Ryland Guy Parks

Baby Ryland is here!  He arrived 2 weeks and 1 day before his due date, which turned out to be a big blessing because he weighed in at 8 lbs 10 oz and 21 inches.  Can you imagine how big he would have been in another 2 weeks?!  

Ryland has been such a blessing.  Miller especially adores his little brother and is very tender and loving, it melts my heart.  If you ask him, however, what the baby's name is, he'll tell you he hasn't decided yet.  In fact, that is exactly what he told his Sunday School teacher today after hearing Quin tell everyone his name is Ryland.  I think he feels a lot of responsibility for the name because Quin used to ask him his opinion on names all the time and we never really talked about this one, so he's not sure what to think of it.  We've tried to allure him with cool nicknames like Ry, Rylie and Ry Guy but he's still "undecided".  In the meantime, Miller says we can just call him Buddy Boy.  :)

So here's the story :).  My contractions started around 10:30pm on Tuesday night.  They were pretty short and mild so I convinced myself that they would stop if I went to bed.  About 3 hours later we resigned ourselves to the fact that it was time to get ready to go to the hospital.  We are so blessed to be surrounded by people that are willing and happy to help us, even at 3:00 in the morning!  There were actually three shifts of people in our home to watch the kiddos until my mom got in Wednesday evening.  Thank you thank you!  Anyway, my OB's office is on the same street as the hospital where they deliver, so I never bothered going there for a tour or anything.  I just told Quin to drive to Texas Woman's Hospital and the GPS took us there.  But the sign said Texas Children's University/Women's Pavilion.  That didn't seem right so we asked every person from the valet to the security guards at the Labor and Delivery unit if we were in the right place and they all ushered us on until they couldn't find us in the system.  Everyone was taking their time trying to figure out why we weren't registered at the hospital while I'm in serious pain about to have a baby.  Finally I asked these same people for the third time if there was actually a different hospital nearby called TWH because I thought we were in the wrong place.  They finally conceded that there was a TWH down the street.  What?!  So we rushed to the hospital down the street, slightly flustered and in real danger of having a baby in the car - just kidding.  We checked in at 4am, got the epidural at 5am and then my contractions slowed and we basically waited until my doctor was on call at 7am to start the Pitocin.  She came back at 8:30 to break my water and then Quin went downstairs to get breakfast.  Of course, just as he's riding the elevator down the nurse is calling the operator to page him back to my room because it's time to push.  Luckily, he made it back in time for 15 minutes of pushing and voila - giant baby boy #2!