New Year's Eve Update

I can't believe the year is over.  It seems like just yesterday Kristen and I were sharing our news of being pregnant with Liam with everyone, and here he's been here with us for almost 2 months!  I meant to post an update this last Tuesday, which was Liam's 8 week old mark, but he's kept us both pretty busy lately. 

Ok, a little stats update for everyone - as of yesterday, our little guy weighed in at a whopping 10 lb 7 oz!  We also measured his height and head size - 22.5 inches and 15.25 inches (circumference), respectively.  Weight-wise, he's been marching right along his percentile line, gaining just what he should.  For height and head size, though, he's jumped up the charts quite a bit!  He's moved from the 25th to 50th percentile in height since birth, and his head has grown from the 15th to 50th percentile!  It just amazes me how these babies grow. 

I just finished posting a bunch of recent pictures to my Picasa account - here are a few of my favorites, and feel free to head on over to the Picasa album page to check out the rest.

We figured out that we've been battling a pretty good case of colic with Liam for the last 2-3 weeks.  It's nice to put a name to the face of this demon that takes hold of our otherwise sweet baby boy.  Somehow it helps, makes Kristen and I feel less like inadequate parents.  We also just started trying Gripe Water with our baby boy, and so far it seems to really be helping.  Hopefully we'll move through this colic phase quickly, and get on to the fun playtime phase soon.

I guess that's it for now - stay tuned for the next update!  Same bat time, same bat place.

The Savior of our Sanity

This is not a vacuum. This is the device that has single-handedly saved mine and Kristen's sanity.

Oh it cleans like a vacuum (ridiculously so - thank you James Dyson). But the real reason this beautiful machine is so amazing is that it can transform Liam from a screaming, wailing, inconsolable monster of rage into a quiet, peaceful, sleepy, lovely looking infant, usually in less than a minute.

Before Liam was born, I remember reading in one book anecdotal stories of parents who (usually by accident) discovered that the noise from a loud household appliance, such as a hair dryer or vacuum cleaner, could soothe their fussy infants. I remember thinking (and remarking to Kristen) that surely it wouldn't take something that loud to work on Liam.

Let's talk about decibel levels for a moment. Our dear friends Joel and Amber thoughtfully gave us a toy giraffe that has a speaker buried inside that produces four different kinds of white noise - it has a volume level around the same level as normal, conversational speech, say about 50-55 dB. By comparison, the average vacuum cleaner has a volume level of 80 dB. It turns out that your average screaming baby has a volume level of a whopping 110 dB - keep in mind that OSHA requires hearing protection in the workplace at sustained levels over 85 dB, and you can actually permanently lose hearing at sustained levels over 100 dB. So I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that it would take some pretty loud sustained noise to break through the powerful rage of a fussy infant.

The best part of this is when we tell people about running the vacuum continuously for hours, first to calm Liam and then to keep that little monster inside him soothed - people look at us like we've completely lost our minds, even experienced parents!! Clearly the power of white noise over an infant is not a universally understood phenomena.

So in closing I would like to address our vacuum. Vacuum (I really should name it), thank you, from the bottom of our hearts. We can never express to you the depth of our gratitude and love for being able to soothe and quiet our little Liam. And if I go and buy another vacuum as insurance in case you fail for some reason, know that while you may be replaced, you will always hold a special place in our heart.

Hello World!

So here we are, our first blog. We'll see how long I keep up with this, but I've been wanting to have a little place to write for a while now, and hopefully friends and family can actually keep up with what's going on these days (especially since Liam leaves very little time for normal adult communication).

Speaking of Liam, here's a pretty cute current picture of the little bugger:

That's one of his rare awake-yet-not-nursing-or-wailing moments these days. We keep hearing that the 3 month mark is the magic "wake up" moment for most infants - Kristen and I have our fingers crossed that he'll settle down in a month or so and start having some quality fun awake time.

So that's it for now - feel free and follow, comment, or just be an anonymous passerby.