Photos

Holy geez. Where has the time gone? Over two months have gone past and no post. Sorry everyone. So instead of boring you with more of my witty repartee, I'll just put up some pictures, hit the reset button, and hopefully do a better job of updating this thing.

Josie went as a giraffe for Halloween.

"With the Jell-O, and the pudding, mwaw, mwaw, mwaw."

Aunt Kristen and cousin Nick came to meet Josie.

The frat uncles and fratling spawn.

Uncle Jeff will have a little girl of his own soon.

Josie has my nose...as in her nose looks like mine, and also she's ripping mine off my face.

Josie pals around with her stunt double. Wearing the panda outfit while hanging with the panda is a little like wearing a Bon Jovi T-shirt to a Bon Jovi concert.

This outfit was brought back from China by Nat's assistant Jin. That character on her shirt means "deadly assassin with funny hair who kills victims with feces." No joke.

Gearing up for Christmas.

More soon.

Month 2 Notables

As Josie's second month comes to a close, here are a few high-lights:

Ever since the cord stub fell off, Josie has been loving bath time. This is about the only time you'll see her hair lay down, though we did try out a different style for her.
Sully is developing more of a liking for Josie. He is becoming pretty protective of her and gets very concerned when she cries. I guess this makes sense. They both love to eat, they both love to sleep, they both love to lick their hand...really they have a ton in common. Here they are kickin' it fireside.One of Josie's historically least favorite activities is tummy time. But just in the last couple of days she's become pretty keen on it. This photo also illustrates her widening power alleys, or I should say "alley" singular, as she is really only losing hair on her left side. Still plenty up top, though.

Return to the Lake

Late in August, we took Josie on her first road trip to Nat's folks' house in Amarillo. Since it seems like lakin' is a top priority for the Carters, we figured we need to get Josie acclimated as soon as possible. It was also a good in between point of Colorado and Oklahoma, so Natalie's grandmother Doris, and aunt Rosie made the trip out to meet Josie. As usual, the lake house did not disappoint and we had a great week there.

"Whoa, hey there. Let's keep the hands where I can see them."

"Look at my Baby Bjorn! Lars, let's go down to the fjord and eat chocolate and play badminton."

Tall Like Her Parents

I thought this was worth documenting. Since for a little while Josie was the newest baby out of the people we know, she always seemed like such a pip-squeak compared to other babies. That is until Natalie's long time friend Lindsay had her second child, Maeve. Despite the fact that Maeve is only a few days old in these pictures, you can tell she is awed by Josie's domineering size. That is not some kind of camera trick or optical illusion people, Josie is actually that huge. Of course the faux hawk does add about another inch to her overall appearance.

Visitors

August was the first chance that any of my family had to come out and meet Josie. Unfortunately, that was also the time that Josie decided she would start sleeping less. What my beloved daughter didn't take into consideration was that the less she sleeps, the crankier she gets. The crankier she gets, the less she is able to go to sleep. It is a vicious cycle.

Still Josie was glad to meet her grandparents on my side. My mom spent a weekend with us and spent some QT with the newest Jones. What you can't see in the picture below is I'm off camera getting ready to throw a cheese puff into Josie's mouth who has obliged me with an inviting target.
My dad and his wife, Sandi, also came out to meet Josie. My dad admitted he had little experience with tiny babies (I was raised by circus performers for the first two years of life), but he did pretty good handling Josie.
I think both grandparents, after a weekend in the house with a newborn, realized that the best part of being a grandparent was the ability to eventually go back to their own home. But we had a good time when they were here.

Slack Dad

It appears I have fallen behind in my blogging. My apologies to those FOJs (fans of Josie) out there who want updates on how the girl is doing. I can only offer up the excuse that as babies get older, they need more constant attention. I don't know why I was kept in the dark about that until I had to learn the hard way. But on to a bevy of posts.

First off, our neighbor offered to take some portraits of Josie soon after we got her home. Brandi is an aspiring photographer trying to build her book, and we definitely made out like bandits on her generosity as the photos turned out great. Our apologies to Brandi for Josie urinating on her nice baby blanket...but it least it wasn't number two. You may have seen some of these on Facebook, but we actually couldn't view these for the longest time due to my computer running off of an old operating system. Tiger, that was so 2007! Oh, ho, ho! Now that we've bumped up to Snow Leopard, we are now able to share.







I remember those days when Josie used to sleep all the time. Ahhhh, those were the days.

Give the people what they want

We have heard the outcry for more pictures of Josie. So hopefully this will tide you over for a few days.

Things are going good still. Mom and dad are settling in to the routine of feed, nap, change diapers, do laundry, sponge bath, and repeat. And Josie is still being very patient with us as we get better at this parenting thing.

The fam had some more visitors recently. Eric and Emily came down to meet Josie, and she obliged them by sleeping through their entire visit. Josie was also excited to meet her aunt and uncle, Kayce and Derek, who came up from Amarillo and stayed with us for the weekend. It was great to have the Carter side of the immediate family all together with Josie for the first time.

We have a brief couple of days of down time before the Joneses start coming to town to meet our little lady. Should be more fun times coming soon.






It wouldn't be a Carter family reunion without strapping on the Luchador masks and getting in a few Mexican wrestling matches before your flight home.

The Josie Equation

Now that we've had Josie home for two weeks, we are starting to get to know her a little better. And we are beginning to see who gave her what. We will break it down.

As you can see from above, Natalie was born with the same explosion of hair. But it seems like her dad gave her the natural faux-hawk styling. We've washed it many times, but it always goes right back to the hawk.

Every nurse that checked Josie's pulse-ox monitor attached to her foot when we were in the hospital commented on how large her feet were. And in truth, when they took her footprints they almost didn't fit on the page. Thus we've determined she got Natalie's slightly larger than normal lady feet which blesses Josie with the lifetime inability to find her shoe size in stock.

Every day, Josie's nose starts to look more and more like her dad's with the telltale nose dimples. I'm not going to say that's a good thing, but I have never seen another nose like mine. So points for being unique.

Her mom said she inherited her dad's temper, but I countered by saying, "What!?! That is complete bull crap! That's it! I'm freaking out of here!" And I stormed out of the room.

Personally, I think she looks like a combination of Natalie as a baby and me as an adult. Which honestly I was pretty gangly and awkward until age 20, so I think she got my looks during my prime. But we'll let you be the judge.

She has arrived!

It has been a whirlwind last couple of weeks. As I'm sure most of you have heard, the now infamous Josie Carter Jones was born on July 8, 2009 (7/8/9 is easy for Dad to remember, thanks Josie). Since our hospital records everything in metric increments, we heard several different converted stats for her. But the final measurements for the record books are 7 lb. 4 oz., 21" long, 13.5" head circumference. Not too shabby.

The circumstances of her delivery were not ideal, but the ultimate outcome was a complete blessing. Nat was doing very well, her labor was progressing as it should be, when all of a sudden Josie’s heart rate went way down. After repositioning Nat, the heart rate came back close to normal. But the same thing happened two more times, and our OB made the call to do an emergency C-section. Natalie was awake for this and I was in the room as well. When they got Josie out she did not look well. An abruption had taken place where the placenta detached prematurely and filled the amniotic sac with blood and other gunk which she aspirated. Josie was immediately in the care of neonatal nurses who began bagging her to stimulate respiration. They quickly had to insert a breathing tube, which helped her breathe and allowed them to suction out some of the gunk that was in her lungs. She was then taken to the NICU for further care.

Josie went through a number of tests which all yielded positive results, and after two or three hours she had the breathing tube removed and replaced with a CPAP, which is a less intrusive breathing aid that looks like Bill Lambere’s face guard with a chicken beak on the front. She was in pretty stable condition by this point. They had gotten a lot of the fluid out of her lungs and her vitals were pretty good.

Josie stayed in the NICU for three days and showed drastic improvement hour by hour. She eventually had all breathing aids removed, and once Natalie was able to feed her she had her IVs taken out. To our great delight, Josie was released from the NICU hours after Natalie was released from the Mother/Baby ward, and we were able to take her home right on schedule. I credit the superb care and skill of the Memorial Central Hospital staff with the fact that Josie is here today and her amazing recovery. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to these professionals.

Now that we have Josie home, Nat and I are cutting our parenting teeth. Fortunately, Josie has been taking it easy on us. She really only cries when we change her (which bodes well for future modesty I hope) and when she needs some feeding. She's been letting Mom and Dad get some much needed rest, albeit at three hour increments.

We've had a few visitors come to see Josie. Of course Papa and Nana Carter have been over a number of times. We also had the Graffs and the Millers over to celebrate dual birthdays for Josie and I. Yesterday, Julie, Pilar, and Lauren came bearing gifts for the newest member of the fratter family. And thankfully, our neighbor Brandi brought over some homemade lasagna.

We've received a ton of emails and calls wishing us well, so thank you everyone for all the kind words. Given the circumstances of how the delivery went down, we've been totally behind in getting out photos and updates. Our apologies, as we have been frantically trying to get accustomed to our new lives together.

Now I'm sure a burning question in everyone's mind is "How is Sully doing?" Honestly, he's adjusting pretty well. He is a little reluctant to get to know Josie that well at this point, giving her only an occasional sniff. But he is overall a lot calmer than he's ever been. He even is handling thunderstorms a lot better, which is a very unexpected benefit of the new family dynamic.

I will try to do a better job of updating the blog/calling/emailing etc., but for now here is a crop of pictures that will hopefully satisfy your appetite for everything Josie for a little while.













"My mom did a great job on my mani."