Discharged!

Well, we were all discharged from the hospital this afternoon. We decided that we needed to do something crazy on the way home rather than just drive straight home. So, we called our friend Jennie who works on the way home and stopped by and let her see Evan. I guess you could call it a tradition. When Eric was born, he actually went to Beth Trunk's (close friend of the family) house first and then went home. We decided to carry on the tradition. We also decided to stop at McDonald's and get food. Because when you have a 3 day old baby in the car, why would you not stop at McDonald's. We all made it home safely, got Evan fed, and got settled. We're all going to the pediatrician tomorrow morning for Evan's first checkup. Then, we're just going to focus on eating, SLEEPING, SLEEPING, SLEEPING, and SLEEPING.

I'm sure many of you would like to meet the little guy, so just give us a call and we'll get you over to see him.

The first 48 hours

Well, the first 48 hours have flown by. After the post on Monday, we spent most of the evening waking up to two things. One was all the machines Denise was hooked up to kept having alarms going off. Don't worry. They were all stupid false alarms. The second was, of course Evan. However, he actually slept pretty well. The biggest issue was getting him to breastfeed. One would think you'd just show him where to go and let his instincts take over. Apparently, it's a little more complicated than that. Since he wouldn't always "go to town", we actually "supplemented" him with an ounce or two of formula. They're worried about "nipple confusion" (we'll save Eric's comments for that topic). So, we actually let him suck on a finger and then put the formula in an eye dropper and let him suck it out of the corner of his mouth. This really helped us when he wouldn't sleep in the middle of the night. Now, both Evan and Denise have made a lot of progress. He's nursing well now. A good feeding will pretty much put him asleep for 2-3 hours.

The last two days we had a lot of visitors (all grandparents, the only living great grandparent, two aunts, an uncle, four friends, and a partridge in a pear tree). We're hoping we can go home tomorrow. We're looking forward to getting settled and getting Eddie (the cat) introduced to Evan. Then, we're hoping the rest of you will get a chance to swing by and see him if you'd like.

Until next time, here's a couple new pictures. We had to leave the funniest picture off the website. While breast feeding, Evan extended his middle finger at Eric! I guess now Eric knows he really is the father!

Welcome Evan!

At 4:08 PM today, Evan Christopher Schmidt was born via scheduled c-section. Both mom and baby are doing great. He weighed 8 lbs 8 oz and was 19-3/4" long. He's sleeping now, so mommy and daddy are going to try to do the same. Check back for more postings.

First Posting

Okay, we probably should've started a website when we got married, but we didn't. We probably should've started a website when we found out we were expecting, but we didn't. So, little "Baby" is due in a just a few days. So, we thought better late than never. All of the postings previous to this are actually "back-posted", but we hope you enjoy them. From here on out, they'll all be posted in real-time.

Remembering Fraiser

As Denise hits 36 weeks, we finally had to say goodbye to Fraiser. Fraiser was 17 years old and used to belong to Denise's grandmother. Denise inherited Fraiser in 1999 and has had him ever since. Whoever thinks that a dog is a (wo)man's best friend never knew Fraiser. So, now we use these pictures to remember the impressions he's left on our hearts (while Eddie works overtime to dish out some extra love).

Freestyle Crusing Baby!

We just went on a cruise of the Carribean. It was great. We selected NCL because they don't have set dinner times and a more relaxed set of "guidelines" for attire at night. We decided to get down to Miami a day early. So, we went to South Beach for dinner. We found the restaurant in a list in our hotel room. We chose it because they had a limo that would pick us up for free. It wasn't exactly the newest limo, but it was a free ride. The ship was great. It was NCL's newest ship and had all the creature comforts of home. On our way back, we had some time to kill before our flight, so we went on an airboat tour of the Everglades and then watched some crazy guy get in a cage with an alligator and then feed it. As it turns out, alligators only attack when provoked. Anyway, maybe we've seen Crocodile Dundee too many times.

(Most people don't know it, but Denise is already 12 weeks pregnant and we have our first doctor's appointment today!)

New Year's Eve Snowstorm

So, what happens when you have two bottles of champagne and 8" inches of fresh snow on New Year's Eve? Well, everybody stays home (to stay safe) and Denise and I drink all the champagne ourselves. Happy New Year!