The Morrison Family

John – Well, Evan’s now three weeks old, and we’ve somehow managed to keep him alive and (relatively) undamaged. And aside from a few frustrating nights of him not wanting to go to bed (until 2:30 AM!) and not cleaning up after himself, he’s integrating well.

We’ve continued to have a steady stream of friends, family and neighbors popping over to see the big-little guy, and bringing gifts, food and well wishes. Our backyard neighbors brought one of my personal favorite gifts over for Evan, his very own couch! So cool!

We also had the pleasure of hosting a post-birth shower for Evan at our house, thrown by my friends from the National Guard. Many thanks to Lori, Tara, Tom and Dave for the bringing over the excellent food, cake and everyone else for the great gifts and always entertaining company. Evan passed around to just about everyone in the house, all the while remaining unconscious. (I can’t blame him, as becoming unconscious during a party is something that actually tends to happen pretty regularly with this group! *wink*) It’s always great to spend time with you guys, and since another overseas deployment is just around the corner for some of you, it was great to get together and spend some quality time!

We’ve got more pictures up in the gallery for those who want to know what they’ve missed!

John – So far so great! Our first week with Evan was capped off with a visit to the pediatrician, who pronounced him healthy and fit, and in the 97th percentile for height and weight. Thus, he has officially been designated a big boy!  The last seven days went by very quickly, a blur of feedings, diaper changing, outfit swapping, remnant shopping, visitor greeting and relative meeting. It was great to have everyone meet our little (er..Big) tyke, and many thanks to all of you who brought him gifts and brought us food. Special thanks to Robin for introducing us to the wonderful invention of “Edible Arrangements“. It’s like flowers that water you..

We’ve been getting a pretty substantial amount of hours of sleep per night, but they’re coming in more bite-sized increments of 1.5 to 3 hours. It’s actually not so difficult to get up after the shorter amounts of time, it’s when I’m hitting the REM sleep at 3 hours that I tend to wake up in a daze and not really have any understanding of what’s going on. All in all, the sleep situation is pretty under control.

I feel a tad sorry for Jeanette as Evan has proved to be a bit of an eating machine, and aside from the initial elation of him taking to breastfeeding like a Senator to Lobbyists,  he tends to eat ALL THE TIME, thus relegating Jeanette to a form of milk vending machine (just deposit love!). Hopefully he stretches out the amounts of time between feedings a bit more so that Jeanette would be able to leave the house alone sometime in the next few months..

As an odd aside, being a new father and technically inclined, I had to do some research on the web for baby related musings. I came across a List of 20 Baby Products Great for Traumatizing Infants and I had a little laugh. Granted, I don’t plan on buying any of these, but judging from how Evan likes to play “Fire hose” when being changed, the Peepee-Teepee might just come in handy.

Well, that’s all from the trenches for now, until next post, goodnight and good luck..

Er.. It’s 3:00 in the afternoon, evidently I have lost all concept of time..

John – We’re back home and settling in, and Evan’s birth story will be up soon, but the basics are that Jeanette went into labor around 6:30 on Saturday night, while were out at dinner. The contractions kept coming, so we went to the hospital at 11:12 (we got in an 11:11 wish in the driveway! Of course it was already coming true..)

We were admitted to Fairview Ridges a few minutes later, it comes in handy living about 2 miles from a great hospital. Jeanette labored on like a trooper until 5:01 AM July 13, 2008, when Evan James Morrison came into the world.

He did great on all his vitals and weighed in at a whopping 9lbs, 13oz, even after taking a tinkle om Mommy and I. He was 22 inches long, and had a 14cm head. (“A very important number”, as I was told by a very serious looking nurse who wanted to impress upon me how big of a kid Evan really was.)

We spent the next few days getting to know our little guy, who has an excellent disposition, as long as he’s fed, and not sitting in his own filth (like me!) and had grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great grandparents and friends stopping by to welcome Evan to this world. (Post-Uterus..)

I’m sure that Jeanettte will be putting up a much more detailed and moving story about how it all went down, but until then, here’s a few pictures to tide you over!