Micah First Four Weeks

Micah's first four weeks have been a bit of a blur.  He's up to eat every 2 hours which is tough particularly when he doesn't go right back to sleep at night.  I've included one of his glow baby pictures from the beginning when he had jaundice and was on a billy-blanket.  He is changing very fast and really getting chubby from all that eating.  Hopefully that will translate to more sleeping soon. 

"New Hat"

One of my friends from work got Micah some sleepers with the elastic bottoms.  Maya decided that they would make great hats and ran around with them on her head.

Helping Mommy with Laundry

One of Maya's favorite things to do is "help" me with laundry.  As you can see most of my folded laundry ends up on the floor in a pile.  She then shakes it very hard to "beat it into submission".  Here she is taunting me :)

Newest Member of the Sabnani-Zegarra Family

Micah Levi Zegarra was born at 9:38 am on January 21st.  He was 8.3 lbs and 20 3/4 inches long.  Like his older sister he also has quite a bit of dark hair at birth.  Though his will obviously be cut sooner to keep unlike his sister's. 

He is having some issues with jaundice, but other than that things are going well overall. 

Mommy is attempting not to push it too much and recover from her c-section.  The not pushing it part is the problem.  That said off to drink a bunch more water and lay down for a little while.

The good, bad, and ugly

I have rarely been as thankful to receive a call from my boss as I was this morning!  The words "the office is closed due to the snow" is something all administrators in education love to hear as usually even if the schools are closed we have to go into the office.  Thus, I was able to stay home with Robert and Maya. 

Robert's hernia repair surgery went well yesterday.  He is in pain, but hopefully that will become less as the days go on.  I really need him to be better before my c-section on the 21st.  And I guess we also need baby boy to stay nice and comfortable in the belly until then :)

I also got some bad news on a couple fronts today.  Since November, the state of Ohio is not allowing anyone until the age of 14 into the hospital for visitation.  This includes the maternity ward. So I will not be able to see Maya the whole time I'm in the hospital.  This was rather upsetting, probably more so because I'm totally hormonal, but they had better release me after 3 days!

The other news involves my grandparents.  My grandfather has liver cancer, which we know is fatal.  However, this week things have taken a turn for the worse.  He spent the majority of the week in the hospital.  My mother cancelled her trip to India with my dad and the group from NNEC (mission trip then seeing family in India and Singapore) to stay home.  We found out today that he may only have 2 more months if this next round of chemo doesn't shrink his tumors a little.  At best he has 8-10 months. This news coupled with my grandmother's rapidly increasing dementia has made for a constant string of bad news.  This stress on top of Robert's surgery and my having to do everything at 37 weeks pregnant has made the week quite stressful! 

So thankful that it is Sabbath and I can hopefully take a break for a while.  Here's to praying that Maya sleeps past 5:30 am!

New Year's Day

I feel like I should at least acknowledge that there is a New Year with a post.  We spent the day (and all the days of break before) getting the baby's room ready and going through the house trying to rearrange everything in the best way possible.  In the process Robert made his hernia worse so he will be having surgery on the 7th.  Hopefully I will not go into labor early and will wait until the 21st for my scheduled c-section.  If not it will be very interesting seeing the two of us try to get Maya in and out of places.  At 24 pounds she will be above the amount we can lift.  He should be able to lift her by the 21st...fingers crossed. 

Still no name for the baby.  We can only come up with silly names at this point.  We are going to have to get serious soon though!

I've done a lot of cooking and baking over the break.  Tried out some cookies/bars that I've been meaning to try from Alice Medrich's Cookies and Brownies.  I must highly recommend the "Chewy Almond Cherry Bars".  Wicked yummy!  Robert was also a fan of the double chocolate chips which used Andes mints instead of chocolate chips.  The dough freezes great so I put some up for after the baby is born.  There is also a great recipe for Peppermint Bark Cookies in the Dec. addition of Bon Appetit.  I've only been nibbling here and there because I got a sinus/bronchitis infection after eating one cookie!  Such is my luck. 

I'm resisting the urge to check my work email until Sunday night.  Need just a little longer to not think about all the work things that will be added to my list of things to do come Monday. 

Happy New Year's all!

Christmas Letter 2009

Merry Christmas! We hope that you are all healthy and happy during this Christmas season. This past year has been a busy one for us. Robert began his 6th year as an associate/youth pastor at the Centerville SDA church this December. In June he took a month long Sabbatical in Scottsdale, AZ. While there we did a 4 day whirlwind road trip to the Grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Bryce and Zion. Maya was a real trouper and enjoyed riding around in her backpack on her favorite Sherpa---Daddy. During the sabbatical we also realized that my tiredness and general feeling of yuckiness was not due to working more in May and getting ready for the sabbatical, it was because I was pregnant. We are expecting our second (and last) child, a boy, at the end of January.


Several days after arriving home from the sabbatical we left for Maine where Robert was the pastor for Junior Camp I at Camp Lawroweld. It was wonderful to be able to spend time in a place we love and with family.

I still work (part time now) as a School Improvement Coach. It is nice to still have my foot in the professional world and be able to spend the majority of my time with Maya at home. Currently I seem to spend most of my “free time” trying to cross things of my massive to do list and clearing out my library/study to make room for baby boy. After much dragging of my feet I’ve decided that we need the space and so I’m going with a Kindle instead of an actual library.

The changes in Maya over the last year have been astonishing to us! She has gone from mostly stationary last Christmas to recently walking. It’s fun to see her little head bobbing up and down as she walks behind furniture and all over the rest of the house. She has always been a “talker,” but she began using actual words at 8 months. Now most mornings begin with hearing her go through her litany of words over the baby monitor. As this is usually at a very early hour we are thankful that we can usually chuckle at some of her proclamations of “ah-oh” or “Hi”.

We are sure the whirlwind will continue with the new addition to our family in around 6 weeks. And no we don’t have a name picked out yet. We are trying something new in the resolution of trying to communicate with people more…our new family blog (which has almost nothing on it at the moment) is: http://sabnanizegarrafamily.blogspot.com . Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers! God bless in this New Year.



Love,



Robert, Heidi, Maya Grace and unnamed soon to arrive baby boy Zegarra