christian hearts daddy

christian and i are sure going to miss his dad over the next week or so. we're heading west for a wedding and to see family and shane is sticking around to finish up finals and begin his summer internship.

pea in the pod

following a mid-day walk, christian sacked out for a nap in his sling:

best birthday present ever

birthday surprises:

• extra morning nap, courtesy of christian
• new digital camera, courtesy of shane
• quick date night with shane, courtesy of the wittwers who offered to watch christian for a couple of hours (thanks, guys!)
  

sunday afternoon nappers

two weeks old

so little christian had his two-week check-up on wednesday. here are his stats:

weight: 8 lbs. 4 oz.
length: 21 in.

the kid sure can eat. i credit part of the weight gain to the fact that his pediatrician thought he wasn't gaining enough at first so we fed him around the clock without failure. now we wait for him to let us know when he's hungry.

this is probably video only the grandparents will want to see but we're posting it here for all. (sorry for the annoying narration -- i forget how silly i sound on camera. next time i will let the star of the show do the talking.)

christian dale larsen

so we decided that after the little guy had survived two weeks with his amateur parents he was deserving of an official name. we had narrowed the options down but were struggling to make the final call.

"christian" comes from shane's paternal grandfather, rudolph christian larsen, and "dale" comes from shane's own father, dale louis larsen. we figure the name christian not only has a lot of meaning on its own but it's also very danish, tying back to both of shane's parents' heritage.

so there you have it. "scooter" has a real name. but you can still call him scooter...or gus, or goob. his dad still does.

one week old

we can hardly believe our sweet little boy is over one week old. he's already growing up -- his cheeks are fuller and he is more alert. here are a few pictures taken over the past week:

new addition

baby boy larsen

born wednesday, april 8 @ 2:19 a.m. est.

7 lbs, 12 oz. & 20 inches long

healthy, happy & home

west wing tour

outside the oval office, overlooking rose garden

we made it through a white house west wing tour today -- so now shane says the baby can come any time. ;) i think he was just nervous that my water would break while we were scoping out the oval office and he'd be blacklisted from ever working near the white house again.

i wasn't sure i'd be up to the task after the past few days of being so sick but everything went much better than i imagined. it probably didn't hurt that it was simply a gorgeous spring day -- complete with blue skies, sunshine and a pleasant breeze.

here are just a few pics of our adventure. sadly, the one i was most excited about (me posing with a cnn microphone) didn't really turn out.

new podium and backdrop (all redone since i was here last time with actual press credentials)

chillin' in the white house press seats

the due date...

...came and went. it's actually quite the blessing -- for reasons i won't explain here and now i wasn't quite ready to go into labor. somehow i think little baby larsen knew that.

so, now we wait. not too anxiously, just because we know he'll be here soon enough. in fact, the midwife yesterday said he's totally in position and i really just need to relax and keep hydrated so that my body can be ready to go when the time is right.

any guesses on his size, weight and birth date? i won't weigh in yet myself just because i don't want to skew the numbers but it would be fun to see if anyone gets it just right.