12-31-12 Karter's 2 week Stats

Today was Karter's follow up at the doctor's office.  He was 11 days old, so it took the place of his 2 week visit.  Our little man is growing fast, he was up from 5 lbs 7 oz one week ago to 5 lbs 15 oz and 18.5" long.  So he made his way onto the growth curve, he was in the 2nd percentile! He had already passed his birth weight (5 lbs 12 oz) and had grown a quarter of an inch from 18.25" at birth!

Here are a few photos of Karter and his big sister on New Year's!  We had a low key evening and everyone was in bed well before the New Year arrived :-)

12-29-12

Well, the days following the holidays were a little tough for the Johns family.  Mommy continued to have problems with her blood pressure and was readmitted to the hospital on Wednesday the 26th for hypertension and preeclampsia.  Fortunately we have amazing friends and family close by that quickly stepped up to help us out.  Nonna came over to stay with little man for us until Nana could get here and then Nana took care of the kiddos (on her birthday none the less) while Daddy was at the hospital with Mommy.  Miss Heather was in from Louisiana, so she also came over that night to play with Zoey and give Karter some extra attention as well.  Although Mommy knew her kids were well taken care of, it was definitely an emotional low, I felt horrible and just wanted to be home with my babies!  Luckily, I was discharged late the next day....but not without further drama...  Mommy's blood pressure spiked again Friday night and I had to call the doctor, luckily before he made me go back to the ER he called in a diuretic for me and that made a big difference. Here are just a few photos that we took when we were all home and things calmed down a bit again. 

12-28-12 Karter Photos

OK, so these are by no stretch of the imagination professional photos, but just wanted to document some more photos of hat my sweet little man looked like at 8 days old...so here he is!

Karter - 1 Week (12/28/12)

At Mommy's Baby Brunch in NC, 10-10 had the great idea to have everyone decorate stickers to help us document Karter's growth.  So here he is posing with his first sticker (by Aunt 10-10) at 1 week.  Well, actually 1 week and 1 day....since Mommy was in the hospital when he was 1 week old we did it a day late.  Of course his big sister wanted to give her baby brother some loving as well.   

Karter's First Christmas

They say the greatest gifts are the ones that are unexpected.  That certainly holds true for us this Christmas, the best Christmas gift was just having our little man home safe and sound.  I don't expect he will remember much of his first Christmas, since he snoozed the whole day, but we enjoyed having him here with us.  It was also unexpected that Zoey slept until after 8am!  Then when she came in to wake us up she was so EXCITED, she said Santa was here and he left paints and he filled my stocking!  She could hardly wait to rip into all her presents.  It turned out to be such a nice laid back Christmas, we took our time and enjoyed opening presents and then Daddy made us some yummy banana nut french toast for breakfast...and then we opened some more presents.  The rest of the day we spent listening to Christmas music and playing with Zoey's new toys.  

Christmas Eve

It was unexpected, but it was our first Christmas as a 4-some!  Today was Karter's first doctor's appointment with Dr. Jones and he was such a good boy during our first big outing!  He was 5 lbs and 7 oz, which was great!!  After his appointment we all went to First Watch for lunch and then went home to start our Christmas Eve preparations.   Mommy was still on restriction because of her blood pressure, so Daddy had to help with the cookies for Santa, so here are some photos of Zoey and Daddy baking!  We made chocolate mint cookies and heath bar cookies for Santa :-)  After we got the cookies ready for Santa, Daddy and Zoey went out in the yard to sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn for Santa's Reindeer.  

Papa Mike, Lo-Lo and Fuzzy come to meet Karter

The day after we came home from the hospital, Papa Mike, Fuzzy and Aunt Lo-Lo came for a quick visit to meet little Karter.  While they were here they snapped some family photos of the 4 of us in front of the Christmas tree. We also got some photos of Papa Mike snuggling his newest grandson and Nana and Papa with both the grandkids.

Hospital Photos of Little Karter

The hospital has a service that comes in and takes photos of every newborn, here are some of the photos that they captured of our sweet Karter on 12-22-12, when he was 2 days old.  You will notice that he always looks very serious in the photos, his Daddy says he gets that from his Mama :-)