Nathan Lare Watson, born March 10, 2009

We're way behind on blogging, if you haven't noticed.  Here are some pics from our son's arrival.  We've got tons of pictures from the last nine weeks.  We'll try to catch up quickly and start posting more recent pictures.  As for life with Nathan, it's been an adventure.  He's so much fun, and so much work.  He's starting to hold his head up and babble and smile.  We sure do love him.  Check out the flickr link on the right for more pictures than you probably care to see.

The Preparations Continue

This past Sunday we took a road trip to IKEA.  The nearest one is in Chicago, so we made a long day of it.  Man, it was fun.  We decked out the boy's room, we're especially excited about the daybed that pulls out into a king size bed.  Buddy seems to be thankful that we're making his room so nice.  I'm afraid he's in for a rude awakening.

Today, we had a routine ultrasound to make sure our son was head-down.  He was.  He's completely within the normal range on every category.  I thought this was a cool picture of us watching him on the monitor.
We got to see the little guy in 4D.  Am I crazy, or does he look like me?  Maybe both.

Showered

We were in Georgia for Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving is alway something to look forward to, but this year the trip also served as a chance to be showered with baby gifts by my family.  Our son was given all sorts of things, stuffed animals, pacifiers, blankets, but most importantly-Braves jerseys.  My uncles, it seems, are concerned about his being born in St. Louis and the detrimental impact that might have on his baseball fandom.  I was concerned too, but I think we've taken the first big steps toward preventing such an error.  Crisis averted.

Ashley at 22 weeks pregnant.  Over halfway there!  I (Pete) felt him kick for the first time a few days ago.  It blew my mind.

More Ultrasounds of our Son

WOW!

What a great day.  We went to visit our baby.  Yeah, there's never any distance, especially for Ash, but seeing the squirming, kicking, yawning, hearing the heartbeat--it felt like a visit.  As you can see we opted to wear "gender neutral" green.

As the ultrasound was beginning our nurse informed us that she was a student.  That turned out to be much to our advantage.  She was having a hard time getting all the photos she needs to get, so we got to watch our baby squirm, kick, move, make faces for about an hour.  She kept commenting on how active our baby was.  A hand in front of the face, a somersault during a spinal measurement, etc.  So Liz called in Rene, the wiley 30-year veteran with an enormous and entertaining personality.  Within minutes, she asked us, "Do you want to know the gender?"  "Yes".  "Are you sure?"  "Yes".  The she said "I'll give you a hint, the hand is on it."  Then we yelled, "Is that a penis?".  "Sure is", she said before proceeding to refer to our baby's parts by names not normally uttered by middle-aged women.  We were so excited.  Not because we wanted a boy, but because now we knew, and that it made parenthood all the more real.  The ladies went on to rave about how active our son is.  They said he was an A+, showing no signs whatsoever of being anything but a healthy, rambunctious baby boy.

 This picture above, we're told, proves that it's a boy.  There are more ultrasound photos, but I'm having trouble uploading them, so I'll just save them for another time.  We're delighted to have a healthy son.