It's been a long day

My mother in law was kind enough to allow me to 'steal' a picture from her camera...

This was taken about 5 minutes ago in our hotel room. As Natalie has had a rather busy day, she has retired to the king bed in her room for a good nights sleep. Maybe next time we'll see if they have a smaller bed:-)

San Diego and Los Angeles

I can't believe I forgot my camera:-( For some reason, as we were leaving, I grabbed a number of items including my camera case, but no camera. We bought a throw-away camera so we hope to have some pictures when we return.

So far the trip has been interesting. I'm learning what it is like to travel with a 2 month old. All things considering, it has gone pretty well. We have enjoyed our stay with my grandmother at her community, La Vida Real, and have found all of my grandmother's friends to be very endearing. Natalie has become the star of the show at our meals in the dining room. My grandmother is only too happy to show off her 'great granddaughter from Pennyslvania'. It is great to see her so happy.

We did take a day trip today to see our family in LA. We met them in Irvine and have settled in at a local Residence Inn. I've managed so far to wrestle and lose to a leaky sink in our room and have found ways to try to pawn off Natalie's rather odorous diapers by attempting to secretly dump them in my brother's room. Natalie has managed to completely 'soil' her car seat for the third time this week (I had no idea that there was such a high 'rate of return' on digested baby formula:-) We did enjoy a nice dinner and the crowd is now planning to make an ice cream run to a local ice cream parlor. Like I said...all in all, not too bad.

Hope to have pictures soon!

Quick Update

It has been about a week since I last entered a post, so I will do a quick 'catch-up' on the latest and greatest. Natalie is gaining weight little by little so we are very glad for that. We are trying to get into a routine as we will be traveling to San Diego this week so that Natalie can meet her great-grandmother, Grandma Creason. This will be her first big trip so we are exited but a little apprehensive about traveling with a 2 month old. We trust God will give us safe journey mercies.

This past weekend we had the opportunity to co-host a 40th birthday party for our dear friend, Jody Kooiman. We don't have any pictures from the event, yet, but I hope to post some. We were also visited by our friend Lauren Kooistra. I have added a picture from her visit.

The rest of the pictures are of Natalie, looking cute, as usual:-)

Natalie Sleeping

No one was harmed in the making of this film. Young Natalie can still breath, even given her peculiar sleeping position:-)

A few recent pictures

Here are some pictures from the past weekend. We celebrated Amanda's birthday on Saturday at a local French bistro and then enjoyed time with my Aunt Jane, Angela and my brother's family on Sunday.

A few early proofs

We had a photographer take some pictures of us with Natalie last weekend. We are starting to receive a couple of proofs, which I am posting here. For a view of more of the proofs on the photographers blog, click on the link below:

http://www.custom4keeps.blogspot.com/

Ellen and Davis here for a visit!

We were so glad to have Ellen and Davis visit us last week. Here are a few pictures from the adventures of the wives and kids...

The latest

Amanda's childhood friend, Ellen, arrived today with her son, Davis. They are going to be spending the week with us. We had a nice dinner out tonight, but I don't have any pictures, yet. I will hope to add more this week. In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures of Natalie that my mother forwarded to me from her camera (I realize I've been adding a lot of Natalie lately, but I have family that tells me I can't have too many pictures:-)

A little video

This was taken with my camera so the audio isn't the best- We think she is still entertaining:-)

OK, now I'm tired...

Big Smile!

There is something about hanging out with Mom and Dad around the Sunday lunch table that just makes a kid smile:-) Natalie was very photogenic today so I snapped away while she sat at the table in her baby seat.

Then I gave this other kid a left hook...

At lunch today after church, Natalie was telling us stories about how some other 'big kid' tried to come over and take a toy from her in nursery. Apparently it resulted in fisticuffs (I always wanted to use that word in a sentence) so Natalie was retelling it over our mealtime.

**Some artistic liberty taken by the author of this blog**

Where is your nose?

We spent so much time yesterday working on memorizing different parts of the face that when she took a nap, she was still practicing in her sleep (actually she was very tired after we had a photographer over to take some baby pictures...this also explains why her attire is more suited to being outdoors in 80 degree weather).

I think this is a smile:-)

Natalie is starting to smile. I snapped a picture today while she was joining us for breakfast. I think it just qualifies as the beginning of a smile. We haven't yet been able to get a picture when she has a big grin so this will have to do...

We are biased so we think she is looking 'cuter' everyday.

Hanging out on the quilt

Here is a picture taken last night while Natalie was resting on the quilt. It was right after I had put her on her stomach for 'tummy time' so she wasn't overly enthusiastic. She is actually doing very well on her tummy. She lifts her head and can even roll over when she gets fired up.

Visit with Tim and Anju

Friends of ours from Philadelphia came to see us this past weekend. Here is a picture of Tim and Anju with Natalie. Tim developed some tricks of his own so that he could keep Natalie from crying. Since she likes to be carried around the house when someone is walking, Tim got a fair amount of exercise.

Ice Cream with friends

Amanda, Natalie and I had the chance to catch up with our friends, the Dodds and the Allens, on Friday night. We ended up at Friendly's and enjoyed some serious ice cream. As you can see from the pictures, young Cole Dodds took power ice cream eating to a new level. I told his dad, John, that whenever I need a good laugh, I just check out the picture of Cole with his ice cream 'brain freeze' look.

This is the life

And to think it only took 9 diapers, 3 feedings and 2 outfits to look this peaceful.

Whatever you do, Dad...

Please don't take away my pacifier!

Froot Loops

I just had to post this picture of my niece, Emily, enjoying a bowl of Uncle Dave's Froot Loops.

(we had a little bonding time one morning when she was here:-)

mmmm.........good!

Family and Friends visiting

We've had a number of visitors over the past week and a half. Here are a few pictures.

Top picture is of Josh and Steph with Natalie. Bottom picture is of Mary 'Nana' Reeser with Natalie.

Finding a rhythm

5 days in and we are working on finding our rhythm. Natalie must feel like her life is so busy with all the eating, sleeping, diaper and clothing changes, crying for Mom in the middle of the night, and all the other fun events taking place.

She has been a real sweetheart so far, but definitely has shown us her personality. Amanda is working with her to find an eating pattern that works. Today was to be her first doctor's appointment since coming home from the hospital, so I will look forward to hearing a full report later today.

Since Natalie's arrival we've also had many visitors and family in town. We took a number of pictures, so I will work on adding some of those pictures to our photo gallery on the bottom right of the blog.

Here is a quick picture from this past weekend-

Sleeping

Big day for naps-

Here is a quick video taken tonight with Amanda's parents.

Natalie's First Day

You know, the first full day of life is a tough one. You get poked, prodded and tested all day long and then you have to figure out how to get food and who your new friends are going to be. And...you keep trying to take a nap because you are tired from yesterday's action but everyone wants to pass you around. I would say that from Natalie's demeanor on her first day, she is pretty flexible. Maybe God knows that her parents need to work into this slowly and so he gifted young Natalie with an ability to 'roll with it'. Any way you slice it, Natalie was a real blessing today as we enjoyed a number of visitors.

Here are a couple of pictures of Natalie with two new friends, Jody Kooiman, and Grandma Creason. We had a number of other family and friends visit, so I just picked two pictures.

Tomorrow Natalie gets to experience her first car ride in her cool car seat (officially approved by the nurse in charge of car seats...who knew there was such a thing!) and gets to see her new room. Boy, a lot happens in the first few days of life!

Natalie Elizabeth Creason

Wow- a lot happened in the 8 hours or so since I last posted an entry. We were cruising along all set to have a baby by 5pm, but then came to realize that our little one had decided to get into a transverse position (sideways) which caused Amanda to have serious difficulties in the delivery.

To Amanda's credit, I was absolutely amazed by her determination and by her efforts to try to move the baby along. The nurse who observed the process said later that Amanda went far beyond what most would do. Fortunately, no one told Amanda it wasn't normal so she just pushed and pushed until the doctor finally pulled out our dear Natalie Elizabeth a little before 8pm. The last 3 hours were non stop pushing and an amazing display of physical exertion that left me with a new respect for Amanda. As this is a rated PG blog, I will spare the details, but suffice to say, I never knew a newborn baby's head could take so much 'manipulation' by a doctor.

So...after a day that started around 5am and ended about 8pm, we are blessed to have a third member of our family. Young Miss Creason weighed in at 7.6 pounds and measured 21 inches long. Here is a picture taken around midnight after she'd had a quick scrub in the newborn nursery. She was then headed back to spend the night with her Mom, a tired but very happy Amanda.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. Thank God for his faithfullnes to us during this day.

Dave