Amazing Baby

I'm holding our amazing baby boy. His surgery went well today. He was cheerful beforehand, even though he wasn't allowed to eat, and is waking up sweetly as the anesthesia wears off now. We love our baby so very much, and are grateful for everyone's prayers and support.

Baby Backpacking

I guess you wouldn't call what Chase did backpacking. He really went sleep packing, but he's really good at it.

We headed to Marion Lake last Saturday for some camping with friends. The weather was really great and so was the company. Oliver was self sufficent this time around, he carried his own food, bowl, and tennis ball.

He was really great on the hike, although his lack of awarness of his pack earned him the nickname wide load. More than once that pack almost tripped me as he would jog by.

If it weren't for the mosquitos we would have had a good campsite too.

At least we had a great view. Megan and I are a new and overly protective parents when it comes to bug spray, so we didn't use any. This wasn't a huge problem until about an hour before sunset. Then the litte parasites came out for dinner so we retreated to our tent. Baby's first bug bite isn't something you get real proud of, but it's still a first.

Being a great roller isn't always an advantage. Sometimes you get a mouth full of dirt.

I managed to get a couple sunset pics before getting eaten alive.

Happy family...

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Chase is addicted to rolling. He can't stop himself. When we put him down he immediatly rolls onto his left side then suspends himself there for awhile. About half the time he then rolls onto his back and the other half onto his stomache. When he was three weeks old he would occasionally roll from his belly to his back but this was an accident and it has become very infrequent. Consequently Mom and Dad have to roll him back to his back after three or four minuets on his front.

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East Coast Swing

For his first plane ride Chase chose the red-eye from Portland to Newark. It was a good choice, he slept four out of the six hours we were in the air. The bad part was that his parents and grandparents were dead tired the next day. But we all survived.

The fam visited Megan's relatives during the week of the Forth of July. It was a very relaxing trip for me and also nice to get to spend so much time with my son.

Chase got to meet a lot of his family for the first time. Aunts, uncles, great uncles, great aunts...

Including his cousin Conner...

Chase isn't very good at sharing...

He also learned some music appreciation...

Flying with a baby was not nearly as bad as I had feared. In fact there are some bonuses. The first of which is that you get to board the plane early. This is a huge advantage because we never check any bags, we got first access to the overhead bins. The second is that it gave Megan and I an excuse to walk up and down the aisle burping and entertaining Chase. The downsides is how cramped it was. Fortunately we sat next to some very gracious people who gave lots of compliments about the behavior of our child. It's really nice to hear, even though we didn't have anything to do with it.

Driving in the car has been the biggest struggle so far. Chase doesn't really like to be in a car seat for more that twenty minutes. We're not sure if he gets car sick or if he's just cranky. We tried to time all of our car trips around his naps. The key to travelling this way is flexibility. We rarely told anyone that we would be meeting them at a certain time. Mostly though we tried to have people come to Meg's parents house.

All in all it was a very good trip. Now it's back to work :(