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Sad day for the Hokie Nation. I’ve been following this story all day, in total disbelief. Seeing the campus that I called home for five years all over the news in this context is surreal.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims.

Virginia Tech should be known everywhere as being a great academic and research school, as well as having a beautiful campus, a great football team and an incredible student and alumni community.

Now, it will be known for this.

And of course, the media was so quick to toss blame to people other than the idiot who killed 32 people, pissing me off to no end.

In general, I would say that Julia has taken to being a big sister very well. There have been a couple of minor incidents (like claiming the crib and pack-n-play to be her own whenever Sofia takes a nap in them), but we really couldn’t be happier with how she has acted over the last week.

She often wants to hold Sofia, but if we give her a reason why she can’t, she accepts it without much resistance. We sometimes use it as a reward for letting us brush her teeth before bed or for cooperating with a diaper change, which seems to work very well.

She hasn’t complained at all about Mommy not being able to spend as much time with her and she has willingly come along when I have needed to take her on errands (which is an adjustment - but not necessarily a bad one - I’m having to make myself).

Yesterday, we went to Grandma and Granddad’s house for Easter. Julia’s cousin Trini was very friendly when we arrived, but Julia needed some time to warm up. Eventually, she did and you can see from the photo above that they had a lot of fun running around the house.

Tomorrow will hopefully be our first chance to catch up on some things we need to do around the house, as Julia will be going to Tia’s house for the day.

Julia visits her sister at the hospital on Wednesday…

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Experimenting with a new video sharing site…

Here’s some video from Julia’s second birthday. This was during the sugar-rush stage after most people had left…

Make an on-line slide show at onetruemedia.com

Someone told me that taking care of two kids is much more that twice as difficult as taking care of one. We only had two kids to take care of for about two hours today and I can already say that this person was absolutely right.

We brought Sofia home today a little after 3 p.m. and I went to pick Julia up from Tia’s house around 5. Before dinner (pasta from our favorite local Italian spot, because neither Melissa - tired and busy feeding Sofia - nor I - not exactly the cooking type - were able to cook dinner), Julia was going to watch some TV and Melissa was going to feed Sofia (again). Melissa needed a pillow for support, but Julia wouldn’t let her have the one next to her. When I went to get another pillow, Julia wanted that one too. This led to a meltdown.

Obviously, we’re going to need to learn to adjust.

After dinner (for Julia and I - Melissa wouldn’t have hers until later), we were all sitting on the couch watching Julia’s Little People DVD and I was checking my email. Then I realized that there were dirty dishes on the table and clean dishes in the dishwasher, so I needed to take advantage of the time.

But as I was putting away dishes, Julia started to fall off the couch, face first. Melissa (still feeding Sofia) stuck her foot out to prevent Julia from falling. She did, but Julia was left with a mark under her eye.

Fortunately, Tia came over for Julia’s bath time. So, she was bathing her while I made her bed and put her clean laundry away and Melissa fed Sofia (again).

I have no idea how one person could watch both of them for more than 25 minutes (the length of a Dora episode) and I have a feeling we’re going to be relying on the TV more than we ever have.

Otherwise, the day went well (except for Sofia never sleeping more than 15 minutes at a time from midnight to 7 a.m. last night). Julia loved her big sister gift. In fact, as I was getting ready to read a book to her before bedtime, she said, “I wanna play basketball.” And she said the same thing after the book whe it was time to lay down.

She’s doing pretty well with bedtime now. Today, it took less than 15 minutes for her to go to sleep, despite the loss of power midway, causing the Beatles to shut off completely in her room.

I have more pictures, but they (along with catching up with the outside world) will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m afraid of another night like last night, where a full hour of sleep never comes, so I’m going to bed now.

A few pics from today…

Sleeping. Except for a stretch from 2-6 a.m. last night, she’s been doing a lot of it.

Sleeping off a meal.

“I wanna hold da baby sister.”

The girls.

So right after I posted below, the doctor (different on that we thought) came in, said that M was fully dilated and broke her water. That was around 9:00.

She left and the nurse told Melissa to wait until she felt the need to push. Around 9:30, we brought the nurse back in as M was feeling some pressure.

On the second round of pushing, the baby started to come out and the nurse couldn’t call the doctor in quick enough. So, Sofia Rae Schuhmann was born at 9:36 a.m. before the doctor arrived.

The nurse told us later that it was her first delivery in 5 years.

Sofia weighs 7 lbs., 6 oz. And of course, she’s beautiful. She’s got some hair, but probably not as much as Julia had.

Mommy and baby are doing well.

We’re waiting for the doctor (same one who delivered Julia) to come around and check the progress. He’ll likely break her water (like with Julia, it hasn’t broken on its own) and then the process will speed up. Best guess for delivery time might be 10:30 or so.

They increased the epidural a bit around 7:30, so M can barely feel the contractions now. We’ve all been trying to get some sleep.

Blackberry blogging…

Melissa started having contractions at 2 a.m. today and they were clearly stronger than the few she had in the morning over the past few days.

Abuela came over to stay with Julia and we left for the hospital at 3:45. The contractions were very painful by the time we got to the hospital and she was 6 cm. Fortunately, the epidural was done around 4:45.

Since then, she has been able to feel the contractions, but the pain is minimal. Right now, we’re just trying to get some rest. Tia is here providing support.

Today’s the day!