Happy birthday to Hazel!!

Hazel turned SEVEN years old today!  And the poor girl was pretty grossly neglected.  I was not on the ball before we left for Austria, so we had no presents for her, no cake, no anything.  I am a terrible mother.  [Hanging my head in shame.]  Luckily our friend Kathi brought a present over for her (and then later came again to bring a present for Ethne who felt a bit left out), and her cousin Maloree called her! 
Ethne has been sick, and Brett was late home from work, so when Jethro, Hazel, Talmage, and I sat down to dinner Hazel said, “Can you maybe sing me Happy Birthday before dinner?” and Jethro and I said, “Suuure!” at the same time.  Don’t worry, we will celebrate her birthday later. 
But, I did tell her the story of her birth day.  It goes like this:
Once upon a time, I was pregnant with a little girl and she was breech.  So I went in to the doctor and had a Version performed.  It was successful and actually pretty easy, i.e., not painful.    Before I left, they gave me the straps that had held the monitors on my belly and told me that I could bring them back when I have my baby and then they wouldn’t have to open a new package.
I can’t remember if it was a day or two or three, but soon it was Saturday the day before Father’s Day.  And we thought it would be so cool if she were born on Father’s Day.  So I choked down a little castor oil on Saturday night, it did it’s work, and I went to sleep and slept soundly until about 7:00 in the morning, at which time I felt a contraction.  So, with the only previous birth we had experienced being a long, drawn-out affair, we got ready and went to church.  Contractions came steadily throughout sacrament meeting, and by the end of it, I was in enough pain that I thought I probably didn’t want to squirm through the next two hours on the piano bench in primary.  So I asked Sis. Provonsha if she would play the piano and she said she would (and probably wondered why I was not…) and we went home.  We were fairly excited by this time, and started timing contractions, and found that they were five minutes apart.  So we called my doctor who said to come to the hospital.  So, we took some more time to pack the bag and call our friends the Bodilys to ask if they could watch Jethro.  Luckily, they were home when they ordinarily wouldn’t have been because of flooding in their house or something, and they picked Jethro up and took him back to church and put him in nursery.  :) 
So.  We were finally actually in the car and started driving to the hospital.  At this time we lived in West Lafayette, so it took a while to get to the hospital (a while not being all that long, maybe 15 minutes or so, but longer than when we moved to our house which was about 3-4 minutes away).  By this time I was in some pretty awful pain and was doing a lot of whining.  When we were over halfway to the hospital, Brett remembered about the monitor straps and asked if he should turn around to go get them, and I said, “NO!” 
So we got to the hospital, walked in-stopping for a contraction on the sidewalk and seeing a guy in a car driving past stare at me, and went up to the Labor and Delivery floor.  They sloooooooowly found my file, asked a few questions, and finally got us in a room.  Then the nurse gave me a gown and told me to change.  I went into the bathroom, felt for a moment like I needed to throw-up, so I squatted down by the toilet, at which time I felt a little bit of an urge to push.  So I got up and tried to get dressed, but pretty much couldn’t, so I asked Brett for help, and then managed to get up on the bed, also with his help. 
And I can’t remember exactly how it went next, but within the next minute or two, whether I told the nurse I felt like pushing, or she was just going to check anyway, but when she checked she got pretty excited and told me not to push and had them call the doctor to hurry and soon more nurses were in there telling me not to push, and one of them told me to pant like I dog, and I was like “No!” and Hazel’s head was already out, with the cord around her neck when the doctor ran in and yanked it off and caught the rest of her.  I had been in the hospital for a total of 20 minutes when she was born. 
And she was beautiful and sweet and dark-haired and round-cheeked with the prettiest little lips and elf ears.  :)
So, Brett came home while I was in the middle of telling Hazel this story, and then he said, “So, that’s the fictional story, now I’ll tell you the REAL story.”  And he proceeded to tell about how after we found Jethro under a log, and we felt like it was time for another child, we started searching under more logs, but all we could ever find were pill bugs and ants and centipedes.   Then a fairy came and told us that you can only find your FIRST child under a log, so we had to look other places.  So then we looked and looked… (a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember) and finally we found her in a little nest of grass.
So then we asked Hazel which story she thought was the real one, and she said, “Mom’s was the real one, but Dad’s was MUCH cooler.”  :)
My sister Kami told me that her neighbor just had a baby and named her Hazel and Leo, her husband, commented to her that he really likes the name Hazel and would name their next daughter Hazel if I hadn’t already had a Hazel.  Then he said that he probably likes the name because he likes Hazel, cause she’s so sweet and cute.  Awwwwww.  It’s so true.  She is so sweet.  And a joy.  And has been from the moment she was born.  I just LOVE my girl!!!