Clark 1

Pregnancy/Delivery

Clark came into the world on March 19th at 7:18pm weighing 8lbs 3oz. He was born in Cincinnati Ohio at Christ hospital. The pregnancy was pretty uncomplicated. I had a bit of nausea at the beginning which for me seems to be an indication that there's a boy in the oven, but other than that all was pretty smooth sailing. (For those of you uninterested in the gruesome details of pregnancy and delivery, feel free to skip this section)

The delivery was equally calm, in fact for a while there I was doing lunges in the hospital trying to get him to come out because he seemed to have given up for a while and I was desperate to get the show on the road. I really wanted the doctor to break my water, but since he was busy with several other patients HE was NOT in a rush for me to go into labor. So, I attempted to speed things up on my own by sprinting across my hospital room and lunging from one end of the room to the other, but in the end I'm not sure it did any good. I eventually gave up, took and nap and then he started up again. I got an epidural as usual. I admire women who go "natural" and at one point in my life toyed with the idea of being one of those "tough mommas" ,but have since then concluded that the only way I will ever go completely natural is if it comes so fast I have no choice in the matter. There is something truly fabulous about pain free deliveries. However this time I feel like I got snowed. Yes I realize epidurals can't really "snow" you since it only numbs from the injection site down, but I could not feel a thing and I asked the nurse to turn it down, because I was getting nauseated, but apparently this particular pump could only be changed by the anesthesiologist. Then she checked me and said, well you're crowning, perhaps that's why you're not feeling so well. Before I knew it I had pushed a couple of times after they managed to track down my busy doctor and he was out.

First Moments with Daddy

Happy Birthday Grandma!! Grandma Garcia flew in on her birthday and got to see Clark just a couple of hours after he was born.

First Day Home

Brotherly Love

Emma's nurturing side.

What's in a Name?

Alexander Clark Garcia

Really what a daunting task to determine someone's name -- what they will be known for for the rest of their lives. Sometimes as a parent I feel like in the end I'm blinding reaching into a hat and pulling out a name. If I don't like it I chuck it. If I do I keep it, but in the end it turns out often as an eeny meeny miny moe game. So, as usual Sergio and Is tarted out vetoing each other's names and the only name we could really agree on was "Clark". Does it come from Clark Kent, Superman's secret identity? Sergio sometimes likes to pretend it doesn't, but who are we kidding? Of course that's where the original inspiration came from! Sergio likes to go through all the superhero secret identity names when considering possibilities for both girls and boys. And no, Lois was never in the running for Emma; I gave it a quick veto along with many others. Personally I just liked the sound of the name Clark and right now it's not a common name which I also liked. As for Alexander I would have preferred Alejandro, but that was vetoed and we ended up with the next best thing. So why Alexander Clark instead of Clark Alexander? At the time we thought it sounded better that way. Now, they don't sound that different to me. Maybe we unconsciously just wanted to confuse everyone. Either way our kids are stuck with what we named them. But all things considered it could have been much worse. At least none of our children have been named Barry Harry. Considering the amount of hair our children have at birth and the gene pool their parents produce, it would probably be quite appropriate for any of our children. It's a good thing we have only one girl so far. If we had three girls by now instead of two boys and only one girl, I'd have to be setting money apart for an electrolysis machine. As it is, it's socially acceptable for boys to be very hairy, and Emma, well she'll just have to learn the joys of waxing when she hits puberty.