Birthday Videos

As promised...some videos of the big day.

 

 

Best year so far

Our little man is a year old today. Amazing. As I look back and reflect on the year behind us, I'm in awe of the milestones these little ones reach and pass in such a short amount of time.

One Day Old

One Month Old



Two Months Old


Three Months Old


Four Months Old


Five Months Old


Six Months Old


Seven Months Old


Eight Months Old


Nine Months Old


Ten Months Old


Eleven Months Old


One Year Old

It's been the most fascinating thing to watch him grow and discover the world around him. Always our little chatterbox, he's full of things to say and has been since he was but a few weeks old. Perhaps one day he'll be a great orator, but for now his cute little voice jabbering away is simply music to our ears.

First word: Gobbum-- noun-- usually used in reference to good food, or food in general since he's never really been picky. Fine, so it's not an actual word, but one of his own vocabulary, but still...he uses it with specificity. Other words: Da-da; ma-ma; gog (dog and most other animals); hruh (truck)

Number of States Visited in 1 year: 4 (Nevada, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia) including 4 trips on an airplane. Pretty well traveled for a year old, thank you Delta Air Lines.

Number of teeth by 1st birthday: 3 and a half (the latest one is being fairly pokey about coming in.)

Disposition: Generally happy unless you're wiping his nose, which thanks to another cold is happening a lot this week.

He's strong-- every diaper change is a wrestling match. He's smart-- quickly figures out how his toys work. He's our little super-Talan. This has definitely been our best year so far and we're all the more excited for those yet ahead.

I'll try to post a couple videos of his birthday today. Together, they're a little long, so it will take some time to upload...and at this point it's late and I'm tired, so more to come.

Here's a teaser

Happy Birthday buddy. We love you!

Some videos of how I coped with turning 40

Talan is getting more and more adventurous in his dining selections. We've tried mashed potatoes, ice cream, pineapple, tomato, pickle, beef stew, chicken and rice, and today...

spaghetti.
Yummy!

Ride the Lightning! Yee haw!

I was teaching a CPR/First aid class at work on Monday and was getting ready to do the section on severe allergic reactions. We have a spent epipen in our supplies so people can check out how it feels to use one. I pulled out the pen and blam! The spring loaded needle shot right into the bone on my left thumb. The pen deployed and I instantly felt the reaction. My heart rate was about a thousand beats a second and I could feel my pulse in my eyeballs. I was trying to pull the needle out of my thumb, but it was lodged in the bone so hard it felt like trying to pull a nail out of wood with my fingers.

















That's what the needle looked like after I finally got it out of my thumb. There was even a small chunk of bone stuck to it. Sticking your thumb with an epipen feels like jumping out of an airplane while getting electrocuted. (I've done both, not at the same time). I also felt kind of like this guy...








Luckily we have a nurse at work who looked online for how to deal with it. It made me feel slightly better to know that this happens so often that there is a name for it--Epipen-thumb syndrome. Apparently you have a 1 in 50,000 chance of doing this to yourself. The nurse checked my heart rate, which was actually somewhere between double and triple what it should be. He then told me to head to the car because we were going to the emergency room at the nearest hospital. I assured him I was fine, but he told me I was going to lose my thumb if we didn't hurry. You see, epinephrine is a powerful vasoconstrictor , it was closing off all the blood vessels in my thumb. Sure enough, as we got close to the hospital, my thumb turned the color of concrete and got really cold. I sat in the ER for about half an hour trying to massage blood back into my unhappy opposable when they took me back and smeared nitro-glycerin gel all over my thumb to open my capillaries back up. As an added precaution they decided to take an EKG reading and by golly I was in atrial fibrillation. The bottom half of my heart was working normally, the top half was trying to keep the beat to some odd Dave Mathews tune playing out in the hallway. The kept me there for about an hour to make sure I was coming back down to earth then released me. I made it back to work just in time to start teaching my one o'clock blood-borne pathogens class. One of the people in the class stopped me and said, "Dude, you're talking really fast". I guess I was. I taught a 2 hour class in about 24 minutes. Luckily everyone passed the test at the end so I guess I was at least speaking coherently.

I left work and headed to my doctors office. See, I took a little tumble off a ladder the previous Saturday and bruised my hand. The bruise was still sore and swollen on Monday. The Dr ordered an xray. The xray tech asked me a little jokingly if I really thought my hand was broken. Then she called me over to take a look. Does it look broken to you? Here's the actual xray. Look closely at the 5th metatarsal, just above the pinky knuckle.



I think I'll lock myself indoors for the next few days. Heather said something about things like this coming in groups of three...

Mom...the meatloaf...now!

Talan is about 5 and a half months old now and we decided to venture into the world of spoon feeding. The past few days we've given him some rice cereal a couple of times a day. The messiness that will be as much of a staple as the cereal will be over the next year is seriously going to challenge my OCD. It's pretty cute right now, however.

He getting stronger and stronger every day. Our little wiggle worm. Always moving, squirming, kicking. It's so fun to watch him discover new things, including his own abilities. I can't help but wish, just a little, that we had toys like these to play with as adults.

More giggles

Talan is getting more and more playful. It's amazing the simple things that entertain him.




It's even more amazing how he keeps us entertained by his day by day progress.

New Adventures

Mommy and Daddy are introducing me to some of their hobbies so I can have new adventures.

Mommy took me on the airplane again. This time I was big enough not to sleep the whole time.

I got a little hungry but all I got was milk, instead of peanuts and soda. I'm not sure that's really fair.

I listened closely to the safety video. My nearest exit was actually behind me. I'm glad I listened. Now I felt safe to fly.

It was a pretty fun trip. I really like Vegas. I got to see Grammy and Papa, aunts, uncles and cousins. It was 72 degrees in April. This was one of the few times I've been out in the sun. I really like the sun.

I've also been doing some work in the garage with Daddy. He showed me his motor cycle. Vroom. I think he might have to get a sidecar so I can go on rides with him.
Don't worry, we always wear helmets in our family.

My biggest hobby right now is growing. Mommy keeps comparing me to a weed, although I don't quite understand the comparison. At my last visit to the doctor I weighed 16.5 pounds and was 26 inches long-- in the 90th percentile for height and weight. Daddy says my smile is in the 100th percentile. I guess I'm growing pretty good.

Talan Laughs

It is like music to our ears. Our little chatterbox is starting to giggle and laugh. I had to be super cheesy/goofy to get him to laugh the other night, but I was able to get a little bit of his laugh on video.

Talan's Blessing Day

Joshua blessed Talan yesterday in our Sacrament Meeting, joined by our Bishop, Joshua's Dad Myron, his brother Justin, my brother Josh, and brother-in-law Bus (Benjamin). It was a beautiful blessing of hope, love, and a life full of goodness.

My heart and mind were of course racing during that special ordinance. It was all I could do to contain the love and deep emotion we already feel for this little guy. When you're standing in the sun, soaking up it's warmth, it's hard to imagine there will ever be moments of cold, darkness, lonliness, etc. How grateful I am for the knowledge that Heavenly Father has provided a plan for our family to be happy, despite the difficulties life may send our way, and more importantly--to be together forever.

Not to deviate from the stirring heartstrings, but since this is also to chronicle real life, the day was not all angelic bliss for this little man. I'm not sure if it was due to all the hustle, bustle, and excitement of the day, but mixed in with all of Talan's smiles and generally cheerful cooing and gurgling, we also had to deal with diarrhea and projectile vomit.

The poor guy caught some sort of intestinal bug. It started in the morning, luckily before the white suit went on, with a liquefied bowel. I was a little worried that there would be a part 2 during the church meeting (in the white suite) so I had bit of McGyver-esque inspiration and fashioned some extra protection out of a diaper (general coverage) and a sanitary napkin--with wings (for additional coverage up the back). We made it through the service without any leakage!

Later on in the day, while feeding Talan, he looked directly at me with all of his pure cuteness, and proceeded to projectile vomit all over me. Luckily his diet is solely breast milk, but I had no idea he ate that much with each meal. It was like someone turned on a garden hose and sprayed me 3 times.

The amazing thing was he smiled through the whole day, despite these minor challenges. He really is such a darling little boy. Oh how we love him.

Talan smiles...

Talan just keeps on growing. He's putting on about 1 pound a week and was 12 lbs last time we checked. He gets cuter every day and recently learned how to smile. The challenge now is to keep a camera handy to catch the cuteness. We got lucky a few times, check it out...

First Month-- A Month of Firsts

I can't believe Talan is already 6 weeks old. We've had a few adventures in our first month with our sweet little boy. Some were more enjoyable for him than others.

First bath at home

We've graduated to being submerged in the bath and he likes it a little better than sink-side. He doesn't care much for the getting in and out part, being naked and all, but he seems to like being in the water. Maybe we'll have a champion swimmer someday.

First Airplane Ride

We took a quick hop down to LasVegas to spend some time with Joshua's family. Talan handled the security screening and the flights like a champ. His parents were a little frazzled with the extra planning and packing now required, and the enhanced security pat-down for requesting our breast milk be searched manually and not by x-ray. Taking a "quick trip" out of town is now a little more complicated than it used to be, but we're excited to be able to show him a little bit more than his corner of this big world.

First Christmas

I'm pretty disappointed that I didn't get more pictures of his first Christmas. He's so little and really didn't know the difference, but I have to get better about having the camera handy. We spent Christmas with Joshua's family in Vegas and were just tickled to have our little guy with us for Christmas this year. He was the best present either of us could have asked for.

First night in his own bed.

Well, we're still working on that one, but we noticed that when he is in his crib, he sleeps with his arms up above his head. Perhaps he's dreaming about scoring touchdowns, who knows. It's pretty cute though.

He's even managed to catch his first cold. Luckily it was nothing serious, just a little nasal thing, despite his parents best effort to keep the germs away.

Every day he's more and more alert and responsive. He has a variety of facial expressions he's trying out. We're pretty entertained by this little man.