before he said and she said, now they say things together…
By mike
kyden was born a month and a couple of days ago. he came into the world at 7#8oz. in this time he has soared to a whopping 10#10oz. the kid can eat. so he’s growing up quick and has outgrown all of his newborn clothes already.
if i had to guess, we have probably gone through about 600 diapers this last month. it’s sort of insane how many of these things we are going through and it does not seem like the rate at which these diapers are being consumed will go down anytime soon.
it seems like it’s been a long time and he has grown from a fragile and frail little baby to a sturdy little tyke. everyone says that they have at one point dropped their baby, but so far there have been no accidents on this front. this is something that i’m particularly happy about because i’ve tripped on koda a few times while carrying kyden. there were times when i thought that kyden, koda, or myself would surely have had some kind of accident of some kind, but we have all been lucky so far.
they say that life completely changes after the birth of your child, and it’s true. though i do complain about being tired, christi bears the far greater burden. she is the one that is up all day nursing the hungry boy. how he manages to eat so much boggles my mind, but his diaper consumption is proof that he is eating and eating well.
i ordered a new hard drive the other day and it arrived. grand plans to install the hard drive into the desktop seem to have faded away, and instead are replaced with little moments of joy when the house is still and i can hear myself think. it seems that that hard drive may sit in its box for a little while longer.
it’s been a long journey so far, one that started with near-panic when he is screaming and not knowing what is wrong to still not knowing, but being too tired to panic. still, it is those moments when he smiles where it’s all worth it. poo and all.
By mike
this weekend was spent cleaning up and tying up loose ends. the garage has been cleaned and i probably could put 1 car in it right now, i need to get rid of a couple more bulky items and then we’ll be in the clear.
the recycling bin is full again and i found a bunch of door levers that we had registered for our wedding. i replaced all of the interior door levers in our house over the weekend and now every door in the house looks new. the new levers are cool, but they don’t open quite as easily as the old ones used to. subsequently, i have ran into a door a couple of times expecting them to open.
we’re rounding the corner now and getting into the last month or so of the pregnancy. it’s time to start packing a hospital bag and installing the car seats into the car. i keep telling christi that she should start packing the bag and she keeps telling me that i should pack it. i tell her that she probably shouldn’t trust me to pack the bag if she cares about wearing clothes that match.
apparently, i am supposed to pack stuff for myself, as well. people tell me that i should bring food for myself. the hospital has internet, so i guess i’ll bring a laptop as well.
By mike
today is the day of the hospital tour. we were supposed to do it earlier, but there was some kind of conflict of plans and so we rescheduled it. prior to the hospital tour, we are supposed to fill out a bunch of paperwork. filling this paperwork out now will alleviate the need to fill all of this stuff out when we are rushing the hospital.
by this time, we are supposed to have found a pediatrician (we have) and are supposed to put his information in the paperwork. we interviewed two pediatricians and picked the one that we liked better. both were very close to us.
during this tour we are going to learn where to go, what to do, and hopefully what things we need to bring with us. i’ve already started my list of things that i am bringing. the list is short, but important: camera, video camera, phone, and charger. there’s still a bag of christi’s stuff that we need to pack. i’m not sure just yet what it is that we are going to be bringing.
so things are shaping up. the nursery furniture is pretty much all taken care of and we are in the midst of trying to figure out where best all of the furniture should go. we have a couple of things left to buy and then we should be pretty much set.
By mike
we’re going on our first pediatrician interview today. we will be asking a host of questions to find out if this pediatrician is the right one for us. it appears that there are not many pediatricians near us, though, so if this one doesn’t work out, then we may have to go farther than we would like to visit the doctor.
that being said, growing up, i remember that i had to go almost an hour away to visit my pediatrician. the doctor’s office was far away, but he was referred to us by someone because he had specialized in some kind of skin condition that i had had back then. i would get these unexplained rashes and he would treat them symptoms.
i really hated doctors growing up. i remember this one time i was crying so hard because i had to get a shot while at the doctor’s office. so traumatic. i don’t know how a parent will be able to comfort a child and make the child not be scared of the doctor. it must be such a scary experience.
By mike
yikes, it’s nearly been a month since the last post, i guess things have been pretty busy over here. well, preparations for the baby are coming along, i think we are at a stage now where we are just waiting for a few things.
we have ordered the gliding chair which they say can take 8-10 weeks for delivery! that means that the chair will arrive right around when the baby is due. paul told me that his chair came the day before leeya gave birth so the timing really worked out. it might come down to the wire for us, too.
the baby shower is quickly approaching, too. we decided against a co-ed baby shower for a couple of reasons:
1) i think it’s weird that couples have co-ed baby showers. baby showers have traditionally been a female thing and as christi has discovered after being married to me, i’m surprisingly traditional.
2) if we did a co-ed baby shower, it would be huge. our friends plus significant others would have made it impossible to do that baby shower at my parent’s place. it would have been a zoo.
so, christi is having an all-girl baby shower. it sounds like christi still wants me to go to it though, she is disguising it as an opportunity for me to take pictures of the event, but, really, i think it’s because she wants me to be there.
By mike
i knew after i setup this blog that there would be long lapses before i would update again. it’s been tough trying to keep up to date with any social network, let alone find some time to blog. my blog has been woefully neglected and it seems the only time i have to contribute anything into the land of social networks is via twitter.
but let me say that i’m busy for a reason! work has ramped up again and i have been pretty swamped there. but i’ve also been busy because i have been setting up the nursery!
By mike
christi has been encouraging koda to eat spiders. if she sees a spider, she tells koda to go get it! instead of stomping on it with his paw like i thought he would, he went up and just ATE IT.
i don’t get it, but he doesn’t seem to be grossed out by it. i think he may even like the challenge of food that he has to chase. i’ve seen him do it once already and christi tells me that she is going to keep encouraging him to eat them. she reasons that it is better that he eats them than the spiders eating us.
next time i see him eat a spider, i’m going to encourage him to give christi a big kiss. ewwww!
By mike
we don’t know what happened, but koda chipped a tooth pretty bad the other day. we had it looked at and his vet said that he would recommend pulling the tooth. christi, unsure about whether or not to pull the tooth, made an appointment with a doggy dentist for a consult. yes. you read that right. a doggy dentist.
the doggy dentist told us that since the chipped tooth was so bad (down to the root), he recommends getting his tooth pulled. he also informed us that koda has two extra teeth in his mouth, so he would have recommended pulling a tooth or two anyway so that it gives some room for the rest of the teeth to grow. dog’s teeth don’t fully mature until 18 months, so koda has some time for the rest of his teeth to grow.
right now, he’s got a big gap in the front of his mouth!
By mike
so let’s recap a little about what has been going since the he said/she said blog ended…
OCT08: to celebrate our one year anniversary, we went on a (delayed) honeymoon trip to italy. i think that when i told christi that we were going to go to italy, she was shocked. i don’t think that she was expecting to hear that as a destination for us. our trip to italy was fantastic and we had a great time there. oh, and koda got bigger.
NOV08: thanksgiving came and went, but probably the most exciting thing this month was that we went to our first couples massage. that was really kind of nervous for me, but after it was all said and done, i have to say that it was pretty good. oh, and koda got bigger.
DEC08: december was full of dinners, get-togethers, and other holiday things. koda was just finishing up his first puppy classes and he was really starting to listen to us. there was also the glorious day o’ LAN partying. i haven’t LAN partied since. oh yeah, and koda got bigger.
JAN09: january was a pretty stressful time, work for me was really starting to hit a critical point and i was getting really burned out. our friends cheryl and greg moved into their new place which just reminded me about how long we have lived in our place and how much stuff still needed to be done around the house. oh, and koda got bigger.
FEB09: of course, february means superbowl sunday! we had a big party of people here enjoying the game in its HD projector glory. good times. christi and i went for a weekend getaway at sonoma. we brought koda with us and he seemed stressed out, but he still got bigger.
MAR09: christi spent most of this month training in preparation for a union strike at her company. this training required her to climb 25 foot poles… one of the days got cancelled due to high winds and someone had to be rushed to the hospital the day before. koda still got bigger, though.
APR 09: april was pretty quiet. i started a new job at the end of march and i was just trying to settle in. i was stressed out from all that i had to learn and my nights and weekends were pretty busy. oh yeah, koda still got bigger.
and that brings us to may. there have been heat waves and then some cold spells. some rain and some sun. and we’ve just started koda up on his second session of puppy training. christi says he has stopped growing for a few months now, but i still think that koda is getting bigger. he barely fits in our house now.
By mike
after the server crash with no backups, it was hard for me to want to try to get the better-together.us pages back up. there would be so much work to do and i just wasn’t sure if i was ever up for it again.
the he said/she said blog was a lot of work because we would always end up having to blog at the same time and the time sensitivity of it all was just a lot of pressure to try to find something witty or interesting to say.
it’s been almost two years now since we have gotten married and so much has come to pass in that time.
christi doesn’t know it yet, but i’m bring the better-together.us pages back with a new blog. maybe she’ll blog too, we’ll see!
