time before, I have practically NONE now!!! Right now is one of those rare moments when all 3 children are asleep...so here I am sneaking away to do a blog entry. (I must be crazy not to be asleep myself right now!) Seriously, other moms of three, how do you do it? And moms of more than three, WOW. I am in awe.

Anyway, so here's an update of our life for the last several weeks...

December was great...and very busy! You saw all our Christmas activities a couple of entries ago, but right after Christmas was over, we packed up our apartment and moved all our stuff into a garage on January 6th. Wasn't our choice to move... the landlady sold our apartment and said we could either move before we left for Thailand, or after. I thought it would be easier to pack with 2 kids instead of 3, so we decided to go ahead and move out. (I'm glad I did now, though it was CRAZY!) So here are pics of our home as we knew it...

The living room

The dining room Our room Susanna's room Caleb's room (and yes, we had a bathroom and a kitchen...I just forgot to take pictures of them!)

LOOOOOOTS of good memories of our first apartment in Central Asia. Though the place was small and had its problems, we made it home. I'll tell you one thing--I'm not much on moving. I lived in the same house from the time I was 3 til I moved out at 18 to go to college. Since then, I've moved 10 times, and I've learned that no matter how many times you move, or how brief a time you've lived there, it's always sad leaving a place you've called home. I could say a whole lot more about that, since moving and change and transition has been such a huge part of my life experiences over the last few years, and will continue to be in the years to come... but enough of my reverie!

So anyway, moving out was stressful, incredibly busy, and emotional as well, but we did it, and two days later we arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to have Emily. We came a few weeks early, and our time awaiting her arrival was precious. Lots of family time, lots of good experiences...

enjoying the house we sublet (HUGE compared to what we're used to!)

playing in the yard--enjoying the warmer weather! playing with the dog--her name's Gypsy, and she came with the house (owners are away on sick leave...)
taking walks around the neighborhood (the houses remind us of condos near the beach somewhere in Florida...) enjoying the vast array of gorgeous flowers that fill the yards and sidewalks here...

while observing a bit of Thai culture (these Bhuddist sanctuaries--some more elaborate than others, and most replenished daily with burning incense and food and drink offerings--are in pretty much every yard...)

(...and so are these water bottles. But they're not religious--we found out they're just to keep the neighborhood dogs from doing their business there and killing the grass... And it seems to work, believe it or not! You'd think it would have the opposite affect, but for some reason, to dogs, water bottles and fire hydrants are very different...)
Anyway, I enjoyed more time to homeschool the kids (mostly Caleb, but Susanna's picking it up too!) and we had fun riding local taxi transportation to get acquainted with the city.(Caleb's expression pretty much captures my emotion about there being no door on the back of the taxi trucks!!!)

Yep, those first couple of weeks were fun, but we felt pretty lonely after a short while. Feeling the language barrier again, missing our friends, our work, our home drove us to begin searching out new friends. So, this became one of our favorite places to visit... the Juniper Tree Guest House, complete with playgrounds, a swimming pool, and lots of kids and like-minded people in our line of work to visit with.

And then my mom arrived! And I'll have to continue later, cause sounds like my time is up for now!!!