Great Landings

I wanted to do a “One Month Old” update for everyone, but as it has been pretty typical in my life right now I am running about a week behind. So instead of one month, we have a five week update. But to be honest, I think five weeks is way better then a one month update. If for no other reason it is a cool 20% increase in weeks! Think of it as a raise, or one of them buy four get one free deals. Same goes for the flood of pictures I have been adding to the Caden Christopher Carlson album on the Greatlandings photo site, consider them my gift to you for visiting the site. Anyway, on with the good stuff.

Erin, Caden, and I have been home for just over a month now and it has been an experience to say the least. The adjustment from life without a baby, to one with has been insane! Gone are the days of playing XBox, going out to lunch, and taking a shower whenever you want. They have been replaced with every three hour feedings, a never ending stream of dirty diapers, and having everything I own covered in baby vomit. In other words it has been both the most exhausting and amazing five weeks of my life.

Caden seems to be adjusting to life in the outside world well. When we left the hospital he weighed 8 lbs, 1 oz. At his one week appointment he was up to 8 lbs, 10 oz. And just last week at his one month appointment he was up to a whopping 11 lbs, 2 oz! That is a 30% increase in just three weeks time! Of course all of this weight gain makes sense seeing as instead of eating 3-4 ounces of food like a normal one month old, he likes to eat 5-6 ounces. That is as much as a 6 month old would normally eat! Needless to say, he is taking after his Daddy in the eating department. But the doctor says it is fine, and there is no such thing as feeding him too much at this stage. While I know he is still a little baby, I can’t help but to feel like he is growing way to fast. We have had him for only five weeks and I already find my self missing when he was a “little” baby.

Other then that he is doing good although we are all still getting used to things. He loves to be held and snuggled with, can hold his head up really well for his age, and has the most kissable lips I have ever seen. He has had a touch of acid reflux which I have been told is very common in babies. So he has medicine for that and we are hoping it helps him sleep a little better. As of right now he will go from a dead sleep to screaming, scrunching up, stretching out, in about three seconds flat. Totally heartbreaking to not be able to do anything to help him. But like I said, he has his new medicine and things seem to be getting better.

As for Erin and I we too are doing good as well. Erin goes back to work next week and I have no doubt it will be extremely difficult for her to leave her little man all day. We have tried to get into some sort of system the past few weeks, but it has been hard. We take turns getting up in the middle of the night, and by morning we are both usually delirious with exhaustion. But it is getting better, Caden is sleeping longer, and we have had no shortage of advice from friends and family on how to do things. I think before long we will have a schedule and a system that works for us and we can hopefully get back to real life again. Right now it feels like we have been locked up for weeks with nothing but baby stuff going on. Although we did have a great Memorial Day down at the lake last weekend.

In summary I can tell you with 110% certainty that there is nothing more awesome then having a baby. I never doubted it when people told me things like “your life will never be the same“, but usually when they said that it was in reference to the things I would have to give up. How I wouldn’t be able to do this or that or how I needed to do XZY before the baby got here because after “things will all be different“. Well they were right, it is different and my life will never be the same. But what no one really said is how I wouldn’t care. Anything I have to change, give up, or adjust because of him I will. And I wont be disappointed for one single second. Because at the end of the day nothing can ever come close to being as amazing as my baby boy.

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Erin, Caden, and I spent the holiday weekend down at Tom and Kathy’s floating house on Norris Lake. We had an awesome time hanging out with the family enjoying the great weather, eating some amazing food, and having a few cocktails. Outside of a massive thunderstorm on Friday night (check out my first ever lightning picture), the weather was perfect and the water was the warmest I can remember for Memorial Day weekend.

Caden loved the lake as well and did much better then we ever thought he would. Huge thanks to everyone for a great time and for helping out with Caden, especially Tom and Kathy who not only let us hang out at their house, they even gave up their bedroom so Caden didn’t have to sleep on the boat his first time down.

As always I took a bunch of pictures and you can find them on the Greatlandings photo site in the Memorial Day 2010 album.

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Last night Erin, Caden, and myself attended Karlla and Jimmy’s wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, awesome reception full of dinner, drinking, dancing, and trying on Cory’s funny glasses. As usual I had the camera out in full force and got a lot of fun pictures. Although for some reason I have more pictures of Simmie then anyone else! You can check them out on the Greatlandings photo site in the Jimmy and Karlla Wedding album.

Thanks for a fun night everyone, and congrats to Karlla and Jimmy!

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Just wanted to give y’all an update and point out a new little feature/project I am trying to pull off. The project is called “Caden – 365″ and the idea is to post one photo a day, for the next 365 days, of my little boy Caden. You can read more on the new page I made for the project by clicking the link on the top, or right HERE.

I also wanted to mention that I have been adding more photos of Caden to the Photo Site. I have just been putting them into the album I already made called Caden Christopher Carlson. Seeing as I am sure I will have nothing short of a billion pictures of him (before June) I may have to come up with a different solution. But for now that is where you can find them.

Lastly I have been getting a lot of folks asking how we are doing and the answer is AWESOME! Of course there is some adjusting going on for everyone, but Erin, Caden, and I are doing great. Caden is two weeks old today and it feels like a lifetime ago that we were in the hospital with him. He is getting bigger and more handsome every day. Erin is also getting back to her normal self as well. The best news is that her worst symptom from pregnancy was the unbelievable swelling in her legs and feet is finally getting back to normal. All and all we are one big happy family!

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Well here we are, the final edition of Baby Watch. I already put up one quick post announcing the arrival of our little baby boy Caden, but I wanted to come back and put up one more post with some of the highlights of the past few days, and some final thoughts. I know I promised this would be up sooner but you will just have to trust me when I say the past few days have been hectic to say the least.

As scheduled Erin and I checked into the hospital last Wednesday to prepare for her induction on Thursday morning. Having just been there the week prior we were experts on the whole hospital deal. They gave Erin some medicine to get her ready for the next day and we got the last full night of sleep for the week. On Thursday morning they started the medicine Pitocin that would kick start Erin’s labor. They also put a monitor on her that measured the contractions and the babies heartbeat. Over the next several hours her contractions begin to get stronger and closer together. She got her epidural after things started to get really painful for her and then we waited, and waited, and waited. Then around 8:00 PM the doctors said it was time to start pushing!

Having been to the education class and having seen the scary videos they show you, I figured I was as prepared as anyone for what was about to happen. Boy was I wrong! Over the course of the next two hours I experienced just about every emotion you can. It started with excitement about what was going to happen, slid over to fear over what could happen, and ended with pure joy over what did happen. The two hours that Erin spent pushing the baby out were the proudest I have ever been of her. Never once did she scream, cry, or call me names. She had a job to do and was nothing but strong, focused, and determined. I have often told people over the past nine months that “we” were having a baby. I can tell you here and now “we” didn’t do anything, Erin had a baby and I am just happy I was allowed to hold her hand when she needed it.

At 9:56PM Erin made her final push and baby Caden was born. It was the moment Erin and I had been anticipating for so long and it was AMAZING! It must have been because it was my wife, my baby, our family, but this was nothing gross and scary looking like the videos from class. This was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. The doctor placed Caden on Erin’s belly and I told her it was a boy. I got to cut the umbilical cord and the nurses moved the baby to another area to clean him up, while the doctor cleaned Erin up. And that was it, we had a perfect little baby boy!

Erin, Caden, and I spent the next two nights in hospital visiting with everyone and getting used to our new little boy. On the day we were supposed to go home they told us that Caden needed one more night in the hospital under some special lights because he was just a little bit Jondus. Luckily the hospital was nice enough to let us stay in our room another night so we could continue to feed him on a regular basis and visit with him whenever we wanted. Then on Sunday afternoon we brought our little bundle of joy home and it has been awesome. Everyone said our lives would change, and they have. Anything that was important to be before has just been knocked down a peg if not forgotten about completely. All I want to do is hold my little boy and love on him, and that is just what I plan to do.

So that brings us to the end of Baby Watch and the start of something new. I don’t plan on any more regular posts, but I doubt this is the last you will hear on the subject of Caden. I hope everyone enjoyed the updates over the past few months as much as I have enjoyed doing them. As Aunt Carol says, this has to be one of the most documented pregnancy and births in history! I have uploaded a bunch of pictures from the first couple of days. You can find them in the Caden Christopher Carlson album on the Greatlandings photo site.

PS – For the record it was my friend Greg who guessed the birth date exactly with Lori coming in a close second. Nice job!

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Just a real quick update to introduce Mr. Caden Christopher Carlson to the world! He was born last night April 29th at 9:56 PM, weighed 8 pounds 5.5 ounces, and was 20 inches long. Both Erin and baby are doing great and should be coming home on Saturday morning.

Sorry this is so short but internet here at the hospital is hard to come by. I promise to make a proper post tomorrow complete with lots of good pictures! Thanks to everyone who has sent us all the nice messages, emails, texts, phone calls, and visited us here at the hospital! Y’all are the best!!

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Came across this today and thought I would share it. This is a video from Apollo 11 launch on July 16th, 1969. It is of the Saturn V rockets starting up for liftoff and was shot in high definition at 500 frames per second. Amazing stuff!

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