I always feel like blogging after I finish reading Trisha’s blog, but that doesn’t mean I do as good of a job of it. I also don’t change Ingrid’s blog design on a weekly basis either. Sorry!
In the three weeks since Ingrid’s birth, we’ve taken a lot of pictures of her, along with a few videos. Picasa, with its magical face-recognition voodoo, claims I have 42 pictures of Ingrid. I won’t post them all here for you, but here’s a few favorites.
We gave Ingrid her first “real” bath, and as new parents we were very careful not to boil her alive. Our fancy baby-sponge mat (thanks Beth!) has a little sticker on it that’s supposed to change color at 104 degrees so you don’t hurt your kid. A little science experiment reveals that ours changes color at about 97, so we’re more in danger of freezing Ingy to death than boiling her.
As our first, Ingrid will likely have far too many pictures taken of her. We’re documenting her growth versus the size of a rather large bear. (That’s week 2 on the left, week 3 on the right)
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our cats are a little jealous. The only attention they get now is when I shoot at them with my double-barreled dart shotgun, or when they’re being funny.
Seeing as babies don’t do much, that about sums it up. Here’s a video for you to enjoy, and you can also follow along at home with periodic video uploads to our YouTube channel.
As an FYI, we’ve got ourself an HD webcam and are currently duking it out between Skype, Logitech Vid HD, Google Chat, and Live Messenger to figure out which one works best. If you want to meet Ingrid, give us a holler!
At about 1:00AM this morning contractions started, and at 2:30 Lisa and I were headed out for the 45+ minute trip to Gothenburg, NE to deliver a baby. Our new baby had picked the single stormiest day of the winter to be born (though, also the last day to qualify for 2010 taxes 
), but my many years of ditch-touring experience during the winters of North Dakota had prepared me for a rather uneventful drive.
When Lisa had gotten settled in for the long haul they asked her what she thought about epidurals. Her response: “How soon can I get one?” 45 minutes later her IV and all were prepped for the procedure, but the doctor needed around an hour to get between her impenetrable vertebrae. After profuse apologies from him in regards to the duration and pain of it all, Lisa was glad to forgive him as the pain melted away.
Just about as soon as it wore off it was time to push. The Dr. gave her a quick tutorial about how to push, and then for some reason thought it was a good idea to trust me to coach and count. When he made it back a little over a half hour later he said it was time to change into his jammies and catch. At 11:00AM Ingrid Anita decided to make her grand entrance, and we had our long-awaited daughter!
…alien! At least, that’s what one grandpa said upon looking at the ultrasound pictures. I, on the other hand, had a different reaction. I thought our dear Eustace Clarence looked an awful lot like Emperor Palpatine (from Star Wars). Is that a bad thing? Click on the thumbnail below to see what I mean:
OK then, enough fun with look-alikes. You probably want to see the other ultrasound pictures, and find out if Eustace Clarence is a boy or a girl. Just click here to see!
It wasn’t many weeks into the pregnancy that we had an ultrasound to make sure everything was OK (and to satisfy a little curiosity as well!)
Eustace just wouldn’t sit still–the doctor kept remarking how active he was, and it took a while before he settled down enough for her to get the heartbeat read. Looks like he got my ADD!
