Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Two Months Old!

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Well today marks Lennon’s two month birthday!

Wow! I can’t hardly believe he is already 2 months old. I remember when I was 7 months pregnant and getting to 9 months seemed like an eternity. And now, here he is, all old and grown up already!

Baby Lennon at 2 Months

Baby Lennon at 2 Months

Yesterday Lennon had his 2 month pediatrician appointment. This is the one where she gives him all his first shots! Oh no! Poor Lennon!

He took it like a champ. First they measured him: 23 inches. Then they weighed him: 13 lbs, 3 ounces. Big guy! (He’s gained almost 5 lbs in 2 months!) Then he sat around naked cooing and smiling at himself in the mirror while he waited for the doctor. When she finally came (and noted his developing flat head!) he started to get fussy. By the time she was done testing him, he was full on screaming. Mommy and Daddy got him to settle down with a pacifier and fall asleep - only to have the nurse show up moments later to stick him twice in the leg and make him swallow some yucky medicine. Boy was he pissed at us!

Fortunately he doesn’t hold a grudge… or his memory.. very long at this age. He was back to being pacified and sleeping in his car seat just a few minutes later. The rest of the day was a crabby blur for him.. a side effect of the shots. He even slept a full eight hours straight last night! While that’s something we’ve been looking forward to, Mommy and Daddy did have to admit that it scared them a little.

Today baby is celebrating and playing with Daddy and Nana while Mommy is at work. More pictures to come soon!

Happy Halloween!

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Welcome to Lennon’s First Halloween!

Mommy and Daddy love Halloween.. all the funniness surrounding costumes and fake dead scary things and candy everywhere! Last year, before there even was a “Lennon,” Mommy and Daddy dressed up as Super Mario and Princess Peach. This year we had to pick costumes that would include the whole family.

Check it out! We’re the Star Wars family!

Star Wars Family: Princess Leia, Yoda and Luke Skywalker

Star Wars Family: Princess Leia, Yoda and Luke Skywalker

Baby Yoda and Daddy Skywalker

Baby Yoda and Daddy Skywalker

Mommy Leia and Baby Yoda

Mommy Leia and Baby Yoda

Sleeping Yoda Baby

Sleeping Yoda Baby

If only they made Storm Trooper costumes for the cats!

Lennon & the Pumpkin Patch

Saturday, October 25th, 2008

It’s almost Halloween and what’s more fun than baby’s first visit to the pumpkin patch!? We made a date with cousin Kaden to visit Encino’s pumpkin patch today and Lennon had lots of fun. It was a little hot (in the 80s in October!) but Lennon loved the guy singing and playing guitar.. It looked like he was trying to dance and play air-guitar along with him. Baby also got really excited when we gave him his own baby pumpkin. He stared at his little pumpkin and seemed to be trying to talk to it. Super cute!

Here’s some pictures to share with all your curious onlookers:

Lennon's First Pumpkin

Lennon's First Pumpkin

Aunt Dina, Cousin Kaden, Mommy & Lennon

Aunt Dina, Cousin Kaden, Mommy & Lennon

Updated Pictures of One-Month-Old Lennon

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Mommy and Daddy have been busy with all the bits and pieces related to closing escrow and preparing to move out of the condo and into the new house in the next few weeks. As a result we haven’t had a chance to update you on little Lennon and his adventures.

Two Fridays ago, we took a day trip down to Long Beach to visit Nana and Gedo. After a cocktail at dinner, Gedo got up enough nerve to hold the baby!

Gedo holding Lennon in Long Beach

Gedo holding Lennon in Long Beach

While in Long Beach we took Lennon for a nice long walk on the beach and by the marina.. Of course he slept through it, as he always does. Baby is infamous for falling asleep whenever we take him on walks.

Of course, getting baby to sleep outside of his walks is not always as easy. After receiving multiple recommendations and a lot of praise for swings that could help, we took my coworker Beth’s advice and bought the Graco Soothing Center - a $150 super swing that lets baby rock back and forth at multiple speeds and in multiple directions. After spending all that money and putting the whole ugly thing together, we put Lennon in it.. and guess what he did? Screamed his head off! For the first couple days he absolutely HATED the Soothing Center… but since then we’ve convinced him of its merits (mainly by trying over and over again.. and by speeding it up to faster than what we’d imagine he’d find comfortable). The only trouble is it’s really hard to look cool and punk-rock in your skull and cross bones onesie while sitting in this goofy teddy-bear decorated seat…

Punk Rock, Teddy-Bear Head

Punk Rock, Teddy-Bear Head

Less than a week later, Lennon turned 4 weeks old… and then 2 days later, he became officially one month old! Wow! A whole month! He’s already growing fast!

Lennon at One Month

Lennon at One Month

At one month old, Lennon was still attached to his umbilical cord. Typically the little remnant piece falls off around 10 days old.. but baby has been “attached” to it. We took him to the pediatrician and she did a little soddering with some silver nitrate solution to help it along. It didn’t come off in the office but by the next day, it did! That was on his one-month birthday, in fact. Mommy was very proud of baby for finally letting it go. Now he has a cute, perfect little belly button.

Now Lennon is almost 5 weeks old.. At this point he’s mastered making and holding eye-contact. He’s also figured out that there’s more to life than eating, sleeping and messing in his diaper. He cries and screams at more of a zero-to-sixty speed than before and Mommy and Daddy now spend a lot of time trying to decode what the screams mean. We’re starting to be able to decipher between the fake attention cries and the really serious cries. Progress!

Around now Lennon is also starting to learn how to smile at us.. And not the smile that newborns do when they are passing gas but actual real smiles that are reactions to us talking, playing or smiling at him. He hasn’t quite got it mastered but it’s starting to happen and even those little half-meant smiles are melting Mommy’s heart! Here’s today’s attempts at smiling…

More to come! For now though, don’t expect them too often. Mommy is soaking up her last days of maternity leave.. Trying to store up as many baby daytime moments as possible before she heads back to work in November!

Lennon’s First Friends

Monday, October 6th, 2008

This weekend Lennon met some of his first friends. Since we’re sure he and his friends will find it fun one day to look back at how little they were when they first met, we took some pictures.

First, Lennon met his second cousin Joseph who was born exactly six weeks before he was.

Lennon Meets Joseph

Lennon Meets Joseph

Then on Sunday, my coworker Beth came by with her son, Tony, who was born in April.

Lennon Meets Tony

Lennon Meets Tony

Tony and Lennon

Tony and Lennon

Finally, Gerald dropped by and this time Lennon didn’t cry through the whole visit. They actually got to bond!

Gerald with Lennon

Gerald with Lennon

After that fun weekend, Lennon had to face the music and go to his doctor for his two week visit. Mommy and Daddy were looking forward to this visit to find out how much Lennon weighs now - at 18 days old. Well, as we expected, he’s gained a lot of weight! He weighed in at 10 lbs. 2 ounces! Wow! Quite a gain from 2 weeks ago when he weighed in at 8 lbs 5 oz. Go Lennon, Go!

Lennon’s 2 Week Old Photoshoot

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

Yesterday Lennon and I went to Babies R Us in Calabasas to take pictures of him at 2 weeks old. We didn’t get a chance to take any professional-type photos in the hospital so these are the first ones he’ll have. Unfortunately he fell asleep in the car (he loves to nap in the car seat) and wouldn’t really wake up for his photoshoot. We did the best we could - and I was thankful he wasn’t screaming and crying like the other kid in front of us - but it would have been nice to capture his beautiful blue eyes! Oh well - You know babies - They get away with everything!

Birth Announcement

Birth Announcement

With the Teddy Bear

With the Teddy Bear

Chillaxin

Chillaxin

Deep in Thought

Deep in Thought

Posing with Help from Mom

Posing with Help from Mom

The Cutest Picture

The Cutest Picture

Mom and Lennon

Mom and Lennon

Meeting Grandma & Grandpa

Monday, September 29th, 2008

We’ve been busy the past few days: Grandma & Grandpa flew in from Florida to meet Lennon!

Grandma fell in love with Lennon instantly and has spent as much time as possible holding and playing with him.

Grandpa may be in love with Lennon too but he’s very nervous about holding him. The only way he’ll do it is if Grandma puts Lennon in his lap while he’s already sitting and then Lennon just sits/sleeps there without fussing.

Mom and Dad celebrated having the grandparents in town by going to see Dinosaurs Live at the Staples Center - without the baby! Yes, our first date after the baby arrived!



Last night we went over to Rick’s sister’s and had a big family dinner - with both sets of grandparents plus cousin Kaden. Here’s some cute pictures of the two cousins at dinner:

Otherwise, Mom and Dad are still getting used to being a mom and a dad. We have to rotate baby-tending nights so that every other night one of us gets a full night of sleep while the other tends to the baby monitor and has to feed and change the baby whenever he wakes up - which is about every two to three hours. They say that at six to eight weeks the baby learns to sleep through the night. We can’t wait for that to happen! But for now, the shifting nights is working out to some degree. Of course we still get up at six a.m. most of the time and go to bed by nine p.m. Ah, the lame life of new parents! But there are some perks…

Finally, we also bought a house this weekend! Rick saw it for the first time on Thursday and had me and Lennon rush over to check it out. We had an offer in by Friday night, got a counter on Saturday morning and then countered back and got accepted by Saturday night. Today we had the inspector come by to check out the house and so far, so good. It’s definitely a little bit of a fixer-upper (way too much pink wallpaper and carpeting for our tastes) but it’s a great big huge house (almost 2700 square feet) in the mountainside/hills of Tarzana off of Vanalden. All the neighboring houses are $1 million+ houses so Lennon should have some great luck trick-or-treating up there in years to come. I’ll upload some pictures as things progress but we’re very excited to have finally found a place - and made a really great deal on it.

Oh yeah, and one last thing: Everyone has been wondering who Lennon looks like. Because he has dark hair and blue eyes, it seems natural to say he looks like Daddy.. but when my mom came to town this weekend she brought a picture of me when I was born. It’s almost eery how much alike Lennon and I look as newborns! Check it out:

Laura as a baby

Laura as a baby

Baby Lennon, Day Two

Baby Lennon, Day Two

I have uploaded these pictures and a few others to the existing Kodak Photo Gallery Website.. You can check them out here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=m4osjet.6m6rgv7p&x=0&y=kyuz0k&localeid=en_US

Ah, a Baby’s Life!

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Day Four and baby seems happy as ever! Check him out in his cool “Future Rock Star” outfit. This is how he’s spending his evening after a very exciting day that included his first visit to the doctor’s and a surprise drop-by to Nana’s house.

The doctor’s visit revealed that Lennon now weight 8lbs 7oz.. Typical for a newborn, he’s lost a few ounces since birth. (Sure is strange that babies are born bigger and then lose some weight.. Mommies everywhere will agree that it’d be nice if it were the other way around.) Despite Daddy’s concerns that baby has jaundice, a lazy eye and possible malaria, the doctor confirms that he is perfectly healthy - and definitely has super healthy skin coloring (i.e. none of the typical jaundice that new babies often experience).

In other news, I am finally producing milk for him.. so that worry has subsided. I’m not producing enough for the appetite that he’s got but we’re mixing breast milk with formula and that seems to be making him quite happy. Plus I’m pumping it all so anyone can feed him - not just me. We’re getting there - making progress anyway. Soon we’ll have this baby-feeding thing down.

The next challenge is getting him to sleep at night. He really is a rock star in training because come midnight, he’s awake and ready to party. That means Mommy and Daddy have to sleep in shifts to keep him company. I guess I’ll be getting used to getting only 4-5 hours of real sleep per day and 2-3 hours of half-conscious baby-napping sleep.

Here’s another picture or two from yesterday when we watched football together. Hope you’re all enjoying Lennon’s antics and the pictures. He’s such a darling!

More Pictures of our Burrito Baby

Sunday, September 21st, 2008

We are so happy to be home! Good riddance to the hospital and the poking, prodding nurses! Horray!

We got home yesterday around 1pm and since then have been adjusting to our new happy family life. Lennon is the world’s best and easiest baby. All he wants to do is sleep and he just occasionally wakes up to be fed or changed. As long as his Mommy is nearby, he is completely happy and content. He’s also getting used to Daddy too (although he apparently was a fussy monster between 1-4am last night when Mommy was sleeping and Daddy was in charge). He eats a lot (we’re using formula for now because I’m so far not producing any milk.. but we’re working on that).. And he loves to be swaddled up like a little burrito. Hence the new nickname: burrito baby!

Here’s some more pictures of Lennon - and I’ll post a bunch more in the next week - don’t worry!

I’ve also posted a bunch at Kodak Gallery - http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=m4osjet.6m6rgv7p&x=0&y=kyuz0k&localeid=en_US

Lennon meets nana

Friday, September 19th, 2008