Welcome, Lauren Mackenzie

Our family has expanded! I am happy to announce the birth of our second child, Lauren Mackenzie Heaberlin on Tuesday, March 20, 2007. She came into this world weighing 8 lbs., 5 oz. and measuring 21 and a half inches in length.



She looks like Cayleigh but with dark hair!



Becca and Lauren are resting at home now. Cayleigh is excited and growing accustomed to seeing us both hold another baby. She enjoys helping with stuff like bottle feeding (she loves to hold the bottle) and is constantly leaning to give Lauren a kiss or to hold her hand. I'm now the proud father of two beautiful daughters!



I have to admit though I made my first of likely many mistakes as Lauren's dad just hours from her birth. Those of you on my e-mail distribution might notice I have spelled her name differently here than I did in my e-mail announcement. Yes, I misspelled my own child's name. I could of course claim we simply "changed" the spelling but that wouldn't be right. It was even my suggestion months ago when we chose her name to spell it "Mackenzie" instead of "McKenzie" but I e-mailed it as such anyways. Oh well…




Be sure to check the photos in the gallery!



-Scott

Mini Vacation

It's 5 minutes after midnight on Friday, June 16th. T-minus one day 'till our mini vacation to Myrtle Beach! This will be Cayleigh's first ever trip to the beach - so I've got batteries charged and cameras queued. I'll update the gallery with more photos from months six and seven when we return on Tuesday.




Work is going pretty well - busy as can be. We've got several large projects underway in my team, including one from-scratch, next-generation product. Of course, the deadlines are near-insane and the pressure is high to produce high quality software… a dangerous combination but I think we're up to the task.




A little time at the beach should yield just enough R&R to keep me from getting burned out. Burned, maybe, but not burned out.




In geek news, I've downloaded and installed the Windows Vista beta 2 DVD and have installed it in my local VMWare instance. It seems pretty cool; I need to tweak my VM settings so it's not quite so sluggish. Maybe I'll get around to posting some screenshots or something :)




-S

mmmmmm-wah!

OK so it's been 5 months since I last blogged. Here?s what you've missed:



In the last 5 months, Cayleigh has grown to 17 pounds (70th percentile) and almost 29 inches (97th percentile)!!! She's rolling over constantly now, sitting up on her own, and starting to babble. Right now it's mostly "bah bah bah bah" but every once in a while it really sounds like "ma ma ma". Even after my hours and hours of chanting "da-da-da-da" !!! Oh well. She's got a little hair coming in but not much - still really light, especially in the sun. Her eyes are as blue as ever - I've no idea where she gets those from.



This week, for the first time she made an obvious attempt to mimic something we do - making a kissing sound! Monday night while Becca was playing with her, she gave the usual "I love you" followed by an in-air smooch. To our delight, Cayleigh looked up at her and made a kissy-smack with her lips! Sure enough, every time we'd do it, she'd grin and do it herself. Awesome!




Well, I'd love to write more about how far she's coming… but I've written this whole entry with her sleeping in my lap. She's now awake and reaching for the keyboard with drool-encrusted hands - so I'll sign off for now.




-S

Slobber and Giggles

We have lots of both these days. Cayleigh has discovered her hands… and chews on them accordingly. She's not quite to the teething stage yet, which makes me think we might need to contact our State Farm agent to add flood insurance because she drools quite a bit as it stands now.



Smiles and cooing abound now. She's particularly giddy after she wakes up from a sound nap or just after feeding. She has an absolutely charming ear-to-ear grin that makes me forget about work and schedules and anything with which I might have been previously preoccupied.



She's not quite sleeping through the night, though she does mangage five to six hour power snoozes after her just-before-bed feeding. Around the 5:00 AM mark or so she tends to have a wet diaper and grunts and snorts to let us know about it. We've been putting her in her own room, so to be extra-precautious we have the baby monitor turned up to near-deafening levels. I think I can hear the dust landing over that thing.

Anyways, I've found that if she is restless in the wee hours (she's really never "fussy" per-se...) she sleeps rather well in my arms in the La-Z-Boy in her room… on the magnitude of not a peep nor a twitch for 4+ hours. I am starting to kinda like it - sort of my nappin' buddy if you will. Becca says I'm wrapped… I think I'm just bein' a dad.



Today I'm off work and Becca's not… so it's a day alone with Dad for Cayleigh and me. Gonna knock out some of the todo list and maybe swing by the office or just get out for some fresh air.





Fun times,




-Scott

Six Weeks and Counting

Well, baby girl turned six weeks old this past Tuesday. So I guess it's time for a blog update, isn't it? :)



Cayleigh is doing absolutely terrific! She's up to just under 11 pounds and I believe nearly 23 inches. Since the day we brought her home she's been on an absolutely wonderful 4 hour feeding schedule (to which her body clock adheres almost to the minute). She sleeps nearly all through the night except for where we wake her up to feed her or her body clocks wakes us up to feed her :)



I'm told this is a blessing, and I'll definitely count it. It wasn't until this week that she had her first fuss-in-the-middle-of-the-night spell, and even that was minor by some anecdotes I've read on the Web. Feed, rock, sleep, repeat. Actually in the past couple of weeks's she's really starting to stay awake for longer blocks of time during the day - yesterday she was awake for over four hours straight!



In the mornings she is full of smiles that will absolutely melt your heart! If you've seen my photo gallery, you'll know I've never got the camera too far away… but there is just something about her smiling spells that entrances me to the point I cannot break eye contact nor the inescapable reciprocal grin I have to seek out the camera.



Becca is still at home for a few more weeks. She'll be working part time after that at least for a little while while we feel out how things are going to be and how our new routine will be.



Life is great!





Happy Holidays,





-Scott

Battle Story Number One

...more accurately I should say number two.



I was in the living room changing baby girl, who was a little fussy between a feeding and a nap. Super Dad here decided to check and change the diaper as quickly as possible. On a side note, I'm starting to hear the sounds of powered lug nut guns as I do these quick-changes… perhaps I'm watching too much NASCAR… So anyways, I find a mini-turd and proceed with the one-handed diaper hotswap. I was just in time to catch the aftershock-blast that made the first soiled finding look like a mere dingleberry. Woohoo! Great catch, Dad! Then, during the middle of my mental self-back-patting for a such quick reflexes, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps continuing to hold her feet above her head and hiney at a 30-40 degree up-angle isn't such a good idea. The next thing I know, my mind is flashing to the History Channel documentaries about Saddam Hussein's famed Super Gun, as brown cannon fodder is flying through the air in several directions.



Man down! Man down! Shots fired! Red Alert, Shields Up! Scotty, MORE POWER - GET US OUT OF HERE!



Too late.



Two soiled-yet-unworn diapers and 8 wipes later, munchkin is sound asleep in fresh Maggie Simpson-esque gown while Mr. Incredible dad is retreating to the bedroom for new clothes of his own.



...And we're only on day four.





Tally ho!





-Scott

Hello World!

It is with the greatest pleasure that I would like to announce:

Cayleigh Nicole Heaberlin

Born 11-1-2005 @ 12:28 PM

8 lb. 2 oz.

21 in.



Mom and baby are doing fabulous and are expected home from the hospital Thursday 11-3.

Of course, photos and videos will be available soon in the photo gallery! Until then, enjoy a few tiny pics in the mobile blog.



We are so excited! She's amazing!




-Scott

The Stage is Set

The nursery is painted.

The baby furniture is in place.

The baby clothes are washed and folded.

The closet is teeming with dozens of cute little outfits.

The crib, bouncer, playpen, papasan, carseats, and stroller are assembled.

The rocker is to be delivered within the week.

The birthing classes are finished.

The new digital camera is bought.

The camcorder is on order.

The dad-to-be has nearly beaten his new computer game.

The diaper bag is packed.

The mommy suitcase is packed.

The vacation time is marked.

The grandparents-to-be are on alert.

We've dilated 2 cm.



The stage is set for little CN to enter the world.



For now, we wait.





-S

Belly Bonanza

Over the last two or three weeks, out of nowhere Becca has developed a belly. I swear I woke up one morning and did a double-take. She still hasn't really gained much weight (though she claims she has… you can't really tell) but whoo-ee thar's a basketball in thar! It's so cute, too - baby girl is quite active and tends to be on one side or the other - to the extreme that quite literally Becca's belly will often be lopsided, an extra bulge where a head or elbow or knee is. My five year old nephew Trey was in town this week and got the opportunity to feel the baby kick - which evoked wide eyes and a quickly withdrawn hand and the exclamation "It's like theres something in there!"



Beccca can assure you, there is indeed something in there :)



And no, we're not going to "just tell you the middle name." Any of you.





-S

CNH

Lots of news to report!



This past Wednesday we found out we're having a little girl! During the ultrasound, she kept on sticking out her tongue and kept her hands over her head the entire time, even through all the poking and pushing the technician was doing to try go get her to move! As of a week ago tomorrow (July 4) I have been able to feel her kicking for a week - she's really active!



Of course, now that we know it's a girl, we can tell you her initials - C.N.H. No hints, other than of course the 'H' is for Heaberlin :) If you call / e-mail me with guesses, I'll not tell you if you're right nor if you're wrong - it's our secret till she's born!



So here shortly we're off to get paint and decorations for the nursery. Looks like Becca wants "purples and greens" which to me could be Furman Paladin purple and John Deer green, but I'm sure that's not quite the tones she has in mind. Perhaps once she picks some swatches I'll scan them in and post them here somewhere.



Elsewhere in Heab-land, we just got back from spending the weekend in Tampa, Florida, where I was a groomsman in my man Mike Rogers' wedding to his sweetheart, Teresa. The ceremony was beautiful and it was the central point to a beautiful and relaxing weekend.





-S

I can't take it anymore, so...

I'M GONNA BE A DAD!



OK, there… I said it. I've been dying to blog it for the past 2 months… but I told myself I'd wait till the end of the first trimester before spilling the beans online. Almost made it, too! :)



No, we don't know what we're having yet… I'm just hoping when it gets here November 14th it looks a lot more like Becca or me than the alien it favors in the pictures I've seen so far :)



No, we don't have potential names picked out yet but we are zeroing in, down to just a few variations. We've also decided that while we will find out and share the gender of the kid, we're keeping the name decision a secret till it's born. Yes, news of that decision won us some shrieks and frowns from the grandparents-to-be (and earned me a smack from my mother-in-law) but we want to keep everyone on their toes. :)



Heabdad - hard to imagine, isn't it? It is for me. But we are excited as can be!





I'll be sure to keep you posted,






-Scott






p.s. - thoughts? comments? Drop me a line at (scott - at - heabdogg - dot - com)