A Southern Boy

This is Jack going to town on some collard greens. He does his Daddy proud.

More Freeman Pics

As babies go, Freeman has been an easy one so far. We've enjoyed two nights in a row with sleep shifts lasting 3+ hours. Seems like it took weeks and weeks for Jack to get his nights and days on track with those of us who are long time residents of the ex-utero world.

We had one rather rough night. Freeman slept all day his second day home, waking only to eat for 15 minutes at a time. At one point, John and I found ourselves with one kid at school and the other one snoozing hard. Instead of taking naps ourselves, we ate chocolates in front of the bazillionth episode of Law & Order that we've seen since getting satellite two years ago. I said, "Well, Dear. Welcome to parenthood of two. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Drop it did. From about 10 pm to 3 am. Freeman wasn't fussy, mind you. He just needed company and approximately 300 diaper changes.

There is an extent to which I can't tell if Freeman is easier or if we are. Probably the latter. Jack was a good teacher, and experience has helped us avoid some of the things that were hard the first time around. To his credit, though, Freeman seems to be a pretty mellow kid.

On to the pics...

The shirt says it all.

Freeman's hair and face seem to come mostly from Daddy. It's not clear that he's got Mama's ears...it's only certain that he doesn't have Daddy and Jack's.

This is not Jack's first reaction to Freeman. Sadly, we didn't catch that on film. When they met, Freeman was sleeping peacefully in the hospital bassinet. Jack stood on a chair to view the baby. Freeman suddenly flailed his arms in his sleep, which caused Jack to pretty much leap out of skin in terror. It took a few days after that for Jack to really warm to the baby. Now (when he's not busy doing his own thing with his cars and Lincoln Logs) he's a most enthusiastic baby brother kisser.

Freeman's build is not at all like Jack's at birth. Jack was a big pot belly plus a big head with tentacles for limbs. Freeman is our more 'husky' son so far. Those may be Mama's nascent thighs. I'm sure it was a fluke, but right after this picture Big Bit managed to push himself from belly to back. He was a week old.

Freeman joins the Family

We are thrilled to announce the arrival of Freeman James Basham Chamblee, who was born on September 11, 2008, at 11:53 p.m. He is 20.5 in. long and, at birth, he weighed a healthy 8 lbs., 6 oz. Mom and baby are doing fine and Dad is the doing the blogging. Below are some introductory pictures.

Hello! from FreemanFreeman and MommaFreeman and Daddy

Pictures of Freeman with the rest of the family, including Big Brother Jack, are coming soon!

Geographer Jack

Dad writing here, for a change. Since Jack is only two and a half, we are never 100% sure what he knows and what he doesn't. However, we suspect that he knows more than he's letting on. What better way to get what you want, right? A few days ago, he surprised me with a little impromptu interactive geography lesson. The pictures below are of Jack (of course) with some foam houses I made for him. The houses aren't really as interesting as what they represent in terms of what he knows.....and what I don't.
When we got the blocks out, I asked Jack what he wanted to make. He said he wanted to make Carter's house. Carter is a little boy who lives next door in a white brick ranch-style home. So, I made Carter's house (which is in the top left of the picture) and then told Jack I would make Jack's house (shown in the top center). The next thing that happened is that Jack asked me to make "the brown house," which I took to mean the brown ranch-style house on the other side of our place. I built this house (shown on the bottom right) with some amazement since, as far as I can recall, he has never mentioned that house to me before.
Finally, just to see if he knew what I thought he knew, I built one more ranch house, shown on the bottom left and asked him whose house it was. He told me that it was Margie's house. Margie lives across the street and I was indeed trying to represent her house. Overcome with geographic emotion, I then started adding lots of detail. For example, it was I, not Jack, who cleverly parked the matchbox car in front of what would be our garage. I also put in lots of other round blocks to accurately portray the location of as many trees and shrubs as I could. Then, just to show me whose game this was supposed to be, Jack tore two contributions to my foam arboretum from the "ground" ..........and stuck them to his face (as above).

If there are any lessons to be had from our little reconstruction of the street's geography, they are:

1. Even at two, our kids have an inner world that is unknown to us and, as a result, know more than their parents realize.

2. No matter how hard we try to let them be themselves, we are still in danger of making a big fuss when our kids do things that remind us of ourselves (witness this entire post, for example).

3. MY KID'S A MAP GENIUS !!!!! WOOOHOOO!!!! In your FACE, MAAAAN!

4. See #2, above. Um, sorry about that.

Little Bit Goes to the Beach

Daddy and Mama went back to the beach at Sanibel (the site of some of our all time favorite pics of Jack) to see if we could immortalize the belly that Mama is carrying around courtesy of Little Bit.

Scrolling through the dozens of pictures Daddy took (you gotta love digital SLR photography...it's so easy to click away until you get a good one), it might be time to start calling the new baby Big Bit.

This is us at a little over 31 weeks. I'm happy to say that we continue to be blessed with excellent health. We've experienced only mild to moderate levels of most of the normal pregnancy discomforts. A delivery that doesn't involve back labor would be icing on the cake.

I've started trying to picture life after Little Bit gets here. I imagine the first thing Big Brother Jack will say upon meeting his sibling is, "Noooo! I DON'T WANT it!" He's sweet like that. He's two like that.

Backtracking 5 - It Ain't All Sunshine

For two straight weeks preceding the trip to Illinois, we all endured the longest cold of Jack's life. It skirted the edge of croupy for only one night, thank goodness. The buckets of post-nasal drip were not fun. Jack has his mother's touchiness about nasal discomfort, but he doesn't get how to really blow his nose.

He spent nearly the whole two weeks with this face. Every twenty seconds or so, he would pathetically screech, "I wanna blowyournose!"

Near the end, though, he finally started finding his Zen again...

Backtracking 4 - Two Little Monkeys

This is as close to a focussed shot as I could get of the frenzy of movement that was the boys at play together. Jack knew the words to the song 'No More Monkeys' before our visit, but I would say that Maddux taught him the song's essence.