Jackson, 5 days old

He's Here!

On Thursday, October 13th, exactly 6 days late, our amazing bundle of love and sunshine arrived.  After a quick and fairly textbook delivery, we were blessed with Nathaniel Jackson Sechrest.  He weighed 6 lbs 13 oz, and was 19 inches long.  He was a superstar from the very beginning with 9's on his apgar scores and a healthy cry and great color right from the get-go.  He is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen with his big eyes and perfect face.  I know that every mom says this, but I have a host of doctors, nurses, and visitors who can back me up; plus, photo evidence.  He is now 11 days old and is a total champ.  He eats, sleeps, poops, pees, and burps like it's his job, and right now it is.  I'm sure when he gets older he will be rolling his eyes and saying "oh mom" all the time because I just can't stop looking at him and singing to him and kissing his adorable little face and hands and toes.  It was absolutely love at first sight for both me and Nate.  Prepare yourselves for our world now to revolve around Jackson.  And just look at the kid... tell me you could resist...

The Waiting Game

I am 38 weeks along with this little boy.  At 36 weeks, our doctor told us that we would be having a September baby and that we probably wouldn't make it another week without having the baby.  Well, we (of course) had a moment of panic and flew into frantic preparations and busted out the nursury and threw a baby-q for our family and friends and cleaned our house top to bottom.  Now what?  We sit and stare and relax... and it's wonderful.  Everyone keeps telling us that we should be freaking out and walking a lot and eating spicy food and trying to get this baby here.  But frankly, I'm loving these few days of peace.  Our bags are packed and we are ready for our baby to be here, but I'm really not in any hurry.  Nate says we're in a "holding pattern" and I think it's a nice way to live for now.  I'm sure there are lots of terribly useful things we could be doing while we wait, but for now, we are catching up on old movies, taking our dogs to the dog park, and sitting on our back porch watching the sun set... basically steeling ourselves for the moment when our lives are turned comepletely inside out and upside down (in the most delightful way) by a screaming, pooping, barfing bundle of love and sunshine.  Any day now....

And now for your viewing pleasure:

It's a Boy!

So the wait is over and we now know that we are having a baby boy! We couldn't be more thrilled. I could get all revisionist and say I knew he was a boy all along, but I really didn't. So pretty much everyone but my sister and Nate's dad and aunt were wrong. Everyone was leaning girl. The ultrasound was awesome. He was wiggling so much and we saw lots of cool things like him sucking his thumb, swallowing, yawning, and doing flips. He started off with a creepy face-on shot that looked like a Halloween skeleton mask. We counted fingers and toes and got lots of visuals of him kicking and punching me. Nice. He is already the sweetest little thing. Here is some photo evidence. Hopefully he won't be mad at me in the future for putting his little junk on our family blog!

Such a cute face!

He got bored and showed us a really big yawn.

Toes!

Proof

Still looks a little like a lizard to me...

Lizard

Don't have a heart attack or anything, but I'm back. Among other things, what you may have missed in the last year and a half is that I am pregnant. 20 weeks pregnant to be exact. Also, we bought a house, I got a new (now sort of old) job, and Nate got a Jeep. We moved from Draper to Salt Lake City (Millcreek) and bought an adorable little brick house that was built in the 1940's. I have been working for Camp Bow Wow for over a year now. It's a dog day care and boarding place and I handle the marketing. We took the plunge and decided that sharing a car for 6 years was enough. Nate got a 1998 Jeep Wrangler that he loves and that the dogs and I are learning to love (it's really bumpy). We are having our first kid, whom we affectionately call Lizard since that's what he or she looked like early on. I am due in October and we find out what I am having on Monday. So here is your shot! Anyone who cares to publish their guess, please do so. I may decide to take up blogging again and publish some pictures of the house and Jeep and baby. We'll see.