Xander was born!

Xander was born on November 2nd, 2005. He's healthy and everything is wonderful! So I've been taking lots of pictures...

This is Xander at about one minute old. He's being cleaned up. Not the best photo, but I videotaped the earlier bits and then just wanted to look at my son.
This is Karen and I with Xander. Behind the blue sheet they are still closing Karen up. Xander is maybe five minutes old.
Here he has been taken to a room on the side. He's still just a few minutes old, and Karen is still being closed up.
After his bath.
They pop him into his mother's arms. She just glowed.
Awww! Look at them!
This is the next morning, Thursday.
I know, it's the same thing, but it's so CUTE!
So here's yet another one!
What a face!
Here he is getting buckled into his car seat to go home...he's so TINY! Awww!
Yep! A shot of me holding my son!
And here we start showing the recent theme of our lives...sleeping. So here is the beautiful Karen catching a nap while her son snoozes on top of her.
And here is me catching a nap...
And look! Karen napping again! Gotta get sleep when we can, he is not letting us sleep for long. He really likes to eat a LOT!
Karen snuck up on me and took this one...I think it's my favorite so far.
Awww! He's ADORABLE!
Yes, I took a zillion of these. Shut up.
OMG look at his cute little knees! And toes! And fingers! And...and...awww.
He wants a hug.
He's not ready for his close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Here's the ultrasound we took on March 13, 2005. The black blob is the gestational sac, and the little circle inside is the yolk sac. You can't see the fetus yet.
Here's the March 2nd ultrasound. It's starting to get VERY cool indeed! You can see the baby now, and in fact you can even see a little tiny heart beating away on the ultrasound monitor. Evidently a heart starts growing really fast, I wondered if it was just a pulse driven by Karen's heartbeat but it really has a heart! That's so cool! They even let us hear the heartbeat, and as trite as this sounds that was just amazing. The picture on the right is annotated so you can tell what's what. I think it looks like a giant X-Wing attacking the Death Star. The technician laughed at me.
An April 11th ultrasound! Yay! Karen had some weird cramps and got really concerned. She called the gynecologist and they said to come in, so we did. The kid is fine, everything is well, and MAN look at that ultrasound! He's growing like anything! Dang! You can see a head and little arms and legs now! And ... well, before she was re-enacting Star Wars, right? X-Wing and Death Star? So before they took the ultrasound I told her that her womb would be in the early stages of the Empire Strikes Back. And indeed, there is the probe droid! The saga continues...
We have come pretty close to finishing the nursery now...a few more tweaks and it'll be done! So here's the pictures...the left has the changing table, and on the right is a rocking chair and the crib. We painted the room in two colors, painted the ceiling blue as well, added white trim around the top, and a border in the middle where the colors met. I'm really delighted with the way it turned out.
Here we went to a 3D imaging place. It's a new type of sonogram. We can see his face! He's ADORABLE! Aaargh! Plus he has my nose. Wooo!
Look! He's yawning! They can do that in the womb? Weird.
Feet! He has feet! Oh man I'm gonna be pathetic as a father, I can tell. I'm excited because he has feet? Geez.
More yawning! Awww. I still can't believe they yawn in the womb. Pretty cute, though.
I just liked this one.
Man, look at that BELLY! This is Sept. 21, 2005 - she still has two months to go. Dang. She's gonna be HUGE.