Happy Halloween!!!

... and four week b-day Meghan!


Our little pumpkin...

Gotta love the fleece costume/sleeping bag. I think Meg will get a lot of wear out of this thing this winter. Now her California native parents are wishing they had a pumpkin costume/sleeping bag of their very own.

Of course Meghan did not just have a costume she also had an Halloween outfit underneath her costume (courtesy of Auntie Bean).
She had her four week check up at the pediatrician's office yesterday and she is up to nine pounds!! She skipped the eights altogether. Two weeks ago she had surpassed expectations and was heavier than her birth weight. As a mother, it is good to know that one's child is not going hungry; I'll say!

Meg's headshots

Meghan reading...

Supporting her birthplace team... GO SOX!

Sleeping

...sleeping some more. We love this photo; she'll probably hate it. But she always seems to have the best bedhead!

Mama's favorites...

New & improved fam in Hyannis.

Mama's favorite picture thus far...

Daddy kisses

Mama kisses

Happy two week b-day!

I think it will be many months before we stop celebrating MJ's weekly birthdays... here we are after an Octoberfest party on, you guessed it, MJ's two week birthday!

Nannie's visit

Nannie and Meghan at the Head of the Charles regatta



Nannie and MJ on Harvard Business School campus. We had to head onto campus to collect Meghan's packages from the post office. What a lucky girl!






Nannie, Mama, & Meg's first trip to the Cape.

Nannie planned on coming to Boston on Meghan's due date because we all expected her to be late! Meghan had other plans so she was four days old when Nannie arrived.

First car ride

Happy Birthday Meghan Jane

It is not everyday that your daughter turns zero!

And introducing for the first time...

...first-time grandmother "Bean" and her little grandbaby. Roxanne came out from California on a moment's notice and was able to meet Meghan on her birthday. She battled traffic from Fenway Park, a plane connection in Miami, and October temperatures in Boston in the mid-80s... the things you do for love!

And here she is!!

Meghan Jane Morse
Born at 3:06 a.m. on Wednesday, October 3rd. Weighing 7 pounds, 4 ounces and measuring 21 inches long.

It was a crazy and at times scary labor but it was definitely worth it! Here are a few pictures of our new and improved family.

Hospital and laboring...

We arrived at the hospital in the early afternoon. It was actually incredible at how slowly everything transpired the day of October 2nd. I was still not in active labor by the time we got to admitting at Brigham and Women's Hospital. It was a good thing I wasn't really laboring yet because admitting took an hour or so, then triage took a few more hours in the waiting room alone, then an hour or so in the actual triage room (where they confirmed again that my water had broken). But it was in triage that I was elated to find out that the doctor on call that day was the same one I had met the day before, unbeknownst to me at the time, at my last prenatal appointment. He went to Cal Berkeley for undergrad, where he met his wife, a Cal Forester!! It was so nice to have something in common with the man that would deliver my baby. Go Bears!
Anyway, it was in triage that my contractions started picking up a bit on their own but where it was determined that I would take pitocin to amp them up to make sure I delivered before 24 hours had passed since my water broke (to avoid infection and other complications...). (Notice I am still smiling in the bottom picture (photos are in reverse chronological order), this is because I wasn't in active labor ... yet! Ignorance is bliss.)
So I was admitted to my own labor and delivery room at around six p.m. I was still smiling a bit when we got to my L&D room and stopped shortly after the real contractions started coming fast and furious.
Uncle Tyler hopped on a flight from NYC as soon as he heard that I was in labor. I was only allowed two people with me pre-delivery and Uncle Tylee made the cut! He wasn't present for the actual delivery (don't blame him!) but was the first family member to meet our little girl.

The moment we had been waiting for...

My water broke some time the morning of October 2nd, probably around 8 a.m. Andy had already left for class for the day. To be honest, I wasn't sure if my water had broken, no gush, no ruining clothes/shoes, etc. - nothing like in the movies. It all was actually very calm and surreal. So I called the doctor's office they said that it probably was my water breaking and to come on in to test for sure... needless to say I called the emergency contact number at HBS, they retrieved Andy from class, he hi-fived his classmates and they cheered. Off we went to the doctor's office in a cab because I was not sure if labor would start any second... better be safe than sorry.
The doctor took one look down there and confirmed that my water had, in fact, broken. Andy and I then walked home, finished packing our bags, tidied up a bit, and then took a cab to the hospital (because every time we get into a car in Boston, we end up crossing some bridge, paying a toll, and getting incredibly lost).
This picture was taken in our baby girl's room, the next time I were to return home this room would finally have its very own little tenant!!

Andy and Chelsea get a history lesson

One week before Baby Morse is "expected" to arrive, Andy and Chelsea went to visit the birthplaces of two of our presidents... can you guess who they are? We started the day at the visitor's center and then took a trolley to the birthplaces of John Adams and John Quincy Adams and from there a trolley ride to John Adams's bigger post-Revolution house in modern day Quincy but it was located in Braintree back in the day (for those that have read McCollough's John Adams and are sticklers for accuracy). The trip concluded an unofficial tour of presidents' homes (Grant in St. Louis, White House in DC, and now two Adamses).

Morses gain street cred...

Our Santa Cruz pals Andrew and Nadia sure knew what they were doing when they bought us Red Sox tickets as a going away present... Andy and Chelsea went to their first Red Sox game as Massachusetts residents. Going to a game is a necessity here since the Sox are not just a baseball team they are a cultural phenomenon. Although we did not have on 18 layers of different Sox paraphernalia we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Maybe next time we will wear shirts that say: "Real women date Red Sox fans" or "Derek Jeter drinks wine coolers." And oh yeah, we have to simultaneously love the Sox and hate the Yankees. There is so much to learn here at HBS...

We Made It!

We made it to Boston! Moving up the East Coast, we had one more stop in New York, and then we pulled in to our new home just in time for classes.

What more can we say? Jersey, baby!

Tyler took us to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and he created a little modern art of his own.

A little more culture in NYC: Tyler took us to a trendy new restaurant opened by the editor of Vanity Fair, where the main objective has less to do with eating than watching famous people eat. The food was great, and the company even better: l to r, Mikey's fiancee Blaire, Chelsea, Andy, Tyler's girlfriend Rebecca, Tyler. And it was good that we had a good meal - we needed our strength for the 2 AM cabaret that we went to after dinner. This 21st-century vaudeville show had everything from performance jump-rope to topless modern dance to fire-eating.

After loading the bikes onto the car one more time, we're ready to head out to our final destination!

We've arrived! After lots of rain in New York and Connecticut, we pulled into Boston on a beautiful summer evening.

On our way to dinner in Cambridge, we did a little exploring of the HBS campus: here's Andy in front of the business school library. (The bell in the belfry, cast in about 1790, is getting ready to go home to Russia. It was moved to HBS nearly 80 years ago, when Stalin was about to take it out of a Russian Orthodox monastery to melt it down. I guess the capitalists at the business school didn't think that was such a great idea...)

After 5 glorious weeks and about 5,000 miles on the road, we're so thankful that we had the chance to go on a trip like this. Ours is a beautiful country, and we really enjoyed the slice of it that we saw. Thanks so much to all of our hosts, family, and friends who took the time to make a bed for us, share a meal with us, or buy us a drink. It was a great trip!

Pregnant & Unemployed - You Betcha! But almost "home"...

We're back, from the interstate highway to the information superhighway. Here's where we left off:

Gifford & Andy - Gifford Pinchot was America's first professional Forester and is considered the Father of American Forestry. Before Teddy Roosevelt appointed him to lead the country's new Forest Service, he spent some time managing the forests around the Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. He really wanted to take a picture with Andy when we stopped at the Biltmore - he's on the left in this photo, Andy's in the pink shirt on the right.

Here we are at the Biltmore Estate in Western North Carolina. Beautiful spot, great history, and plenty of factoids to discuss for at least a few hundred miles.

After Asheville, NC we went to Columbia, South Carolina. We cruised the State Capitol grounds, had a couple of pulled pork sandwiches (a Carolina specialty), and saw more than a few plaques/murals/statues that remind visitors that General Sherman burned the city to the ground in 1865. I guess it's still a touchy subject...

Next stop, Carolina Beach, North Carolina. We stayed with Santa Cruz expatriates Jessica and Shane Keenan, and here we are in Wilmington (the next city up). Known worldwide as "Wilmywood" (the Hollywood of the South), you may recognize this scene as the REAL site of Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, and on and on! The beautiful people in this photo, however, are not actors, but Jessica, Chelsea, and Shane.

He we are boating on the Cape Fear River and Intracoastal Waterway with Jess & Shane's friends the Conways. Great Southern evening for a sunset outing!

More sightings of the beautiful people in Wilmywood! We had terrific weather, and Andy loved going surfing all week with Shane without ever putting on a wetsuit.

Here's where we were planning to stay in Washington DC, but they lost our reservation.

Confusion on Capitol Hill: despite the fact that Sequoias are the largest trees in the world, this "shrub" is the best representation of a Giant Sequoia that could be found on the Capitol grounds! I'm outraged!

No pictures yet, but we've made it to New York City, and we'll pull into Boston tomorrow! Museums, shopping, cocktails at the Four Seasons, running in Central Park, and a cabaret tonight that starts after midnight - feels like New York!

Still Pregnant, Unemployed & Homeless...

We're still on the road! We've reached the Atlantic coast, and our compass has finally turned from East to North. Here's what we have been up to since our last post:

Our first night in a motel - if you're ever in Amarillo, don't stay at this place!

Then on to Norman, Oklahoma, where we stayed with Chelsea's Uncle Rich. He's a professor emeritus in archaeology at OU, so we had a great visit, covering everything from Navajo history to Norman politics!

We had a good long stay in St. Louis with Chelsea's sister Brandy, her husband John, and their two little girls, and here we are at The Gateway Arch. The view from 630 feet above St. L was great, but Chelsea was much happier with her feet on solid ground in the visitor center. By the time we left Brandy & John's house, Andy finished all of his HBS pre-requisites, took his finance class final exam at St. Louis Community College, and really started to vacation!

Test of strength - the Arch passed.

Swimming, slides, fountains, and FUN at the pool with our St. Louis hostesses Mary Grace, Brandy, and Molly (L to R).

Uncle Andy exposing the girls to some local culture at the Budweiser Brewery.

St. Louis has a HUGE park leftover from the World's Fair about a century ago, and it has a terrific playground. We took the girls up there for lunch and playtime, and I think we had even more fun than they did!

Our last night in St. Louis, we all went to see the Cardinals play the Cubs. A great new stadium, burgers, Budweisers, and enough cotton candy to nearly drown Molly and Mary Grace - everything was great but the score...

Coming soon: the next few stops, from St. Louis to our current visit in Washington DC...