That is a very cute baby.

Congrats!!!

Congrats to you both (Primordial as well as pongo)!

Nina is 9 months now.



Just to reiterate some new father husbandly advice (not that I presume to know anything, just what seems to be important in our relationship): it's important to spend some time without the baby when possible to keep your relationship strong. Luckily my wife's parents live 15 minutes away and are happy to have her sleep over whenever. We are youngish (28), for our area anyway, to have kids so all of our friends don't have kids. We try to use the time to do the things we used to be so free to do - trendy new restaurants or bars. That's been pretty helpful to us in keeping up with our friends and feeling like our lives aren't completely dominated by our children.

This has been by far the most exceptionally challenging and rewarding period of time in my life. My mother passed away 6 weeks ago - and though it wasn't unexpected (terminal cancer) - the actual reality of the situation has been hard on us. It's been especially hard because we were away for 2 weeks just before Christmas while she passed and my wife having to care for the baby for days while I was pretty much nonexistent to them as I was basically only at the hospital, sleeping, or after that - busy helping make arrangements. In addition, the baby had regressed quite a bit on sleeping patterns while away and all of this, coupled with holidays and funerals, generally being busy, and myself trying to transition away from poker has really caused some tremendous stress.

My other piece of advice is related to trying to keep stress levels to a minimum and that is to start to get sleeping routines early. We pretty much winged it very early on and then had a 4 week cross country road trip to see my mom where all sleeping habits went out the window. On our return, we did manage to get her sleeping pretty well but then the subsequent trip for my mom messed it all up again. We found that our entire day would be 80% about getting the baby to sleep or keeping the baby to sleep and it was really really draining. The last few days we've taken a more concerted effort to get her sleeping (our main problem was the use of sleep crutches) again and she's quickly getting better.

This is getting long but the take home piece of advice is get your baby off any sleep crutches (rocking, holding, feeding, bouncing, etc) you develop early because it will definitely pay off in the end, or at least has for us. Everyone is going to have their own advice or input, but we were uncomfortable simply letting her cry herself to sleep and use a modified method we found from the "Baby Whisperer" book. I can go into more detail if anyone is struggling with sleep at all.

As for updates, number one is two-and-a-half:

12 weeks pregnant now, due 9/8/14. I can't wait to find out the sex. We found out she was pregnant at like 4 weeks or less so it feels like she's already been pregnant for a long time, but yet she's only 12 weeks along. It's very strange to think that there are only two ways this can go, and we are fine with it being either sex, but yet there's still so much anticipation. Here is the ultrasound at 12 weeks. Got my first dad feels when I saw him/her rubbing his/her face with his/her hands on the ultrasound.

Reading about nub theory coupled with my original gut feeling makes me pretty certain that she's a girl, we'll see. My wife's not buying it until she hears it from the doc or tech.

Wife is preggers with #2. Just between you all and me, I'm terrified.

#2, Audrey, born yesterday at 1:26PM.

Wow goofball, congrats, she's beautiful (and my baby niece is named Audrey, so I love the name too)!

The minis (Alexander and Nathaniel) turned 20 months old yesterday; we still haven't figured out if they're identical or not, but I think they're pretty different:

Pretty awesome that this thread is still going. My kids, which were tracked here, are now 7 and 5. Sometimes I have trouble wrapping my brain around that.

I wish I saw this thread sooner. We just had a baby girl last week, and there has been some pretty good info ITT. I just skimmed over most of it so it may be covered, but what plans are you starting for the babies college/savings? Can anyone recommend anything good?

There's a tax-advantaged investment vehicle called a 529 plan that's specifically for savings for college. Do some research into that. Each state has one, but you can use the one in any state (i.e. if you use the WA plan you don't have to live in WA, or go to school in WA or anything)

There are Coverdell and 529 plans. There is also a 529 prepaid plan where you can lock in the current rate of college tuition. It's generally accepted that locking in the current rate is not a good idea.

Much of the planning process obviously is determined by your lifestyle and income and projected income. I would say the better your financial situation is, the less you should put away in something like a 529. The reason is that you can be penalized if you don't use it all. You may only have 1 child, they may not need the money (scholarships), or they may not go to college. If you put away 150k into a 529 and don't use it, you can pay the penalties on that large number.

Also, take into consideration the choices of what you can invest in. If there are limited options, you may want something that's higher risk and hope for higher return over the 18 years before you need it.

There is a lot to consider. In general we've decided we'll put away between 200-400 a month into a 529, and the rest into general stock accounts until we need it. We'll adjust accordingly as she gets older. In all honesty it's not an easy calculation.

My wife is 17 weeks pregnant now. It will be our first child. We're very excited.

Some 4 month photos, wife is pretty picture crazy so I have plenty, sorry for the photo-flooding :-p.













Been nothing but incredibly rewarding so far, my sleep/work schedule is pretty terrible and I only get to spend 2-4 hrs of quality time with/around him per day but it's just so nice to have. I feel like I'm a bit overexcited now though because he moved forward soooo quickly with interacting with us and recognition, laughing more often, etc., all in a super short period that now it seems like such a long ways off for crawling, walking, running, talking, etc., but it's still nice just to hang out w/him. Also been insanely lucky with the sleep, he sleeps every night 10:30pm-7am straight through the night, wakes up, eats and hangs out for an hour, back to sleep for ~1-2 hrs, then another nap again around 1-3pm and then up for the day usually til the night again, so having a full nights sleep has been great for us. Anyways, thanks to everyone in the thread, always motivating to hear what everyone else is going through and see pictures of everyones beautiful kids. <3

Nice pics! He's cute. And I see you've got a "Sophie le giraffe" lol.

I heard someone say 3 months was the most stressful time for parents so you've made it over that hump, if that's true. I remember 6th months being a really good time. After that they get more mobile and things become tougher for a while.

yea haha wife is French, so like every one of her relatives sent one as a gift , I think we have 3. Looking forward to 6 months, we'll see how crazy him going mobile gets, should be really interesting, especially with the dog around, guess we'll need to get lots of baby gates for areas he's running in

Baby-proofing your lower cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms is a good idea once they go mobile, as well as getting those plastic socket covers for all wall electrical sockets. Then, they'll find alternative ways to get themselves into trouble

Primordial

Great pics, thanks for sharing

22 weeks now. Found out we're having another boy.

This brings up a question for any of the men here - do any of you have a problem with what sex your child is? I don't mean this in a bad way, just wondering if you have your hopes up for #2 to be the opposite of #1, or do you want the same?

For example, my wife wants to have another (I'm not sure I want that), but I'm kinda leaning towards wanting another little girl so she can have a little sister. I'm overly happy I have a daughter, I'd be even happier with 2. I wouldn't be "dissapointed" in having a boy, but I'm like 51% in favor of having a girl.

Is that weird?

Not weird, I was 51% boy for first and now would strongly prefer girl for 2nd just because I think having a daughter is such a different relationship/experience, I'd really love to have both and don't see myself going 3+. That said I would never be disappointed with another boy or mad or anything but id really love to be able to have both

Yeah it's a strange thought process. If you have X you want Y. However, the good part is that you can look forward to a "bond" between the two if they are the same sex. I would somewhat like a son, but if my daughter had a sister that'd be great too. Not to mention we could re-use some of the clothes lol.

My wife really wanted a boy. I will never mention that to my daughter when she gets older.

My wife and I had our first baby 4 months ago 1/14/14 and it was a boy, we wanted a girl but it obviously didn't really matter. We are going to try again soon because we want 2 kids and we hope it's a girl so we can have 1 of each but another boy would be great so he could have a brother.