Family

Now that I have one, I need a place to stick articles about them.

Overdue for some more Alex pictures.

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Life has been busy since Daddy went back to work, but we are all adjusting. Alex is still growing like crazy, and keeping Mommy on her toes.

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The naming ceremony that Jenn wrote went very well -- the family was very impressed by Alex. He was very well behaved throughout the event.

Alex is wearing a christening gown owned by the Poole family, which is at least 75 years old and has been a part of many of their christening ceremonies.

More Alex pictures -- thumbnails this time, so that I don't blow my bandwidth :)

Yeah, you can plug the speaker, but the message stays the same.

Your weekly Alex fix:

He was 8 pounds 10 ounces on Tuesday -- that's a 8 ounce gain in 6 days. We are also noticing that he's a lot more awake, alert, and interested in his surroundings. He isn't sleeping through the night much better, though, that's why Mom looks so harried.

...I give you Mr. Alexander George Mackintosh, doing what he does best/most: Personally, I don't get the attraction of gratuitous sleeping-baby-pictures; he'll be much more interesting and photogenic in a couple of weeks when he goes fully interactive. And at that point we'll probably start taking more pictures.

Oh, and in the too-much-information category, Alex weighed in just under 4Kg at the doctor's today (that's 8'2" for you imperialistic types). He now weighs more than Ceili does, but less than Isa does.

It is my privilege to announce the birth of my son.

He was born 12 May 2004 at 0833EDT at the Queensway Carleton Hospital birthunit. At birth he was 2.9Kg (6 pounds 6 ounces).

Mother and baby are doing well, and we expect to all be home before next week.

I'd mention his name, but as of yet we have not picked one. :)

The Baby Shower for Jenn went really well -- Jenn always enjoys having people make a fuss over her, and she really had a good time. I'm personally overwhelmed by the generosity of our family and friends, Jenn and I are really lucky. We have a ton of thank-you notes to write.

I'd like to thank everyone who came out to celebrate this with us, but especially Christina and Jen D. for the idea, and Suzanne and Nicola and Avril for doing all the organizing.

Jenn writes:

Hi everyone,

Thought I'd send out a general update for those who were interested.

I'm now at 26 weeks, which means only 14 weeks left to go until my due date. According to all the pregnancy books I've been reading, the baby is about a pound an a half now. I can verify that it's definitely getting bigger, since it's a lot harder to ignore when it decides to do somersaults in the middle of the night. :)

It also means that it's starting to get to the point where people can feel movement on the outside if the baby is particularly active. Unfortunately for the general public (and for me), the most active time is about ten minutes after I've laid down to go to sleep. Don't worry, eventually it will get to the point where even minor motions are clearly detectable from the outside.

We've had our 20 week ultrasounds already and for those who were hoping for a hint on whether to buy blue or pink sleepers, the baby has proven to be as camera-shy as its father and had its legs tightly crossed during the ultrasound. So we'll get to be surprised in May/June, since there are no more ultrasounds scheduled during the pregnancy. We did get to see the baby yawning on the ultrasound though. You could actually see the little nose crinkling up. The tech informed us that it was the "most difficult bun I've dealt with this week." Always nice to hear from someone else that your kid is special. :)

As for names, we've decided we're not settling on any names until we meet the new arrival. We know too many people who had a short list or a name picked out who then decided on something totally different when the child arrived. So we'll wait to be introduced.

I'm feeling all right. A little tired and starting to feel an energy drain, but the doctors all tell us that is normal for the last trimester. I used the last of a major spurt of energy to paint the house (the kitchen, library, master bedroom and nursery). There's still a fair bit of work to be done in setting up the nursery. We got a lot of baby donations from friends who have already been down this road but now we have to sort through them all and see what we have and start assembling the pieces. It's a little daunting but I'm sure we'll manage to get through it. Hopefully we'll even manage to do it before May. :)

I think Dave and I are both starting to get nervous about the irrevocable step of becoming parents. It's going to be a big change. We're hoping the fact that we recognize in advance that it's going to be a steep learning curve and a huge change in our lives will help us to get through it.

I think that just about covers it for the interesting bits.

Jenn.

There's been a new addition to our little family. Say hello to Ceili (pronounced Kay-lee -- my wife named her, and claims this is gaelic. OK, whatever). She joined us from the Ottawa Humane Society about three weeks ago and is in the process of settling in.

The Humane Society claims that she is about a year old and was picked up as a stray. She's very vocal and demanding (especially about food) so I think she's not too long gone from her littermates.

Isa is doing reasonably well with her new friend, and we have hopes that they will start liking one another any time now.

At 7PM EDT on 13 August 2002, my friend Jack died of heart failure after a brief illness.

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