Tears, laughter and yard work

Tears - Hannah got her second set of shots on the 8th. I think I am more upset about the experience then she is. While she has probably long since forgotten about the whole thing, I am terrified of the next set. I feel like an absolute monster holding her leg still so they can cruelly jab her muscle with this horrendous looking needle. and not just once but three times. The health nurse also raised some concerns about the shape of Hannah's head. She may have to see a specialist, but I was supposed to get a phone call early this week, and so far the phone has been silent.

Laughter - Hannah laughed for the first time on the Monday (11th). Definitely a moment I will treasure for a long time to come. Once she figured it out she just kept on laughing over and over again for about five minutes. Each time she laughed she would just have this huge smile on her face. I think she shocked herself at the sounds she was making. She hasn't laughed again, but now that she has it figured out I am sure she will use it again when she wants to charm us into playing with her.

yard work - This one is pretty self explanatory, With spring comes yard work. We spent last weekend getting our yard ready for the summer. I raked while Dan pruned our apple tree and attempted to level the ground in the back of our yard where I am hoping to have a garden this summer. I was hoping to have one last summer too, so ask me again in August about my garden.

My wife: The ultimate hostess

Well somebody sure had been busy in the last few weeks...

Carmen planned a pleasant little surprise dinner party for my 25th birthday!

And what a dinner it was:

1. White Bean dip
2. Stuffed Mushrooms
3. Mushroom and Leek soup
4. Lasagna with Ceasar Salad
5. Gourmet French Vanilla ice cream strawbery and balsamic vinegar topping
6. Chocolate Mocha Cheesecake

If you think that this sounds like an elaborate meal, it certainly was! Even more incredible is that Carmen made EVERY dish from scratch. For those of you that missed out on the Mocha Cheescake: Boy did you ever miss out! Oh well, more for me I guess :)

Birthday Blues

There once was a time when I used to laugh at all of those silly people that made such a big deal about getting another year older. I could never really understand what exactly their problem was with having been on this earth for yet another year.

Over the past few days, that shoe has managed to find itself snugly in place on the other foot. Today marks my 25th birthday and I am finding myself surprisingly unhappy about this unavoidable incident.

Traditionally, birthdays are supposed to be a day to look back on the previous year and reflect on everything that has happened. When I look back on the past year, I can't help but realize how truly blessed I have been. Carmen and I were blessed with a beautiful, happy and healthy baby girl. I accepted a new job that has given me more time and energy to spend on my new family. And most importantly, I remain in good health.

So why am I so glum? I really have no idea. Perhaps it's the knowledge that I am now a quarter of a century old. Maybe it's the thought that at 25, there is no longer any mistaking that I am, in fact, an adult (Never mind me being proud about owning a house and a minivan). Or maybe it's just my head playing some kind of a nasty little trick on me. Well, whatever the case, I'm sure that this feeling will pass in a few more days and stay gone until that dreaded 40th birthday (or perhaps the somewhat less stressful 30)...

Home sweet, home

As much as I enjoyed visiting with my family I'm not going to complain about being home again. I hope everybody had a good weekend, I now we sure did. Hannah did surprisingly well with the travelling. She slept the whole way going there, although she was some what fussy on the way home, who wouldn't be after such an exciting weekend. Well I guess now that Easter is over it is time to plan for Dan's birthdat, anybody got any ideas on how we should celebrate him being around a quarter of a century.

Snow snow, go away

I just have to make a complaint about the never ending snow. Just last week I was telling my Mother what wonderful weather we were having here in Alberta. I think I jinxed it because the next day it started snowing and forgot to stop. I had hopes that yesterday was the end of it, but I woke up this morning to a blizzard that is stronger then ever. The worst part of all this snow is it has caused the air in our house to reach a new level of dryness. Hannah suffers from ecyzema, a trait passed down from her father, the dry air in the house has caused her to break out into one big giant rash. Well perhaps a slight exaggeration but not to far off. While her legs and back are still clear, her chest, face, and arms are looking quite sore.

Three months already?

I read somewhere that babies sleep better when they can hear their mothers breathing, because it more closely resembles being in the womb. I think that person got it wrong, and it's the mother's who sleep better. Since moving her to her own room, I have caught myself waking up in the middle of the night trying to hear the sound of her breathing. When my memory returns and I realize that she is all the way across the hall, I can't help but feel lonely. She is growing up to fast. It has only been three short months, and she has doubled in size, begun sleeping through the night, and has adjusted to sleeping in her own room. I can't even begin to imagine how much change another three months will bring. While I am looking forward to each new milestone Hannah reaches, I also can't help but want to go back to those first few weeks and just take things a little slower.

Hannah - Circa 3 Months

Remember to click on the image to see more pictures

Sorry

I must apologize for my horrible neglect of this site. It is amazing how quickly time can fly by. I find it hard to believe it has been three weeks since we last updated. So I guess I will give a quick update as to what has happened since Feb. 19;

Hannah came off her Caffeine on the 23rd, and then had a sleep test on the 28th. In order to pass the sleep test she could only be 15% periodic. (Periodic meaning she has periods where she holds her breath temporarily causing her oxygen levels to decline) Hannah actually failed the test as she was 19% periodic, however the Dr. decided against putting her back on the caffeine as she has grown so much and appears to be thriving despite being periodic.

We went to Edson this last weekend, it was an enjoyable weekend, and I think Hannah got to meet the whole town of Edson. We got some great pictures which hopefully Dan will post tonight, I've been bugging him since we got back.

Since coming back from Edson we have been putting Hannah in her own crib instead of the bassinet. The transition was actually a lot easier then I thought it would be. She almost seems more relaxed in the crib, and has actually started sleeping right through the night. I still have to get up and give her her soother occasionally but she has been going 10-11 hrs without eating these last few nights. Hopefully as she adjusts to not getting fed in the middle of the night, I wont have to get up so often to plunk her soother back into her mouth.

And that brings us to today. Hannah had her three month appointment today, and I am glad to say she is doing great. She is 12lbs 2ounces, and 56cm. Developmentally the Doctor placed her closer to one month old instead of three, but he said he would expect that seeing how she was two months early. Size wise it is hard to tell she was early, but when considering her behavior there are still signs of prematurity.

Hannah - Circa 2 months

Remember to click on the image to see more pictures

blaaahh

That is what i have to say about the flu. I have been suffering from the never ending flu since Tuesday. I was debated as to whether it was the flu or food poisenning, i have now settled on the flu, as i have apperently passed it onto Hannah, judging from her extremely grumpy behavior. This a scenario I never thought about pre-parenthood. Here i am trying to nurse myself back to health, but instead of relaxing I am doing twice as much trying to comfort Hannah. While I am complaining, I don't really mind as Dan was great and took over the night time feedings when i was at my worst. So if anybody has information as to how long this flu lasts, let me know so I can have somthing to set my sights on.

Baby Shower

I would like to thank Maureen and Michelle Yaehne for hosting a baby shower for Hannah this last weekend. We had a great time, and we appreciate all of the hard work that went into making it such an enjoyable evening. I would also like to thank everybody for all of their great gifts, We our now completely outfitted for caring for an infant. I would also like to extend a thankyou to Lynne, Katy, and Colleen for their parts in arranging the shower.

immunizations :(

Well, Hannah got her two months immunizations today, and I have to say it wasn't as bad as I had imagined it would be. She was greatly upset by the first two shots, and exercised her very well developed lungs. But thankfully shortly after the third shot she calmed right down and went to sleep. So now I can expect a slightly crankier then usual daughter for the next few days. A fair trade off for the knowledge that she is safe from certain life threatening diseases. On a much more positive note, Hannah slept for a full seven hours last night. I view this as a pivotal moment in my attempts to get some real sleep, as just last week she was waking up every 2 to 3 hrs. Of course now the challenge is to convince her that night time is 8 to 8, and not 12 to 12. And for those people who like to keep up to date with Hannah's stats, she is now 10 lbs 2 oz, and 22 inches. I can't believe she has pretty much doubled her weight already.

Babies: The Forgotten Weed

It's funny how perspectives change once you have a child of your own. It's always amazed me how quickly people younger than myself have always seemed to grow up so fast. For instance, it's hard to believe that children that I remember from when they were in diapers are now in Junior high. Despite my amazement, I could always reason through it by thinking about how many years it has been since I had really SEEN them.

Now HANNAH on the other hand, is a completely different story. I do her morning change, and maybe her morning feeding, go to work and come home 8 1/2 hours later only to find that Hannah has gotten noticeable longer. (Kinda like all those weeds in my backyard in the summer...). Hardly any of the clothes that swam on her when she first came home from the hospital even FIT her anymore, and her awake times are becoming more and more entertaining as she starts to discover that her voice can be used for something other than crying.

Six week checkup

Tuesday was Hannah's six week checkup, and I am glad to say she is starting to look like any other six week old baby. According to the Doctor's chart, at 8lbs 12oz she is on the low end of normal for a six week old baby, but if corrected for the fact the she was 8 weeks premature, she is actually on the very high end of the scale. Despite her sizeable weight gain, at 50cm her length still shows that she is, in fact, a premature baby, which is normal if you correct for her prematurity but doesn't even register on the chart if for a full-term, six week old baby. This may make you think that she is a very fat baby, but I can assure you that she looks like a perfectly happy, healthy little girl - Just not quite as lanky as she used to be.

Website Update (Warning high Geek Factor)

The most obvious change is that I have added my all-time favorite picture as the background for the site - Please let me know what you think of it.

For all the geeks out there:

I have finally fixed that last nagging problems preventing the site from being XHTML 1.1 Compliant. There were two HTML 4.01 elements that aren't supported in XHTML 1.1:

1. The <strike> and/or <s> tags
2. The onerror attribute for the <img> tag

The fix to the <strike> problem was pretty straight forward, I just had to use the <em> tag with the appropriate style attributes.

The fix to the onerror attribute was a little more tricky and required some changes to the JavaScript behind my slideshow images. As a side-effect, I have also fixed the problem where all of the images shared a single index (so if you stopped viewing image set #1 after the third image, the next time you clicked on another image, it would load the fourth image of that series). Please feel free to take a look at the page source to see how I did it, it was really quite simple, but considering my limited Javascript experience, I was pretty happy about the outcome.

Once again, please fell free to share any advice or feedback you might have :)

Hannah - A Professional Take

For those of you who either wouldn't have known or haven't figured it out yet. Carmen's sister Angela and her husband Marc were out for the weekend. Having them here was great! I really enjoyed watching them with Hannah, and best of all, Angela brought her trusty camera and took about 100 pictures of her. The picture I posted yesterday is probably my favorite, but here are another bunch. One Two of these 17 18 images wasn't weren't taken by Angela or with her Camera, can you guess which one it is ones they are? ;)

It's nice to have a photographer in the family

Hannah - Images to satify the angry mob Mom

Hannah - Christmas photos

Where did the last week and half go?

Wow, it's hard to believe that it's been almost 2 weeks since our last post. Needless to say, lots has been happening in our little world. Christmas came, and Christmas went: Carmen's dad came out the day Hannah came home (talk about timing!), my family was here Christmas Day and Boxing Day, some friends from WAY out of town came in for New Year's Eve, and we had a social dinner with some friends tonight.

For those of you who were otherwise unaware (and those that simply don't care), I am smack in the middle of changing jobs. My last day at 5D was Friday, and I start at Global IQ tomorrow today. While I have every confidence that this move will be beneficial for our entire family, I still have that nagging little voice deep inside screaming at me for leaving a sure thing just to pursue a little bit of happiness in my career. Thankfully a supportive wife, friends, and a few sympathetic co-workers have helped in smothering suppressing the little bugger.

Hopefully the new job year and new job will give me more time, energy and patience to enjoy the more pleasant things in life: My wife, my daughter, and of course my computer ;)

The holidays saw a lot of nice photo opportunities, hopefully tomorrow I will have a chance to upload some more and post them for all to see.