Saturday, December 30, 2006

Happy Birthday - Maiya (part 3)

(Please click on the photo to view more pictures.)

We all made it up to the hospital today. DLCnM were, of course, all there, along with Pete and Teri. Dana Wingblad paid a visit while we were there as well. She brought Lynette all sorts of snacks and sweets that looked like they'd really hit the spot.

Everyone is doing well, and it looks like Mom and baby should both be discharged tomorrow after a final checkup. Knowing how well Lynette does on exams, I'm guessing they'll be home in time for the Lions game!

Michele and I are about to settle in for the night and hopefully watch the Spartans clinch the GLI Championship over the Wolverines.

Friday, December 29, 2006

Happy Birthday - Maiya (part 2)

Please click on the picture to see a few more photos of Maiya. Hopefully we'll have even more shots to post tomorrow after our visit.

Michele also wanted to let everyone know that Dan WAS there. He may even be in some of the pictures on their camera. We'll be sure to link to them if/when they get posted.

Happy Birthday - Maiya

Congratulations to Dan and Lynette. They gave Colin a baby sister today at 4:10 pm. Maiya Anne was born naturally weighing 7 pounds, and measuring 19 inches long.

Michele was at the hospital for the delivery, so hopefully we'll have some pictures soon. Jake will get to go with me to meet his new cousin tomorrow.

For the record, Maiya owes us a dinner and a movie since we were originally going to go out with Dan and Lynette tonight. At least now, by the time the rain check is cashed in, Lynette will probably be able to join us in a drink. Of course, I doubt Pursuit of Happyness will still be in the theaters, but we'll make do.

Speaking of the Hermans, you can find their Christmas pictures here.

Also, here are some photos from Mark and Kelly (if it requests an ID and password, you can use andersonannex@gmail.com for the id and anderson for the password).

Lastly, we got some results back from Jake's head ultrasound. Unfortunately, they think there may be some excess fluid around his brain. Luckily, however, we were able to get an appointment with a pediatric neurologist for Wednesday, January 3, so hopefully we'll get some more definite answers then.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Merry Christmas!

(Please click on the photo to see more Christmas pictures.)

So, I think it's safe to say that, aside from his crazy sleep schedule, Jake really enjoyed his first Christmas. He got all kinds of great gifts, most of which would fall under the category of edutainment. Michele and I also learned how much more fun it is opening gifts for your child and seeing their expression! This could easily be the best Christmas we've had together. This even topped the Christmas that the Anderson kids got our very first Nintendo!

Christmas eve eve, we headed up and visited with GnGT for a while and got to see their new fireplace and entertainment system. While I don't appreciate the enormous amount of heat that thing can pump out like everyone else, I could appreciate their new LCD HDTV. I helped Pete make sure he had all the best cables for his current equipment, plugged everything in, and programmed and taught them how to use the universal remote.

Later in the afternoon we headed over to MPnA's. We went out to church and then came back to have delicious grilled cheese sandwiches from Colony. I think they've quickly replaced Halo Burger as the food that I MUST have when I'm in the area. God help us if I ever get transferred up that way. I could easily weigh 300 pounds within the first 6 months.

Christmas Eve morning, Jake decided he would continue to get up at 6:00 am, so we decided to do all our gifts in the morning. Alison seemed to have as much fun helping Jake open his gifts as she did opening her own.

Later on, we went to church at St. Matt's in downtown Flint before heading over to the Husted's. When we got there, Michele and I tended to Jake (as good parents would) making sure he was fed, medicated, and then finally asleep only to get down to the kitchen and realize that no one missed us, and most of the food was gone! I think we both got enough to eat though, and the lasagna and shrimp were as good as ever.

After ANOTHER round of great gifts, we tried to carefully move Jake down to the car with no success. He woke up got to see a lot of relatives briefly before we whisked him away around 9:00 pm. He fell asleep in the car almost immediately on the drive down to DLnC's. When we got there, he, of course, woke up again, and was up until just before midnight. 6:00 rolled around awful quick, yet Jake was ready for it. We got up and fed him long before anyone else was stirring... even Colin.

Once everyone did get up, we had a great Christmas morning with even MORE gifts for Jake (and us). The rest of the day was spent eating, relaxing, and playing with all the great new toys.

On the day after Christmas, we finished up our gift-giving/receiving with the Pruss family. Elle really seemed to like the bongo drum we got her. Jake couldn't take his eyes off of it either, so maybe we have a birthday present figured out for him all ready!

It was a great weekend for all of us, and we are very blessed to have such a great, large, family.

After you've visited our photos from the picture link above, be sure to check out MPnA's photos here. I'll post other links for DLnC and hopefully GnGT when they are available.

Also, we are heading out this afternoon to get Jake's head ultrasound. Hopefully everything will go well, and I'll be able to report that he just had a head growth spurt, and nothing else. I'm not sure when we'll find out the results of the scan, but I'm sure Michele will be on pins and needles until we do.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

9 Months Old

(Please click on the photo to see more pictures.)

Well, well, well... two posts in two days. I don't want anyone to get spoiled, but I guess the stars just seemed to align.

Jake is 9 months old today, and did pretty well at his checkup. He got a flu shot and some blood drawn. We also found out that he needs to have an ultrasound done next week on his melon. Apparently his height and weight (27 1/4 inches, 19 pounds 8 ounces) are around the 35 percentile while his head size is in the 95 percentile. I think he's just going to be smarter than Michele or I, but the doctors think we should take a look just to be sure.

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post that while Meme and Alison watched Jake on Saturday, we went out to dinner and a movie with Mark and Kelly as our Christmas gift to each other. It's something we started with Dan and Lynette back when they were in Chicago, and we thought it would work well with these Wolverines as well. We had a delicious dinner at The Claddagh in Livonia, and then saw Deja Vu. We all thought the movie was pretty good, but probably a rent (if you don't see it in the theater). We'll be going out with Dan and Lynette on the 29th as long as she doesn't decide to give birth to "Coline" before then.

While I'm working for, hopefully, the last day of the year tomorrow, Michele will be getting together with "the girls". We are then planning on heading up to Grand Blanc on Saturday.

Also, for anyone that DID sign up for the e-mail notifications, you will not get videos and some images/links in the e-mail. You can click on either the blog name (Anderson Annex) or the title of the post, and be taken directly to our blog to see the full post. The e-mail is meant to serve as a notice that there's been an update. Sorry for any confusion that was caused. Going forward, the RSS feed and hopefully the e-mails will be truncated so you know to come look at the site.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

It's Coming Quick...

So, you may have noticed that after the post encouraging people to subscribe to our blog, the blog has been pretty stagnant. Well, as I am sure is true of most families, we have been pretty busy lately. Not only are we trying to get things in order for the holidays, but we also have been dealing with a sick kid.

A little over a week ago, Jake scared Michele and I with breaths that sounded like choking while he was asleep around 9:30 pm. We quickly woke him up and determined that he was, in fact, breathing. They were just labored, wheezing breaths. It sounded like he was crying, but, in true Jake fashion, he was smiling away the whole time! We called the doctor's office and they advised us to take him to the ER. Of course, by the time we got there he sounded normal. Over the course of the next three hours, they observed him and took X-rays and determined that he did not have pneumonia. They then sent us on our way with advise to contact his pediatrician the following day.

After a few hours of sleep, we headed to the pediatrician's office and they determined that he could have asthma. I guess this is pretty common for preemies, so they were not really surprised. They also stressed that he could very likely grow out of it, or it might just be a seasonal thing. Basically, we shouldn't get too worried that he'll need to be medicated for the rest of his life to treat it.

After that little visit, he is now on Zyrtec as an antihistamine, two drugs given through the nebulizer, and another antibiotic because it appeared as though he might be getting a sinus infection on top of the breathing problems.

Jake has been a trooper through all of this, and besides a few days of being "less happy" than normal, he has seemed just like himself. He sounds a lot better, and we haven't had any more "incidents". Michele will be taking him in for his nine month appointment and a follow-up checkup tomorrow. Hopefully he'll come off of the antibiotic and one of the breathing treatments.

Aside from all that, we have most of our Christmas shopping done. Jake went to 12 Oaks with us last weekend and was an angel in his stroller. We wouldn't have known he was there if he hadn't giggled and squealed out loud occasionally as he grabbed his hands or the belt to his stroller.

Jake has also moved up to rear-facing car seats. As he's near 20 pounds now, it was getting a bit tedious carrying him in the baby carrier. We found some seats that we liked at Babies R Us, and after a "quick trip" to Ypsilanti (which is the only store that had them) I got them home and latched into the cars. Jake looks more comfortable than he did in the carrier, but he seems to like getting out of them better than getting in them.

We also got our Christmas cards all mailed out. We had a few cards that we needed to find addresses for, so they went out later, and we know of one that got lost in the mail. While no one has commented on the card, I decided to divulge our secret in finding the "perfect" photo for this year. You can see all about it in this little video that I made.



Lastly, here are some photos left over from November (including our new Christmas tree and ornaments) and here are a few from December. Michele is out of school now, so she brought Jake down to the Ren Cen where we had lunch with Mark, and Jake got to see Santa.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Subscription Setting Updates



Before I get into the "meat" of this post, I wanted to talk for a second about subscriptions. What are subscriptions, you might ask, and why should you care?

By subscribing to our blog, you get an easy way of finding out when I've found time to throw up a post without actually having to visit the site.

There are two main ways to subscribe to our blog. On the right-hand side, you'll see a subscribe section that looks like the image below.


The first way to subscribe is to enter your e-mail address and click "E-mail me updates". This will take you to a second screen where you'll have to enter some text to prove that you're a human and not a spam bot. After you enter the text and click the button, they will send you an e-mail. When you get the e-mail click the link to verify that you want to subscribe, and presto, you'll get an e-mail like the one pictured at the top of the post any time we update. It's really very cool. For anyone that already signed up, this should continue to work as before.

The second way to sign up is through something called an RSS feed. This is basically a way that website sends out short blurbs to a reader letting you know that there's something new to read. You can think of this as a headlines option in the news. You see what you want to read and proceed to B7. In the virtual world, you see a new headline and you click to read the whole post. I have setup two easy options, you can click on the Yahoo or Google buttons to add them to the respective readers. I personally use Google Reader to manage my 20+ feeds that I keep track of, and the newest version is really VERY good. You can also click on the RSS logo (orange button with white, curved lines) and try to figure out (or let your browser figure out) how to go from there. For the very few people that subscribed via this method, the address has changed. Please update your readers accordingly.

Now, onto the updates.

So there's not much new to post today. Jake had a follow-up doctor appointment, and besides learning that we want to find a new pediatrician, we also found out that he's over 19 pounds, and his lungs have cleared up. We're going to continue using the nebulizer twice a day for another week just to make sure.

On Friday night our house had an unsuspected visitor. Mother nature decided she wanted to take a peak at our basement and followed the storm water up our drain and fanned out quite a ways. I spent the vast majority of Friday night, and into Saturday morning sucking up all the water with my AWESOME shop vac. If you don't have a shop vac or are unhappy with the one you have, go buy one of these for Christmas. All the Anderson men have one (Jake doesn't yet, but he's not even walking... when he is, it might be a good reason to upgrade!). MPnA also came down Saturday to help clean up, and to hang out. Michele and I bought their old snowblower, so they were kind enough to bring that down as well. To help defer the costs of transportation, I sent my dad back with several sheets of drywall. I think he got the better end of that deal.

Michele left Jake with me on Sunday while she went Christmas shopping with her mom and Lynette. It sounds like they did some pretty good damage. I'll need to get started eventually!

Good luck getting subscribed (if you want to), and if you have any questions, post a comment with your e-mail address, and I'll get back to you.