Labor Day and Anniversaries...

Although there is plenty to talk about this week, I just wanted to take the time to wish your mother a Happy 1st Anniversary!!!!  Once you get older, you will likely say, "Why do I care about your anniversary, I wasn't even there when you got married," but in this case, without the events of one-year ago today, you would surely not be here today!  So no matter how many siblings you end up having, YOU should be the one child that goes out of his way to wish us a Happy Anniversary every September 6th!

Back to you and everything we learned this week...

What a fantastic weekend!  Aunt Amy, Uncle Mark, and your cousins Allie and Ryan came in from Atlanta to meet you.  While it was nice to introduce you to them, this was also the weekend we introduced you to the rest of the world.  We broke in the stroller this weekend and decided you were old enough, and mature enough, to handle the outside world.  You had many firsts this weekend, we took you to Portillos, Pepe's, Baby's-R-Us, Target, McCullom Park, as well as both sets of Grandparent's homes AND on of your Great-Grandparent's home.  You met two aunts, three uncles, two cousins, a great-uncle, a second cousin, two psuedo cousins, a great grandpa, a great grandma, the Zvoneks, and the Ohdes.  Non-stop action all weekend, and I don't think I will ever stop beaming with pride when I introduce you to new people.

So Saturday morning we met with our second photographer.  We have been blessed with a couple of budding photographers as friends, who were more than willing to photograph you as a newborn.  We first sat down with JR Photography (Jeff Lintz) last Saturday (The pics in this post are courtesy of him).  This Saturday we met with Sarah Plourd-Jastre (samples of her pics will be available later this week).  So one of the primary differences between these two photographers, was that Sarah wanted to take some pics with you "au natural".  We were expecting you to have finished eating, and fallen into a DEEP milk coma, but, of course, that just wasn't the case.  You were wide awake through the entire shoot!

  

After about an hour with Sarah by ourselves, Aunt Amy came by  with Grandma T and your cousins Allie and Ryan.  You had just finished one of your "au natural" poses, and you were starting to get a little fussy.  Now, handling a 10-day-old child sans diaper, as you can imagine, is a bit like playing Russian roulette.   You started to get a little fussy, and Grandma T felt like she knew how to calm you down.  She proceeded to pick up the loaded pistol (that would be you!).  Grandma swooped you off the blanket and began to coddle you like only a grandma can.  Aunt Amy made sure to comment about how funny it would be if you peed on grandma, and sure enough, about 3.8 seconds later, you proceeded to piss all over your grandmother!  Grandma, to her credit, took it like a champ and we all had a pretty good laugh.  

Life Lesson #1 - Pissing on other people is MUCH more entertaining that pissing on oneself (you must be preparing for a life in politics)!

We spent a lot of time with your Aunt and cousins this weekend, and it was great to see them interact with you.  They were so excited to meet you this weekend, and they were more than willing to lend helping hands, as long as it didn't mean changing a diaper.  I hope the fact that they live in Atlanta doesn't deter you from becoming close to them, but knowing my sister (your Aunt), she will do anything possible to make sure we get quality family time a few times a year.  Between their visits to Chicago, our visits to Atlanta,  a little bit of Skype, and a few family vacations sprinkled in, I don't think you and your cousins will have a problem hitting it off!  Worst part is, this is only ONE set of cousins.  While Atlanta makes visits more manageable, you have another set of cousins that live in Sweden.  That will be an entirely different hurdle to overcome!

All in all, this weekend was really the perfect way to introduce you to the world.  Good food, good family, good weather, and good (well-behaved) baby made for a perfect weekend.  We are now a lot more comfortable taking you outside of our cave.  Not sure if we are supposed to be taking you all over the place with us, but our condo is SO small, that cabin fever sets in pretty fast.  It is best for everyone's sanity if we get out once in a while.  

Oh, and by the way, I am working on our current living situation.  There are some life changing events in the works right now and I will update you once more things are finalized, but it will definitely impact where will may be living 6 to 9 months from now. 

Till the next time...

Dad 

To anyone reading this, feel free to contact me to inquire about any photos you see in my blog.  Our friends have been kind enough to help document Noah's early days, so if you like what you see, I would be glad to put you in touch with our photographers.