Lake Towada Fireworks

Last weekend we took a trip up to Lake Towada (about 1 hour West of here) for a fireworks show. On the way, we stopped and walked around a little bit to see some of the waterfalls of Oriase Gorge. When we got there we experimented with some of the local cuisine and then watched the fireworks after the sun set. Little Micah did pretty well with the fireworks...but still startled a little bit at the real loud ones. Here in Japan they have a little boat that drops huge fireworks shells directly into the water and about 30 seconds later there is a HUGE explosion from the top of the water. Those were the ones that scared Micah, so we ended up leaving a little bit early.

We've also added to our photography setup...we now have two Alien Bees 800W strobe lights (http://www.alienbees.com/b800.html). We're still waiting on a couple more accessories and then we'll be full up. We can't wait to get everything so we can start playing around some more with our home studio. Anyways, here are a couple of pictures to prove that we're still alive...just very busy!

M.A.C.

As several people have noticed and commented on, our little guy's initials spell out 'Mac'. No, it wasn't just coincidence...we really liked the idea of spelling something with his initials when we had both decided that we liked the name Micah. Although we thought of other names like Ulysses, Ichabod, and Olaf...we finally settled on Alexander. Anyways, we've had some fun comments about his middle name, so we'll share some of the references here:

Little Mac from Mike Tyson's punchout (my favorite...thanks bro):


And the always amusing Mac vs PC commercials:



And there's also MAC tools, Fleetwood Mac, and MAC cosmetics...I'm sure there are more, but just wanted to throw something on here to help you waste your time on our blog :).

P.S. Sorry mom, no photos on this post...we're busy...and I wanted to do this

Baths, Bili Light and Dad

Well, we have officially been parents for nine days now. My due date was suppose to be this Wednesday. Wow, I can't imagine how big he would be!

Micah's first bath was an interesting experience. He liked the warm water....at first, but since it was a sponge bath, the cool air that hit him afterward made it a "not so nice" time. He handled it great!

We are back to battling Micah's Bili-rubin count. Today we went in to get his blood drawn(for what we thought would be the last time) and found out his count was still fairly high. We have to go back on Wednesday and have him retested. So once again we are sun tanning our little guy with a bili-blanket. In some of the pictures above you can see the light from the bili blanket. When we are at home we keep him wrapped up in it to help him get better. I can honestly say this tugs on my heart strings.

Ryan is such a rock, he has been my voice of reason, my biggest supporter and the world's best dad (aside from my own of course.) Ryan seems to have a better grasp on this parenting thing than I do. Check him out, he always gets little Mac to calm down and chill. Perhaps it's that he doesn't smell of breast milk, but whatever it is he has the magic touch.

At Home...sort of

So, we were discharged from the hospital on Tuesday around noon and sent home to relax...well, sort of. Since our little Mac was looking yellow, they had us come back every day to get some blood work done to monitor his bilirubin count. On Friday, the count finally started to retreat just below the threshold level of what they are worried about.

On top of that, sleep hasn't exactly been something that we've had a lot of in our household lately. Don't get me wrong here, Micah kicks some serious butt in the chilled out baby category, but still the new sleep schedule takes some getting used to. Not only that, but we haven't exactly been too lazy around here, we've been going to cookouts, parties, 4th of July fireworks, cherry picking.

We've also done a very limited amount of camera work with the little man, but we'll try and get a photo shoot going soon. Here are a couple of our latest favorites...mostly fun little detail macro type shots, but they're all fun to us.

Last of the Hospital Pictures

Hey everyone...here are a few more pictures of Micah that we snapped the last day we were in the hospital. You can see just a small range of expressions that he has. He learns a few more everyday, I think. Things have been a little crazy around the house as we try to adjust to this new way of living. We haven't taken any pictures of him around the house yet, but we will definitely get caught up on that. As far as the last post...that is Micah on top.

Who's Who

So, 1.4 minutes after little Micah was born everyone started to say that Micah looked like his Daddy. I figured that I would pull a photo from the Cross archives and do a little bit of a comparison. I must say that there are some definite similarities...but I'm not going to tell you who is who...you'll just have to try and figure it out. We will have more pictures up sometime tomorrow...I just wanted to have some fun first.