Good Times with Oma
Luka had a great time with his Oma and wants to say “Thank You” for spending time and taking care of him.
Getting ready for Christmas
We started to decorate our home for Christmas and also attended Sue & Tracy’s Holiday Hoopla (their Christmas party).
Luka’s Christmas outfit was a big hit!
2 Week Check-up
Today was Luka’s 2 week check-up.
He gained a bit of weight – which is good – and is now at 10.1 lbs (or 4,58 kg). Part of the 2 week check-up is a blood test, which means he had to be pocked again (his poor heel!).
The doctor said he is fine and everything looks good – yeah!
Going to Grammy’s house
Yesterday, we went to Grammy’s house for dinner. Cousin Jake was there as well. Can’t wait to get older so I can play with him!
Santa Claus Day (Sankt Nikolaus)
December 6th is Sankt Nikolaus or Santa Claus day in Germany. Kids put there boots in front of the door the night of December 5th and Sankt Nikolaus comes bye and drops something in their boots.
If you’ve been good you will receive chocolates, oranges, nutes and little toys. If you’ve been bad you get a wipe or rode to remind you to be good.
Since Luka is half German, he also put his tiny little boots in front of his door. Although Hillsboro is a far way from Germany, Sankt Nikolaus did come bye to drop off some goodies. Now, it’s hard to find something a 1 week old baby wants other than a fresh diaper or a bottle of food, but Sankt Nikolaus was able to find something: little socks (all the way from Germany) and a little chocolate santa (which mommy eat so baby can “taste” it in the milk).
Now, we aren’t quite sure yet which German and which American traditions to keep for Luka, since keeping both might confuse the poor kid, but we’ll figure it out over the next year or so.
For more info about Sankt Nikolaus see:
http://www.thehistoryofchristmas.com/traditions/germany.htm
Technobabble baby
Thanks to several web-based applications, we were able to quickly announce Luka’s birth to the world in a lot of really effective ways. Here’s a quick guide to the fantastic services we used to share our excitement:
1. As I’m sure you learned in our previous post, picking a name we both liked was a daunting task. But we found the perfect name with some help from Nymbler. Type in up to six baby names you like, and Nymbler will suggest dozens of similar-sounding suggestions. You can save suggested names to a favorites list and read about the origin and popularity of each one. There are tons of websites that suggest potential baby names but we liked Nymbler the best. To know how common our chosen name has been through history, we went over to NameVoyager, which charts the rises and falls of the top 1,000 names since the late 1800s.
2. Starting at the hospital we will be using Trixie Tracker which is a web and mobile tool to help us uncover and understand patterns Luka’s sleep and daily schedules. Trixie Tracker lets us create charts for Sleep schedules, Diaper changes, Bottle and breastfeeding, Solids, Pumping, Milk inventory, Medicine doses. This info will be especially useful at the doctors office when they ask how often Luka is feeding, etc. There is also a Yahoo Widget for the service and even better it has an iPhone interface for entering data and viewing stats on the go.
3. One of the most time-consuming tasks right after Luka was born was trying to get in touch with all of our many friends and family to tell them the good news. Phonevite made this process a breeze by letting us record a message by phone right there in the delivery room. With our preset lists of people to call, including phone numbers and email addresses, Phonevite called and emailed them with our message. The other excellent feature was during the call, everyone’s phones showed the call as coming from us, rather than an unknown number from some company. Phonevite played the message immediately, and then played a brief identification tag at the end saying it was sent via Phonevite. We set up several lists before we even went to the hospital with one for our immediate family, extended family, friends, and our work colleagues. We were able to instantly reach 74 people within minutes of our sons birth with a single personalized call. Phonevite’s website also verified which calls were successful and which didn’t go through for any reason, in case we needed to follow up once we returned home. Phonevite’s service has a lot of unique uses, but we saw the appeal immediately for how quick and easy it made informing everyone of Luka’s arrival.
4. Since I’ve had so much fun using status updates (aka micro blogging), it seemed natural to use the same method to record Nadine’s progress during labor and delivery. Ping.fm, offers the ability to update many websites simultaneously. Ping.fm kept our friends on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, Brightkite, and Identi.ca all in the loop on Nadine’s progress, all the way through the delivery and beyond.
5. With the iPhone’s built-in camera, we were able to immediately take some great photos of Mom, Dad, and baby Luka. In order to get those photos to where friends and family could see them right away, we used the AirMe iPhone app to automatically upload them to our Flickr account where the world could see. It took only seconds from the time we took the photos until they were up and available for everyone to view on FriendFeed, Flickr, and of course this site.
Luka Louis Perrin is born!
Today at 12:17 am, November the 26th of 2008 Nadine and I welcomed our first child Luka Louis Perrin to the world.
Luka weighed in at 9 pounds and 10 ounces. (4366 Grams for the my German peeps!)
He is 21 and 1/2 inches tall. Head circumference: 14 inches. Chest: 14 inches.
Does it have to be kid friendly?
Be warned: The first few seconds of this video will make you sea sick. Don’t worry though, we have fired the camera man.
Fashionably Late
Our baby's due date was today but he pulled a no show.
I'd like to think he's just being fashionably late.
We are waiting... waiting... waiting...
Press Play!
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The name game
Nadine and I spent countless evenings discussing names. If you consider me rejecting every name she suggested a discussion. As the months went on I kept shooting down every single suggestion made by her, friends and family. Nothing resonated with me.
Because I wouldn’t agree to her (100′s of) suggestions, Nadine (jokingly) threatened to name our baby Rudiger unless I became more open to her suggestions. Or at least offer some suggestions of my own.
We both liked Lucas but knew that the nickname Luke was inevitable. I’m not a Starwars fan and didn’t want the association so Lucas was out.
She wanted a name that could be pronounced the same in German and English. I wanted a name that was unique but that is spelled just like it sounds.
The topic was ongoing and it seemed everyone wanted to add their 2 cents. At work Nadine and co-worker
Sue put a bunch of (random) names on a dry erase board. Arrows to the left of a name showed Nadine’s opinon of that name, arrows on the right showed how I felt. (No arrow indicated neutral) Oh and lets not forget about the Excel spreadsheet that Nadine created to keep track of it all.
When we visited Germany Nadine’s family was partial to Bruno, which was great grandpas name. Bruno has become somewhat of a nickname ever since.
Nadine liked a bunch of different names but narrowed it down to a few. Noah and Dominik.
I on the other hand only liked two names. Asher and Tyler.
After some intense debate, and some help from a website called Nymbler we found a name that we both could agree on. The site allowed us to input up to 6 names that we liked and it would then offer suggestions that were similar to the ones we input. We entered Lucas, Bruno, Noah, Dominik, Asher, and Tyler. One of the suggestions offered by the site was Luka. We both liked the name.
We had previously talked about and agreed on Louis for his middle name. Louis was the middle name given to my grandpa, my dad and me. I wanted to honor my grandpa and my dad by passing it down to my son.
Whew! So to put it all together…
Luka Louis Perrin is the full name of our son.
P.S. – Yes, we know thats the same name of that funky looking doctor on ER.
It’s a Boy!
The early mornings have already started. I was (reluctantly) up bright and early today. We had an appointment to see our baby for the first time. I’m not a morning person but I should start getting used to seeing that yellow thing in the sky rise. What is that thing anyway?
I woke up pretty fast as soon as I saw our baby on the ultrasound monitor. If ever there was a reality check today was it. Actually seeing the baby was an eye opening. No longer was Nadine just pregnant. Seeing the baby wildly move around on the screen made me realize just how real this is.
Feelings of excitement and fear were both equally prevalent. I held Nadine’s hand and we continued to watch the screen. The ultrasound technician must have shown us and taken pictures of every possible angle of our baby. It was truly amazing.
Almost an hour had gone by and just as the technician was about to give up, the baby cooperated and we learned the gender of our baby. He quickly covered his private parts with both hands as if he knew we were staring. How modest of him.
Like father, like son. The ultrasound technician had to push and poke around to wake the little guy as he had fallen asleep. Being half asleep myself I could relate.
We are happy to report that as far as we could tell he has all limbs in tact. Ten fingers and toes. And based on the measurements taken, our boy, as of today weighs 15 ounces.
