Faces of.....

Nathaniel likes to make faces. Even though I have had plenty of exposure to newborns I haven't ever really paid attention to the kinds of faces babies make so I don't know if this is unique to my kid or not. I assume other babies do this but I also assume other babies don't, which I guess makes me a great theoretical quantum physicist.

Either way Nate makes faces. I'd like to share some of them with you. The last two are my favorites.


This is Nate feeling squeamish as we gave him the "birds and bees" talk


Happy after we told him we were all going out for Big Macs


Drunk on meat and special sauce after Big Macs


The inevitable internal problems of eating a Big Mac












This is right after I told him how much money Avatar made.

Succession

It can be said that my son looks like me. I've heard some scientists say that this is an evolutionary boon. A trait all baby boys have to prevent the father from taking the child's existence as a challenge for his domain. However, if I were to find a new born male a challenge to my leadership I think it would be much more frightening and challenging if he looked like me. Who is this upstart kid who is not only going to take my place but no one would even know there had been a switch. They wouldn't even question his authority cause they'd think he was me, or close enough anyway.
Does make sense to me.
This is me looking like him.....or the other way around.


Furthermore, it seems Nate has taken a liking to vampires. Thankfully, it's not related to the glowing, pedophilia vampires from Twilight. I think it's more of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer influence.

Quantity

Well babies are mostly boring. They sit around and look cute but don't do much at this point. So what I can't give you in cleverness I will make up for in quantity.

Nate loves himself a pacifier and if he can't reach his, like in the first clip one he'll find another.





Also, babies sneezing is always fun so here ya go.

It's Bathes Time

Atop our child's stomach sat a monument to the gross parts of having a baby. A last bit of disgusting biology clinging to our new baby. A black and brown reminder of the less savory things that producing a baby requires. Eventually though even the left over umbilical cord fell off and we now had the green light to give Nathaniel a bath. A real person bath, which he liked. I don't know if it's the warm water, the clean feeling or the natural inclination towards exhibitionism but he likes himself a bath.

After our doctors appointment yesterday we learned a few things; Nate is gaining weight very well. He is now at 6 1/2 lbs. The doctor also told us that he had great motor skills and was interested in how active he was for his age. I only had to show her the video of Nate rolling over a few times to convince her of this. Finally, she said he had a great head shape.

So what we have here is a boy that will grow up to be athletic, about 5'3" and have a great head shape. If that's not a recipe for success then I don't know what is. Ladies look out.


Could I get some help here?

Vile Weed

Nate sleeps pretty good. In fact, he seems to have a talent for sleeping, which is great for now, not so good for the rest of his life. Normally we'll feed somewhere between 8-10 p.m. From there I usually just stay awake for the next 4 hours and then feed him with a bottle. Annie wakes him up again in another 4 hours to feed him.

As a side note: Every always talks about the baby eating in the same terms you would talk about a farm animal. "He feeds every three hours." or "He's feeding right now". Every time we talk about his feeding I imagine Nathaniel doubled over a trough while I throw slop in and watch him dig in. Which, to be honest, is too far. When he gets hungry I can hear him gulping from feet away.

Last night we were disgruntled when I fed him a bottle at 3:30 a.m. and he wouldn't go back to sleep, like at all. He fussed and every time he got close he began to get real angry. The way he was acting made me think he was having stomach problems. He finally calmed down around 12:00 and slept. We did some internet searching and found that broccoli is a food that often gives babies stomach problems. We had broccoli last night. Newman was right all along, vile weed!


Sometimes he likes to practice his "Home Alone" look. We think all the earthquakes have him worried and he is practicing the "duck and cover, covering the head with your arms" position.



LONG JOHNS!


I made the mistake of getting too close to his territory and he issued a baby challenge. Apparently a baby will defend its territory by challenging the new comer by opening their mouth as wide as possible to demonstrate which baby has better feeding capacity.

Pictures

Here are some pictures. I think the lesson anyone could take away from this is that our kid loves to suck. He sucks constantly and if he is not sucking, usually, he's not happy.

Nathaniel has grown very attached to his pacifier. Sometimes he'll put both hands over it when we try to take it out as if to keep us from taking it away. Other times he'll put one hand over the pacifier and another over his ear. We think he is pretending to be a radio man in a WWII era platoon.

Also, he likes hugging mommy.

I pity da foo

I made the mistake of telling Nathaniel that babies usually begin rolling over somewhere between 3-6 months. When we had Tummy Time this afternoon he kept trying to roll over without much success. After one failed attempt I saw his eyes glaze over and I could telling he was drawing inspiration from somewhere, and then.........




Ladies and gentlemen our kid rolled over! 5 days old.

Tummy Time

There's this new thing called Tummy Time. Apparently you just lay your baby down on his tummy and let him flail around. This works as exercise for his little body and also serves to frustrate him. As a parent this is kind of sad but also funny (note I mentioned sad first making me not a bad parent for thinking it is also funny). The doctor recommended we start Tummy Time because babies are getting misshapen heads because parents are afraid to put kids on their stomach.

So Tummy Time it is. At first he wasn't too in to it.


A few minutes later he started to get into it.

I know it doesn't look like much but note the ferocity in his eyes.

Suddenly Nathan heard a beat. Off in the distance he caught the sound of some pumpin' jams and felt the need to take Tummy Time up a notch.

Is it just me or is my kid doing the worm?

More baby then you can shake a stick at

There was that odd moment Thursday night around 11:00 when the doctor entered the delivery room and said you're ready to start pushing. Suddenly and not so gently reality became a frozen sledgehammer crashing into my gut. 9 months of being pregnant, or for me having a pregnant wife, leaves you feeling that the reality of things is that your wife is now pregnant and that the baby part is a distant concept, ungraspable by one not having been through the process.

Suddenly a man enters your life and says, "hey, that thing in you is actually a baby and you are going to have to force him out through uncomfortable means." Again, suddenly, you realize how much simpler everything was a day ago. Nervous anxiousness perched in my stomach and began making a nest. Annie began to shake, nerves shocked at the doctor's proposition. Shock soaked in nervousness attacked our minds as it struck us, we were going to have a baby and in about a minute Annie was going to have to start the painful, foreign and unknown process. Suddenly, something you had become used to for 9 months becomes something very different. The nurse explained how Annie needed to push and what to feel for. The doctor got ready and then every one looked at the electronic contraptions that would tell us when our lives would begin to change forever. After pushing through the third contraction, the doctor stepped away and put on his birthing coat and pulled up the tools. the baby would come out in the next push and and where I thought I was nervous before, my senses showed me how much more nervous I could be. The doc explained that when the head popped out Annie would need to stop pushing. It wasn't what he said but the fact that he said it as if he were ordering a pizza. He didn't seemed to understand that we were having a baby hear not talking about the weather. A contraction later and there was a baby. Nerves cashed so suddenly my body felt almost numb but my emotions went wild. We had a baby. The foreign became familiar and the unknown became Nathaniel Lee Green. Here is the evidence.





You can see my bed for two nights off to the left. When I say bed I mean chair from Hell that I sort slept in.

Sappy Montage

This is a video montage of little Nathaniel's first few days. When I first made this video I thought; "Wow, this is really cheesey and lame." but in the stuck with it. I don't like doing lame things, in fact I don't think I've ever done something lame. But with a new baby I figured I could indulge in a lame and cheesey thing or two. In fact, I think I signed something at the hospital, one of the 50,000 things we signed, saying I had to make a video montage of my son.

Its 5 in the morning and I'm awake

Nathaniel Green was born at 11:19 April 1, 2010. He weighed 5 lbs 14 ounces and was 19.25 inches. Its now 5 in the morning and he is feeding. Thats right, he has been sleeping for hours and let us get some precious hours of sleep. But its still 5 so I'm not really going to write anything and I'll just post some pics.