Our River Trip

Here is naked Crash, trying to beat the heat. Don't know if you keep up with the weather nationwide, but in Arizona, it was 110 degrees today. I just about melted. Needless to say, Crash, Gavin and I spend a lot of time indoors.

What did Gavin do at the river? Eat, Slept, and Pooped. Well, he did do more then that, he's finally getting to an age where there is some personality. But this picture was too cute to pass up. He's wearing his aloha shirt for the first time.

Liz and Kim on the Sea-doo. Kim drove so slow in the beginning. It took him awhile to warm up to the watercraft. But once he did, there was no stopping him!

Getting ready to hit the river! Kim and Liz on the Sea-doo.

This is Taco and Christina on the Sea-doo.

The River was so much fun. We are definetly going to go back soon. Just after the job situation is a little more successful.

BTW, we had this thought while driving out to Laughlin. Gavin has been to Hawaii, California, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, with layovers in Georgia and Texas. That's 7 states. Not bad for a kid that's only 2.5 months old.

So we made it with Gavin 10 weeks now. Its had its ups and downs. Gavin still doesn't sleep through the night. I've thought about giving up breastfeeding 100 times, but still haven't done it yet. And we made it though our first round of shots. Thank you to all of our family and friends that have supported us with Gavin accessories, baby advice for Kim and I, and your love. We really appreciate it during these tough times.

Write again later.

Gavin's first video

Gavin's 2 months old

So today we had Gavin's 2 month old well baby visit.

Oh my gosh my heart broke when they gave him shots. 5! 5 shots today. My son is not a pin cushion thank you very much! I hate that they have to immunize today's children! The whole time (whole time being appro. 15 seconds long) I wanted to scream "Stop! Stop! we'll finish the rest tomorrow." He just kept crying and crying. The pediatrician's office knew what they were doing though. They had 2 girls giving the shots at the same time. So one girl had 3 shots the other had 2, and they were going at the same time to get it over with faster. Oh it was just heart wrenching. And I have to do this again at 4 months, 6 months and a year. Screw that, Kim can take him to the dr. appts from here on out. That was really hard.

But growth wise, our little chunky monkey, is now 13.5 pounds. He can have a whole drop of baby tylenol for his pain tonight with the shots! A whole drop! He is 25 inches long. His head has grown to 16 inches around. He placed above the 95% on his height, above 75% on his weight, and above 80% on his head size. So he's all in all, a healthy baby boy.

As for Kim and I, we are still unemployed. I have been offered a job as a 2-year old lead teacher at a preschool. They do not offer infant child care discounts, only after they turn a year. So we're still debating on if we should take that job or not. Kim has got a call back from Auto Zone (get in the zone, auto zone!) about more references, but not confirming a job. We decided that if Auto Zone doesn't call back by tomorrow with something, then I'm going to take the preschool teaching job and Kim is gonna have to stay home and be Mr. Mom.

Arizona is freaking hot! We're not adjusting to this well at all. Crash got shaved on Tuesday, so he's naked. And Gavin can't go more than 2 diapers without baby powder or its diaper rash central. We Hamiltons are not designed for 101 degrees and more. But this weekend, Taco and Christina are taking us to Laughlin. So hopefully the river out there will cool us off. Kim and I have been getting a little depressed and frustrated with the job searching. Well Kim more than me, but noneless, we're frustrated. This economy is stupid. Companies are looking for cheap labor, but you know what, there are families out there. Families that need health insurance, families that need diapers, families that need money. And its hard right now to find a job. But we know that God has us in his hands and he's got a plan for us. So we put our faith and trust in Him.

Well check back next week, I'll get some river pictures up, and you've got to see naked Crash. Sorry it took me so long to blog again. You try having a kid and finding time. No, seriously, I promise to be back next week.

Breast milk to the rescue

I think I have stumbled across the greatest cure all medicine. Breastmilk. I am going to put it on every cut, sore, and rash from here on out. Now I know a lot of you are thinking, "thats disgusting" and if you read my blog about my breastfeeding class you'd know, that I was once in those shoes. There was nothing more disgusting to me than breastmilk. Well, I have a story for you that changed my perspective and made me a boobie believer!

So Gavin was about a month old. And he wakes up from a 4 hour period of sleep with a bunch of gunk in his eye. Ok-gunk in the eye.....holy shit pink eye! Thats the first thing that popped into my head. So I start thinking, maybe its just sleepys in his eye, and it will go away. So we wipe it away and go about our day. Until Gavin takes another nap and wakes up with double the gunk, so much now that its stringy between his upper and lower eyelid. Ok, full on pink eye! So I'm thinking in my head, our temporary insurance hasn't kicked in yet, we can't go to the emergency room. He's a month old, his poor little immune system.....oh my gosh, he's going to loose his eye if I don't do something!
So what do you do when you have a burning question and no medical insurance.....you google it on the computer. So we googled. And what did google come back with. Put breastmilk in the eye. My first reaction.....hell no! that's disgusting. But then I saw Gavin's eye, it was awful. I felt like such crap for letting it get this bad and I felt even more like crap because there is something I can do about it, and I haven't. So I give the eye a little juice. What do you know? It like melted all the gunk away within minutes. We put a warm wash cloth on the eye and wiped away remaining gunk. It was amazing. So everytime I fed him for 24 hours I put a little breastmilk in his eye, and the pnk eye never came back.
So I chamged my mind about disgusting boobie juice. If it weren't from breastmilk, my son would have lost his eye. Well maybe not lost his eye, but it would have been bad.

Come and see the baby parties!

I know there are tons and tons of people that Kim and I want to see and introduce our newest family member too. So since we are car-less until the end of May, we thought we'd have a couple parties so family and friends can come to us to meet the little man. There are 2 events happening, let us know which one you'd like to come to. Please RSVP so that we can get the right amount of food for all to enjoy.

When: Friday evening, May 22
Where: Mom's house in Norco
Time: anytime after 5pm

next meet the baby party,
When: Sunday, May 24
Where: Dad's house in Orange County
Time: 12 noon

Ok hope to see you all soon, and then we can snap more pictures and I can blog about you coming to our party! Please RSVP, by email, text message, phone call, facebook, whatever.

Florida Vacation

Sorry its been so long since our last blog. We had our Florida vacation! We had such a great time!Although it wasn't easy getting there. Gavin's first airplane ride went really really well. He were all prepared with bottles and binkys. We were told that if the baby's ears are popping and they are crying, the best thing to do for them is feed them so the sucking action will pop their ears. Check out gavin's first plane ride.

We were able to spend time with Kim's grandma and auntie. One of my favorite parts of our time in Miami was the gator farm! I wrangled myself an outrageous gator......it was about 2ft long, about 8 pounds, 1 year old, and its mouth was taped. At this gator farm, there were no joke, over 1,000 gators of all different ages. As an added bonus, it was mating season. So we got to see some male gators fighting over a female. Got to enjoy the "love is in the air" atmosphere at the gator farm.

We also got to spend time with Kim's past. We met a lot of Kim's friends from high school and their kids. This is Edward and his daughter, Charlie and his daughter, and Kim with Gavin.

Check us out in South Beach Florida. I stopped and ask a local about the South Beach diet and if they had any tips for me. He just looked at me and said (with a lisp) "Girl, you look about as good as a cabana boy in a speedo". Kim and I said thank you and continued on our way.We then packed up shop and headed to Walt Disney World in Orlando. We went to Animal Kingdom and went on this fun safari adventure and this totally awesome rollar coster. We also went to Epcot center which was amazing!

We rode the Finding Nemo ride (check us out in the clam).
Epcot center puts on an amazing firework show. Gavin, our little trooper slept through the whole show. Its ok though, Kim and I had such a great time, we want to come back in a couple of years when Gavin is older. Maybe go to Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios parks. It was a great vacation.

But the best part about our entire Florida trip was spending time with our friends. We have such great friends from almost every corner of the United States and we all met up in Florida to go to the Disney theme parks. We got to see each other's kids and how much they've grown, we got to catch up with each other's lives, and make new memories. These are friends that Kim and I made in Hawaii through the Chafee. All of the guys used to work with each other on the ship and we have all been relocated and restationed across the United States. Thank goodness for email and phones so we can all stay in touch. I can't wait until 2010 because we want to make this an annual thing. We want to meet up with our friends again maybe in the snow next time.

Our first week

We are all alive!! For a week now, Kim, Gavin, Crash, myself, we're all alive! Maybe we can actually do this!

Everyday that goes by we're learning more about our little man and I think he's learning to trust us. "hey these people will change my diaper when I shit my pants" and "hey that lady gives me something delicious out of her boobies when I'm hungry". We're getting to know him as well; he follows a strict pattern we've learned. Wake up, get a diaper change, feed, burp, feed, go back to sleep, and begin cycle again. It just sucks because he'll go through the whole cycle about every 3 hours, day or night. I have composed a list of things that I would like to say thank you to. Things that if I didn't have them, I would not have survived this first week.

1. my husband. Its amazing how much they are capable of when they find the motivation to do it. We've been home from the hospital for a week, I've changed the diaper maybe once a day (usually the night time routine ones). Kim has been amazing these last couple days.

2. MAMS pacifier, don't leave home without it.

3.Boppy pillow-the stress it takes off your arm while feeding is quite remarkable. Plus, once Gavin falls asleep, I can just roll him off the breast and into the little crack between myself and the pillow. He'll sleep forever there, it really is a heaven sent item.

4. car seat-technically, its called an "infant carrier" which happens to snap into a base and can be used as a certified car seat. Since its 1 of the 2 places that Gavin will fall asleep in and REMAIN asleep in, we're more inclined to think of it as an "infant carrier". Then we don't feel so bad by letting him always sleep in his car seat.

5. my boobies-Thank you, thank you, thank you, for finally bringing the milk in and feeding the child who has a mouth like a sucking vortex of destruction.

6. Layette sets- we didn't have any of these upon Gavin being born. I thought they were kind of lame and didn't see the point in them. But they are the little outfits that have the built in mittens, or the ones that flip over the hands and protect baby from scratching his face off. Thank goodness for these, without them, I'd have a baby that looked like he was attacked on a jungle safari.

So yeah, those are my things of priceless value. I wouldn't know what to do without those items. New mommies out there, stock up on those before baby is born. Don't be like me and waiting til after baby is born to realize that you need all these things. Ok, that's all for now, we'll keep you posted as we spend our last couple of days in hawaii.