Holiday Rush

Well, one side of the family has come and gone, and the other side arrived this morning. Zach's enjoying all the attention! And enjoying being spoiled rotten. :)

We've been able to enjoy the weather some, but it did rain some last week when my family was here. We still managed to fit in a trip to the Phoenix Zoo's ZooLights. Zach enjoys looking at all the Christmas lights at home, and he was just mesmerized by all the lights at the zoo. It was fun watching him watch the lights! We'll make it back this week with Christine's family to check out the lights too.

And in other exciting news, our good friends Chad and Karen finally got to meet their little guy! Their son Ashton was born Friday, mom and son (and dad :) ) are all doing well. Zach will have a little buddy to play with . :)

From Zach 2008 December

National Championship Game

Here we come!

SEC Champs!!!

Now hopefully on to Miami for the BCS National Championship!

Thanksgiving Day Weekend

Wow, that went by fast! We had a nice weekend, though. We had a good Thanksgiving dinner, talked to all of the family over the webcam so they could see Zach, did some Christmas shopping, put up some Christmas decorations, even wrapped some gifts! It never fails to feel strange putting up the outdoor decorations in shorts and a t-shirt. But we find a way to manage. :)

Zach is doing great still! He's sleeping really well through the night. We grumble a bit when he "only" sleeps 7.5 hours. :) What a great kid, huh? Not even 3 months old and sleeping through the night. He's always in a great mood too. Unless he's hungry and then you better have a bottle ready! He is starting to get a little grumpy and rubs his eyes when he's getting tired. But he's getting more playful and chatty!

Just a few more days until family starts coming for Christmas. Something tells me the little guy is going to get (more) spoiled rotten!

From Zach 2008 November

Sleeping...

For the second night in a row, Zach has slept 8+ hours! Actually 9 1/2 hours last night interrupted only by getting his hair washed about an hour and a half after he fell asleep at 9.

We put him down lengthwise in the crib like normal, but he wasn't exactly in the same place this morning when he started waking up...

From Zach 2008 November

Maybe this is how he got there....

From Zach 2008 November

2 month check up

Yesterday was Zach's two month checkup. He is now 24.5 inches long (in the 90th percentile!) and weighs 13 lbs 3.5 oz (75th percentile). No wonder his 3 to 6 month clothes fit so well already!

He also had to get some immunization shots. He was not happy about that part... :(

From Zach 2008 November

Happy Birthday to Christine!

Yesterday started Christine's last year of her 20s. She's getting old like me! :)

I am thankful

that Guitar Hero did not exist while we were in college.

Oh, and Spurrier... Still glad you get to coach against your alma mater every year? How about that 56-6 smackdown?

Two months old today!

Zach turns two months old today! He's doing great, growing like a weed already it seems. ;) He's wearing mostly 3-6 month size clothes and some of those are even getting small. He's been sleeping pretty well at night, about 5-6 hours at a time.

We think we've picked a nanny too, so we don't have to worry about the search through the holidays!

From Zach 2008 November

Relaxing

Today is mostly a relaxing day. Catching up on posting pictures on Picasa, and just doing a few things around the house after we were busy most of yesterday. We went out and ran some errands (it's amazing how much longer things take when we go out now! :) ) to Circuit City, Target, etc. Circuit City is closing all their stores in the Phoenix metro area, so we went to see what kind of deals they had. We got a few DVDs for Zach for when he gets a little older and we got Guitar Hero for us (finally!). And then we went to Chad and Karen's for dinner with them and Todd and Erin. It was like a mini-baby shower for Chad and Karen since they are expecting their little boy next month.

The weather has been really nice lately, mid to high 40s in the morning 75-80 for the highs. Perfect weather for evening walks! And nice in the morning too, depending on Zach's schedule. Though we've been on the lookout for coyotes ever since a pack of 4 of them crossed the road in front of us about a hundred feet away at dusk. Kind of surprised us, but it was in an area of the neighborhood near the elementary school that isn't built up as much.

We've also interviewed a couple of nannies to help watch Zach when Christine goes back to work. She's been working it out with her bosses to work a reduced schedule (32 hrs a week) and we'll probably have someone come in 3 or 4 days a week so I can get some work done from home.

Not much else going on right now. Just looking forward to the next few weeks of college football, looks like the Gators have had things fall in place where if they win out they should be playing for the national championship! And the Cardinals (the Cardinals???) are looking really good and they should make the playoffs. Of course we had season tickets last year.... :)

From Zach 2008 November

Revenge!

This game was marked on the calendar ever since that idiotic display Georgia pulled last year when the entire team rushed the field after scoring their first touchdown in the first quarter. Shows how much Florida is in their heads, huh? Well guess what? Revenge is sweet.

49-10 and it wasn't even that close.

Happy Halloween!

From Zach 2008 October

And GO GATORS! Beat the Dawgs!

She's free!

Christine got clearance from her doctor on Friday to resume normal activity! The doc had her go ahead and stop taking her BP medication and just wants her to come back next Friday for a check to make sure everything is still ok. So that brunette whirlwind you might have seen Friday was Christine relishing her freedom! :) We ran a few errands over the weekend that we've been saving for when she could leave the house and we have gone for a couple nice walks through the neighborhood now that the weather is getting really nice.

Not much else going on. Enjoyed the Gator game on Saturday where we clobbered Kentucky 63-5. The Gators blocked 3 kicks, including 2 on consecutive possessions for Kentucky. That was a lot of fun to watch! :) BIG game against Georgia next week...

Here's Zach enjoying the game:

From Zach 2008 October

One month doctor visit

Tuesday was Zach's one month doctor visit. The doctor was really happy with his health and everything seems to be going pretty well.

His updated stats:
length - 22 in (he lost some of his original length when he lost his conehead, so he's back to 22 in now)
weight - 10 lbs 4.5 ounces

He's doing great! Eating 4oz per sitting now, and last night he slept for 6 hours straight, we're pretty lucky in that dept. He's starting to smile more (it's not always gas now). And he continues to become stronger, he holds his head up when we're holding him and turns it during tummy time. And, he's starting to grow out of some of his clothes already! They grow up so fast...

I'm a month old!

From Zach 2008 October

From Zach 2008 October

From Zach 2008 October

Already??? Where does time go?

Time flies!

On Sunday Zach will be one month old already! He's been doing really well. He eating 3-4 oz of formula at a time now. And after a rough day on Monday (gas pains) he's been sleeping even better at night now. He'd been sleeping 3 or maybe 4 hours at a time, but the last three nights he went 5 hours! Hopefully that will keep up! ::knocking on wood::

Everything else is going pretty well. Christine's blood pressure seems to be back to normal. She has an appointment on the 24th, so hopefully she'll get the all clear to resume normal activity then! Zach has an appointment next Tuesday, the 14th. We're interested to see how much he's grown so far. Seems like a lot!

Here's a happier picture than after the Gator loss a couple of weekends ago:

More from Zach 2008 October

The Gators lost...

...and nobody was happy about it!

From Zach, September 2008

Catching up...

Been too busy to post for a while...

On the health front, Zach is doing fine. Mom, however, had a return trip to the hospital Monday. Christine had another followup appointment with her doctor to check her blood pressure and it was high. Really high. So we got a return trip to the hospital to keep her under observation for 24 hours. Luckily they let Zach and me stay with her. It wasn't fun for anybody but it at least made it a little easier on Christine.

The good news is that Christine is doing fine now! She's on some BP medication and on orders to keep activity to a minimum, but she's ok. Except for the sitting still part. :)

Otherwise things have been going pretty well. Zach is still sleeping fairly well, though he's been waking up hungry more often so we are starting to feed him a little more. And he's starting to enjoy tummy time a little, lifting his head all the way off the ground and turning it, and pushing his legs around a lot. Pretty good strength for only a couple weeks old!

Check out some pictures from the first week or so here: Zach's Arrival and some more taken this month here: September

We'll keep adding pictures every couple days and we'll start a new album each month to help keep the number of pictures under control... :)

Day Two - Sept 12, 2008

At about 10am the nurses started Christine on the IV drip for the second part of the induction process. They warned again that it could take a while to work, the main nurse guessed it could be about 24 hours before it was time to give birth! About this time Christine's water broke and she was about 1 cm dialated.

It wasn't long before Christine started to feel contractions on a fairly consistent basis. They were happening fairly frequently (about every two or three minutes) and Tylenol worked for a little while, but soon Christine was wanted her blessed epidural. Especially knowing that this could go on for 24 hours or more! The nurse said that getting to 4 cm would take a while, then about a cm an hour until 10 cm, then an hour or two of pushing. So we started thinking that we could have our little boy that day!

Once she got the epidural, life was once again happy. She got that at about 1:30 and she was 4 cm dialated at the time. So we were now thinking the 9:00-10:00 time frame. But since Christine is an over-achiever, by 5:45 she was already 9 cm dialated!

It was also near this time that Christine's dad had to leave to go get her mom at the airport. Her flight was scheduled to land about 8:00, so we figured they'd get back to the hospital around 9:00. We had thought that she would make it in time, but it was starting to look tight.

By 7:30 Christine was fully dialated, but they decided to wait longer for Zach to start dropping on his own so Christine didn't have to do as much work. 8:30 came and went, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00... Finally at about 10:30, they decided it was time. Luckily, Christine's parents had made it back by around 9:30!

So at 10:42, Christine pushed for the first time. It seemed like she was doing pretty well, since about 20 minutes in, one of the nurses asked if I wanted to see Zach's head while Christine was pushing! And after just 36 minutes out Zach entered the world, with a very healthy set of lungs!

They got him cleaned up and tended to the new Mom, and before we knew it he was having his first bottle at about 12:30 am. Christine was feeling kind of bad (they had put her on magnesium to help prevent siezures from her high blood pressure and the side effects are apparently pretty bad), so they let her recover for a while before moving us to our post-partum room. We all fell asleep (Zach fell asleep in my lap) before they came in at 3:00 am to move us. By the time we made it upstairs, met with the new nurse that would be helping Christine out, fed, and changed Zach, it was a little after 4:30 before we hit the bed. Or the recliner in my case.

A pretty exhausting day, but well worth it!

Day One - Sept 11, 2008

Christine had been dealing with high blood pressure over the past couple of weeks of her pregnancy, so she was being watched closely by her doctors. They were watching for pre-eclampsia, which can be pretty bad - causing kidney problems or even siezures. The only cure is for the baby to be born. So we were scheduled to start going in twice every week for her blood pressure to be checked and for an ultrasound to make sure Zach was doing ok.

During the first of these appointments, Christine's BP was even higher than it had been. We had already planned on asking the doctor how long they would let this go since Zach was considered full-term at this point. When we asked the doctor, she said that we'd test it again with Christine laying on her side for a while and if it was still high she'd probably have us go on in. Go on in? To the hospital??? Now?????

Her BP came down, but only to 130/80, even though Christine had been resting for a while. The doctor said it was time to head to the hospital to be induced! So out the door we went to go home and get our bags and head to the hospital!

We made a bunch of phone calls to family, including Christine's dad who just happened to be in town for a training class. He had a scheduled flight for the next day, but that quickly got cancelled! :) And also a quick call to Chad and Karen to come to our house and pick Austin up so they could watch him for us for a couple days.

When we got to the hospital we filled out the paperwork and started to get settled in our labor and delivery room. We finally had a chance to realize that this was happening and happening soon! So much for our plans to finish getting a couple things ready over the weekend. ;)

There wasn't much more excitement for the rest of the night. Christine got her first dose of medication to help start the induction process, I paced around the room half the night, Christine's dad came by, and Christine's mom made flight plans for the next day. We just tried to relax as much as we could with nurses coming in every hour or so. Our main nurse was kind enough to drag a cot in for me for the night, but I didn't sleep much. My mind was racing every time I woke up during the night.

Just the first of many nights without a full night of sleep. ;)

Day 2 to be posted soon...

Zach has arrived!

Zachary Brian Cox
born September 12th, 2008
22 inches, 8 lbs 3 oz

From Zach's Arrival!

More details to follow...

That was close

We had a pretty strong monsoon storm come through yesterday. At one point visibility was down to less than 50 feet here at home because of the dust storm that came before all the rain. We did have a casualty because of the strong wind. The grill not only tipped over but got pushed towards the house. Even with the full propane tank to hold it down. Luckily, it didn't quite make it to the sliding glass door.



It could have been worse though, we could have been this guy:
http://www.azcentral.com/community/chandler/articles/2008/08/25/20080825cr-stormplanes0826.html

So busy...

Whew... First of all, many thanks to Karen and Chad for a great baby shower! It wasn't a traditional shower (that's a good thing), but it was a great chance to catch up with some friends that we hadn't seen in a while. And a chance to eat some great food that Karen and Chad prepared. They really went overboard! We got a lot of great gifts that will come in handy pretty soon.

We had a lot going on last week... An orientation class at the hospital, a doctor visit, a visit to a pediatrician, dinner with some friends didn't make it to the shower... Then Saturday morning we bought a bunch of things that we still needed for Zach and then spent the rest of the day cooking a bunch of meals to freeze so we have something to eat when Zach comes.

It should be a quieter week this week, just trying to get some more little things ready for Zach's impending arrival!

FexEd comes through

We claimed $50 for shipping and $50 for damage (thinking we might have to pay for the replacement parts and to have them shipped to us). FedEx sent us a chack for $140.97. Go figure...

Finally...

We finally have a crib put together! Of course not without some more fun... We went to IKEA and they said they'd give us whatever spare parts they had, but they wouldn't open a new crib to give us the hardware since it was bought at a different store. So we ended up about 12 pieces short.

While walking through IKEA, I called their customer services to try to have the pieces sent to us. They took our information and said someone would call us within 24 to 48 hours to "see what they would be able to do" for us.

So, since our local IKEA had some cribs in stock now, we decided to buy another new one. We figure once we get replacement parts from IKEA we can return one. Otherwise, if for some reason we can't get all the pieces, then we'll file a claim with FedEx for the cost of the crib (thankfully I declared a value for the shipment this time!). What could possibly go wrong? :)

Finally though, we have a crib all put together! Behold...

We still have to wash the bumper, the blanket, and the bedding, but at least we have it all ;)

Pop Quiz

Does this:

Look like it made it here with all of its pieces?

FedEx decided they would drop the hardware off somewhere in between Bradenton and here. Back to IKEA...

Trials and Tribulations of Finding a Crib

So a couple of months ago we found found a set at IKEA with a crib, dresser with a changing table attachment, toy box, bookshelf... pretty much everything. It was highly rated by the baby bargain book we got, it was pretty cheap... best of both worlds right? Yeah, that's what everybody else thought too.

First, we were waiting until we moved to pick it up, thinking Christine's dad could help up pick it up when he was here to help us move. Of course by then we were only able to get the dresser (without the changing table attachment), the toy box, and a bookshelf. They told us that the crib and changing table attachment were both out of stock but should be back within a week or two.

Well, we kept checking, and they kept telling us a week or two every time. We were checking their website for inventory status for every store in the nation, thinking maybe we could have the pieces shipped - they were all out. When I called in to check the status one time, the girl said she was amazed that they were all out of stock, not just this crib, but all their cribs. She said that she had heard that some people were having problems getting cribs even at Target, Babies R Us, etc. What is this, some kind of baby boom??? And on the same call we were told that the changing table attachment had been discontinued. We figured we could get by since the dresser should be big enough.

Based on IKEA's complete lack of cribs, we decided to go get a crib at Target that we liked. It didn't match the set that we had, but it was nice and we figured we better have something! :) We figured that we could wait to put it together for a while to see if we could get the one we wanted from IKEA.

So after weeks of calling IKEA to check their status, Christine noticed that the crib was available online! Of course with their shipping costs, the $160 crib would be $300... We were kind of debating what to do, so I called IKEA again to find out if they would be back in stores. They told me that for some reason they were going to be supplied to our store later than most of the others, not until August 25th!

I was looking at some of the inventories for other stores and found that the Orlando store had it. Kind of half joking I called Christine at work to see if anyone in her family would be in Orlando anytime soon (they live in Bradenton). At the same time I looked to see how much it would cost to ship it ourselves if we could get one that way and it would only be about $40. That's a little more reasonable...

As it turned out, Christine's sister, Jackie, and her boyfriend, Brett, were going to Orlando to turn in his apartment keys that weekend. Not only that but they were planning on going to IKEA while they were there! Perfect! So we made arrangements for them to pick up the crib and ship it to us.

That weekend Jackie called Christine to make sure she was getting the right crib and said, "I saw all the stuff you got. The dresser, the changing table, the bookshelf..." Christine said, "What? We didn't get the changing table, they said they were discontinued!" So all of a sudden things are looking great! They picked up the crib and the changing table attachment, we emailed them FedEx shipping labels, and we should have both pieces Tuesday. Things worked out pretty well, we just had to pay a little extra for shipping, and we'll have to take the other crib back to Target.

Pretty nice, right? Well, on Friday Christine went to check the status of another piece of furniture that has been out of stock and just for fun checked on the crib. It's in stock now, of course. :P So we could have had it by now and not paid the extra shipping. Guess they meant July 25th??

Oh well, at lease we managed to get the changing table attachment out of it...

Doctor visit

We went to see our new doctor today. We switched for a few reasons, the big one being that the hospital we will go to now is a lot closer. Turns out that the staff of the new place is a lot nicer and better at their jobs too. It never ceased to amaze us how hard it was to make an appointment at the old doctor. The good news is that they want to do their own ultrasound so we get another peek at little Zach on Monday!

On the home front we're finally getting a little more unpacking done now that we have all the office furniture. Hopefully this weekend we can make some more progress.

And things with my new job seem to be going well. It's nice to not have to drive 100 miles a day. But it's a little strange not leaving the house for two or three days at a time!

Just have to finish getting the house cleaned up/set up in time for the baby shower on August 16th. It's amazing how fast time is going.

Ultrasound Day

Well, we finally made it in for the second ultrasound. (The tech was out sick last time.) Supposedly it was just to measure Zach's heart, but the tech ended up measuring his head three times. Apparently he has a huge head - she said that his head is two weeks ahead of schedule! Overall the tech said Zach's about 10 days ahead of schedule, but most of it from his head. Everything else looks good and he seems to be doing great! That's his profile up there. His big ol' head on the right, with his fist on the left resting on his chest.

He doesn't seem like he going to be late at all then. Which just helps remind us that we have so much to do still....

The big 3-0!

First of all, welcome to any new visitors that are probably here because you got our "we've moved" photocard in the mail. We'd love to hear how you're doing, look at our profile to get our email address and send us an update :).

I usually let Brian take the reigns on posting to the blog, but as you may or may not know, this Thursday is his 30th birthday! Boy he's getting old :), I'm sure he'd love to hear all about how ancient he's getting this week so send him a note to rub it in!

As far as updates on our house, we're settling in pretty nicely. We have a lot of our things unpacked, and this week we have painters in to get rid of the bright white walls and replace them with some "crisp khaki" throughout the common areas. We had them paint the nursery too, it's a blue, we'll post pictures on our picasa as soon as we have everything back together. Keep checking back for updates, we have a doctor and ultrasound appointment this week, so we'll post and let everyone know how little Zach is doing! At the rate he's kicking we might have the next David Beckham on our hands!

Finally registered...

We went out last weekend and did the baby registry thing at Target and Babies R Us. Thankfully Christine had put together a nice list of things that we need/want, so it was only a slightly daunting task. It's still a little unreal shopping for this stuff for ourselves and not as a gift!

Here are links to our registries -
Target
Babies R Us

Other than that we've just been unpacking and trying to get things settled in the house. We'll have some painters coming in next week to do some work for us during my week off in between jobs. Once that's done we can start hanging things on the wall and getting all that stuff back where it belongs.

More news

The unpacking is progressing this week. The first ceiling fan has gone up, hopefully a couple more will be done over the weekend. And after a bunch of hassle, we have our phone and internet service back on after the original guys that came out last week weren't able to finish the job.

Also, I have now given notice to Honeywell that I will be leaving effective June 13th. I'll be able to take a week off to get a lot of stuff done at the house, then will be starting work with Marathon Data Systems working on their PestPac software on the 23rd. I'll be able to work from home, which will be nice after commuting at least 70 each work day for the last 7+ years. And it opens our options up a little for child care when Christine goes back to work at the beginning of next year.

Baby on the way, new house, new job... what else can we change? :)

Whew...

After a busy weekend of moving we are in the new house! There are still a couple of odds and ends of things that are left and the pool table won't be moved until this weekend, but everything else got done. Thankfully we had a lot of help from friends and on Saturday and Christine's dad came in to help Friday and Saturday. We couldn't have gotten it all done without them! Now the fun begins with all the unpacking, putting up ceiling fans, etc.

Now that we've officially moved now we can start getting things ready for the baby. We've hardly done any shopping and haven't registered anywhere yet. We're going to have to start doing that this weekend.

Wow, time flies!

We've signed the papers on the new house and we're about to move in this week!

Luckily we managed to sell our current house after only 3 weeks on the market, so that took a lot of pressure and stress off of us. We close on the sale on June 11th, so the timing really couldn't have worked out any better.

There's been a lot going on in the last few months. On top of all the work to get the old house ready to sell and getting ready to move in to the new house, we've also been preparing for an addition to our family!!

Christine is about 5 months pregnant and we just found out a couple of weeks ago that we are going to have a boy! She's done pretty well through the pregnancy so far, no morning sickness or anything. She's due at the end of September, but it's amazing how fast time is going. So in a few months we'll have some pictures of little Zachary Brian!

We've started looking at and picking out some stuff for the baby's room, we'll start getting some things from IKEA once we move.

More updates soon...

So they say...

...it's a bad time in the housing maket? Seems like a good time to buy then! We are buying a spec home that is being built now and should be ready in April. Here is the floorplan: Our New House

We've got a meeting Thursday to pick upgrades and another meeting with a loan officer afterwards.

Here are some pictures of the new home in progress.

• These are from when we were looking at it for the first time. At this point it had passed framing inspection and was waiting for the electrical inspection. Feb 17th
• These are from this past weekend. The drywall has been put up and it's a lot easier to see the rooms now. Feb 24th
  

We've had to get busy fixing a couple things with our current house, along with getting it cleaned up and decluttered since we have a realtor coming by tomorrow to get the process of selling our house started.