Baby pictures!!

Well, just thought I should make a blog post because if I don't do it, I'll just keep putting it off and then it will be 6 months will go by. Well, I was just thinking and I don't think I posted any pictures of Josephine on this blog! My wife has been stealing all the pictures! Luckily my iTouch takes decent pictures so I can use it and the pictures are safe from here stealing them and posting them on her blog. Well Kayleen woke up with the mother of all headaches on Sunday so I did something very foolish. I decided to take both girls with me to church by myself. Since Josie is still nursing I decided to go to the latin rite nearby. For the first half of mass I was in the church narthex begging Louisa to behave because she was very interested in wondering around. Well, luckily Kayleen's aunt and Uncle were there and I spotted them after the homily so I joined them for the rest of mass and things were so much better. Louisa wouldn't let her great aunt or uncle hold her but she behaved a lot better. It's funny how Louisa takes her time to warm up to people, especially at church. Every sunday she doesn't want to go see grandma or grandpa but when she visits them at their house she is so much friendlier. Maybe it's the suckers. Well, I only talked about Sunday because I took these pictures Sunday morning.

It may be early but it looks like these girls got the same nose.

Josie is such a smilely girl! It's funny but I could get the almost 4 month old to smile but the 2 year old, not so much.

As far as the table goes, I finishes the routing for the table top and stained it but keep forgetting to take picture of the stained parts. Oh well, at least it gives me a reason to blog about something in the future.

Something to brighten your day

On Sunday Kayleen had an Alter Society meeting which meant I got to watch Louisa at church. As we waited in the church hall I pulled out my cell phone to entertain Louisa, she can be pretty vain and loves to see pictures and movies of herself. (Well, it may be more of a fascination of seeing herself on a screen than vanity.) So I casually took a picture of her by putting the phone in front of me and trying to find the button on the phone to take the picture. This is the photo I got. I was pretty surprised because I couldn't see what I was even taking a picture of.

I have a smart phone so I downloaded an app that takes retro looking pictures, that is why the picture looks the way it does.

Happy Birthday Louisa!

Happy Birthday Louisa! For her birthday we let her demolish a piece of cake. She did get some in her mouth but she spread most of it on her face.

She was very happy

There she got some in the mouth

That is delicious! I want this EVERYDAY!

Kayleen and I figure that one day of cake a year should be ok.

Our wild adventures to the south

So this last weekend we went down to the wilds of Oregon to take part in my God-child's baptism. It was so great to see so many of my cousins in over a year. I also got to see my grandma, and Louisa got to see her great grandma for her first time!

It took us a while because Louisa doesn't know left and right and so when I told her to turn left she would turn around and glare at me. I keep forgetting she is only 6 months and doesn't know what left and right are.

Louisa getting to know her cousin Isaac. Apparently she gets to know people by grabbing at their feet.

Here are Gina and Isaac on the right and Louisa and me on the left. (I hope you're ok with this picture, Gina. Kayleen took two pictures and this is the better of the two.)

Louisa getting a few z's in.

Isaac was too.

Here is Henri and Louisa. Louisa has had some "stranger danger" and has started to cry when strangers, typically men, hold her. Henri was able to trick Louisa for a while.

Here is Louisa after she realized that neither mommy or daddy were holding her. She warmed up to Henri later on though. We find that it just takes a little time for her to warm up to guys.

Here is Isaac, clothed in white after his baptism. "All you who have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ! Alleluia."

I don't know why but this picture came out sideways. It didn't when I previewed it. I'm just going to be lazy and make you do the work. If you want to see the picture correctly, please tilt your computer monitor or tilt your head. Or save the picture and rotate the picture yourself.

Louisa got in some good playing time on all of her great-aunt's toys.
Here we are visiting grandma.
Here is our family picture before we left for home.

Here are some videos from our visit to Louisa's great-grandma.

Louisa's first solid food

Louisa is really growing up fast. Last week we gave Louisa her first meal of something other than mommy's milk. (Well, actually it was rice cereal made with mommy's milk.) She is getting used to the spoon, right now she still needs to open her mouth a little more. It seems like she gets more on her face and on the floor than she does in her mouth. But we know she is getting enough to eat because Louisa is finally gaining weight at a normal rate. She has been gaining about an ounce a day for this whole week! Lou is up to 13 lbs 14.5 ounces! We are hoping she moves above the 17 percentile in the weight department. I am missing having a light baby though. It seems like the difference between a 12 pound baby and a 13 pound baby is huge! It seemed like I could carry Louisa all day when she was 12 pounds and now at almost 14 she really puts wear on a person's back.

Busy week

I always seem to be making excuses as to why I haven't blogged. Really it's because I keep putting it off, but this week it seems that Louisa has been taking up all my time.

Louisa and I spent a lot of time saying lines from our favorite movies. Here she is doing the scream from Home Alone. (To be fair, Louisa was more acting our movies that I knew about and am assuming she will like one day. We have not been having her watch hours of tv everyday.)

Here I'm training Louisa to be a formidable xbox player. She really needs to practice more and spend less time eating the controller. I don't think xbox expected their controllers to need to be drool proof.Lastly we took photos to see what Louisa would look like with a huge body or what I would look like with a small head. Not really sure. I just know that it's weird.

My little sassy girl

Here is our little "Sassy" girl.

Slow down Lou

I'm just going to write a quick little blurb. So Louisa just got a new trick of being able to go from her tummy to her back, but today she surprised us and went from her back to her tummy! Unfortunately, out of the three times she did it we didn't get any of them on film. Maybe tomorrow. Kayleen is getting ready to brag to everyone she knows about how Louisa is a child prodigy because in the baby books we have it says that babies might be able to roll over by the time they are four months and that parents should only expect them to roll over in one direction. Well Louisa is mastering both directions at 3 months and a week and 3 days. I am hoping to get film footage because I'm pretty sure there are a lot of doubting Thomases out there thinking that I'm making this up. I'll show you, I'll show you all!

Big moments

Louisa is making big steps in growing up already! yesterday she rolled from her belly to her back! I told Kayleen but she just assumed that I was lying. It took Louisa to prove that her old man is not a liar.

This was the first time Louisa rolled on film.

Here is Louisa's second roll for the camera. She didn't have a lot of patience here.

Oh no! Two losses

Well the mariners are back to the mariners of last year. They blew two games they could have won. One of them was on they should have one. They should have use Felix. After his first game he was projected to win us 162 games! That would have been awesome, although making the year a little anticlimactic.

Here are the season projections for King Felix after the mariners first game.

I don't have any pictures of Louisa to post. I guess I can just give a story from today. As a new dad, I find that babies are naturally very expressive. Louisa tells us a lot by crying, but you can also look into her eyes and you can tell when she is angry with you. Today we went grocery shopping and our goal was to shop while Louisa slept in her car seat with a blanket covering her. Well, this worked at our first stop but not so well at our second stop. Louisa started to cry and the only thing that would calm her down was to be swung in her car seat. Every time I tried to stop she would start to cry again. A few times I would peek in on her, she would be staring strait ahead and had this look on her face. I could tell she was very upset that her nap was being interrupted. She seemed to be thinking "I'm going to make you bounce me in the car seat the whole time we are at the store for punishment for interrupting my nap!!!" I hope Louisa doesn't develop a rebellious teenage attitude before she turns 1.

Also, any prayers for my grandma would be appreciated. She is in the hospital right now.
This is Kayleen and me with my grandma during Thanksgiving break.

A second smile!

Well, I never actually blogged about the first smile but Kayleen caught Louisa's second smile today. (These are smiles while she is awake. She has smiled in her sleep many times.) Sunday was the first time Louisa smiled and it was while Kayleen was holding her. Well today it was my turn. We gave Lou another bath and after her bath we dried her off in a nice warm towel this was the expression she gave me...
Kayleen took this picture. I felt ad about stealing it from her until I saw she used the picture I took of her and Lou and put it on her blog.

Well, to catch up I wanted to thank everyone for their well wishes. Kayleen and I are so happy and grateful to God for giving us such a beautiful child.

I guess I should talk about the things that have been going on since Lou has arrived. Kayleen has been a great new mother. In the first week I think she was very high on the new mother euphoria because she had so much energy and all she wanted to do was to hold a look at Lou. Usually Kayleen would want to be in bed by 7:30 (Well, this might be an exaggeration on my part but still pretty early.) and I was more used to staying up till 3 or 4 in the morning. So I was pretty surprised that Kayleen was staying up late and able to handle the middle of the night feedings. When the lack of sleep started catching up to Kay, (Not me as much because Kayleen let me get my sleep. Thank you honey.) we started making sure to take advantage of Louisa's downtime.

One thing that is pretty amazing is how much newborns poop and pee. Louisa is a very healthy baby and so she has many dirty diapers. Kayleen's grandparents are providing us with a diaper service so we are using clothe diapers and so I now know how to use clothe diapers. This is a skill set that I am trying to use as little as possible.

Here is Lou in her snazzy pink jogging suit which she has not used for jogging.

Here you can see her currently blue eyes. Grandma is hoping that they stay blue.

Here I am with Lou. This is right before she gave me a smile.

Kayleen bought me a book called "The Expectant Father", which is a pretty good book and one that I would recommend for any first time dads. Well, in the book the author tries to describe the feeling he had when he would hold his newborn child and he said it was very difficult to actually put into words. The only way he could describe it was that he wanted to roll his daughter up into a ball and eat her. Well, I can't say I feel exactly like that but I am so happy and feel so blessed to have such a beautiful family. I thank God everyday!

We had a baby!

Well Louisa ended up being a Sunday child just like her mommy. Lou was born Sunday afternoon, as pretty much everyone already knows now, and she weighed in at 8 lbs 9 oz. It was so amazing to see the birth. The whole experience was just awesome.

(Sorry, but this post is kind of random. I'm tired and just have a lot to say and so I wonder a lot in explaining how things went and some of the feelings that day)
When Kayleen was 7 cm dilated both of our mothers decided to go get some coffee and let us relax. Our doctor figured that Kayleen would probably take about 2 hours or more to get fully dilated but an hour after being 7 cm Kayleen asked the nurse to have the doctor come back to see where she was at because Kayleen was feeling a lot of pressure. The doctor came in and said that she was fully dilated and that she needed to get ready to start pushing! This really surprised me. The whole day we were told "Ok, labor for first time mothers on average is 12 hours." so we figured Lou would be born around 9-10 PM. Then when Kayleen was at 7 cm the nurse told us that is typically takes a woman an hour to dilate one cm. Well an hour later Kayleen had dilated 3 cm. When the doctor did say that Kayleen was going to start pushing soon my hands started to shake with excitement.

When Kayleen started pushing they didn't have any straps for her to put her legs into (I don't know if hospitals still use them but it didn't look like any of the rooms had the stirrups thingies.), so I got to hold onto Kayleen's leg through the birth process. It was really amazing to see it happen, and also it went by so fast. Kayleen pushed for all of 32 minutes with no screaming. (On a selfish note, I was happy she didn't scream because I was there holding her leg and she would have been screaming in my ear. And believe me, with three other women in the room, none of them would have cared if a man was uncomfortable or in pain.) Kayleen was very focused during the whole birth process and didn't make a lot of noise.

Well, I was planning on writing more, but it's late and I need to get some sleep while I can. I started this post and have been adding on to it throughout the night and now it is 12:30AM and I need to go to sleep. Enjoy these pictures. The first two were taken the day Lou was born.

Here is little Louisa

Mommy getting acquainted with the little lady who has been in her womb for 9 months.

This was taken last night. Louisa was so alert and was looking all around.

Babies tire you out. It's a fact. But I think they get tired too tiring out their parents.

What to do?

Well, as we approach Louisa's due date I have been trying to think of what day would be a good day for Lou to be born. It just doesn't look like Lou can be born for quite a few weeks. Just look at the next few days:
Tuesday: American Idol Kayleen watches this show and also geema watched the show so she wouldn't be able to come to the hospital.
Wednesday: Same thing as Tuesday.
Thursday: The Office is on. Both Kayleen and I like to watch this show so Lou can't be born this day.
Friday: Psych is on and we keep forgetting to watch the new episodes.
Saturday: It's the weekend and I need to blow off steam by going to the bar. Since I will be a little inebriated, I wont be able to drive Kayleen to the hospital.
Sunday: Kayleen would be happy if Lou was a Sunday child but only 4% of babies (according to Kayleen) are born on their due date. Some people might call her strange.
Monday: This is a possibility but I'll have to look it over just to make sure.
Tuesday: Now we get back into the television schedule. Darn Tv making it so inconvenient to have a kid.

All quiet on the Western front

Kayleen still has not gone into labor yet. It's a little frustrating just because the doctor made it sound like there was a good chance we would have the baby over the weekend so Kayleen and I have been ready to leave at a moments notice to run to the hospital. Well, over the weekend all Kayleen had were those Braxton-Hicks contractions. Then we were sure it would happen in the beginning of the week but we ended up being wrong. Now we are going into our scheduled doctor's appointment. Kayleen was 2cm dilated last time, we are hoping we don't get stuck at the hospital because Kayleen is too dilated.

Also, today is E's birthday, happy birthday E!

Also, today is the anniversary of Roe Vs. Wade decision. This is the day that Pro-Lifers march on the capitol for the rights of the unborn. Recently I have been looking up videos about FOCA, freedom of choice agreement bill, and so I have been looking at the arguments made by the so called "pro-choicers." I get tired of their arguments because if you take a little time to think about them, they are lies. (Also, in case you don't know about FOCA, it's a bill that would lift pretty much every restriction on abortion in every state. I'm surprised that such a bill could abolish a states own rights, it doesn't seem like such a bill is something the founding fathers wanted when they started this country.)

1) "Don't like abortion? Don't have one!"
I have seen several cars with this bumper sticker and this is just an absurd statement. If they think about why people are against abortion, they will realize it's because people believe that the child in the mother is alive and an abortion is murdering that child. So therefore they are saying that we should just ignore the murder of millions of victims that cannot speak for themselves.

2) "Keep you laws off my body!"
This one I was just thinking about recently and now I want to know how people can claim that something that may not have the same blood type and that doesn't have the same DNA as the mother can still be called part of the same body? Looking at it from the fathers perspective I was thinking about how the baby is a little bit of the mommy and a little bit of the daddy. Any woman that days it's still just their body is lying because they are writing off the father completely. In my experience, anti-abortion demonstrations are places where men's voices are not as respected or cared for. I was in a college club at WSU and there were some people who wanted to have an anti-abortion demenstration but the idea was turned down because most of the people in the club were guys and it was decided that abortion was a woman's issue.

3) The coat hanger.
Women will hold posters picturing a coat hanger saying that they don't think it's right that a woman should risk her life to have an abortion. That if it become illegal for abortions then you will still have abortions going on, but many women will die trying to perform this evil act on themselves or in a back ally abortion clinic. To me this is the same as saying that murders need to be protected when they are trying to commit murder.

4) The "pot calling the kettle black" argument.
Some pro-choice supporters (Actually, I'm going to start refering as pro-abortion because I think that people should choose whether they have a child, but once that baby is conceived, that choice has been made.) say "How can you claim to be for life with babies but support death with the death penalty? Therefore you are hipocrits and your voice doesn't count." Well, that last part I added in, but that is the point of their argument it seems. Well, first of all, a lot of people that are pro life, are not supporters of the death penalty. Also, those that do support the death penalty don't support the death of random people but people that have done horrible things that they are deemed a danger to society. It seems like here the pro abortion people are just trying to say that pro-lifers can't claim to have the moral high ground here and they are trying to drag pro-lifers down and claim that they are at the same level.

And to end my post, here is a Glenn McCoy Comic:

Now we can have the baby

Kayleen and I are finally settled into our place and Kayleen feels like we can have the baby now. I in the other hand was not ready until Lou had some home made hats. Luckily we got these hats made, Kayleen added the pink ribbon to the blue hat to make it more girly. These hats were made on Kayleen's new loom set that I bought her for Christmas, so I guess I kind of had a part in making them.

Also, I thought I would post these videos of the GI Joe public service announcements. At the end of every GI Joe cartoon they would have a public service announcement telling kids to not take medicine without their parents knowledge and not getting into cars with strangers and other things like that. Well, some guys recut these endings and re-dubbed them and came up with some very interesting clips. (Just a warning, these is some swearing and also, if you are not interested in silly internet videos then you would probably not be interested in these videos.)



And here is part two:

Beware! Nesting woman!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get in trouble with my blog post title, but Kayleen and I went to the doctor's today for her weekly checkup and we were told that Kayleen is more than likely going to deliver early, in fact she said any day now! We finished moving everything into our new apartment today, but we still need to unpack and finish setting up for Lou. This has sent Kayleen into uber nesting mode. As Kayleen's friends know, she usually goes to bed pretty early but tonight she had lots of energy and is panicking a little bit hoping that everything is ready when Lou comes.

Tonight Lou was kicking a lot. Kayleen thinks it's because she is getting tired of being cooped up in for so long and that she is anxious to get out. It was pretty amazing though to see her kick because you didn't need to feel for her kicks, but you could see her foot pressing through and you could almost grab her foot too. (Which reminds me a story my Aunt Jan told us about when she was pregnant and her baby pushed their foot out so much that she was actually able to hold onto their foot.) I pressed back (don't worry, I didn't push very hard) on Lou's foot. I wonder what she was thinking, if she would think that it is someone else. I know babies hear voices and can recognize their mother's voice after they are born, but do they realize that there are people out there? I've heard that is takes a while for babies to even become self aware, so I'm not sure. I wonder if Lou put any thought into the pressure she felt as she tried to stretch mommy's tummy into odd shapes.

Getting ready for baby

I should probably start this posting wishing my sister a happy birthday. Happy Birthday Katie! Hope you have a great day!


I can't believe it's the middle of January already! It seems like B-day, birth-day, is approaching at a million miles an hour. (Not sure if that makes sense, but it approaching very quickly. I hope this clarification makes you happy Pat.) Kayleen has been somewhat in nesting I guess, but she is frustrated that she can't really prepare properly because we have not yet moved into out apartment yet, we are sort of in apartment limbo right now waiting for our place to get cleaned up and some minor remodeling finished up.

Well, I started writing this post while I was getting my oil changed but when I got back, I put off finishing the post and now it's Wednesday and we have started moving into our new place. Kayleen is excited and is very happy with the new apartment. (It would be impossible not to be pleased with it, it's one of the best apartments in the building.) But the nice thing is that we will have a room with all of Lou's stuff. We are pretty much all prepared for her now, we just bought a little sleeper so that Lou is safe while she sleeps with us on the bed. (Below is a picture of the sleeper, although it doesn't come with a baby like the picture on the box says. But it does come with a little nightlight which I'm sure will come in handy for Kayleen for midnight feedings.)
This was one of our few costs that we had, our families and friends have been very supportive and have bought us pretty much everything that we needed. (Thanks mom and dad for the stroller and the car seat, and thanks to my in-laws for the clothes, mattress, humidifier and something that Kayleen says that I'm not allowed to mention.) Now that we have all of the stuff, Kayleen and I are finishing up on studying on child birth and things that would be good for us to know when Lou is born. One thing that I never thought about was that this Sunday Kayleen could have Lou and she wouldn't be a preemie. So far there are no signs that Kayleen is going to go into labor tonight (but now Murphy's law says that she will.) it didn't help when Kayleen had us watch a video about the final months of pregnancy and one of the women in the documentary went into labor at 37 weeks with her first baby.

It will be nice tomorrow to be finally settled into our new place. I am so excited for the arrival of Lou. The whole pregnancy has gone by so quickly, it seems like it was just last week that we found out that we were going to have a baby and now we are going to be able to meet our baby girl for the first time face to face.

To finish off this post, here is a picture of the Puget Sound.

Election day is one day away! EEK! And a baby update!

I actually wrote everything after this paragraph first, but Kayleen started talking about the baby with one of her friends and I thought I would talk a bit about Louisa. Kayleen is excited that Louisa has been kicking more and more and also the kicks are getting stronger. Yesterday Louisa decided to get some exercise and was going crazy in there. The kicks were so strong that they were easy for me to see. I think she is trying to stretch Kayleen out a bit so that she has more room because she has been growing quite a bit now. Kayleen still refuses to either swallow a ball for Louisa to play with or to have a surgeon put on in Kayleen. Louisa must be so bored in there, I feel sorry for her. I try to talk to her, but not only are the conversations one sided, I have a feeling she has no idea what I'm talking about. I think Kayleen may like it better if she doesn't know what I'm talking about.

Tomorrow we get to find out, at least we should be able to find the results, of a multiple of important issues being decided. Obviously the biggest issue is the next president of the USA, but almost as important for us up in Washington is the issue of I-1000. But going back to the presidential election, this was just posted last Friday by a woman who was a democratic speech writer who is said to have written speeches for Barrack Hussein Obama and his wife Michelle as well as Hilary Clinton and John Edwards and John Kerry. But she has become with the whole democrat campaign and has defected the Obama campaign for the McCain campaign. She states that it was for a number of reasons but the biggest reason was the way it treated Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, people she thought the democrat party champiogned. If a speech writer for the democrat party is abondoning the Obama campaign, I wonder if there are many more?

Also, there is a video of Obama talking about McCain, and here he shows what a classy guy he (Obama) is.


And also, here is Obama earlier in the year talking about how he is going to tax the coal industry so much in order to get rid of the coal industry really.

My baby likes...

Recently Kayleen has been worried about Louisa because the last few days she has not been kicking as much as she had been before. She was starting to worry, like any other soon-to-be mother I would imagine. But last night I was programming and I started playing some music. I started playing a song by Carrie Underwood called American Girl, Kayleen likes that song, especially since we are having a girl, and Louisa started kicking like crazy again. I guess she is a big Carrie Underwood fan, just like her grandma.

Also, on Wednesday, xkcd had this cartoon.
I found it especially funny because I was trying to play an episode I had bought on iTunes and apparently I had already selected the 5 machines to run my shows on. That was a little frustrating. I guess I should think about the lesson of the cartoon.

To end this entry, I'll ask a riddle. Lets say that there is a hallway. You are at one end of the hallway with three light switches. Each switch goes to a light bulb in a room at the other end of the hallway. You need to find out which switch goes to which bulb. You can flip the light switches on and off as much as you want, but you can't see the light from the bulbs coming from the room. Also, you can only go into the room once. I'll give you the answer later.

Lazy Sunday

Well, I've been trying to keep up my blog, but it continues to be a hassle to get the internet and to think of things to blog about. Unfortunately for me, I'm probably going to go through my blogging ideas rather quickly. The good news is that I have a test coming up this week and two more the following week, so I should be able to think of quite a few things to blog about to to keep me distracted from studying.

Well, seeing as it is football Sunday, the Seahawks played today against Bridget's Giant's. Well, the Seahawks showed up, but they didn't play a very good game. Congratulations for your Giant's win Bridget. I'm just going to block out this game, or maybe even this who Seahawk season and think of the glory season where the super bowl was stolen from us. (I tend to hold grudges and I will not root for the Steelers still, even though you could argue that I should just be upset with the refs.)

We also went to a country swing dance last night!!!

Pat surprised me with a picture. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Pat actually smiled!!! I think it was because he got to feed his constant need for power by being able to control the play list for the dance. I was hoping to be able to do it but people thought the three hours of the hamster dance would not be as awesome as I thought it would be.

Well, on the baby front, Louisa has been kicking mama more and more. Kayleen doesn't mind it when she kicks her, but anyone else does it and she throws a fit. I personally think that she has a double standard. Also, she can discipline her later after she is born. Discipline being making her take out the trash and cleaning the house. I'll suggest that we wait till she is older because when she is older, we will be able to get better work out of her.

But, back to the kicking, I haven't been able to feel a lot of them, but I have felt a few of the kicks. Kayleen says that she thinks they are still kind of shallow kicks, so I'll have to wait another month or so before the kicks will be easier to feel. (For other people to feell that is.)