Attack of the Joneses

Photos

2009-12-01T15:11:00.001-08:00

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

2009-09-14T21:42:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-14T21:08:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-14T15:50:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

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."

Last day

2009-07-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

Tuesday marked Natalie's last day of drilling and filling before the delivery. I think she timed it about right. Any longer and I think she would have choked out either a patient or me because apparently the stresses of dentistry are not alleviated by an ever-expanding tummy and an increasingly frequent need to urinate. Go figure.

Natalie has been a real trooper by working for the past 39 weeks, and I'm hoping it pays off in the form of a heightened tolerance to loud, ear-piercing noises in Baby Jones. We are contemplating replacing the stuffed bear that makes womb noises with a high speed drill in her crib.

We celebrated Natalie's hiatus from dentistry with a dinner at our favorite local restaurant, On The Border, where Natalie indulged in a virgin strawberry margarita. I planned on getting a photo, but she pounded it pretty quick. I have a feeling there will be a rapid return to alcohol consumption in my wife's future once she is less one baby girl.

Many thanks to grandpa-to-be, Steve, for his triumphant return to North Academy to cover Natalie's shifts while she is on maternity leave.

We'll keep you posted.

Nursery

2009-06-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

Well, we are getting pretty close to the big day. We are to the stage now where Natalie goes to see the doctor every week. If we had to guess at this point, we would say that she is not going to come early. But Natalie is still doing well, and we're both pretty relaxed and just ready for her to get here.

A little down time has allowed us to tie up some loose ends such as finishing the nursery. This room used to be an office, and will hopefully be an office again sometime in the undetermined future, so we decided to not do too much rearranging or painting. Here is the full tour:

This seemed a very appropriate reminder to have hanging over the changing table.
The art was my contribution to the decor. We had these illustrations printed on canvas, and they turned out great. Click on the image for a closer look.
Everybody keep your fingers crossed for smooth sailing from here on in. We'll keep you posted as developments arise.

Cousin

2009-06-11T15:21:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, Casey, my 8.5 year-older brother, has also been expecting his first child. This baby proved that modern science is indeed a science and was born on her exact due date of June 10th. May I present my niece, Mary Elizabeth Jones, born June 10 at 10:31pm, weighing in at 8 lbs. 1 oz., and 22" long.
Everyone I've talked to so far back in Atlanta says she looks like Katey did as a baby, but I think she looks a lot like Casey with cooler hair.

Two brothers having baby girls a month apart. Pretty freaking exciting.

Friends in town

2009-06-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Just as we were getting over the bruises from Amarillo, we had a slew of friends in town. Jeff and Signe Risom of Denmark fame were out from London for the week and found our house to be a good go between of Pueblo (Jeff's hometown) and Denver. They stayed with us for a couple of nights before meeting up with all of our other friends in Denver.

Since Signe grew up on pickled herring, I thought she would feel at home eating at the Texas Roadhouse, Colorado Springs's finest dining establishment. This is me and the Risom's in front of the Garden of the Gods.
There was also an appearance of the New York contingent up in Denver this past week. It had been a long time since a lot of us had been together, and I always relish the chance to see all of these guys. Here is me, Sean, Eron, Jeff, and Kevin posing with the newest little man, Jax Graff.
If only Jax and baby Jones knew how many stories they are in store for from their dads that begin with "So back when we were cool and good looking in college..."

Calling an audible

2009-06-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

We here at the Jones house never like to get too comfortable with anything. You gots to keep it fresh. That's our motto. So we figured with Nat being a month away from delivering this baby, now is the perfect time to switch doctors.

WHAT!?!

No need to worry, people. This was a very calculated move. We had reached what you might call a "communication impasse" with our old doctor and thus felt we would be more comfortable finding someone whose communication style jives more with ours. Nat met with her new doctor last week and we both feel much better moving forward.

The only downside is that we can't deliver at the same hospital. But never fear, we toured the new hospital over the weekend and it's just as sweet as the other one. Looking at our old post about the previous hospital tour, I laugh because both Nat and I really didn't know where this new hospital was. And it is substantially larger resulting in us getting lost on our dry run to the delivery ward.

In further baby news, Nat and I went to an 8 hour birthing class this weekend. "8 HOURS!" you say, "GOOD LORD!" That was my sentiment as well. But since Natalie and I are model parents-to-be, we only stayed for the first two hours and skipped the last six. The way we figured it, we could spend six hours practicing pain management breathing techniques, or we could just get the freaking epidural. We chose epidural and lunch at Il Vicino.

We did stick around long enough to watch some totally sweet 1980's child birth videos which caused the guy sitting next to us to say to his wife, "Oh my God, did that baby's head just explode?!?"

If you are still worried about our preparedness, don't be. My brother sent me the notes he took from watching a child birthing DVD. Apparently child birth is a lot like high school literature, save yourself some time and get the CliffNotes.

And it was all amarillo

2009-06-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. The Joneses have been trying to keep their collective head above water (as you will see proof of in this post), so let me bring you up to speed with some rapid-fire posts.

At the end of last month, Natalie and I headed down to lovely Amarillo, TX to Fort Carter-South. Derek and Kayce have lived in the Lake Tanglewood community for some time now, but Steve and Carolyn recently bought a house in the same community right on the lake. They've spent a good part of the last three months renovating the place, and this trip was the first time Natalie and I had seen it.

I will admit, I was skeptical about a "vacation" home in Amarillo, especially since Nat and I so enjoyed the Aspen Glen house in Carbondale. But I will gladly admit that their place is awesome. I have never spent much time laking, but I now see what the attraction is. Steve and Carolyn have done a great job on the house giving it a very comfortable, modern feel. It's the perfect place for lounging around or for an extended day of punishing speed boat activities.

I of course being of limited lake experience, approached the weekend in the totally wrong way. Determined to get up on skis for the first time, I spent two solid hours in this pursuit resulting in a pretty aggressive sun burn and a VERY aggressive armpit rash from my life jacket. This combination effectively limited any of my subsequent activities to camera guy or steering the boat. But it was worth it for those four seconds that I got up on my skis...kind of.

Nat obviously had to take it easy. No wake boarding for her. But she did eventually remove her insect-repellant shirt and swim a little in the lake.

We are definitely looking forward to more trips to the lake, especially once we have a little rug rat running around. I feel confident she will have more luck skiing than her dad. Here is a smattering of photos.

Didn't this guy get the memo that he's going to be a grandpa in about a month?

We talkin' bout practice

2009-05-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

Since we received a bunch of new baby goodies from the shower, we wanted to demo some of them to see if they pass Jones standards. Natalie thought it would be a good idea for me to captain the trials because she believes my practical baby experience to be lacking due to me being the youngest child in my family. I think she just likes barking orders and making the monkey dance. As we do not currently have a baby, we recruited a stand-in to aid in the test process.First I performed basic diapering on our new changing table. As you can see...flawless.Next I mastered the ancient art of swaddling. I thought my diapering was good, but the precision of my swaddling surprised even me.
Choosing a car seat can be a little overwhelming. Chicco? Graco? Maybe Combi? Here you see I put our Chicco KeyFit 30 through some rigorous stress tests.
Though Natalie would not let me post the photo of me throwing the car seat off our deck, I feel pretty confident our baby could survive a three story fall in the Chicco.

And finally, I made a couple of laps around the nursery in our new stroller. It handles like it is on rails.
Apparently Sully felt he could use some big brother practice and got in a few smooch reps. Well done.One step closer to parenthood.

Shower

2009-05-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Friday marked the 8 month point. Here is another photo to check the progress. Saturday was the eagerly anticipated baby shower, and it did not disappoint. It is an embarrassment of baby stuff around the Jones house following the big haul this weekend. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the safety and clothing fund of Baby Jones.It was quite a turnout at the Mayo-hosted event in Denver. We had friends making the trek from such far off places as San Francisco, Chicago, and Atlanta to add to the already diverse crowd. From frat gals to the dentals...and even some Chatfield Chargers...added to the carnage of wrapping paper and half eaten crudités. Here is Natalie surrounded by her spoils.
All of this has got me wondering when the husband/dad gets his day in the sun. For the ladies, it is a constant string of parties and gift giving: wedding showers, bachelorette parties, baby showers. When do I get my loot? All I've had is a bachelor party and the only "gift" I got was a shot of Austrian gasoline provided by Jeff Risom.

But seriously, thanks to everyone who came and thanks for all the wonderful gifts. There is very little left that we have on our list of needs, which means I have even fewer trips to Babies R Us in my future. Honestly that is gift enough for me.

Check back soon as we begin our stress testing of all of our new baby items...

Hospital Tour

2009-05-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

Nat and I took a tour of Memorial Hospital North where if all goes well we will be delivering a baby in a couple of months. A couple of pivotal pieces of information were learned at our tour:

Number 1, where the hospital is. To this point I wasn't 100% sure I had ever driven past it.

Number 2, where to take Natalie in the hospital. If all else fails, go to the emergency room entrance.

Number 3, do not abuse the entry access code or it will be taken away from you. So for all you crazy party crashers who like to bust into delivery wards, do not come to me asking what the code is because you are out of luck.

We are really lucking out with the hospital. It is very new and nice. Flat screen TVs, the whole nine yards. I am a little concerned that there are only four birthing rooms, but apparently they only deliver around 130 babies a year. We'll roll the dice on getting a room I guess.

On a side note, both mom and dad-to-be are becoming emotional wrecks. I always knew we were a pair of softies, but the two of us cannot watch anything even slightly emotional on TV or it's a sob factory. I totally lost it watching "Grey's Anatomy" the other night, imagine what happened when we saw "Marley and Me." Not pretty. Natalie can blame it on the hormones, I however am just a pansy.

Bump

2009-04-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

Since there have been a lot of requests from the Atlanta Joneses to see pictures of the baby bump, here is a side by side comparison of Nat back in November and Nat now.

Test Run

2009-04-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

So in an attempt to keep our far away friends and family (which since we live in Colorado Springs is just about everybody) updated on the exciting coming months, we've started up our own blog. Bear with us, we are new at this.