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Look at me grandpa! Im kung fu fighting!

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Look how cute i am. :-)

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My two favorite people. :-)

Yeah! Roran is 5 months today!

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Roran eats! :-)

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Roran helping put his clothes away. :-)

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Look! I found these things at the bottom of me! :-)

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He is just too cute!

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Roran laughs! This is a real laugh vs. the "ha ha " he did for me a couple weeks ago. Yeah!

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I am learning to push up! :-)

Yeah! Successfully fed and laid back down Roran without any yelling at dad! :-)

I hope this stage passes quick

God damn it sucks when your kid doesn't like you...

It is really hard to be a dad sometimes. You can't actually be the one that feeds him. You are the one that has to go back to work, so you only get to see your baby when he is asleep in the morning (and being snapped at to not wake him up so mom can still sleep after I leave) and in the evening after spending close to 10hrs away. So that means that he is nice and tired and easily fussy when you get home. Since he spends the majority of time with mom, you don't have a strong connection with him so when he wants to relax, it is rarely with you.

This has been my past month. What a blast...I love this part. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade the little mini-me for anything in the world, but I really can't wait to get past this stage.

Tonight is a perfect example of what we are going through right now. Jessica is doing a Xfit class from 7:30pm to 8:30pm 3 days a week. That means that I get him for about 90 mins a week where it is just me and him. Sounds great right? I get to tell him all the stories that mom doesn't want me to, we talk about going to college, what it means to be a man...all the fun dad stuff right?

WRONG

Jessica leaves usually as he starts to cry (don't blame her). It usually takes me 15-20mins to get him calmed down so that he can have his nap. Once that happens, about 20-30mins later he wakes up. I go in, put the Binky back in his mouth, make funny faces and we start talking again. This lasts about 10mins. Then the REAL crying starts. He is hungry. So I get the bottle that we have all ready to go and try to feed him. Which then turns into a 45min battle of trying to get him to eat (it has been 2-3hrs since his last meal) to get him to eat 4 oz. FOUR OUNCES. Usually (when mom is feeding him), this takes about 25mins. But when dad is doing it, it takes 45mins and he is literally screaming the entire time. Screaming like I'm waiting for the neighbors to call the cops screaming.

So the moral of the story is what dads get is about 3-4hrs before its bath and bed time. Yes, I get to spend 3-4hrs a day with my child...no wonder he barely remembers who I am. And everyone tells me that its hard for the mom to go back to work. Do they have any idea what a dad goes through? I had to go back to work after about 2 weeks, and then leave EVERY morning knowing that it will be a battle to get him to remember who I am when I get home.

WTF...I'm the dad, so its easier for me? I don't care as much? America is kind of messed up that way. I think that moms and dads should get the same time off w/o having to worry about their jobs or what is going to happen. Because I'll tell you and everyone else who thinks it's 'easier' for men, go to hell. If you care about your child, it isn't easy and people need to recognize that.

In reality, I'm pretty confident that Roran remembers me and that he isn't upset because it is me that is trying to feed him a bottle vs. Jess. But it's still hard.

But hey, it's all part of being a dad right? I hope this stage passes quick.

Pumpkin Patch 2009

The Pumpkin Patch was so much fun. My mom's birthday was Monday so we celebrated on Sunday and decided what would be a better way to celebrate than taking the babies to the patch and posing them with pumpkins! It was a lot of fun. Of course we had to torture them a little bit as well. Riley was asleep in the snuggly and Rachel pulled her out, took off her coat and set her next to Roran. Watch the slide show to see the sequence of events that will have you rolling in your chair. You will know the photos when you get to them. It starts with Riley sleeping next to Roran and she slowly wakes and then starts screaming, its hysterical. Yes, I know we are warped and twisted to think that this screaming is so funny, but wait till you see the pictures!! Enjoy...

Quick Seavers Family update

So Roran and Jess are back from Oly (again). I seem to be missing out on a lot. Jessica's best friend is pregnant too, but I'm really getting tired of NOT having them around for 2-3 days a week. I think after our chat that it is going to cut down a lot, so that is good.

The reason I'm saying this is because I figured out what it is like to be a parent. A couple of weeks ago, Jess went to Oly for a day or so and ended up spending the entire week down there. That was hard. I had his bouncy chair song stuck in my head the whole time and it literally, physically hurt not to have them here. OK, mostly Roran not being here (love you honey!), but seriously I was not OK with it.

I have no idea if other fathers feel this way, but that is why I have asked Jess not to go to Oly so much. That and the fact that Roran seems to 'forget' who I am after a couple of days. He gets startled so much easier when I see him after a couple days and it's really hard on me. One minute he is fine and then the next he jumps like "Who the hell are you?" and won't stop crying until Jess comes and gets him. After a couple of days back with me this seems to go away, but that doesn't do a lot for a new father who has to work and gets pretty limited time with his only child in the first place.

Anyway, have a good evening. Jess and I are off to have a glass of wine and some 'adult' fun...playing Beatles Rockband you perverts. ;-)

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I dont know, is he mine?

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Look at my old man ring! :-)

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You cant get much more cute than this. :-)

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He is so cute!

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How frighin cute is he?

Family is great

OK, so it has been a while since I wrote last. I'm still trying to get used to the new work, get home, hang out with Roran and Jess schedule. There is eating, cleaning and paying attention to Loki and Meow Zoom that needs to fit in there as well.

So this is going to be a short message about how friggin' awesome our family is. I have to say that everyone is being rock stars about this. I love the fact that Roran has helped pull my side of the family a little bit tighter together. Jess' side was always pretty tight, but mine was more like a net...with a lot of holes. But thankfully there seems to be some tightening of that with Roran. Which is really good because both Jess and I want a lot of family contact for Roran. There is so much history within that network. So much that we couldn't remember (or want to remember) all of it and I believe that it will help enrich his life even more by having those different perspectives.

This past week, Roran got to hang with Uncle Dave, Grandma and Grandpa and will be hanging out with Great Aunt Fern this week. I have to say though, I was very surprised by David's visit. As a lot of you probably know, David and I don't exactly have the best relationship. It seems no matter how hard we try it just doesn't really get anywhere. That being said, he was awesome with Roran. It was very nice seeing him hold Roran and how relaxed and focused he was on him. It was a side of my brother that I haven't seen in a really long time.

Well this is a bit late, Great Aunt Fern was here and it was great having her. She had a lot of fun with Roran as well. At least in between feedings and diaper changes etc. Fern did have to leave a bit earlier than we had originally planned, but this was offset by her being able to arrive a day earlier. =) So all in all it worked out great.

Now we just have to get Roran to meet the rest of the clan and then we can work on trying to have a big family reunion to keep everyone in touch. If you are reading this, LMK what you think of that idea. It could be fun. ;-)

Thanks everyone and we'll chat soon!

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Could Roran be any more cute? :-)

Cute things of Roran

So I had to go back to hell on Monday (that would be work in laymen's terms). It really sucks. Not only am I not that much of a fan of what I'm doing right now, it is keeping me away from Roran and Jessica. I'm worried about how much I'm going to miss of him growing and changing. Not that we can do anything about it. In a perfect world I would be able to take time off w/o having to worry about how we were going to pay our mortgage, bills and buy food for everyone, but as we are all aware of (I'm sure), we don't live in a perfect world.

Anyway, on to what I had intended to write about: Roran. Today he did the cutest thing. I finally got home and was able to hold him in between feedings. He was out like a light, which is no small feat considering that he was no where near calm when Jessica gave him to me. But Jessica needed to be able to relax a bit and I needed to hold him.

On to the point. While I was holding him, he did the cutest yawn, stretch, eye rub, stretch, yawn back to sleep you could ever have seen. I wish I had my camera so that I could post it here. But I'm sure that there will other times that I can capture.

On another happy note, my aunt Fern, Roran's great aunt, will be coming to visit for a few days the end of August. We are using the guise of her babysitting while Jessica and I have a long awaited date night (we'll be seeing Diana Krall at the Chateaus St. Michelle). It will be her first time actually seeing him in person and one of our first outings with just each other. It should be a great night all around.

Now if we could just figure out how to get more milk stored up so I can help feed him and we can have our 'alone' time, we would be good. =)

And if we could get the cats to get more used to him...

Until next time, have a good night!

Roran and dad made it thru their 1st shopping trip alone! And mom had doubts. :-) I think i even got everything i was supposed to! :-)

Roran and dad made it thru their 1st shopping trip alone! And mom had doubts. :-) I think i even got everything i was supposed

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I can help with the midnight feedings!!!!

Roran took his first bottle yesterday! He actually took right to it and later when Jessica went to feed him had no confusion at all. He is actually doing both now and seems to be doing great with it!

Other than that, Time Warps are still happening. I'm not sure how, but they are. They do seem to be getting shorter though, so that is a good thing. Yesterday we were trying to get to Olympia by noon and didn't end up leaving until 11:30...needless to say we didn't make it by noon.

But it was great seeing family. I'm really hoping that Roran will be able to see more of both sides of our families than what I did. A lot of that was my fault so I'm trying really hard to not make the same mistakes with him that I did for myself. Family is very important to both Jessica and I and we both want family to be a significant part of Roran's life.

On the flip side for me, it is really the only way for him to connect with my mom. I can tell him all the things that I remember about her, but there is an entire family out there that has other memories of her that will help make it more 'real' for him. It will never be as good as the real thing, but that is what I have to work with.

Anyway, here is a picture of me giving Roran his first bottle. Enjoy and have a good day!

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Our baby is snoring already. :-)

Time warps

So Roran has been here for a couple of weeks now (two today actually) and Jess and I have noticed a strange phenomenon around him: Time warps.

It is very strange. As an example, sometime this week (see, time warp, I'm not sure what day it was) we decided we would get out of the house because we haven't been out of it for about 3 or 4 days. We decided we would go to the mall to get some free air conditioning and a little bit of exercise. It was about noon when we decided we would do this and about time for a feeding. So I figured we would make lunch, feed Roran and then be off for a couple of hours.

The next thing we know, it is almost 6pm, time for another feeding and we had just finished lunch. And we hadn't made it out of the house yet. Huh? How did that happen? Are we starring in our own personal version of Groundhog Day?

We have several examples of this, but that is fairly typical. Even when we get everything right, we manage to lose at least a couple of hours. We can't explain it any other way than Roran is a time warp. A small tear in the space time continuum or a miniature Event Horizon.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

Roran Daniel is here!!!

So we have been pretty busy the past couple of months. Roran Daniel was born on July 11th at 5:52pm. He weighed in at 8lbs, 2oz and was 21in long. His noggin was 13.5in around.

Jessica did an awesome job in delivering him. Here is the short version of what happened that day.

Jess started having contractions Friday after her doc visit in which she was told that she was dilated to a 3 and 80% effaced. Me being a good husband didn't really know what that meant, but I did know that her doc put her on immediate bed rest. Because of my AWESOME job, I had to finish training the class I was giving and wait till about 5pm to start heading home. Fun.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the evening finishing up stuff that we thought we would have had a couple of weeks to complete. Once that was done, it was off to bed...for a couple of hours. Jess woke up about 3am with contractions. At about 3:15am, she woke me up and said that her water had broken and her contractions were getting stronger. We started timing them and there wasn't much in the way of consistency with them. They were anywhere from 30 secs to 90 secs long and about 1-6mins apart. After about an hour we called the doc and they said to come in.

Once we got to the hospital we were in triage and were told that she was still at 3cm, but about 95% effaced (I now knew what that meant). After some tests and some stronger contractions, we were moved to our room where we would stay for the next 2 days. The labor was pretty hard on Jess. She passed out a couple of times (not good and very scary) and was throwing up during her contractions and in between. At 8am the doc cam in and said that she was at 5cm and an epidural could be given. By 8:45am that was complete and Jess was doing a lot better. The negative side of this is that the epidural stretched out the labor, but Jess was in a lot better condition for it.

Then at 5:52, Roran Daniel appeared officially. He was beautiful. I had no desire to watch the birth, but somehow I couldn't stop myself. It was amazing, so much so that this is all I am going to say about it because words cannot describe what it is like to see a new life come into this world.

For the rest of the day we had some family stop by and visit, but it was mostly just Jess and I trying to relax and get used to the new little bundle we had now. Whoever said that they don't believe in love at first sight has obviously never had a child. There is nothing that either of us wouldn't do for Roran. He makes my family complete.

My only regret is that my mother will never meet him in person.

One quick side note, then I'm done for today (I have to go hang with the little guy and the wife), I couldn't have done any of this without the support of our family and friends. A special thank you goes to Harmony for being my backup and being an all around great person.

Signing off for now, have fun!

We have been very busy setting up the nursery, this is what we have so far....

The beginnings of the nursery

Our little baby boy is only about 3 months away and we are working on getting the nursery ready. We have ordered all the furniture as well as the bedding, but its about 2 weeks out for delivery so for now, we got the room all painted. We are doing the room in blue and brown so we decided to paint a very light blue base with one shade darker of stripes in various widths to give it some texture. This picture is also staring the top part of Meow Zoom and his glowing eyes... :-)

Our Baby Boy

Today we found out we are having a baby boy. He was very happy to let us all know that he was a boy and was super cooperative and just active enough for the ultrasound tech to get all her measurements to assure us that we are having a healthy baby boy. This video was taken at the end of our ultrasound so he was winding down to take a little nap but still had some activity going on. If you can't tell, the head is on the right side of the screen, he is laying on his back so you see a profile of the face and he pulls his legs up towards his head while also moving his arms. Its only 13 seconds so watch it several times!! Enjoy!