It's too bad I didn't have a jump shot...

Grandma Michael was here this past weekend. She hasn't been able to get over to see Charlotte since she was born, so it was a long time coming. I have some pics and video I'll try to put up later.

Yesterday I was treated to a very nice birthday present: a clean bill of health for Charlotte. She's in the 75th percentile for her weight and head size [wait for it...] and 90th in weight. Her shots were traumatic, there were lots of tears...and Charlotte cried too.

So, back to this head size thing. One of my co-workers informed me that they were told how tall their child would be based on the size of the child's head. That got me thinking. If head size is an indicator of height, shouldn't I be around 9 feet tall? If I only had a jump shot.

Who am I kidding? I didn't even have a layup.

Who are Colin Hay and Willy Porter, Alex.

I've received a few questions about the music in the background of the video posted after Charlotte was born. The first song is Colin Hay's, "Hold on to My Hand". Colin was the singer in Men at Work and is great solo artist.

The second song is, Willy Porter's "Water Color Sunrise". Again, great singer/songwriter and amazing guitar player. This was the song Kaye and I danced to at our wedding, not realizing that it was over 5 minutes long. I realize the title of this Blog implies we are, but neither of us are so self-indulgent that we feel people need to watch us dance for 5 minutes.

Picture Machine?

While Charlotte was in the hospital after her birth, they weren't able to take her newborn picture, because the "Picture Machine" wasn't working. I wanted to ask if that was medical speak for "camera", but I thought the staff had heard enough of my sense of humor.

So, about 2 weeks ago, she was finally able to go in and get her picture taken. They ended up giving us a free print package because we had to wait so long. Actually, I didn't even realize they sold you those pictures...but I suppose it makes sense.

The pic is also on the Gunderson Lutheran web site.

Charlotte get's a bath...finally!!

Ok, she has been bathed, but this was her first fully submerged bath. I don't think she liked it so much.



Poor kid. We just had to put up with our parents showing our naked baby photos/videos to our friends and family. Charlotte's are now on the web.

FAQ #3: Re-revisited and a few pics

The sleep thing is getting better. Charlotte wakes up once a night and even managed to sleep through one night. We've got sleep experts from Princeton working on finding out what we did right that night.

We did a little clothes shopping the other day and Charlotte decided she'd like to dress more like Dan Maglior, inventor of the "long sleeve under the short sleeve" look. We soon hope to incorporate the "North Face" Vest while we anxiously await the Danny Mag summer collection.

I wanna be Danny Mag

If you look closely at one of the pictures, she's giving the Corna or "Rock-On" sign. She already rocks!! It's only a matter of time before she's begging for her Judas Priest onesie.

P.S. For anyone who doesn't know Dan [or Judas Priest], I apologize for the obscure reference.

FAQ #3: Getting any sleep?

I'm doing fairly well in that regard. Kaye? Not so much, depending on the night. Charlotte is up every 2-3 hours for varying amounts of time to eat. She isn't a big fan of her crib yet. So, for now, she's spending her nights in a baby papasan chair . We're still pretty early in the game on this sleep thing, so we're not to worried about it yet. Easy for me to say, huh? Given my lack of the appropriate feeding "tools", there's not a lot I can do when she's hungry at 3 AM. We're working on making some "food" available for me to feed her, but we haven't reached our full "production capacity" yet...so it's a little hard. I'm pretty honest about my uselessness when it comes to late night feeding and Kaye taking the brunt of the lack of sleep. When I answer this question, people's response is funny. It's either an amused understanding or mild disgust. Then again, that's people's response to a lot of things I say.

Otherwise things are going well. Charlotte had her first visit to the doctor last week. Everything checked out. She had her first New Years Eve party last weekend. That she slept through. How she can manage to sleep through a group of middle aged men playing "Guitar Hero 2" but can't manage to give her mother more than a few hours of sleep at a time at home, I'll never know. Then again, it was preceded by a short trip in the car...which is like baby Ambien to Charlotte.

I returned to work yesterday after almost 2 1/2 weeks off with Kaye and Charlotte. Returning to work was not easy. Obviously, I'd rather be home with my 2 week old child. But just the thought of returning to work was tough. I grew up in a family of teachers. People [not me] complain that teachers make too much money considering they "get the summers off". However, now I'm convinced that they have to pay them that much just to come back after a summer off. I can't imagine having all that time off and then trying to convince myself that returning to work is a good thing.

Lastly, Charlotte and I discussed the prospect of Brett Favre's retirement and we both agree he should stick around for one more year, at least.

Hey!! Something not baby related.

Here's an interesting story that I recently had the pleasure of being a part of. Lori was one of the first matches I made with Big Brothers Big Sisters. Dealing with local media is always a crap shoot from the accuracy standpoint. In this case, however, he did a fairly good job getting the story right [with a few exceptions].

WEST SALEM, Wis. — “Someday, I can live a normal life.” A life with parents who love me. A life far away from the one I’m “stuck in.”

That’s what Lori Groth, sophomore at West Salem High School, remembers thinking as a young girl.

But even she admits to some amazement at how far she has come toward that dream. She has found a stable, loving home after being adopted by Kelly and Todd Groth of West Salem.

Within her adopted home, she has flourished. She’s earning nearly perfect grades and is making college plans.

Groth credits Sara Lassig, who for three years served as her “Big Sister” through Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Coulee Region, with being there for her during her “tumultuous” childhood and providing her the momentum to chase her dreams.

Read more here...

In light of this "heart wrenching" story, Bowl For Kids' Sake is fast approaching [ok, it isn't until the end of March], but it's never to early to start begging. I'll be sending an email out later, since 2 days after Xmas probably isn't the best time to hit people up for money. However, this year we have on-line credit card donations available. Click here to lend your support.

Christmas Video

As promised, here's the video from Christmas. Unfortunately, we failed to shoot any video with Kaye's family. There are a few pics in the album, however.

Apparently, it isn't Christmas unless Matthew is making some sort of vulgar gesture.

First Christmas

First Christmas.2006

Well, we made it through our first Christmas. We spent the 23rd with Kaye's parents, brothers, and their kids. Sunday was the Erickson [my mom's side] in Oxford, WI. Charlotte made the trip splendidly and was able to meet her namesake-my grandmother, Esther. Christmas Day was spent with Kaye's family again. I've added pictures to the album. Charlotte received plenty of gifts although we really have to work on her gratitude. I don't think she said "thank you" once. I'll have video later.

Also, she had her one week [10 days due to the holiday] appointment with her [and our] new doctor today. It looks like everything is going well.

I swear we didn't plan to do this

Yesterday, Kaye and I were doing some last minute Christmas shopping at the mall. As we were pushing Charlotte through the mall, I noticed the "Have Your Picture Taken with Santa" display. I think we both didn't put 2 and 2 together at first. I think it took us a few seconds to realize that we had our child with us and there's some sort of law that, no matter how young they are, you're supposed to have their picture taken with Santa. We debated for a few seconds about how corny the idea was, but couldn't turn down the opportunity. So, we dragged our poor sleeping child out of her cozy car seat to have this picture taken.

In other news, she's finally warming up to her father and she's sleeping for more than 15 minutes. Without going into too much detail, at some point on Tuesday, she finally started getting regular food from Kaye. Apparently, they like to be fed regularly. Huh. I don't remember seeing that in the owners manual. As the nights go on, Kaye is getting more and more sleep...although we aren't where we'd like to be.

Charlotte and Lucy are getting to know each other. Ok, Lucy's getting to know Charlotte. Charlotte isn't terribly interested yet.

I'll have more Christmas pics in the web album as they become available. Also, very off the topic; I just received some pictures from Matthew this weekend from a few of the local festivals that he and I and my cousin Marnie attended this past year.

Lastly, yesterday a friend of mine pointed out that I had put the wrong in date in the mass email I sent out regarding Charlotte's birth and another friend mentioned that I had her length wrong in the original post . Anyone who knows me knows that I suffer from ADD. I can only say that in the days following her birth, my mind wasn't exactly up to the task of typing and "minor" details.

Video, more pix, and first day home..

Well, the video is rough in spots due to lighting [and the guy handling the camera]. The first scene is fairly soon after Charlotte was born. I also have new pics in the album that I forgot I had taken. They're a little grainy because they were taken with the video camera, which apparently isn't the best camera for stills. Unfortunately, the batteries went out later on Saturday night on my digital camera.

Well, we had our first night home and Kaye continues to amaze me. If Charlotte isn't sleeping she wants to be eating. Kaye still isn't getting a lot of sleep and I've been relegated to "cook", "room service", "house keeping", "cheerleader", "diaper changer", and "guy who holds Charlotte when Kaye isn't feeding her"...which isn't very often at this point and let's just say Charlotte isn't thrilled with it. I have faith that she'll soon learn that, even though I don't have the equipment for feeding, I'm not such a bad guy. At times, I'm even a little charming.

Here she is...

Charlotte Esther Michael 12.16.06

Well, I finally have some pictures available [click on pic above]. I'll have video tonight or tomorrow if you check back or subscribe.

Here's the story. Kaye started feeling labor pains at approximately 1 or 1:30 AM Saturday morning. At about 3 AM we called the hospital and were told that they needed to be consistently closer together. So, since I was so helpful, Kaye sent me back to bed at about 4 AM. At about 6 AM she woke me up [don't ask me how I managed to sleep...probably in denial] and told me that they were 3-5 minutes apart. So, we sat around for a few minutes and tried to decide what to do. At about 6:30 her labor pains got pretty intense so we decided to go in to the hospital.

After arriving at about 7 AM, they discovered that she was 6-7 cm dilated and informed us that we were staying. After a little over an hour, the contractions started getting pretty intense, so Kaye asked for a little something to "take the edge off", which she got. Shortly after that, she decided that she needed a little more than the edge taken off. She asked for the epidural. Of course, they don't pressure you into not getting the epidural [at least that's what they tell you up front], but the nurse informed Kaye she wasn't giving herself enough credit. Kaye said she'd think about it a few more minutes [probably until the next contraction]. In the nurses defense, Kaye was pretty quiet throughout this entire experience, so it probably did appear as though Kaye wasn't in that much pain. Nonetheless, having been warned about the "whoops, now it's to late for the epidural" scenario, I asked what kind of a window we had to make this decision. The nurse informed me we had plenty of time. Apparently, "plenty of time" is about 10 minutes because in that amount of time, Kaye again, asked for the epidural. The nurse agreed and informed her that she'd have to check to see how far along she was. During her examination the nurse said, "Hmmmm, I can't find your cervix." So, everyone agreed that it was too late and it was almost time to start pushing.

I'll spare you the details of the pushing, but let's just say that Kaye and I were essentially mute during the entire thing; Kaye, because she was trying to stay focused [and possibly the drugs]. Me, because I think I was a little shell shocked. I'll also spare you all the typical stories about how amazing it was [and it was]. However, I was able to watch Charlotte enter this world at 10:43 AM, Saturday, December 16th 2006. I'll only say that Kaye was unbelievable and Charlotte is beautiful...loud, like her daddy, but beautiful, like her mommy.

Lastly, Charlotte is Kaye's late grandmother's name [maternal]. Esther is my grandmother's name [maternal].

Again, I will try to get some video up tonight or tomorrow morning.

Charlotte Esther Michael...

Charlotte joined us Saturday, December 16th @ 10:43 AM. She weighed in at 7 lbs 7 oz and is 20 1/4 inches long.

Pictues, video and other details to follow...when I get home to my computer.

Nothing to see here...

Kaye had an appointment with the Midwife today. She is 1-2 cm dilated and 75% effaced. So could come any time. Kaye was given the window of tomorrow to 3 weeks. And who said they didn't have this stuff down to a science?

FAQ #1 revisited

How's Kaye doing? She's a trooper. I'd be a much bigger whiner if I was her. She is, however, uncomfortable and ready to have this baby. This morning, she explained to me that tonight we're going to find the sheet that has all the pressure points on it and work the ones that induce labor...nothing weird, I think they're on her hands and shoulders.