Nathaniel's First Week

Nathaniel is already 8 days old and it seems like he has been with us forever. We are all doing very well and adjusting to his arrival, even big brother Ben. Ben loves to say his name ("Nate!") and smother him with pats and kisses. We have been trying to include Ben as much as possible in Nate's care and so far I have only had one jealousy outburst - the first time I nursed Nate in front of Ben when we were alone yesterday afternoon, when he wanted me to play with him on the floor instead. So, I calmed him down and we read stories during the duration of the nursing and since then, he has been fine with it. Hopefully it will continue!

Nathaniel is such a sweet, peaceful, easy baby so we really feel blessed by that. He had his nights and days confused for the first 3 nights at home but since then we have been waking him up during the day and he has been sleeping 4-5 hours straight at night. He is easily soothed, very content and will sleep through ANYTHING (but that I mean a toddler playing the drums, yelling, the dog barking, etc.). He was having some problems nursing at first but it seems to be improving as he is getting the hang of it.

As for me, I am recovering very well and feel much better than after Ben's birth. I am taking it easy for a few weeks anyway, but honestly feel very good.

Here are some photos from Nate's first week of life. Enjoy!

Daddy and "mummified" Nathaniel, as we called the tight swaddling the pediatric nurses always put him in :).

Looking around. We didn't see those eyes of his very much for the first few days of his life but now he is starting to be much more alert. So, this wide-awake photo from the hospital is a rare commodity!

Nana and Pop visited for a week to meet Nate and to take care of Ben for us. He loved having them there and they enjoyed visiting with the boys.

All dressed up with someplace to go. Nathaniel's in his little fuzzy lamb bunting to prepare for 20-minute drive from Abington Hospital to our house.

Proud Mommy and Daddy with the latest addition to the family. By the second day in the hospital I was definitely ready to come home!

The stork arrived at our house on Friday to let the world know that Nathaniel has joined our family. Ben seems more excited about the large bird on our front lawn than Nate does though :).
Our little sleepyhead...

Being cuddled by his nana...

Becoming more alert. Note his porcupine hairdo :).

Big brother Ben showing off for everyone so we had to take a photo of him acting silly as well!

Brothers!

Brothers

We just got home from the hospital yesterday afternoon and are doing well. Nate is such a sweet, loveable baby and I am recovering nicely. We are excited for all of you to meet the latest addition to our family. Thanks to everyone for your emails and comments on the blog - I will reply to all of you very soon as well.

We hope to have a more extensive photo update over the next few days, but I did quickly want to post this photo that our friend Julie put together for us. Thanks, Julie! :) We think Ben and Nate defintiely resemble each other in some ways but each also have their own characteristics. This photo certainly shows that they are brothers, though!

Introducing Nathaniel Joseph Martin

(Andrew writing this post.)

He's here.

Nathaniel Joseph Martin

Born at 8:44 am on March 11, 2008

Weighing in at 8 lbs. even and 20 1/2 inches long.

Liz was having contractions through the weekend so we knew he would be coming soon. We were hoping for a mid-day birth this time around, but at 12:15 am today we knew it was time to head to the hospital. We called some good friends that were on call to watch Ben and after they arrived we left for the hospital at 2:00 am. Special thanks to the Ferrences.

We were prepared for a long delivery after Ben took 16 hours, but were plesently surprised when the nurse said it was time to push after just 6 hours. Note to the next little guy: Let's keep the trend going and aim for 3 hours!

Liz and the baby are doing great and are scheduled to come home on Thursday morning. AKA - Liz will be back at the controls of the blog Thursday.

Following in his brother's footsteps, Nathaniel came out with plenty of hair.

Ben was anxious to meet his new brother and he had mastered saying 'Nate' by the time we got to the hospital. Here he is 'being gentle' with the baby.

Ben was getting tired of the new baby stuff by the time we took this picture.

Here's my strange story for the day. The same valet that helped us two years ago for Ben's birth was there to assist again. You might be wondering why I would mention this, or even remember that it was the same guy, but the remarkable part of the story is that the valet had only one hand. I meant to ask him how he handled my manual car, but I guess that will have to wait till next time.

Ben's 2nd Birthday Party

This morning we had Benjamin's 2nd birthday party, a few weeks early but with me being due with the baby a few days after his actual birthday we opted to celebrate early. Since I'm 38 weeks pregnant, we did something small at home with just the 7 kids from his playgroups and their moms.

Ben has been talking about his birthday party for days and was VERY excited that the big day had finally arrived. All of his best friends were here at once to help him celebrate, there were lots of games and treats to eat and the theme was Sesame Street. What else could a two-year-old possibly want? :)

With a theme as cute as Sesame Street, I could not let my craftiness sit idle so I started preparing a few months in advance and came up with some cute decorations for the day. Here are the invitations that I made and sent out to everyone. Of course featuring Ben's favorite Sesame Street characters - like all kids, Elmo; but also Big Bird and Cookie Monster.

The sign I created for the front door. I forgot to take a photo of it hanging on the door this morning since it was so foggy outside at the time..

And here are the little themed candy cups that I placed at each child's spot at the table during our craft time. Nothing like M&M's to keep one to three-year-olds focused for a few extra minutes!

We started out with free playtime and a very simple game. Here are almost all of the kids playing together. The youngest one is about 18 months old and the oldest two just turned three a few months ago.

Andrew took a long lunch and was able to come home for the party, which was so much fun for Ben. He loves having his 'Dada' around during the day! Here, Andrew is playing with Tyler and Elaina with some of Ben's fake food.

We played an Oscar the Grouch beanbag toss game, starring homemade Oscar beanbags that my mom and I made together. There's a photo of them later on. Everyone got one and just had to throw them into the foil-lined garbage can. Of course Ben loved this since he likes anything involving throwing lately.

Ben's trying to encourage his friends to throw their beanbags into the can.

Here, Tyler and Elaina join in the fun while Samantha and her mom watch from the sidelines.

Next, we did a very short Big Bird craft. Each child got a "naked" Big Bird at their place and a gluestick and had to glue feathers onto him.

Ben splitting his craft time between crafting and eating M&M's and Goldfish!

All of the kids busy at work crafting.

And voila! Ben's finished creation...

Next up: lunch. Kids loves pizza so we took advantage of this and ordered out instead of making something instead. So, I just had to make a few simple side dishes, nothing fancy since kids like plain foods. We had tossed salad, ABC Jello Jigglers (HUGE hit with the kiddos and everyone enjoyed taking the letter that their names start with!), star-shaped cheese and crackers, strawberries and Elmo and Oscar the Grouch cupcakes.

Ben and Tyler.

Teddy.

Samantha.

Caroline and Olivia.

Gifts were next on the agenda and boy did Ben have a good time. He didn't waste any time waiting to open them as he had last year when he turned one. It was cute because just about all of the kids were so excited to give Ben their gift that they had brought.

Finally, the favorite part of any child's birthday party: dessert! I made Elmo and Oscar the Grouch cupcakes: Elmo because I figured all of the kids would want those and Oscar because they looked so cute and I couldn't resist. (Plus we call Ben, Oscar sometimes when he wakes up from his nap cranky!). To my surprise, every single child except for one chose an Oscar cupcake instead of an Elmo one!

Singing Happy Birthday to my TWO YEAR OLD. I can't believe he is two already!

Ben took an Elmo cupcake at first, ate the marshmallow eyes and then said "No....green!" and pushed Elmo away. He wanted Oscar as well and thoroughly enjoyed that one!!

Yummy! Finger-lickin' good...

All of the kids eating their cupcakes. I apologized to all the moms for the red, green and black icing :).

Finally, here are the favors that all of the kids got to bring home (in addition to their Big Bird craft): an Elmo goodie bag, a giant chocolate chip cookie in a Cookie Monster bag, and their Oscar the Grouch beanbag.

What a fun party and Ben had the best time. He even burst into tears when the last of his friends left!! He really enjoyed the day and loved having all of his best friends and Sesame Street friends there to celebrate the big 2 with him. I'm just glad I didn't go into labor before the party and was able to have it for him!

Golf Cart

As many of you know, our pending move has been on hold for over seven months due to title issues and now we recently found out that the seller has declared bankruptcy so that brings up some further issues we will need to get past since the house is now part of the bankruptcy estate. We are, however, trying to work through this additional setback and since we do not have any plans to move over the next few months anyway because of the new baby, we figured we will sit tight and see what happens. We will keep everyone posted on the situation.

That being said, today we went to our storage unit and brought the items we had stored for a few months back to our house. Many of them are baby items that we will be needing shortly and others were items that the realtor had suggested we store as we showed our house a few months ago. Included in that was Ben's golf cart rocker, among other toys that we had been forced to store in order to declutter, that he had received from Grandpa G and CC for his first Christmas. Well, what better place for this little vehicle than in Ben's new car and truck-themed bedroom.

How cute does it look?

I think Ben may have been more excited about this toy than ever before, now that he is really into vehicles as well as kid-sized seats and anything at all that rocks. All we heard all afternoon was "beep beep" and "golf." He had a blast rocking on it and loved playing with the golf club and ball that the cart comes with even more. Andrew was thrilled that his son literally spent about 2 hours running around our house practicing his putting. A boy after his own heart!