First Bath

On Karsten's first full day home, we decided to brave the first bath. The prospect of a wet, wiggly baby was daunting. Luckily, we're still in the spongebath stage, so it wasn't too bad.

Karsten was a big fan of having his hair washed. He seemed to really enjoy the sound of the running water and having his head massaged while we washed his hair. He just stared back at us with big eyes - so cute!


He didn't enjoy the actual bath part, but really who could blame him, he was laying on the kitchen counter and was cold!


It took teamwork, but we were pretty pleased with how we did for our first attempt at the bath.



Our happy family after the first successful bath!

Coming Home Pictures

We were finally all three dressed and ready to head home!


Scott doing a great job figuring out how to fasten Karsten in the carseat.


It was SOOO hot when we left the hospital, I was worried Karsten would be way too hot in his long sleeves and carseat. We turned the air conditioner on full blast and he seemed pretty content.


The car ride put him to sleep.

Our first official "family picture" when we got home. Notice the white on Karsten's hands - he was leaving huge scratches on his face so we put little socks on his hands. :)

Finally Home!

When Karsten was weighed in the hospital, the nurses discovered that he had lost almost 10% of his weight. Poor lil guy - apparently I wasn't yet able to produce enough milk to help him gain weight. We started to supplement his feedings with formula and we had a much happier and healthier lil guy. Since he had lost weight, the doctor wanted to keep him in the hospital until Saturday.

We were anxious to get home; however, we wanted to make sure Karsten was healthy before we took him home. After just one day of supplmenting his feedings with formula, we he gained back an ounce that he had lost and he was cleared to go home!

We packed up all our stuff and got ready to go home. It was amazing how we had nested in our hospital room after living there since late on Tuesday night.

The nurses at Shawnee Mission Medical were fabulous - they made us feel comfortable at all times, answered all of our questions (and trust me, we had a lot at times), helped us learn about taking care of Karsten and so much more. I can't say enough positive things about my experience there!

Blogger and I are having issues right now - the pics will be in the next post. :)

Karsten's Friends

It's been great to have so many friends and family come to the hospital to meet Karsten. He's been a busy boy - lots of people to look cute for.

My mom admiring her first grandchild shortly after he was born.

My dad being a proud grandpa.

Auntie Jen and David. Jen was behind the camera of many of Karsten's first pictures, especially during his bath.

Karsten was a happy little boy while Jill was holding him.

Audrey wasn't too sure about her mom holding a baby.

Proud Aunt Kelli made a trip from Topeka to meet her new nephew.

Trent and Taylor were very excited to meet and play with their cousin.

Erika, Rick, & Oscar stopped by. Karsten and Oscar will someday have a lot of fun playing with each other.

Kenna is happy that I have finally joined the "Mom Club." :)

Liz and Travis were our 1st visitors.

Karsten's Birth Story

We checked into the hospital on Monday evening to begin the inducement process. By 10pm I was hooked up to the IV and had received the medicine. The adventure was all to begin around 7:45am when they were to administer Petocin to encourage contractions.

After a LONG day of the nurses tweaking the Petocin level to encourage contractions, I hadn't progressed much and wasn't having any contractions of substance. My doctor came over around 5pm to talk to us and give us two options - 1. we could stop all of the medicine and give the entire process another try later that night and the next day or 2. we could proceed that evening with a c section.

Wow, talk about tough choice. We asked lots of questions - what effects would another full day of medicine have on the baby and on me; even if we try another day of medicine, what is the chance we would end up having a c section anyway; what is recovery like for a c section, etc, etc, etc. We had made a list of questions throughout the day so we remembered everything we wanted to ask my doctor. She was very helpful in answering the questions and letting us make the decision that we thought was best for us.

After much discussing and debating, we decided to go with the c-section. We were so ready to meet this lil guy and while the c section had risks, we determined that for us, we were more comfortable with this approach. Once we had made the decision, things moved very quickly - while Scott and I were making calls to our families and friends to inform them, I was being prepped for surgery.

At the end, are so happy we decided on the c section bcause we got to meet Karsten sooner than we would have with the other path. Sweet little Karsten was worth it all.

Welcome!

Karsten Lee arrived June 23rd at 7:43pm. He is 8lbs and 3oz, 19 inches long. Jen has done a great job capturing this entire event. More pictures can be found on her blog We are all doing well and we greatly appreciate all the well wishes. We have such great friends and family.

The Finishing Touch

My dad has an amazing talent for woodworking and we are lucky enough to have many of his creations in our home. We got to select a clock for him to make for the baby's room and we selected this mission style clock that would look great with the nursery furniture. I'm so happy with how it turned out - between the clock and the quilts my mom made, this lil guy has many things made with lots of love!

Grandma's Brag Books

While I was scrapbooking last weekend I was inspired to create a mini scrapbook or brag book that my mom and Scott's mom could carry in their purses to show off pics of the new grandbaby! My ideas started on a much bigger scale (a chipboard book with embellishments for each page), then I realized that I only had a limited amount of time before the baby arrived. (Smart, eh...usually I would have gone ahead and tried the elaborate route.) :)

I found these cute little 4x6 albums and decorated the covers of each - I gave my mom her album tonight, she seemed to like it! I'm sure there will be no shortage of pictures to fill these!

From left to right - album for my grandma (aka Gaga), album for my mom, album for Scott's mom.


The back cover for each album.

Maternity Pics

A few weeks ago our good friend Kenna took maternity pics of us. We went to Loose Park on a beautiful evening and were so lucky that the rose bushes were already in bloom!

I'm so happy with the pictures - in the future it will be exciting to look at the pictures and remember this exciting time in our lives.

Below are just a few of the pictures - there were so many good ones to choose from it was hard to select just a few. A HUGE thank you to Kenna for doing this. Check out more of Kenna's amazing work on her blog!

Green Paws

Madison had a great time playing outside with Scott this weekend. You can always tell when she's chased around the lawnmower because she has the telltale green paws - it's subtle but they are really green!

Since Madison already needed a bath, it was the perfect time for her favorite summer pasttime - playing hose. She will chase the water all over the yard yelping and barking in excitement. She's hilarious to watch. Summer is officially here now that we've had the first game of hose.

37 Weeks and counting

We went to see the doctor today - we're now having visits every week. The doctor said everything seemed to be progressing normally. We had an ultrasound scheduled for 39 weeks to see how much he had grown, but she rescheduled it to 38 weeks (a week from today) to give us more "options". I'm guessing if he has grown a lot by next Tuesday we might be scheduling an induction. We'll see - stay tuned. :)

In the meantime, we're finalizing all of the baby preparations. I think we've purchased all of the last minute necessities on our list. I'm guessing there's an equally long list somewhere of stuff we don't yet know that we need. :) Baby sheets and clothes are getting washed and put away. Our "to do" list is getting shorter as we spent the weekend checking odds and ends off the list. I would like to get some cleaning done around the house this weekend - for some reason the dirty window blinds are annoying me immensly.

Cute and creative

Several people recommended that we pick up some cloth diapers to use as burp cloths. Since plain ole white fabric is not near as fun as decorated fabric, my mom and I (well, actually all her - I just helped with the ideas) made these fun burp cloths.

We have many with different flannels and several that are embroidered with K's. So cute!



Jenn recently forwarded me an idea to make a lil fabric square crinkle toy for babies. I fowarded the idea to my mom who whipped out this uber cute toy. Such a lucky little guy to have so many cute things.

He's How Big?

We had a regular checkup on Tuesday and also had an ultrasound because the doctor wanted to see how big the lil guy was getting. Seems that he's getting big, already 7 lbs - if you believe the ultrasound machine, it predicts he will arrive early.

The ultrasound tech said that it looks like he has lots of hair - she said all of the fuzzy white stuff around the head in this picture is hair! We'll see!

Here is a pic of his foot.