Failed attempts to capture Jackson smiling

Jackson has been smiling a lot, but I am not very skilled at capturing those precious moments on camera. Here are some of my failed attempts. As you can tell, due to the delay of my camera...I have captured the tail end of his smiles or his eyes are shut or he moves a hand in front of his face :)

I then decided to video him, but then he got camera shy and stopped smiling! As soon as I figure out how to post the videos I have taken, I will post those as well. In the meantime, I will continue the pursuit of capturing his precious smile!

* please ignore the fact that in some of the pictures his outfit is way too big :) he is in between sizes right now. He has outgrown the newborn clothes but some of the 0-3 months are too big :)

Minivan

There has been a new development in the Louis household. I have officially crossed over into the "mommy" role. I am now the proud owner of a minivan! This was not an anticipated event. As some of you may know, Walt was planning on driving his car into the ground and my 4Runner has a ways to go before its retirement. But long story made short, Walt's sister needed a car and so we sold Walt's car to her. Walt was sad to part with his car, but was glad to keep it in the family :) So we found ourselves in the position of needing to buy a new car earlier than we were planning. But we decided to take the plunge and we went ahead and purchased a minivan.

It is a used Honda Odyssey. It has about 14,000 miles on it. It is black and is in good condition. I haven't really had the opportunity to drive it yet, but I am sure there are numerous benefits I have yet to discover :) Here are a few pictures!

Jackson Barnard Louis

Jackson Barnard Louis was born on 11/6/09 at 9:31PM. He weighed 8lbs 6oz and was 21 inches long. He was 1 week and 4 days late so my doctors decided to induce. We went to the hospital that morning at 7:30AM. Things got off to a slow start. The doctors and nurses were even talking about stopping the induction and starting over again the following day due to the lack of progress.

Fortunately, God had other plans :) Things quickly progressed...so quickly that my parents stepped out of the room for me to get checked at one point and the next thing I knew I was pushing. Twenty minutes later, Jackson was born!

Here are some pictures from the amazing day! You may or may not be able to tell that Jackson was born with red hair! Although we knew this was a possibility since both of his grandfathers have red hair, it was still a bit of a surprise :) But of course we are biased and think he is absolutely precious! It will be interesting to see if it stays red!

Walt & I (before Jackson's debut)

Our new family!!!

Jackson with my dad
Jackson with my mom
My parents were able to be in town for Jackson's birth. And Walt's sister, Alex, came up to the hospital to see Jackson when he was born. My parents stayed for a few days to help out and then Walt's parents came up to help. We are so blessed to have such wonderful parents!

Here are some pictures of the first few weeks of Jackson's life. He will be 3 weeks old tomorrow! I will try to do a better job of blogging more timely going forward! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I couldn't resist...he loves to sleep like this and it was such a big yawn for such a little boy :)

Jackson's 1st bath...as you can tell, at first he was a little concerned :)

But then he realized that even though his parents are rookies...bath time wasn't so bad

Jackson with Walt's mom

Jackson with Walt's dad

Such a sweet face!

Here is a picture with his eyes open :) It seems that in most of my pictures he is sleeping :)

Here is a picture of him stretching his legs :)

Another sleeping picture! He loves his swing!

Like father...like son...both asleep with their mouths open :)

Jackson Debut