NSJ

Jul took the little man to his first doctors appointment yesterday. He did really well and didn’t even cry when he got a shot (baby tougher than father already). Nicholas weighed in at 8 lbs up from 7,10 at birth and 7,7 when we left the hospital.  He is 20.75 inches long down from 21 inches long at birth. So he is gaining weight but getting shorter. To be honest I’m not sure how you measure the little squirmy guy. I can’t get him to sit still for more than five seconds.
They tell us he is in the 90th percential for length, 50 percentile for weight. I’m not sure what to do with this information. Is this like baby SAT’s? Do I need to have a talk with Nicholas about his slacking in the weight category? “Your mom and I need you to keep the length moving in positive direction so the other kids don’t catch you, and we need you to really focus on the weight component. All the good playgrounds won’t even consider you if you don’t have 80th percentile scores across the board.”

Heart, ears, soft spot, eyes, etc are normal.  No swollen organs (I’m not sure why they would swell, but it seems good they didn’t).

In other news, I got peed on for the first time today while changing his diaper. It is every bit as exciting as they told me it would be.

Grandpa Lew, the baby whisperer, has been helping us since Saturday. He has some crazy mad baby calming skills. Sadly today he had to head back to CT. He said something about having to work and go to school. Hello!? Grandpa? Where are your priorities?

I’m going to go sing Nicholas Cat’s in the Cradle.

I was just going through the photos on my memory card and I noticed that I cropped this photo down for an earlier post:

Here is the original photo:

I think he is giving me the middle finger! I’m not sure if I should be impressed or send him to his room.

Vivian took some amazing photos while she was visiting on Saturday.

More of them here .

Here are Mom’s favorite photos she captured while she was here.

Nicholas slept from 11pm-1am last night (yay!). Then he yelled from 1am-5am (boo!). At 5am we finally got him to sleep and then handed off to Grandpa Lew (in from CT) for the morning shift.

What I don’t understand is how this little seven pound boy can yell four straight hours. I feel like at the absolute longest I could yell would be an hour straight. And I would need to stop for a power bar, some lemon tea, and a red bull at 30 minutes. I know for a fact this milk can’t have enough energy to generate that kind of sustained sound. So here is my new theory. Babies have figured out how to generate energy from nothing (infant room temperature fusion). This means babies are an untapped natural resource — what I would theorize is a nearly endless supply of energy. Wind, water, solar, geothermal, and baby.

Here is how it would work:

1. Wait for baby to scream
2. Screaming resonates specially tuned tuning forks
3. Vibrations of tuning forks heats water and generates steam
4. Steam turns any household fan in reverse
5. Special adapter generates electricity and puts it back on the grid
6. Profit

There are several side benefits:

• Tuning forks generate soothing noise to keep parents sane
• Tuning forks for vibration automatically bounces bouncy chair
• Hot water can be siphoned off and used to heat bottles

While I was up last night I drew a picture:

This is either genius or a product of sleep deprivation. I’m leaning towards genius.

I’m thinking four easy payments of $39.95 for the entire setup. Plus I’ll throw in an extra bouncy chair cover for the first 100 callers.

My parents stayed for the weekend and helped us get the basics for Nicholas’ room. The 5am Nicholas hand-off to somebody on the east coast timezone was delightful. Mom barely let the boy out of her sight.

Nicholas did great during the Michigan game yesterday. He definitely cried more when Minnesota had the ball and he let out a blood curdling scream during a cut away to Ohio State highlights. I was very proud.

We strapped Nicholas to our chest and took him on two walks with Sumo. If Nicholas could tell the difference between outside and inside he didn’t tell me, unless there are small nuances to him being fast asleep that I can’t yet identify. I’m hoping Nicholas will start walking the dog himself soon (after he starts mowing the lawn).

Nicholas also had a bunch of visitors today. I was not great about catching pictures but I caught as many as I could. I don’t believe my Mom’s photo taking dedication was genetic. We didn’t get photos of the Etter family who stopped in and gave us, amongst other things, the all-powerful “play mat.” Sweet. Nor did we get a photo of Brette who brought us an entire bath-time ensemble as well as many other “favorites” of hers.

Scott, Patty, and Christian came by. Patty and Jul volunteer together the cancer center. They lent us most of Nicholas’ baby furniture, car seat, etc.

The Kraus family popped in. We became close with “Melissa and the Joes” when Joe made the mistake of hiring me at Jotspot. Joseph was practicing for Halloween in his kicking airplane costume. When I was young we had to make our costumes out of corn husks but now days they have self inflating gore-tex costumes with sound effects. Kids these days…

Fiona came by and brought her parents Crystal and Tom. Fiona wanted to hold Nicholas but Crystal insisted she wait until she at least turned two. I think Crystal is being soft on Fiona. By two I expect Nicholas to be babysitting for local kids to bring in extra revenue to the Johnston household.

Drew and Vivian came down from the city. I believe Drew needed some advice from Nicholas on an upcoming case. Looks like he also wanted to rub his head for luck. We get that all the time.

Nicholas seems to do a lot of sleeping during the day. I’m thinking we will have to move to France for the next six months because the time change will make that night.

Thanks to everybody for the lovely gifts. Nicholas will be writing you all thank you notes around 2011.

Notable quotes from the hospital stay:

“You haven’t been eating, scallop potatoes, for three weeks…like we have.” -verse from song now stuck in all our heads

“So expect the pain to be about 4-6 times as bad as it is now.” -nurse to Mary, being perhaps a bit too honest

“When Nicholas was born he was in a heap of shit. No, I mean literally a heap of shit.” -the elusive Dr. Goshe
“I’m going to strike the baby with a mallet. Don’t be alarmed.” -NICU nurse right after birth

Three outfits, four bottles, three diapers, two traffic jams, and nine and a half hours later we made it back home.

In all our trips to San Diego the drive never took longer than seven hours (and usually took more like six and a half). Put a three day old in the car and Murphy will have it take nine and a half. The four and a half hours on the 405 in stopped traffic was bad enough but then we finally broke away into the grapevine only to have highway 5 temporarily closed because of a tractor trailer accident.

Nicholas did great. He slept most of the time and kept his volume levels to half of what we know he is capable of producing. He was screaming something fierce in the traffic jam on the 405. He hadn’t taken his turn driving yet so I knew he wasn’t upset about the traffic. That leaves three reasons he would be hollering:

1. Hungry
2. Yucky Diaper
3. Upset about the current administration’s foreign policy decisions, complete disregard for human rights, and irresponsible military spending

Turns out he had pooped the largest poop of his life and was pretty unhappy about sitting in it. I was very conflicted while changing the diaper. Part of me was thinking, “Great poop! Solid work. That’s my boy!” The other half was thinking, “Oh dear god, there is poop everywhere. On my shirt, on the car, on the boy. I think there might be poop in my hair.” Mixed feelings to say the least.

Unbeknownst to us Lynn had prepped the house with baby supplies and sticky notes throughout with baby advice. Margaret had dropped off our baby dog, a bassinet, and a wide array of key baby stuff. Auntie Meg had shipped out a bunch of essentials (and luxury items like a wipe warmer). Auntie Jan had prepared us with a Michigan outfit for the game today. Adoption wisdom tell you to not buy supplies beforehand lest you be left with a bunch of baby stuff and no baby should it not work out, so this was an amazing help.

Grandma Olbrys had filled the refrigerator with food and Grandma and Grandpa Johnston, in from Michigan, were waiting for us when we arrived. Nicholas, having slept the last nine hours, had no interest in sleeping once we got home. Jul finally got him to sleep a bit from 5am to 7am and then I got him down again around 9am. Mom and Dad took him from 7-9 to give us some time to sleep.

I don’t remember who told me this but it didn’t hit home until last night. Babies totally violate the Geneva Convention guidelines on torture (most specifically in the area of parental sleep deprivation). I’ve printed them out to read Nicholas tonight.

I’m not driving while blogging. (Thank you Joe for the broadband card.)