Friday night we went over to see our friends Lydia and Joe. They just had a beautiful baby girl a week before we had Luke. We had planned to go out there to see their new daughter Nicole, but then we had Luke! It was really cute to see both of them together. Obviously they don’t interact yet, but it’s fun seeing their mannerisms and hearing the sounds they make. Joe cooked up a super good BBQ meal too. Thanks guys.

Two nights ago we gave the baby formula for the first time in an effort to make him sleep through more of the night. On average he lasts about 2 hours on breastmilk, but formula should be able to hold him about twice as long, which means more sleep. Two nights ago didn’t go super great. He didn’t want to eat as often which was good, but he was still fussy. Last night we kept him up from about 7-10 pm, then fed him formula, and then went to bed. And last night he slept from 10 pm to 4 am! That’s a new Luke record. Stacie fed him at 4 am and he slept more, so overall it was a very good night. He was in his basinet the entire time also, so hopefully this will lead to sleeping through the night on his own.

I’ve visited 22 states if my memory serves me correctly. I see Denise has Maryland down, so we might have been there on our DC trip years ago, but I can’t remember. I think I’ve got the rest down correctly.

create your own visited states map

I realize that since the baby has come there are more people reading this site than before, and some of you haven’t read my many posts over the past 3+ years. I’m a Conservative through and through, and while my posts regarding politics and discussions of principles will most certainly decrease now that the baby is here, don’t be surprised to find a post every now and then that you may disagree with. It’s not meant as an affront to anyone’s intelligence, but as fuel for meaningful debate. And if you prefer not to read posts without cute pictures of the baby, then don’t feel like you have to. Most people don’t leave comments on this kind of thing anyways. And with that, here is my post.

While reading some comments about the movie Stop-Loss (which is doing terrible, surprise huh?), someone posted a link to the following video. His name is Evan Sayet, and he used to write for the Bill Maher show I believe. It’s a very long video at 48 minutes long, but if you have the time it’s well worth the viewing. It has some revealing insight into why Liberals think Bush is the Devil, War is not the Answer, and why having an opinion automatically makes you a bigot.

How Modern Liberals Think

Edit: You’re welcome Judy, and I should probably add that he was a former Liberal who saw the light. People like this with a gift for speaking and conveying complex thoughts astound me.

Yesterday we went to see a pediatrician for the first time on the recommendation of our OB. We didn’t know much going in, but decided to give the doctor a try. Man were we disappointed. The waiting room was trashy, no one was speaking English, we had a 2 o’clock appointment but they still had the door locked at 1:55 for lunch, there were at least ten appointments scheduled in a one hour window, it took an hour to see the doctor, and even when we saw her she wasn’t friendly. The heck with that.

After that disappointing visit I went home and checked to see if MY pediatrician was still practicing, and he is! Today we got up early and headed out to Long Beach to see the same pediatrician that saw me (and my brother and sister) from the day we were born. He’s a little older now, but still amazingly nice. I didn’t get a picture of him with the baby, but one of the ladies that works in the office is still there from when I was a boy. She even found my picture on the wall from when I was two! Overall we were much happier with this visit.

Now on to geeky stuff. My brother has a fancy speedflash that mounts on the top of his camera, and he showed me a cool one that is only $100, but it can make your flash pictures look so much better. It’s the Nikon SB-400 speedflash. It mounts on my D-50, and the coolest part is that you can aim the flash. The built-in flash points straight at your subject, and often times that overexposes their skin, and it has a tendency of making the background look super dark. The result is something like this:

It doesn’t look terrible (ignore Stacie’s drunk face), but her skin doesn’t look very natural, and the background is really dark. The nice thing about the speedflash is that you can angle the flash UP. What that does is the light bounces off the ceiling, and creates a much more natural looking image.

So much more natural, and for only $100! If you want another cool example visit the link above. Thanks bro for letting me know about this flash. I need a slightly bigger camera case now, but it’s so worth it.

My main goal here was to test a feature on the video camera, but I ended up getting some good video of the baby to put up. I’ll have more to post in the future, but in case you haven’t been able to come over and see him, now you can get a glimpse of baby Luke in action.

Baby Luke Video

The last few days have been a little tough, but that’s all part of learning how to be a parent.

We really want to make breastfeeding successful, and not because we’re crazy and think baby formula is radioactive (let’s see how many radioactive jokes I can make in a week!). Learning how it works on a daily basis has been tough, but we’re finally figuring it out. Luke has been super hungry to the point where the previous two days he wanted to eat almost every hour. But in the last 24 hours I think our milk supply has finally caught up to his demand, and it’s really clear to me now why so many women give up on breastfeeding. Even when it seems like it’s not working you have to keep trying, because the minute you slow down or stop everything can come unraveled. Bet you didn’t know you’d be getting a breastfeeding lesson today did you? Most people will probably just skip this part and go straight to the pictures below.

Pictures!

Father and Son got in some quality R&R this afternoon. And no, I’m not sleeping. Some of the most comfortable positions are just lying on the couch with him tucked in your arms.

This weekend he’ll be two weeks old, so I figured it was about time he start learning the important things in life.

And on a side note, Panic at the Disco has a new CD out!

I’m not sure I can make this a completely non-baby post, but I might be able to go half and half.

Last month we drove up north to Turlock for my Grandmother’s 89th birthday. This was a place we went several times a year for my entire childhood, and I have very fond memories of those trips and the people we went to see. I bought my video camera just in time to take it on this trip, so I shot some video to help me remember the place. If you’d like to watch it then go here:

Turlock Almond Orchard

For the geeks out there, I’ve decided to render all my videos twice. The first is a super high quality 1080i AVC/264 that can be played back beautifully on the PS3 (or the htpc if I can get 264 material hardware accelerated), and the second is a smaller 720p version that can easily be played back on a modern computer using quicktime. That should give me the best of both worlds with just a little extra rendering time and storage space.

So this baby of ours is a fussy little booger. He likes to eat all the time, and rarely sleeps for big blocks of time. He also loves to be held, and 9 times out of 10 if you lie him down to sleep he’ll wake you up with his cries a few minutes later. The worst part is that it means very little sleep for mom because she is getting up constantly to feed him. She’s upstairs sleeping right now and I’ve got the baby entertained (and quiet!) downstairs.

I think God knew he had to make little babies cute so that people would put up with the lack of sleep and crying. Every time this little man poops it is fart city. It’s like he can’t poop without making massive amounts of noise, it’s great. And his little sneezes are the cutest thing in the world. How they go from cute little baby sneezes to obnoxious adult sneezes I have no idea. His mouth even made a smiling motion this morning, but I think it was more of an accident than anything. Shortly after though he sounded off with a loud fart, so maybe the two were connected.

I still have some more Turlock video to edit, but after that I’m on to some of the baby footage.