A quick week

It is Sunday night and what a week. Anika has been great. We have been quite lucky, she sleeps a lot and hardly ever cries.

We spent today watching the football game and visiting with Grandpa Tom and Grandma Sue.


As you can see Anika finds Coach Childress' offensive scheme a little boring.

We spent Saturday on the road. We started out by heading to Delano to get some pictures taken. Angela, a former co-worker of Mary's, is now a professional photographer. We had a blast having photos taken of the three of us and a bunch of photos of Anika. We can't wait to see them.

After the photos we headed down to Victoria to Curt, Jen and the rest of their family. They had just moved into their new home. It is incredibly beautiful. Also, now Curt has only a 45 minute commute to Thomson Reuters (I still want to just call it West) instead of an hour and fifteen minutes.

We finally got home a little after 8p.m. She slept the entire time we were in the car. Right now she is great to travel with. I am sure there will come a day when she will want to control the radio dial.

We are finally home

Everyone made it home safe and sound. We are so excited to get her home. The hospital room was getting a little cramped.


We made it through the first night with some team work. Mary let me sleep while she fed her, and then I got up and would help change her and burp her. Then Mary would go back to sleep while I rocked Anika back to sleep. She was quite alert last night, which was no surprise since she slept all day.

If you are looking to visit give us a call, we would love for you to meet her.

Anika and family

Proud mother and daughter

The proud parents
Anika had visitors today. The grand parents showed up as well as some uncle, aunts and cousins. The cousins were extremely excited to meet her and that was fun. Some other friends showed up as well. Of course she slept through every visit. We are so grateful for all of the warm thoughts and visits. Anika is overwhelmed with all of the compliments.

Here are some more photos of family and visitors . She can't wait to meet more interesting people to add their photos to this album will continue to grow.

Anika Suzanne Zilge

She has arrived and we feel so incredibly lucky.


First lets get the vitals out of the way. She arrived on Monday October 6th @ 7:38 p.m. She weighed 7lbs 6.8oz, her height was 20 1/4" and her head was 13".

Mary's contractions started at 4 in the morning. At 5 o'clock she woke me up (thanks for the extra hour of sleep honey). The contractions were about 6 minutes apart. The progressed to 5 minutes rather quickly. After an hour of contractions 5 minutes apart we called the hospital. They had us wait at home for another hour.

We finally were admitted at 8:45. At 10:30 Mary got her epidural. Funny epidural story. At one point Mary asked me to scratch her left knee. So I started scratching it through the sheets. She said "No under the sheets". So I obliged, and she said "Under both sheets". To which I replied "Honey I am scratching directly on your skin"..."Oh".

At about 1:30 they administered pitocin to speed things up. We got to the pushing stage at 5:00 and we were pretty happy with how things were progressing. Well after more than two and a half hours of pushing little Anika arrived.

If you wish to see more photos go to http://gallery.me.com/brad.zilge#100107 some of the photos seem the same, others don't.

It is Saturday afternoon and Mary still hasn't had any real contractions. We are still waiting and using the time to get things done around the house.

So I spent the day working on the garage. My dad, Weaver and Paul came over to help. The siding is 90% done. The soffit and facia is almost done as well. We might be able to the garage soon.

Looks like we could have had chili fest after all ;)

Due Date

It is Friday October 3rd just a little after noon. Today is our due date, but so far nothing has happened. Mary hasn't had any contractions to speak of. Tomorrow would have been Chili Fest, maybe baby Z will be born on Chili Fest day. Either way, next year she will be voting for daddy's chili.

The Belly

There has been a request for a belly picture. So we shall oblige.