When I got Isaac up for the morning I did my inaugural finger in Isaac’s mouth (to check for those bottom teeth). This has been a daily occurrence ever since I noticed the two swollen places on his bottom gums (ouch, they really look sore). However, I was in for a nice surprise when my finger grazed something sharp. Turns out the right one decided to finally break through! Okay, so Santa came a little late this year for Isaac (he asked for this tooth for Christmas). The left one is still working it’s way through but we are expecting it’s arrival soon!

Then it was time to start on a vegetable this week. I was going to start it earlier in the week but wanted to start it at the morning feeding (he eats better at this time and less chance of night time effects if there are allergies). However, I also know that Ben enjoys being around for these “new” moments and I try to include him as much as I can. So TODAY was the day. After much debate we decided to start with peas. So here is how it went!

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

We dressed him (in the most appropriate bib), made the food, got the camera ready, and braced ourselves for the shower we might soon be experiencing. The verdict: no dice, just plain and simple eating of the food! Really, there were a few funny faces as he was trying to figure out what was different, but other than that it was smooth sailing. Some days I ask Ben to pinch me to see if I am awake or dreaming. Nothing seems to phase this kid! Then again it is food, and he is a Callahan; eating, growing and pooping come with the DNA!

So the first bout of veggies went off without a hitch. He ate 1/3 of the jar of peas (yes, I used a jar, it was free and organic and I haven’t had time to make my own peas yet) PLUS his 2 tablespoons of cereal, and his 3 oz of bottle! Wowsers! We will see what tomorrow brings!

More details and pictures coming with next week’s 5 months old post!

So I have been debating how to fill you in on all of the great things that we have been up to without filling your inbox with a million posts. So I have decided that I will do this really long post with event highlights and set up a gallery of pictures for each. If you are so inclined, you can click on over to the galleries (through the titles of the event) and view the captions for more detailed information about the happenings! So grab a cup of coffee, get in your favorite comfy chair, put your feet up – because here it goes!

Kaiden, Eric and Shanda Party

The Christmas week started with a gathering at my grandparents to celebrate the arrival of my brother Eric, his wife Shanda, and their son Kaiden (18 months). It had been a long time since much of the extended family had seen them so my grandparents invited a slew of us over for a great dinner and time to hang out with one another. This was Isaac and Kaiden’s first meeting. It was so much fun! Kaiden is absolutely adorable!

Please be in prayer for all of them as one of the reasons for their visit is that Eric leaves tomorrow (January 2) for a 6 month deployment to Qatar. He likes his deployment site but is very sad about being away from his family (understandably). And Shanda is way out there in Dover, Delaware on her own with an 18 month old! We will miss him!

Christmas Eve Afternoon

Our good friends Jeremy and Cortney came over with their two boys, Evan and Carter for a little gift exchange and photo session. We took a few family Christmas shots and got great pictures of the boys together! What a blessing to have them around and with boys so close in age to Isaac. Evan did a great job for this boys’ photo.

Christmas Eve

It has become somewhat of a tradition to spend Christmas Eve at my mom’s house. With Eric in town she asked in advanced for us to reserve the evening. She made a GREAT meal (and it was all on the table at the same time)! It was a great evening together but quite tiring. That Kaiden is a fireball of entertainment! And those cheeks are so kissable!

We were really blessed by the gift exchange and grandma made true on the shirt that she bought Isaac that said “What Santa doesn’t bring me Grandma will”!

Christmas Morning

We spent the morning together as a family. This was so nice! Isaac gets up at 8:00 am and we had to wake him up as he didn’t exactly want to go to bed the night before which made for a long night. It was a great morning though. I would say the highlight of the morning included cuddling as a family. My presents from Ben included a new photo printer/scanner/copier which will be AWESOME for the prints that I want to do. I also got a winter coat, which was much needed. And this AWESOME t-shirt!

Christmas Afternoon

We spent Christmas afternoon with Ben’s family. It was a great time with everyone together. Of course Isaac practically slept through the whole thing as he was so warn out from the night before! Isaac got to hang out with his grandparents and Uncle Paul for a while which was so cool! And we got some great musical gifts from Uncle Jesse, Aunt Naomi, and Grace. The highlight for sure was the great wagon that Isaac got and the Garmin GPS unit Ben and I got! (Isaac asked to use the Garmin with the wagon but Ben is insisting it be used in the new Outlander).

Christmas Evening

On to my dad’s house for the evening. This is always a lot of craziness with four dogs (my sister brings her two), a cat, 2 toddlers, and 2 wiggle worms rolling about! We caused everything to be a bit rushed because we couldn’t foresee keeping Isaac out late again as he had such a rough 24 hours already. (Let’s just say I wasn’t sure I had the patience to put him through it again either. There is just something about a fussy baby when you know that you caused the fussiness). At any rate, it was a great time. I got more great items for playing in the kitchen; including a food mill that I will use for making Isaac some baby food. Isaac’s favorite toy thus far from there is this rolling ball from Aunt Sarah, Uncle Rick, Noah, and Gabriel.

Day After Christmas

We headed back over to the Callahan’s as we had the wagon to pick up (did you see the size of that thing)! And there were presents that didn’t get opened by Isaac because he was sleeping so much. And let’s be honest here, Ben and I had forgotten our swimsuits on Christmas Day and were looking for a dip in the new hot tub! Turns out while we were taking our warm dip and Gram and Gramps were watching Isaac, he decided to roll over from back to front for the first time! We were so excited to hear that! He has been trying for several days and was almost there. He has done it in the days to follow which is so very exciting!

Reisert Family Christmas

My mom’s side of the family is still getting together for Christmas and other holidays. I have such an amazing relationship with so many of these people because of all the time we spent together as kids that it is wonderful to get to see them at least once a year. There were quite a few missing that live far away, were sick, or had to work; but it was fun! We ate (of course) had our crazy gift exchange game, played a new card game, and visited with all the new babies. Julie, Jessica and I were all pregnant together (and tried to get pictures along the way) so it was fun to have the 3 babies together for a photo op! This picture by far says so much! Aaron LOVED trying to pull Libbie’s hair – Isaac just looks frightened. But if you ask me this picture is a true depiction of what this whole family get together feels like (not that I don’t love it anyway)!

New Year’s Eve Morning

Ben went into work to sign papers to become Forge, LLC! He and three great guys that he has been working with for some time have decided to team together to become one company. We are so excited about the opportunity to grow with these families. We have been in much prayer over this move and really feel that the Lord has provided in such an amazing way for our family in 2009 through this merge.

New Year’s Eve

Three years ago Ben and I threw a New Year’s Eve party complete with a theme and costume contest. We had no real intentions of continuing it until everyone asked us the following year what the theme was and what time the party was starting! So the tradition began. This year however, we needed to cut back the party as we have a newborn and less space to host people (so if you weren’t invited this year please don’t be offended). It was pretty much a Forge and Family party!

The theme this year was Disney or Disney/Pixar. I pretty much decided the theme because I had a costume already and didn’t want to have to worry about one more thing this holiday season. Ben decided to go along with the theme and be the ship wrecked Prince Eric and Isaac completed the ensemble as Sabastian. The pictures from this event are a must see! The past years (ringing in 2007, ringing in 2008) are great too! (Now that I have posted all this we will likely have to rent space for ringing in 2010.

January 1, 2009

We are excited all of the festivities are over! We are resting and relaxing as a family today! We are looking forward to 2009 and all the great things in store for us ahead. Thanks for taking a trip down memory lane with me. I can hardly believe that all of these things happened in a week and a half!

Happy New Year!

http://www.intoapicture.com/isaaciser08/

For the past 4 to 5 days I have been pretty sick. This seems to be my yearly bout with some kind of nasty head cold plus soar throat which eventually turns into a chest cough, etc…

The difference this year is that we have a 3 month old baby.

Some of you experienced parents might say that this is no big deal, but as a new dad I have this fear of getting Isaac sick. Translation: I can’t kiss him, cough around him, feed him… No fun, for me or for Tricia.

I’ve been on antibiotcs for 36 hours plus Tricia has a migrane equals Ben can feed the baby!

So, for the first time (thanks to my incredible wife) in 4 days, I held and fed my beautiful baby boy. 4 days is a long time in baby world. I couldn’t believe how heavy and long he was. It was like someone else swapped our skinny serious baby for their chunky laughing baby! He ate his bottle very quickly and then sat on my lap looking up at me with a big smile as if to say “I remember you, you’re that goofy guy that makes me burp and laughs at every word out of Dwight Shrute’s mouth!”

It was awesome.

So, sitting on the couch at 2 in the morning, Isaac and I finally reconnected. It didn’t last too long, he’s fast asleep now, but it was much needed – probably more for me than for him.

Hey, did I mention how amazing my wife is?

Last weekend was Apex’s fall baby dedication. We were excited that we were able to dedicate Isaac so early; Although the weekend itself caught us off guard and came up very quickly. For that reason, our only blood family there was Grandma and Grandpa Gallivan (my mom and step-dad). We were thankful that they could join us.

One of the few traditions Apex has is to dedicated the many (and when I say many it is an understatement) children that have been born in the church. As part of this dedication they ask friends and family of the baby being dedicated to come up and pray over the family. For this reason, we don’t have any pictures from the actual dedication (because all of our camera operators were on stage praying). It is a time set aside more for the parents than the child as the parents commit before the Body of Christ to raise their children in the Lord.

It was such an awesome experience for me. As I stood there praying over my son (and with the hands of so many friends and family touching me) I was blown away by the blessing Isaac is in my life. For a woman who thought she might never be able to have kids, to stand on that stage and commit to raising my son in Christ is the very least that I have to offer this little one for all that the Father has done for me. I am so undeserving of this little angel and I am so looking forward to sharing with him all the miracles that I have experienced in my life. Including his birth.

(Check out the Baby Dedication Gallery for more photos).

I stopped in after grocery shopping and this is what I witnessed. Isaac was helping dad give a quote. We are thinking of making him a full partner at 6 months.

The last month has been a lot of fun and has flown by! We have enjoyed getting to know our little man and introducing him to the world. Parenting really is a learning experience. We had our first set of vaccinations today and thankfully he did really well. Of course he cried when they poked and prodded him but he has been a content little boy the rest of the evening. At the appointment he was measuring 24 inches long and 12.4 lbs. We were happy with that considering we had a rough go the first few weeks. Ben and I have really noticed how big he is getting this last week. It seems like he sprouted over night.

Well, here are some milestones, or items that we have learned about our son over the last month.

1. We had some serious bouts of projectile vomiting. For awhile I thought that I (Tricia) was doing something because I seemed to be the one always taking a shower in regurgitated formula but it turned out that Ben got his fair share of showerings too. Thankfully this has subsided the last week or so.

2. Ben suggested about a week ago that we stop sleeping him in his car seat (which we were doing to help with the spitting up). It seemed like when he was gassy he couldn’t work out the gas by kicking his legs when he was in the seat. And Ben was worried about his posture. . .So we made the transition to sleeping on his back in his bed. Of course, this has caused a change in sleep patterns. We were getting at least one 5-6 hour stretch and now we are back to getting up every 4 hours. Still not bad but we are looking forward to the long stretches again! However, his spitting up and gassiness has really improved so it appears that Ben’s suggestion was a good one.

3. He hasn’t really been smiling a whole lot. They say they start smiling socially between 4-8 weeks but we aren’t too worried, it will come. He actually has started more smiling the last couple of days which is turning out to be fun. He really is pretty ticklish too. Ben particularly likes to tickle his lips which usually gets him smiling (probably because he anticipates there may be food coming soon).

4. I can’t resist him when he wears these pj’s! I can’t remember who exactly got these for him but they drive me crazy! He looks and feels like a giant teddy bear. A cute cuddly teddy bear with an adorable cute kissable face. And when he does his little whimper while in these pj’s I practically melt into the floor. I think he knows that he can get away with most anything when he is wearing them!

5. He is holding his head up a lot more these days. He loves to look around. And like most babies he stares at bright lights. Some days I worry that about his eyesight. Is it really good for him to be staring at those bright lights?

For more pictures check out the 2nd month gallery! Clicking on the pictures give you details.

Until next month. . .

I’m almost 32 years old, and while I don’t want to suggest that 32 is *old*, I’ve always thought that having your first child after 30 gave you a chance to observe friends and family and (hopefully) learn from what you see. Do you spank? Do you give in when they cause a scene in public? Do they really have to eat their veggies? I’m just at the beginning of this mountainous number of decisions, but it turns out that it’s a whole lot easier to be objective about parenting when it’s not your kid. Don’t get me wrong, I think my friends and my brother are doing great jobs with their children, but every parent (thankfully) does things a little differently – they do it their own way.

Recently, Tricia and I have been trying to figure out how to get some sleep at night as opposed to napping all day whenever Isaac decides to nap. You’ve heard it before from your friends without kids, “Just let them cry!”… Well, it ain’t that easy. I think God has built something into moms and dads that  can sense distress in their children and moves them to action. Otherwise, I could never explain how the tiniest sound from my little boy can wake me straight up out of bed wondering if he’s ok. It’s like I’ve got a microphone hanging in his crib with a direct line to my ear drum. Carrying that analogy a little further, imagine how my ear drum feels when he’s screaming his little lungs out. Now “just let him cry”…

So, here’s where I’m at with this thing. First and foremost, I want Isaac to understand that he can never do anything that will keep me from loving him. If that means that I need to lose a little (or a lot of) sleep to make sure he knows that I am here when he needs me, then so be it. I will deal with the lack of sleep for a few weeks, to make sure he has no doubt about me meeting his needs. However, it’s probably human nature to take advantage of a good situation. So, when Tricia and I feel that it’s time for little Isaac to figure out how to comfort himself at night, we’ll just have to figure out how to comfort each other through those bouts of crying. We’ve made it this far together, I’m sure we can work it out!

All in good time little buddy. Until then, I’ll be up at a whimper…