A Brassy Christmas

Dear Conrad,

Your first concert was a Christmas concert put on by the various brass ensembles of Mizzou.

The  uniform for the event was an "ugly Christmas sweater" and slacks. I created ugly sweaters for both of the Christmas concerts your dad performed in while he was getting his master's. This is was 2012's looked like:

He was always so proud of his ugly sweaters.

Of course, I gave you mismatched socks for the event. It was only fitting.

You sat through the entire concert so patiently. You were such a quiet newborn. And still pretty tiny too.

I miss the beautiful churches that were in Columbia. Someday, when you can remember them, I hope I can bring you back to this wonderful city. It was the best place I ever lived.

My Favorite Photo: 2nd Month

Dear Conrad,

This photo was taken at Poppy and Gigi's house during our Thanksgiving time there. Because you hated sleeping in your cradle at home and the Pack 'n Plays that your grandmothers had, you slept in bed with us for the first two months of your life. It wasn't until Christmas when you got a cradle from Poppy and Gigi that you liked to sleep in that we stopped putting you to bed with us. While I'm glad you finally got your own sleeping space and Daddy and I got our bed back, I did miss having you next to me. In fact, when you'd wake up in the mornings for a diaper change and breakfast, usually I just fed you in bed and we'd fall back to sleep together ... just like old times.

We Give Thanks

Dear Conrad,

In very little time, you were a month old and Thanksgiving was upon us. We drove all the way from Columbia, Missouri, to our families in Russellville, Arkansas, for the first time since you were born. We were worried about the challenges of driving with a newborn, especially since the trip home was over 300 miles!

November 16th, 2012

We stopped at Arby's in a town called Lebanon on the way there. Your daddy has such a young-looking face in this photo ... maybe because of all the hair on his head. I wonder if you'll have as much hair as he does or if you'll be bald like your Poppy.

Thanksgiving was much busier than I could have ever expected. Nana and Papa normally make a full Thanksgiving meal, but this year your uncle Howard's family came to visit immediately following dinner so they could see your cousin Ryker. It was a pretty rushed event.

Hoo boy, did I over-process this photo or what?
Ryker (7 weeks) and you (5 weeks)

Normally, Poppy and Gigi don't really have a Thanksgiving meal; we normally just have a regular, but nice, dinner with your aunt and uncle and cousins. We still wanted to make sure that everyone got an equal amount of visiting time, so we were bouncing back and forth between houses a lot.

Your uncle Howard was sick during Thanksgiving. Even though he didn't handle you, he interacted with everyone else and his own baby, so you ended up receiving it from someone. Your daddy caught it too, though he was sick longer than you were. I think you only coughed and had a runny nose for three days, whereas Daddy was sick for the entire week after we came home from Thanksgiving. I ended up catching it the next week. I was so mad at Howard for being around when he was under the weather, but what can you do? I probably would have still come down and seen everyone if I were the one who was sick. At least you weren't sick for very long, and it didn't seem to hit you as bad as it did us.

My Favorite Photo: 1st Month

Dear Conrad,

This photo was taken on October 29th. You must have had a doctor's appointment because I tagged the original with height and weight measurements. I was playing on my phone in bed while trying to get you to sleep, and suddenly, you just closed your eyes and went to sleep. My beautiful boy.

Your First Movies

Dear Conrad,

Your daddy and I love going to the movie theater, so when you were born we knew we were going to have to really think about what we were going to see and when we were going to see it. Not long after you were born, Wreck-It Ralph opened in the theaters. We had been looking forward to it for months, so we started reading about ways to take care of you so that you could come to the theater with us.

We saw a matinee of it on Saturday of its opening weekend. You were already asleep by the time we got to the theater, but we were still prepared with a bottle and sling in case we needed to take you out of the theater at any point. You slept soundly through the entire movie though! We breathed a sigh of relief.

Also, because your mom is a big dork, we dressed up like the main characters.

You were such a tiny Felix!

Not long after, we decided to take you with us to see Argo. You didn't sleep quite as well during that one, even though it was a bit quieter than Wreck-It Ralph. However, we fed you and your dad snuggled with you during the movie and you fell back to sleep. It was really sweet. To this day, your daddy still loves holding you close. He's a real dynamite guy.

Your First Halloween

Dear Conrad,

Well sweet boy, normally I adore Halloween. I spend months thinking about and putting together costumes. I drool over Halloween decorations, even though I usually don't end up buying any and therefore have never decorated my own house for the season.

I entertained the idea of your dad and I dressing up as a white mage (me) and a black mage (him) for Halloween, and putting together a baby red mage costume for you. But then I didn't get around to it before you were born. After you were born, I was too tired to do more than sleep, eat, and watch TV while I fed you (again.) So for your first Halloween, there were no costumes or decorations or Trick-or-Treating.

And that's totally okay.

At least you had some rocking orange socks that looked like high tops.

Sweet Heart

Dear Conrad,

We got a call from the hospital that we had been discharged before your hearing tests had been completed. Because you were born via cesarean, you had a lot of fluid in your ears, so you failed your first test. You were supposed to be given two more, but for whatever reason, you didn't get them. Fortunately, the hospital offered to schedule and pay for a hearing test at their facility, so it all worked out. They even sent us some apology gift cards to Applebee's, which was so kind of them.

At your next pediatrician's appointment, you were hardly jaundiced at all, so we were relieved that you were bouncing back so well. Dr. Weidt thought she heard your heart murmur too, so I told her about the nurse that had been sent out by our insurance and how she thought she heard one too. She immediately scheduled a visit with a heart specialist, and even got it to coincide with our hearing test.

The day of the tests came, and your daddy and I were both really nervous that we would get bad news. It took us forever to find the hearing specialist's office, but we ran into a doctor who showed us where to go. She walked us through some of the procedure, like how they can tell if a baby's hearing is working since babies can't verbally tell you that they can hear things. It was really fascinating. The first time she ran the test, you failed again, and your dad and I stiffened. Since we are both musicians, we were afraid that there was going to be a huge part of our lives that we couldn't share with you. The doctor then switched out the tips on her little machine, saying that they might have been too big and were giving her a false reading. After that, you passed with flying colors. Thank goodness.

We made our way down to wear another doctor was going to ultrasound your heart. My best friend Jeff sent me a reassuring message that he had a heart murmur as a baby and grew out of it, so we hoped that if you did have a murmur that it would be something minor. We watched as the doctor scanned all over your heart, and you flailed your little arms. You weren't uncomfortable or anything, you just couldn't control your limbs yet. In fact, you hardly made any noise at all during the ultrasound. The doctor who was scanning you said that he couldn't see any problems with the heart, but after a hospital in Saint Louis checked it all out we would have a definitive answer.

I just realized that, as of this writing, Saint Louis never did call to tell me whether you had a hole in your heart or not. Ha! I can only assume it was a fluke since Dr. Weidt has checked your heart at every appointment and it has been fine since that first one.