Joys of Parenthood: First Bath

It sure looked a lot easier in the hospital when the nurses did it! Carrig had his first bath tonight and he seemed to like getting his big body washed. Other than a sponge bath earlier this week this was all the cleaning this kid got in a two week period. Does this make us bad parents?? It was definitely a two person job to hold his 9 lbs frame while cleaning him, all while trying to avoid letting his head go under water.

The Joys of parenthood #3: Irony

How can it possibly happen this way? Is Carrig already plotting against his parents? It sure feels that way this morning.

Carrig has been the ideal baby for all 11 days of his life: eating well, sleeping well, being cute. He really doesn't have much more to do right now and he seems to have mastered all three quickly. Yesterday we were given permission to let him sleep through the night or to at least wake up on his own without the help of a 3:00am alarm. Kristin and I were obviously excited and the night was looking promising until about 11:30. Around this time Carrig decided that day 11 wasthe best time to strengthen his lungs and practice his screaming abilities...until about 7:00am this morning. Needless to say, I am running on about 2hrs of sleep for what was supposed to be my first full day back at the lab. (Does anyone want to come set up PCR's for me?)

Here's hoping tonight goes more smoothly.

Test

Testing testing testing. Can I upload images from my phone? Trial four.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

New photos -

Photos from Carrig's first inter-state trip are now up on the Picassa page. Please take a look.

And just in case anyone as wondering, Carrig travels very well. Made it to Central NY in about 4.5hrs and back in around 5. Unfortunately, our pee schedules just didn't align on the return voyage.

The Joys of Parenthood #2: The Family Photo

I have never quite appreciated the subtle skills of the Sears portrait studio staff until now. At first glance it just appears that a professional has come in to set up the lighting, focus, and field of view just to then hand the camera off to the lowly high school student looking to make a few bucks. However, I now realize that this misses one important component of the whole picture taking experience: crowd control.

With our new baby has come the need to document all of his happenings and all of the new people that he meets, most importantly the grand parents and family. Below are the series of pictures that it took to get one reasonable family portrait with four grown adults and one baby. In total I think this took about five minutes but likely resulted in about 5 years being taken off of the end of my life.


Oops. I am actually more than a head taller than Kristin. Do over.


Crap. The 10second delay wasn't on.


This picture was supposed to be sans dog. Please move Rogger. Anna get your head out of the picture.


MOM! Yes the baby is crying. Please focus on the camera for 10seconds. Its JUST ten seconds.


There it is. Near perfection. All eyes open and looking at the camera. No dogs. My head of not chopped off. Awesome picture.

A special thanks to the sandwich maker at Panera that snapped this picture for us:


A few eyes were closed but this is a great memory nonetheless. If it took five tries to get four adults lined up, I did not want to pull this generous sandwich artist away from his work for the time it would take to simply get all eight pairs of eyes open for this shot.

Spur of the moment trip to see granny and gramps sanger. Its carrig's first road trip. Be back tomorrow night.

The Joys of Parenthood #1

This is likely a post that many parents can already relate to. Despite the potential cliche I am posting it anyway. WARNING: This post borders on too-much-information overload.

One night Kristin was feeding Carrig on the couch with Anna curled up under Carrig's legs taking an evening nap. All was going well until Carrig got a little restless. He wouldn't feed and he something was clearly wrong. His eyes went wide. The sound that followed was along the lines of 65 year old man the morning after shooting beer with prune juice chasers. Poor Anna nearly jumped out of her skin and sprung to the back of the couch. We could have heard this ass-plosion from the other end of the house. Kristin and I then looked at one another in compete horror as we realized that this diaper was put on solely by ME without QC inspection from Kristin. This stare continued for a moment as we waited for any moisture to be felt on Kristin's leg. Luckily, with quick response, this disaster was averted, Carrig's expression relaxed and he went back to feeding as if nothing had happened.

Carrig's first week -

Whew - take a deep breathe. Carrig is a great kid but there is so much to learn, so much to worry about, and, in turn, so much that one quickly realizes that one shouldn't worry about. Each day seems to present a new challenge: Where is the fine line too much weight loss and just enough weight loss. A billirubin of 12, what does that mean? Pee on the wall, pee on the floor, pee on Curious George - how do you clean Curious George? It seems like everyday we ask ourselves questions that we didn't know people even asked before having a Carrig. I hope to use this blog to let our friends and family know what's new in the world of Carrig and to keep you all abreast of our new adventures in parenthood. If this first week is a good indication of what's to come, there should be no shortage of things to discuss.

Since this is my first post, lets review some of the details:
Carrig Porter Sanger
Born at Mt. Auburn Hospital (Rm 1 in case you were wondering)
2:41am on January 10, 2010

Carrig - Gaelic for "rock" or "stone"
Porter- one who carries heavy loads, often in the mountains or hotels (ignore the hotels part, that's kind of lame)

From what we are told, Kristin's body "is made for making babies." (From Mercy the delivery nurse) As far as first pregnancies go, Kristin apparently had a pretty smooth delivery. Her water broke at 8:30pm, at the hospital by 9:15, epidural at 12:00am, and baby at 2:41. The only small hitch was the lack of an available delivery room the night we arrived at the hospital due to the 24 babies born in the previous 48hrs. Luckily everything went smoothly and Carrig joined us later that morning.

So stay tuned for more random thoughts, funny stories at least to a couple of new, inexperienced parents, and other anecdotes about raising this new kiddo. It promises to be an adventure.