Movies Movies

The past few weeks Kerry and I have been renting movies like mad from the Blockbuster down the street. Since one of us usually has to be holding Joshua movies are a great way to pass the time. So every few days I’ll go pick up 3 new ones. Here are a few we have seen that we can recommend:

Unfinished Life

Match Point

Chicken Little

Glory Road

TransAmerica

The Producers

Shop Girl

The Chronicles of Narnia

King Kong

Derailed

A History of Violence

Proof

There are many others, but due to exhaustion I can’t remember. I will update this as it comes to mind. If we keep renting at this rate I may look into one of the online movie stores.

A time to read

Our normal routine at night is wake up when Joshua is ready to feed, feed and change him. Then rock him back to sleep in our nursery. The back to sleep process usually takes between 30 min to an hour and a half depending on how he is feeling. When its my turn I usually like to use this time to read. Since you do this several times a night the reading time can really add up. I just finished “Primary Colors” which is a great book written about the life of a fictional politician. It was published as written by anonymous, but later found out to be the former editor of Business Week. It really has nothing to do with political opinions, as every instance of “Democrat” could be replaced with “Republican” and the story would be exactly the same. Rather it shows you how the people behind the candidates live their lives and play the game. The reader is taken through the gruling year of a presidential campain and shown the ups and downs and how people have to dedicate their lives to deal with both. Its pretty interesting and a good read. Now I’m really excited because I just picked up Nick Hornby’s new book “A Long Way Down”. He is one of my favorite authors and I can’t wait to dive into this one. If you have never read any of his books, I recommend starting out with either “High Fidelity ” or “About a Boy”.

Grand Parent time

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

Saturday Kerry’s parents came to visit us, or really to visit Joshua. It was a great day, Kerry and I got to go out for lunch while they had some grand parents time and I was able to go for a long run (8+miles). And of course Joshua just soaked up all the attention.

Summary of the last week

So now that Kerry, Joshua, and I are home and have time to catch our breath, I thought I would give a little update on what has been happening the last few days. Wednesday May 24th 7:30am – We had a routine ultrasound to determine Joshua’s current weight. This ultrasound showed he was small for his gestational age. Since he is only 3 days from full-term the doctor’s decide to induce. 10:00am – We are fully admitted to the University Women’s Hospital Birth Unit and Kerry begins a petosin drip. 8:00pm – Kerry is fully dilated and a faced. She begins to push. Thursday May 25th 12:30am – Doctors decide to perform a C-section (for those keeping track, that is after 4.5 hours of pushing). 1:34am – Joshua is lifted over the curtain and Kerry and I see him for the first time. Since Kerry had a fever, combined with Joshua’s weight, he is admitted to the Holden NICU. Friday May 26th Kerry and Joshua receives antibiotics for fevers and Joshua stays in the NICU so he can be monitored and gain weight. Saturday May 27th Morning - Joshua is released from the NICU. 9:00pm – Joshua is re-admitted to the NICU because of a few serious issues. A bit of a scare that I won’t go into. Sunday May 28th 10:00am – Joshua is released from the NICU and allowed to stay in the hospital room with Kerry and I. Monday May 29th Joshua and Kerry are released from the hospital and we go home. So it’s been a busy week. Overall Kerry and I were very impressed with the University of Michigan Mother-Baby Unit and the Holden NICU. Those people really know how to keep on top of things and provide very good care. A big thanks to the nurses who took care of Kerry during and after the birth, they were nothing short of amazing. Also, a HUGE thanks to Rachel, Kerry’s sister. She was in the room before, during, and after the birth and was a HUGE help. She was completely giving of herself for Kerry and Joshua, already starting out to be a great ante! The grandparents were also a wonderful help. Both sides pitched in to provide support during the last week. My mother stayed with us until Wednesday spoiling me with home-cooking and a clean house. Thanks Mom!

Joshua Michael Duty

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Originally uploaded by jduty.

Joshua Michael Duty was born at 1:24AM, May 25. He was 5lb, 10oz at birth. Both mother and baby are doing great. I’ll update more later but take a look at some of these pictures.

Update

Just realized it has been a while since I have posted. Just to calm everyone we have not had the baby yet (much to Kerry’s dismay). He gets all 10s on every checkup so we are pretty much just waiting for the first signs he is coming. A best as we can tell we pretty much have everything ready for his arrival including diapers, toys, nursery, bottles all setup and the call list is made. If there is something that can swing, hold, rock, vibrate, or stimulate the baby odds are we’ve got it in our living room now. Once again big thanks to everyone for all the great stuff.

Things that help

So things have been cranking along very well. We are getting settled into our new house nicely and Kerry has done an awesome job with the nursery. As our lives are about to change rapidly we’ve really been leaning on some great ways to stay connected with people. I thought I would share some of the things we have found to make things easier; iChat One thing we have been doing a lot of is video conferencing with my parents in Dallas and Santa Fe using iChat. I really have to applaud Apple, this is the BEST video conferencing software I have ever used. We have never had a problem with it, the video is clear and the sound is always in full duplex. I really thing a big part of it is the iSight that comes with either the MacBookPro or the iMac. I’ve done conferencing with people who just use a standard webcam and the performance really decreases. If you are going to be doing some video conferencing and want to use a Mac, I really recommend either getting a Mac with one built-in or purchasing a stand-alone iSight, its worth the extra money. Flickr: With the move, the purchase of a digital cannon rebel, and all the ultrasounds we have had a lot of pictures we have needed to share. Flickr is a great way to do this. Flickr is an online photo repository and sharing site. With limited bandwidth you can sign up for free, or you can purchase a professional account for $40 a year which is really worth it. Uploading pictures is a snap because they offer several applications and plugins that interface with common photo applications (we use the iPhoto plugin) and a web interface. Once photos are up on the site you can organize them in sets and also tag photos based on common subjects (for example we have a tag called “cats” that associates the million cat photos we have). Of you want to share these photos people can either go to your flickr site on their own, or you can send them a Tag to view if you only want them to see certain pictures. Plus, flickr also allows you to give people RSS feeds so people will actually get notified when you upload new photos. We love it.