More Carter!

Well... I wish there were more hours in the day- it might help me catch up on sleep. So far, Carter is doing really well, but he hasn't caught on to my pleading for him to sleep through the night. He does fall asleep quickly though and his quiet awake times are the highlight of my days

I have some more pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/burkmans/MorePicturesOfCarter

so feel free to enjoy more Carter-goodness.

Once things settle down a bit more, we'll have time to actually blog AND put multiple photos on here.

He's Here!

Well... the wait is over, and our baby boy has arrived!

Carter Louis Burkman
was born at 7:34pm on August 7th.
He weighed in at 8 pounds, 3 ounces
and measured in at 20.5 inches.

His apgar tests were high (8 and 9 for those who know what that means... I only kind of do.) and he's as healthy as can be. Cindy is doing well and was absolutely amazing during labor. We got into the hospital at around 12pm because her water broke. She started with contractions around 12:30 and Carter was here 7 hours later!

I never understood what people meant when they talked about how special it is to see your baby for the first time - I don't think I'll ever be the same, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Here's a link to more pictures of little Carter.

http://picasaweb.google.com/burkmans/CarterLouisBurkman

I'll throw captions on em later and add to the collections when we're all back from the hospital.

Done Waiting...

***UPDATED*** I threw in one more picture from Cindy at 37 weeks.

The last few weeks have been dedicated to getting things together for when the baby comes which helps me justify my lack of activity on here. Books talk about some "nesting" instinct that kicks in. That might be it, but more likely is just a plain old need to have a space for the baby to live. I love our 850 sq ft place, but it became quite apparent a few months ago that we have a TON of crap and it's taking up a TON of space. So, 5 or 6 boxes worth of donations and heaps of trash bags later, we've uncluttered.

Now that our crap is gone, we've been busy replacing it with new, baby crap (not literally). Car seat arrived in the mail today as will most of the other major items we need to keep our son alive and somewhat entertained. With all this purchasing, gift receiving, and general preparing, I really feel like our boy needs to be here... now. He's not yet (or I wouldn't be writing this). In fact, he's not due for another 3 weeks. The problem is that I am not a patient person by nature. I've done a good job at waiting 8 months, but these last 3 weeks just might kill me.

Today marks 37 weeks and doctor says that if Cindy goes into labor at this point, they won't try to stop it. So, I spend my free time encouraging the baby to not disappoint us by waiting till the 14th of August to come. I'm also trying the "stern father" approach, telling him he HAS to come early and he doesn't want to start life out by disobeying his parents. Is this actually working? I'd like to think so; then I can write a million dollar bestseller about getting your child to obey you from the womb. But until you see my book on the shelves, you can just chalk it up to wishful thinking.

Cindy's doing well, but I can understand why the ninth month is the hardest for pregnant women. Aside from having dealt with being pregnant for almost a year, I really don't think Cindy has much space left in her belly if that baby keeps growing. People have requested pictures and all that, so here's a cutesy little slideshow that'll show Cindy from the start of it all till now (well... start of when we started taking pictures.) Hover over a picture to see how far along she is and make sure to leave lots of encouraging comments cause I had to twist her arm to post these. :)

Hair!

So I just have to say that my super-great sister-in-law Cassie, did a wonderful job on my hair. She has been going to school at Paul Mitchell in Provo and since she has started has been able to dye my hair the perfect dark brown color and recently lightened it again, achieving almost the exact shade as my natural hair color. That isn't easy! Also, she has continued to keep it cute by cutting it and styling it.

Here's my hair when it was dark:

And here it is now, light again:

Thank you Cassie! You're amazing!!

An Update

Okay, so Chris told me today that I have to write a new post. I don't really know what to say, so we'll see what happens.

These last few weeks I have been feeling very pregnant and ready for our son to arrive. A few things have happened since our last blog so let me give you a brief update. We finally found a crib and dresser for the baby which was very exciting. It was a great deal! Everyone has their opinions about buying used cribs, but after countless hours of research, we decided to at least see what we could find. We really lucked out. A couple in Layton was selling a very high quality set (we found out all we could on that too), for less then half what we would have had to spend on the brand new set.

Chris set it up and we started getting the room ready for our new arrival (I put all the clothes and fun things away). That was when it became even more real that our lives would soon be changing. The room still isn't completely ready (I'm trying to decorate still), but things are a lot closer. Hopefully we'll have a new addition in a month. It's safe for him to come after the 24th of July, but he isn't due until the 14th of August. We're hoping for sometime the end of July, but will be fine with whenever.



Last week was the last of our four week birthing classes at the hospital. They taught the basics of pregnancy and birth, and we were able to tour the hospital, which was nice. It seemed like a lot of people in our class really didn't know much about anything really, and continually asked what we thought were self explanatory questions. So Chris kept me entertained by making fun of everyone and their stupid questions. I was excited for our last class which was about breast feeding. I thought that this class would teach us a lot of very useful things. I was wrong. Rather than just teaching us clearly and giving us lots of useful knowledge, she was confusing, not focused, mumbled, and spent most of the time telling us why it was so important to breast feed rather then how to be successful at breastfeeding. She gave us list of reasons people say they can't breastfeed, then said they weren't good reasons, and, if you ever have problems, get help from someone. She went on for most of the two hours explaining how it is recommended to breastfeed your child for at least 2 years, and that Michael Jordan was breastfed for 3 1/2 years. She even went so far as to say, "if you want to do the right thing, the ethical thing for your baby, you will breastfeed." It was really weird. We left feeling kind of frustrated. We both understand that breastfeeding is important, and we were never against it, but we ended up feeling annoyed by the way it was pushed on everyone as a moral issue, rather than just teaching us the basics. Oh well. So that's over.

Our doctor appointments are weekly now and we are excited about that! We're 35 weeks along this week. I can't believe how fast time has gone by. My body always hurts now; I feel like the baby has completely taken over my body (I feel him in my ribs, my lower back, on my bladder- pretty much everywhere all the time). Working has become more and more difficult and the heat is getting to me a lot more. I was really surprised when, for the first time ever, I was hot, and Chris was cold. That was weird.


My mom got into town the other night which was fun. We love it when she visits, and especially that she made it here for the 4th of July. I love the 4th of July, mostly because when we were younger, that was when we came to Utah and spent time with our extended family. Even though not all of our family was there, it was great being able to spend the day with a lot of loved ones. It was a busy day. We started off going to the parade in Provo, then it was back to my aunts house for lunch where we stayed and hung out and visited for a few hours. Then Matt and Steph and their cute kids came over (it was great seeing them) and we lit a few fun fireworks for the kids (tanks, snakes, smoke bombs, flowers and parachutes). The kids were loving it. Then we all headed out to the MTC Field by the temple to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks. Again, the kids just loved it. I was exhausted and thoroughly sore by then, but it was so fun just having us all together.
Hopefully we'll post something again a lot sooner then a month.

Also, I'm trying to update everyones information, so please email us addresses, phone numbers, birth dates etc. Our email is burkmans at gmail dot com.

Registering for your Baby??

Aside from a really bizarre stretch of weather, this week has passed by without much ado. It was 90 or so Tuesday morning, and after a bunch of wind, dropped to below 50, dumping snow on the mountains again. Kind of a cool thing to see; not cool to experience as it left me with bad headaches and I ended up sick Thursday and Friday.

Cindy had a "ward" baby shower with friends from our ward getting together to hang out and share in the joy of all things baby. "Share" really means "give us stuff"- something I will never complain about. It still seems odd that there are gift-giving parties that aren't birthday related, but I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth (odd saying, isn't it? Turns out it actually means something. Go Figure.). I've come to realize already that we have some pretty nice friends as they were quite generous in helping us get started with baby-life.

A handful of people have asked us if we registered. At first, I thought they meant wedding registry, but that doesn't make too much sense and I hoped our friends were smarter than that. They were. Turns out you can register for baby gifts. We have a Babies"R"Us up the road from us and that's the "place" to register around here. Personally, I feel odd registering for baby stuff. It kinda feels like we're begging. I mean, it makes sense if people want to be generous and celebrate this with us, but setting up a want list still seems odd. I may be alone on this one, but oh well.

We did end up registering. I got to use a scanning gun again- always a good time. I found, however, that registering for baby things was not at all like registering when were engaged. For one, there are thousands of things we needed before we got married. With the baby coming, there are things we need, but there aren't as many categories to fill this time around. Clothes. Definitely need clothes. The more baby clothes we receive, the happier Cindy gets (something about girls and little baby-clothes; don't quite understand it), so there's no reason to skimp there. After that, we have bottles and diapers and burp-cloths. Pacifiers, more diapers, more burp-cloths. Once we take care of that, there's some toys and maybe first-aid stuff. But that about covers the basics.

Oh, except the BIG stuff. That's the other struggle with registering. If people really want to know what we need/want, it's the expensive stuff. We need a crib. We'll also need a car seat, a stroller, high chair, changing table, glider, breast pump, etc. I don't think any of those are under 75 bucks. So, do I feel comfortable telling people they can drop a bunch of cash on us? Can't say I do. I mean, it's definitely welcome, but I'm not expecting anything more than a congrats and maybe some little baby socks to make Cindy happy. When all was said and done it was fun to see all the junk out there for babies... makes it seem a little more real that there's actually a baby headed our way in a few months.

30 Weeks!

Well... today marks the start of the "two-hand" countdown before we start sleep-deprivation-- 10 weeks until the baby's born. Now, we're sure that the baby will come EXACTLY on the due date because that's what the doctor said and science is NEVER wrong. On the off chance that the baby doesn't understand science, doctors, or technology and decides to come earlier or later, we'll make due; but for now it's still officially August 14th.

Cindy's looking and feeling pregnant. I mean that in the nicest, greatest way possible because there's no way I could ever handle what she does. Besides working full-time to help keep me in school, she spends the day off-balance, sore, and getting kicked and prodded by our little bundle-of-joy as her organs and the baby compete for space. She looks great though. I even have her permission to post pictures of her online, which is a miracle in itself. We took these over the weekend, so that makes her just about 30 weeks along.



Like I said, she looks great. I'm a lucky, lucky husband. The picture quality itself leaves something to be desired, which is why I'm still looking at upgrading our camera before the baby comes. Just need to head out to our money-tree and we'll be all set. (yes, that was sarcastic). Oh, here's one more of her, too.



Aside from baby news, life is fairly routine. I'm taking one class this spring term: Calculus. It's two hours a day, 5 days a week with a good 3 hours of homework a night. I don't mind math, but 5 hours a day is more than I'd want to spend on the subject. The nice part is that, while the course is hard, it's only 8 weeks long. This means the semester's almost done and I'll be finished in a few weeks. I was planning on Calculus II for the Summer term, but I'm not a glutton for punishment so I'm forgoing the math class until fall.

The biggest reason for this change is because the baby will come exactly August 14th, right before the supposed math final. As I said earlier, if our son doesn't get the memo to come on the 14th, he may just come during finals. That's a lot of pressure for a newborn, so I'll just spare him the stress and not take the math class, leaving him free to come into the world when he's ready. And by ready, I mean August 14th. This will give me some extra time during the next couple months to finish up projects around the house and make sure we're as ready as possible for our lives to change.

On the social scene, we're still semi-retarded and don't get out much. We do things with Sam and Jessie (Cindy's brother and sister-in-law) from time to time as well as with Cassie and Kent (my sister and brother-in-law). In the past, we'd also include Sam and Lori (my brother and sister-in-law) into our social scheming, but they decided to play grown-up for the summer in Houston on an internship with Exxon. I know we could actually call friends and be active but for some reason, I'm allergic to the phone, and I think Cindy may have caught my disease, too. It's really just too easy to say we're tired (which we usually are) and don't want to do anything. From there, we've settled into a habit of being "too tired" all the time. I'm hoping we can change that a bit over the next 10 weeks, because from what I hear, we don't have any concept of what being "too tired" really means. So.. if you read this and you get a phone call from us trying to be socially active, please don't think that something wrong or that we're going to die- we're just trying to better ourselves a bit and think you're just the people to help out.