Your daily dose of Owen

This one's for Nana:

6 weeks old

Saint Patrick's Day

Yes we realize that St. Patrick's day was a week ago, but we thought we'd share our festivities anyway. For this holiday we had a splendid dinner that, while decidedly not Irish, was definitely green. (I also found out that the original color of St. Patrick's day was blue, not green!) This dinner consisted of guacamole, fajitas, and brazilian limeade (colored green). Yum!

Brazilian limeade was introduced to me by the Pickett family, and I would highly recommend you try it, it's DELICIOUS. Here's the recipe:

Place in blender

2 1/2 c. water

enough ice to bring it up to 3 1/2 c.

1/2 c. sugar

3 T. sweetened condensed milk

1/2 t. vanilla

Blend until smooth

Add two limes (skins and all) cut into eight pieces each and blend for a count of five seconds (one one thousand two one thousand etc.)

Strain drink through a fine strainer into a pitcher and serve over ice!

Enjoy.

Home Improvement

We've finally adjusted to life as parents enough to actually get things accomplished. Here's what we've done:

1. Replaced this awful fluorescent light that used to be in the kitchen, with a lovely track light that matches the dining room fixture splendidly. Here's the light from before (sorry no pictures of it before in the kitchen)

and here's the new light. Yay! (I hate fluorescent lights)

2. We weeded the front garden. Again we have no before picture, but trust us, it was BAD. Many weeds and big brown dead tree plant things. We left the daffodils and the pretty little yellow flowers in the front, and now we just need to fill in empty spaces.

Side note about daffodils, they are my mom's favorite flower, so the weeding the front garden reminded me of my mom. Love you mom.

Lessons learned

Parenting Lessons Learned

1. Always, always, always have a burp cloth with you, EVERYWHERE
2. Don't skimp on diapers, unless you want to be scrubbing poo stains out of baby clothes and changing wet outfits every few hours
3. Learn to let things go, like a not always clean kitchen.
4. Have fun

After a month and two days, these are the lessons I've learned.

In honor of Owen's one month birthday (two days ago), as well as his becoming the proud owner of a belly button, we have some tub pictures for you.

As you can see, he really likes to stick out his tongue. A lot.

He also really likes his hands in his face.

Here we have some perspective as to relative sizes. :)

Post-tub. Clean and happy.

And all dressed.
I was once told I'd make a good pig for Halloween. I think Owen takes after me in that regard.

Owen update

As per the request of his loving grandmother, here are a few new pictures of Owen, who is now almost a month old. Crazy! Time has really flown, and we've been having so much fun with Owen, although being parents can definitely be exhausting. Evidence: this picture. A totally impromptu daddy/son nap on the couch. So tender.

Here's Owen having just woken up. I wish I could look as cute when I just wake up! He makes great faces, and really seems like he loves observing the world. He's quite the alert and focused little guy.

This outfit was given to Owen by Casey's Grandma Lucy. So cute! It really makes him look like a little man. He's growing very fast, and has already almost outgrown a few outfits.

Well, that's all for now. We sure do love him. :)

Owen Photo Shoot

Having little Owen home with us for the last 9 days has been the greatest. He is just a perfect little guy. I think that he has only cried for longer than 5 minutes twice.

One of Katalyn's old roommates, Lora, gave us a free baby photo shoot as a baby shower gift. And she took some wonderful pictures. If you want to see some of the pictures they are available here. If you live in Utah County and have photographic needs, you should check out her page. She does great work, and is really fun to be around.

Owen Rodger Pickett: The Continuing Story

It began on a Wednesday much like any other... Katalyn had a appointment with the doctor first thing in the morning, and we went together. She had been measuring small for the last 2 months or so, and that was the same on this day. Her doctors had been concerned about it before. One had ordered an extra ultrasound right before Christmas, and another had us come in to monitor the baby's heart rate and get another ultrasound just a few weeks ago. Though none us these tests had shown any cause for concern, the doctor we saw on Wednesday was still worried that Katalyn was measuring small, and told us that since we were at 39 weeks he thought the best course of action would just be to go to the hospital and get induced. It was at that moment that the full weight of having a baby struck me, and I began to have a mild panic attack as we drove home to pack a hospital bag. Katalyn was sweet and calming as always and helped me not to hyperventilate. When we got home we packed our bags (we googled what to bring), I gave Katalyn a blessing, and we headed out for the hospital.


We waited in this room for a while until they admitted us to the real one. We decided to take advantage of the time by taking some final tummy shots before it disappeared. Isn't she beautiful?


So we got into our room and started on pitocin around 11:00 am. Six hours later, Katalyn had only changed by 2 centimeters, and both of us were getting set to be in there for a long time. That was not a very appealing idea since we had only brought 3 movies and we had finished 2 of them. Around 7 pm the nurse came in to check her again, and somehow she was fully dilated. We started pushing a little while later, and at 8:19 pm, this little guy came out. 7 pounds 4 ounces and 20 inches long.

This was Katalyn seriously 1 minute after he was born. I think the caption to this picture should be something like "Epidurals are the best!"



After checking to make sure that he was healthy, they let little Owen (who was at the time nameless) hang out with us in the room for about an hour. He and Katalyn did some very tender bonding. Then it was time for me to take him down to the nursery. There, the nurse gave him his very first bath. He wasn't too thrilled about that.


But afterward, he was clean and happy and he had a sweet hair-do.


The next day, we had quite a few visitors from Katalyn's side of the family. This is Katalyn's mom along with most of her grandchildren.


By the second morning, we were ready to get our little son out of the hospital and take him home. Here he is right before we strapped him in his car seat. The hat was a gift from Becca. Though his head needs to grow a bit before it really fits, it still looked pretty darn stylish on him.


Here is Katalyn dressed and ready to go home. I feel like the caption on this one should be something like, "Wait, who just had a baby?"


Here we are just hanging out in the nursery after getting him home. I think that my favorite part of this picture is his skeptical look. To me it conveys something to the effect of, "So, you really think you can do this, eh?" Or perhaps, "Who the heck are you and why do you smile at me so much?"


Katalyn's mom has come to stay with us for a while to help us get adjusted. It has been wonderful having her here. Owen just loves snuggling with his grandma.


This picture was taken earlier today, right after our first attempt at giving him a bath. Again he didn't love it too much, but he was so clean and cute right afterward that it was worth it. Unfortunately that only lasted about 15 seconds at which point he spit up all over himself and his little towel. In the end, it turned out okay and we got another priceless facial expression on camera. Isn't he cute with those little ears?


Here's me combing his hair after the bath. We played around with a few different looks. One of my favorites was the missionary part.


I decided that it makes him look a little more mature than I am comfortable with, and we went back to the faux-hawk.

Well that's our story and all of the cute pictures that we have so far. I think that being parents has been a little more difficult than we had pictured, but we love it and him and each other more than ever.