Baby Luke

     We are finally home from the hospital.  It seems like we were there for such a long time.  Any of you who had to stay more than two days after having a baby are probably grumbling at me right now.  We did make it out of there pretty quick.  Our doctor gave us the go ahead to leave a few hours before the mandatory 48 hour mark.  He told us to have a final dinner, on the house (hospital), and then get home.

     We made it home around 7:00 pm and it was sure a nice feeling.  My mom brought Jack over about fifteen minutes later.  Jack instantly noticed Luke as they came in the door.  His look of great curiousity showed on his face and he pointed in Luke's direction.  As soon as Bonnie put him down he bee-lined for Melissa, who was holding Luke.  He pointed at Luke and looked up at me, almost demanding an explanation.

     He then started to show his affection by placing his hand on Luke's face a bit more roughly than we would have liked.  Melissa quickly showed him how to be gentle and soft with his new little brother.

     Jack soon became side-tracked with toys, food, and other toddler wonders.  Melissa's parents, brother Rodney, and Grandma Carma Boudrero arrived soon after.  Luke was passed around and enjoyed by all, especially Rodney who poked fun at Luke's scrawny appearance.

Click on any of these photos to see more photos.

Luke, Our Veteran's Day Baby

     Our new baby boy was born yesterday, 11/11/2009, at 11:11 P.M. His name is Luke Glenn Bair.  He is 19 inches long and weighs 6 pounds and 6 ounces.  We were eating at Cafe Sabor with an old Army buddy of mine, Thayne, and his wife Krystal, when Melissa started to have her contractions. Things moved pretty quickly as we arrived at my parents house to pick up Jack. My mother, Bonnie, was more than happy to keep Jack while we rushed up to the hospital. We made it to the Logan Regional Hospital around 7:00 P.M.

     Melissa had an epidural and after about 4 hours of patient waiting it was time to push. They had everything all set up and Melissa started pushing at around 11:05 P.M. Literally 5 good pushes later our new little one was born. He is small for his age (two days overdue) and so they are taking extra precautions to watch his blood sugar levels but so far everything is checking out fine.
     Melissa did a wonderful job and I am very proud of her. She is recovering just fine and I can see sadness in her eyes every time Luke is taken out of her arms for any reason. We are excited to play the two child game and can't wait to introduce Jack to his new little brother.
     We are pretty committed to wait a few years before having anymore kids but I don't know how long I can wait because now I want two little girls.

Click on the image to see more photos.

Videos of Jack

Jack's Table Dance



Playing in the Leaves

Name Suggestions

     By popular demand we are accepting name suggestions.  Please click on the title of this post 'Name Suggestions' and then scroll down (if needed) to the comment box.  You can comment as annonymous or choose any of the services which you might have an account with to login in and post a comment through that account.  Post any name suggestions you have for our next child, or future children.  We are pretty set on choosing from Scott, Luke, or Robert (see the poll) but if you make a strong enough case for your suggested name, we will take it into consideration.  Have fun!
     Originally we wanted to name Jack, Jack Daniel Bair. We decided that would be complicated and didn't want Jack competing with Jack Daniel's alchohol. Then we decided we would name our second boy Daniel. Same situation. We just decided it could be compicated or troublesome down the road. What do you think? Are we overthinking the situation?

Jack's First Birthday

     November 4, 2009 Jack turned one year old.  We had a small party at our neighborhood community center. Jack got a lot of attention which is what we wanted.  We weren't sure what to do or how to plan a little kid's first birthday party but we decided that the important thing was that Jack felt comfortable and had a good time.  We think that we succeeded in that.

     There were about six other kids at the party.  Jack wandered around watching them play and doing his best to join in.  He got a lot of one-on-one time with family members and friends.  He was very hesitant to sit down and open his presents because he wanted to keep playing.  Once he started to open them though he was really intrigued.  Thank you to our neighbor and friend Abby for helping Jack to open his gifts.

    The one part of the party where we probably failed to make Jack feel comfortable and secure is when we stripped him down to his diaper and sat him on a table with a giant cupcake.  As people gathered around he seemed tormented between being concerned and enjoying his tasty treat.  We were hoping that he would dig right in and massacre the cupcake, alas, he did not.  Even trying to coerce him into, going at it himself, did not work and so I had to feed it to him.  He did enjoy it thoroughly though.

     After the party subsided, all of our guests stayed to help us clean up.  Thank you!  Also, thank you to everyone who sent/brought gifts for Jack and for the cards.  Jack loves playing with his new toys, reading his new books, and his new clothes look great on him.  He especially seems to love his Batman shirt.

Jack Be Nimble

This year for Halloween we dressed Jack up in a little devil outfit. I was a little devil for my first Halloween. Unfortunately we didn't make it very far in our trick-or-treating this year. On our third stop, which happened to be Jack's Great Grandma's house, Jack had an accident. Not his usual "blow-out" accident either, which we would have preferred in this case. In fact we were prepared for a blow-out with a backup Halloween outfit on hand, just in case.

While at Great Grandma's house, Jack was exploring around. Melissa noticed that his costume needed an adjustment so she moved toward Jack to fix it. Lately loves to be chased and really exagerates the urgency to move when we approach him unexpectedly. Jack stumbled overhimself and fell to the floor hitting his forehead, just above his right eyebrow, on the way down. The object he hit isn't absolutely certain but we think it was the wooden base of a table.

Jack screamed and cried for about five minutes while we dabbed at the blood with tissues and tried calming him down. During that time I felt like he would not calm down and it seemed like there was an awful lot of blood. I was a bit worried but after about five minutes of crying Jack got distracted by something and calmed himself down. The gash seemed pretty deep but Melissa and I haven't dealt with anything like that before. We weren't sure whether to take him to the hospital to see if he needed stiches or not.

At this point Jack was so calm and relaxed that it really didn't seem necessary to take him in to be checked out. We still felt a little bit uneasy with the apparent depth of the gash. After a short spell at my parents house we decided that we just couldn't rest easy unless we had it checked out. We had tried affixing a butterfly bandage on the wound but it was too close to his eyelid to get a proper hold. So we set off to the hospital.
The doctor who helped us out was glad that we brought him in. He said that the wound was too deep for "glue" (not sure what kind of glue???) and that Jack would need stitches. I got the feeling that Jack would have been fine without the stitches but the doctor felt confident that with them there would be practically no scarring. Jack was a real champ during the procedure and didn't cry as much as I would have expected although I wasn't in the room while they were stitching him up. I went in right afterwards and he was all smiles.

Jack loved the attention he got from all of the nurses. His backup outfit was a jack-o-lantern onsie and the nurses just could not get over the fact that his name was Jack and he was a jack-o-lantern...

By the time we were finally finished at the hospital and back home it was already about 9:30. We noticed our neighbor's lights were on so we took Jack over for one last trick-or-treat. He didn't show any signs of distress from the events of the night and he seemed to thoroughly enjoy his first Halloween.

Note: Melissa custom-made that trick-or-treat bag by hand for Jack.