Let’s start with just before Easter, shall we?

Kristin’s super hero of a friend, Cassi, came to visit us, but more importantly, she came to meet Baker! Kristin and Cassi have a long history together: They met at a track meet in high school, ran against each other throughout their high school “careers” (where my wife, whom I show no bias to of course, no doubt won every race!), drove across state lines to see each other during college (Cassi went to OSU), got to be in each other’s weddings, and have grown old together via email, Facebook, phone, and the occasional in-person visit. Kristin and Cassi took advantage of their time together to go for a run. Their first together in a long, long time.

But like I said earlier, this visit, of course, was all about Baker.

Somewhere during the course of the last month or so, Baker got to visit Lolita’s for the first time and has since become a regular.

Occasionally Baker comes to Baylor at the end of the week and he and I go on a walk together while Kristin works out at the SLC.

(He’s in there I promise.)

(That’s in front of Pat Neff.)

April also marked the Baker’s three month birthday!

One of the things you quickly realize when you are in charge of a small human, is that you talk and sing and read and talk a lot more than you used to.

Any sort of television viewing for children under the age of two for more than one hour is harmful to the brain development of the child. (Side note: Sort of hilariously, PBS does everything it can to convince you otherwise until finally admitting that, yeah maybe television for more than an hour isn’t too great.)

While I still love reading the books we have for Baker (and we keep getting more!), I’ve already memorized Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? (spoiler alert: A red bird). So! I have started reading Baker “regular” books, most frequently Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest. What better way to stay disciplined and in tune with the Lord, than to share these insights and words with my two month old? They’re good length devotionals: I usually read one after I’ve changed Baker’s diaper while he’s chilling, staring at the poster on the wall.

When Baker and I are out on our own in the car (picking up lunch usually), we listen to The New Yorker’s Short Fiction Podcast.

These things are awesome. They have authors read other author’s short fiction works and then analyze and give insight on them. These are all free of charge, which is just ridiculous. So far Baker and I have listened to two Vladimir Nabokov stories (he’s one of my favorite authors) and a John Cheever story. I’ve listened to a few more on my own and they’re all top quality. It’s great to discover work by authors I had never heard of before or didn’t know a lot about beforehand.

On the music front, we go with a pretty wide mix of music. We do the classical thing, although it’s not as helpful as once was thought. Baker of course has been exposed to more than a healthy dose of Disney music.

A couple of nights ago as I was rocking with him, I gave myself a challenge: Sing every song from every Disney film starting with A Little Mermaid. I did pretty well, I got all the way to Pocahontas before it was time to get up, but I did shamefully struggle with Aladdin.

Anyways, Baker also rocks out to the O’ Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack which has a great mix of traditional bluegrass songs and new moderny bluegrass. Baker also likes pretty much anything you can dance to but especially the following: he loves Jack Johnson, loves the DCB, and of course loves the traditional kids songs (Bushel and a Peck, etc.). Unlike all Getterman men before him, Baker seems to be a bit of a dancer.

So there you have it, all the new ways we’re trying to entertain our boy. It’s actually a lot of fun, despite how exhausting it can be. To see his eyes light up when Kristin dances with him or smile and giggle as I sing to him, is just about as great as it can get, I imagine.

Also during February, Kristin’s mom came down to visit.

One of the things we’ve started doing is putting Baker on his belly while he plays on his Boppy.

This thing is great because it allows us to put him down while we eat, but we don’t have to put him in his chair. He can sit right next to us on the couch! Also, if we put him on his belly, it helps him work on his neck movements and muscles and get used to the sensation of being on his stomach.

Just as an FYI, he still has crazy hair:

Finally, the big event at the end of February was the great snow we received.

I was excited about the snow because it finally gave us a good opportunity to put Baker in this awesome bear outfit I picked up while I was in Indianapolis for business.

I got the outfit from H&M and it’s totally awesome, isn’t it?

Baker finally got a taste of his first snow.

Finally, to end this update, here is a picture of a very happy Baker.

Yes, yes, I know. It’s been way too long since my last Baker update.

February is one of my least favorite months. The weather is always bad and nothing really ever seems to be going on during the month because everyone is indoors avoiding the bad weather, preparing for Spring. I guess having a small human changes things because February was great this year and went be so fast!

Baker was excited about Valentine’s Day…

We tried to get Hannah in on the action, but she wasn’t so sure of it…

Sometime around the middle of the month, Baker discovered his hands.

Every now and then you’ll catch him just staring at his hands. He’s become more active with them, really just hitting stuff with them, but he definitely knows they’re there now and that they’re his. I realize this sounds completely insane to anyone that does not have or has never had a small child, but when you do have one, you will be excited too.

He’s also started flipping over every now and again from his stomach to his back…

He’s still not a huge fan of being on his stomach but he does better every time we put him on his belly.

Before the snow, the weather was ridiculously beautiful so Baker got to go on his first official outside walk!

Hannah went along, of course.

Since I miss seeing Baker during the day, I’ve been taking him into the bedroom with me in the morning while I get ready for work. I put him in his Boppy and open the blinds so the sun shines on him and he loves it.

He and I talk the whole time I get ready. I love this time with him and it gives Kristin an opportunity to have a relaxing morning and eat breakfast and watch the Today Show before I leave.

We also ventured out for our very first meal as a family…and it went about as well as you’d expect it to. We had to choose somewhere out of the way, without a ton of people since Baker doesn’t get his shots until the 9th of March. We chose this awesome little Italian place in McGregor called Luigi’s.

All was well when we arrived. He was sound asleep and we ordered our food, ate some bread and waited. And waited…and waited…I’m sure many of you parents out there know the feeling of waiting on your food with a sleeping baby at your table. It’s like waiting for a ticking time bomb to go off and time moves at an exponentially slower rate than it did just a few months ago.

Eventually our bomb went off.

So we got our food to go and ended up eating out, in!

I’m sure we have more of this to look forward to, but it was sort of an eye opening experience. I never realized how many people stare at people with crying babies. It was kind of sad, rude, and weird all at the same time. Baker still struggles at night, around dinner time. He almost always starts crying between 630 and 7 and doesn’t stop until 730 or 8, so we think he might be a little colic. It’s okay though because he is such a sweet boy and will grow out of it in a few weeks!

Famous last words, right?

Since it has been a little bit since I last updated, I thought I would do just one post with Baker pictures.

Baker’s one month birthday just happened to coincide with Super Bowl Sunday so we had planned to celebrate at my parents with “football food” and treats. My mom ended up getting sick so my dad came over to our house and we had our little celebration here.

Baker got a bath before my dad came over and I love it when he gets a bath. After we dry him off his hair goes back to its normal faux hawk position and it is awesome.

The card you see lying next to him in the above picture is from the Farm Collection by Wee Gallery. He loves looking at these cards; you’ll probably notice them in many of our other pictures. Babies can see black and white really well and since these were less than twelve dollars, they’re a great early toy/exploration device.

A couple of months ago we challenged my very artsy and very crafty father to make and design a cake similar to the ones you see on those cake shows (Cake Boss, Ace of Cakes). This had the potential to turn into a Cake Wreck but as usual, my dad blew us away with what he did. Keep in mind he had literally never made a cake (or baked anything for that matter) before he did this.

Baker was very excited about his cake.

We had a lot of fun celebrating our little guy’s one month birthday and the Saints victory.

As Baker approaches his one month birthday(!), he has been making the rounds seeing the various members of our family. Most of them come to him since we’re keeping him quarintined for a while, but they don’t seem to have any issue coming over to our house to visit him…

My Aunt and Uncle came in from Cedar Park to see Baker, so my grandparents joined them (as did my folks) and made it a Getterman family reunion of sorts.

Kristin’s mom stayed with us for a week and during that time, Kristin’s dad Hoot came down from Frisco to visit Baker.

Finally, Baker ended the week at my parent’s house, where we enjoyed a nice home cooked meal. My parents took advantage of our time there and basically squeezed as much love as possible out of Baker.

As you can see from the above photos, Baker pretty much sleeps through everything. Except night time.

I was going to post this a couple of weeks ago, but then we went and had the baby!

So I guess by now I’ve established that Kristin and I both really love Disney and all things Disney Parks related. Thus, it should come as no surprise to you, that Baker’s room is Disney Park themed.

Hanging over his crib is this sign we had painted, with a quote from Pinocchio:

When Kristin and I went to Disneyland a while back (Hey Chris and Michael!), we picked up two Disneyland attraction posters, which are now hanging on either side of his room.

This is from the Skyway ride going over Tomorrowland. I love the retro feel of Tomorrowland and thought this poster did a great job of showing it off. Sadly, the Skyway is no longer there.

One of Kristin’s favorite rides is Peter Pan’s Flight and since the poster is cool, she chose it for Baker’s room.

I won’t show you all of the plushes that Baker has already accumulated, but suffice it to say we have one from both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, which is pretty awesome I think.

I will show you this little table we have next to the changing table. It has some neat little trinkets on it either from the parks or about the parks/Disney.

Those little things in the square spaces are antenna balls from the Disney parks. The top middle is a pirate Mickey, next to it a Sorcerer’s hat, a Test Track Dummy ball, an iconic Mickey head ice cream, and then bottom middle is a world Mickey ball. The thing in the middle is a button from our first visit to Disneyland that says “My First Visit.”

Finally, just to show you how over the top sick I am about Disney and Disney Parks, I added my own Hidden Mickey above the door frame.

Maybe one day I’ll get to be an Imagineer.

Sigh.

So here we are. It’s hard to believe that the nine months are over and we now have this awesome little guy as a part of our family.

Kristin woke up early Thursday morning noticing that her water had broken, but before she woke me up to tell me, she first fed the dogs and had some breakfast! Around 7am, she decided she should wake me up so we could go to the hospital. For some reason, I think it was because I was asleep, I reacted very calmly when she told me we needed to get going to the hospital. It’s not like the movies at all, really…which is sort of a let down!

We got our stuff packed up and said goodbye to the dogs and raced to the hospital. As we were driving, Kristin basically said “Okay, you need to hurry up and get us there.” I was obviously excited to use my hazard lights and drive like Jason Bourne, but much to my dismay no one else on the road seemed to even notice our “emergency” lights. I dropped Kristin off at the front, she went up and I parked and got our stuff.

This was all around 8am or so. Around 9am I think we finally decided to call everyone and tell them we were at the hospital. Here’s how the conversation went with my mom:

Me: Hey Mom, what are you doing?
Mom: Oh nothing honey, what’s up?
Me: Well, we’re here at the hospital getting ready to have the baby.
Mom: No you are not.
Me: Yes, we sure are.

That was basically par for the course with the rest of our family members. Basically it was a mix of shock and excitement for everyone involved. Kristin’s mom and dad got on the road to come see us and my parents, and grandmother, raced to the hospital as soon as they could.

They got there sometime that morning and were hanging out with us in the room when, around 1:15 or 1:30, the nurse said “Well, it’s time for you to have that baby.” Kristin and I were alone in the room and we were totally caught off guard by this. We were expecting her just to say “All is well,” but instead we find out we’re finally going to get to meet Baker! As the nurse went to get the doctor, I rushed to the waiting room to tell my parents and grandmother.

Of course, they totally freaked out and came back to the room with me to get their stuff and as they were leaving, the doctor came in! Kristin was a total champ during the whole process (the subject of women, labor, birth, strength, etc. is a great topic for another post). Again, labor and delivery are absolutely nothing like what you see on film or t.v. I was much more involved than I ever thought I would be, and I’m very thankful to God (and Kristin) for the experience. It’s a spiritually transcendent experience that is one of those few times in life when you are aware that you are experiencing the miraculous touch of God’s Hand.

Baker was born at 2:09pm, so the whole delivery only lasted about 20 minutes, which is awesome. There was another lady on our floor that was in delivery for 22 hours!

We only had to stay one night in the hospital, thank God Almighty. The night was pretty much sleepless due to the amount of nurses visits, uncomfortable sleeping arrangements, etc. Baker James got a clean bill of health and passed all of his tests so at around 3pm on Friday, we packed up and left.

Thank you to everyone for your well wishes and prayers for mother and child. (And for father too, but no one really ever talks about that!) Thanks for sharing in this awesome blessing with us. Honestly, I’m not trying to be cheesy here. There is literally no other way to describe what this is: It’s a miracle and blessing, and a deliberate act of God. He knew before Kristin and I ever met, that Baker would be our first.

How awesome is that?

Just so you know: Baker is Kristin’s grandmother’s maiden name, and James is my grandmother’s first name (her name is Jimmy Sue) and Kristin’s mom’s dad’s name.