I’m not going to post all the pictures right now because we’ll be using some of them for our birth announcement, but I wanted to share a few pictures from Jonathan’s photo session with Dimples and Curls Photography. Of course you’ve seen his Spock picture already, but here are a few more! I’ll post more later 
I’m at a loss as far as sleep for Jonathan goes. He fights and fights it until he’s choking and almost throwing up. There are multiple problems…
1) He can NOT stand to have his arms or legs tied down or covered. This makes swaddling here lately almost impossible. If they’re covered and he realizes it, he starts fighting to free himself. If he cannot free himself, the screaming begins & does not stop until he’s practically choking. Not going to let my 8 week old get to that point.
If he does free himself his wild man legs can’t stop moving, thus either waking him fully or keeping him from sleeping.
He hates being on his stomach, which we’re ok with because he’s not ready to sleep on it in our opinion. He’s also not fond of his side.
2) The amount of gas his little body produces is crazy! This also wakes him up a lot here lately. He’s not overly fussy about but it does keep him awake.
3) Reflux. He sleeps on an incline and does everything in his power to move during his sleep in order to sleep flat.
His favorite position is to be asleep on my chest. While I love that time and opportunity, it’s just not feasible to do that for every nap and each night.
4) He hates pacifiers, so soothing him that way doesn’t work. I won’t complain about this.
The miracle blanket has been suggested to us, but my guess is that he will fight it just as much ad everything else.
The rock & play sleeper has also been suggested. Does anyone local have one we could borrow for a few days? I really don’t want to throw out that much money for something that won’t help.
I should add that we do use a white noise machine already. And we’ve utilized the car ride to fall asleep method numerous times.
I guess my post isn’t asking for suggestions on sleep methods (baby whisper, happiest baby on the block, etc), but more about what to do to keep him from constantly fighting sleep and constantly waking himself up once he does get there.
Captain Adorable, our little sleep fighter, finally passed out.
I would like to wish a happy first Father’s Day to my wonderful husband, and a great daddy to Jonathan! We love you Joe! (Sorry you have to work on your first Father’s Day)
I would also like to wish my daddy a happy Father’s day! Thank you for being a great dad and for all of your love and support throughout my life!
Happy Father’s day to my brother-in-law Steve! You’re a great dad and have been a great big brother to me!
Happy Father’s Day to my Father-in-law as well!
Our first picture together, not long after we met and started dating!
Happy 4th Anniversary to my very best friend! The past four years of marriage and the year and a half of dating/being engaged have truly been the best years of my life! I am so thankful God chose you for me. You were definitely worth the wait!
I remember the day we met and how fabulous and unexpected it was. We met for lunch, but ended up spending half the day together. I remember the evening you proposed to me…on the beach in Maui. We spent the day together and ended it, so I thought, with dinner. Then you took me out on the beach and proposed to me as the sun was setting off the waters, between the islands of Lana’i and Moloka’i. Four years ago today, you made my dreams come true! I remember the anticipation leading up to our ceremony, the butterflies as you sang to me and as we said our vows, and then the great party we had with our family and friends afterwards!
Dr. & Mrs.
Our first dance
Our wedding cake & figurines
This past year was certainly a year to remember. We started it off with continued struggles through infertility. You (and God) were my rock throughout the heartache. Thankfully God’s plan this past year included getting pregnant, but first you had to help me through the fertility treatments, the tests, the injections in my stomach, and the painful waiting. Months later, we had one of the most incredible, memorable experiences of giving birth to Jonathan. You, again, were my rock. Without you, I wouldn’t have made it through such a whirlwind of an experience!
The day Jonathan was born
We also had the blessing of serving on the mission field together. Alongside our team, we were able to share the love of Christ in Moldova. What an amazing experience!
Thank you Joe for being such an amazing husband, and daddy too! I thank God for each day we have together. I can’t wait to see what God has for us in the years to come!
Just for the record (or for our record) I wanted to document about our baby Spock picture.
I knew during our entire struggle with infertility that if the day ever came, I wanted Christine at Dimples and Curls Photography to do pictures. Her studio is near my family, so it would be perfect to have pictures done and see family! Christine’s pictures made my longing for a baby stronger and stronger…how can you not want a baby when there are such cute, adorable pictures like she does!
When our time came and I was trying to come up with ideas to give Melissa (Christine’s sister, and staff member). I asked Joe what kind of things he wanted- beach/tropical, Star Trek/Wars, etc. He, somewhat jokingly, said that it’d be pretty cool if they could dress Jonathan up like a baby Spock. I told Melissa this, as well as a number of other suggestions. We were pretty flexible with our requests. We wanted brighter, more vibrant pictures. We enjoy fun things, so we didn’t want this to be a boring session.
Our session was pretty great. It would have only been better had Jonathan cooperated. We drove the three hours down (which took five due to having to stop to nurse and construction traffic) and Jonathan slept pretty much the entire trip down. That meant he didn’t want to sleep for pictures. Our four hour session turned into six and we only got a few shots of a sleepy baby! Thankfully Christine and Millie (Christine’s mom, and prop extraordinaire) were so gracious and patient with us, and so gentle with Jonathan.
Millie, who runs Newblet Knittings, did create for us the Spock hat! I saw it sitting to the side early in the session and was so happy! Daddy deserved to have a say in the pictures, even if he was initially joking! The last set of shots we did that day were of Spock. We picked a blue fabric from their stash that was almost identical to Spock’s uniform. They decided to snip a little portion of the fabric off and make a swaddle wrap out of it.
I cannot believe the overwhelming response Jonathan’s picture has had on the internet. It honestly blows my mind! Christine originally posted the picture on her Facebook page. Apparently before she went to bed for the evening she was shocked that there were 87 “shares” of the picture. Little did she realize (or did I realize) that there would end up being close to 600 shares and almost 500 “likes”.
The story then got a little crazier! A few people shared the picture with actor George Takei. Takei played Lt. Sulu on the original Star Trek series, alongside Spock’s Leonard Nimoy. A little over 48 hours later, Takei shared Jonathan’s Spock picture on his Facebook page and titled it “The Next Generation.” Holy cow, the response!!! As of this morning, two days later, there are close to 51,000 “likes”, close to 13,000 “shares”, and almost 1,400 comments.
Mind. Blowing.
I have a six week old son who has made his mark on the internet!
The comments have mostly been encouraging and wonderful. Of course there are the few rude and crude people out there. Sadly, thats the fallen world we live in. We love our little guy like CRAZY! (Remember, we fought for years to have a baby!) We simply wanted to have a little fun with his pictures and we’re thankful to Christine and Millie for allowing us to have a little fun.
And to those people who say our son will grow up hating us for dressing him up like this? I doubt that will be the case. He just had a famous Hollywood actor, one that was a part of cult classic series, acknowledge him on the internet. Millions of people have seen his picture before he turned six weeks old!
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We’re glad that we could work with Christine and Millie and we’re thankful that this has brought so much positive support for both of their small businesses. If you’re in the Charlotte area (or NC/SC area for that matter) and are looking for a newborn photographer, I highly recommend Dimples and Curls! And if you’re interested in the Spock hat, you can order your own from Newblet Knittings!
Here is a sneak peak from Jonathan’s newborn session with Dimples & Curls Photography. We’re stoked because Christine posted this image on her Facebook page and in less than 15 hours has had well over 300 shares, more than 350 likes, and 50+ comments. Its even been shared with George Takei by numerous people. We’re proud parents!
I encourage you to head over to Dimples and Curls Photography and like their page and feel free to click and share Jonathan’s picture with everyone you know!
Jonathan,
Happy 1 month baby boy!!! It’s so hard to believe that you’ve been with us for a month now! It seems like yesterday we were rushing to the hospital and I was praying I didn’t push you out before we got inside. God has blessed us so much by bringing you into our life. I just pray that we will be Godly parents, and show you the love of the Lord in everything we do.
During the first two weeks of your life, you lost almost a full pound of weight, and I was worried! But not to fear, at your one month appointment you proved that you did know how to gain weight! During weeks three and four you gained almost two pounds! You’ve gone from a tiny baby, to a developing little guy. Each day you bring joy to my heart in ways I cannot describe.
You’ve brought such a joy to your daddy as well. As the days go by, I can see more of your daddy in you-in your face, in your personality. I love to see the two of you interact. It truly is the best part of my day.
This past weekend, it seems you came down with a small stomach bug. It broke my heart to see how much pain you were in. Thankfully your temperature never reached over 100 degrees, though it came awfully close. Even though the bug has left, you’re still battling a mean case of reflux. We’re working on getting you medicine that works, but in the meantime, you still suffer the side effects each day. Again, this pains my heart as I watch you scrunch your tiny little body up in pain every time you eat. I wish I could take the pain from you. I would gladly experience it for myself so you don’t have to.
These days, we’re still not getting much sleep. It seems you still have your days and nights mixed up. I’ll be honest, it’s quite exhausting working off 3-4 hours of sleep each day. I think you dislike the dark. When I have a light on, it seems you sleep better than when it’s completely dark. Here lately, we’ve been sleeping in the bonus room, either in the chair or on the pull out sofa so that daddy can get some sleep. Even when you do sleep, you’re quite the noise maker. I don’t know if part of it’s because of your reflux, if you’re having crazy dreams, or if you just like to grunt and talk in your sleep. Either which way, I pray that soon you will figure out a normal schedule…for all of us!
We love watching you fall to sleep! It seems every time you start drifting off, you give us incredible smiles and often start laughing. You laugh a lot in your sleep too. One morning I was tickling your feet (you were awake) and you started laughing! It was a priceless moment for me!
You have given your daddy and me many gifts! You’ve peed on both of us, you almost poo’ed on your daddy, and we’ve all gone through many wardrobe changes. But we wouldn’t trade it for anything!
We’ve learned that you hate having your feet and arms covered. We can get away with covering your feet when you’re swaddled, but even then, we find you fighting to escape most nights. You absolutely love keeping your hands in front of your mouth. Feeding you this way is often a challenge. You also love to suck on your fingers
Some of the big events that you’ve had this first month of your life:
Big things are coming up in your second month of life. You’re going to be moving out of mommy & daddy’s room and into your own, you’ll meet your other grandma, and great Aunt Pat. You’ll also get to start wearing cloth diapers! Hopefully some of the clothes we’ve bought you will start to fit, as most of them are way too big! This will be our last month of staying home all the time. At the end of this month, you’ll get your two month shots, and then we’ll start venturing out a little more!
