After eating his breakfast this morning, Gavin joyfully sat in his bouncer while I sat on the floor next to him and ate my bowl of cereal as usual. This is typically one of Gavin's best times of the day when his tummy is full, his diaper is dry, and he's content to just be awake and take in his surroundings after sleeping most of the night. Today was certainly no exception and he turned into Super Happy Baby! He was grinning away so much that I had to check to make sure I didn't have milk dribbling down my chin and he wasn't just laughing at me! It was too much fun and I just had to snap a dozen or so photos.

Gavin is exposed to so much photography that we hope he grows up assuming this is a fact of life. It will only be when he makes friends that he'll realize it's not normal to have a camera shoved in your face several times a day and that his parents are nuts. Some day he'll learn that other parents don't play with LEGOs and that most daddies prefer watching football instead of mommies. Until that day, we'll continue to reinforce these falsehoods. ;)

Today Gavin is a whopping three weeks old. Our little man is growing up so fast!

We've been told over and over that newborns love to be swaddled, wrapped up tightly in a blanket because it reminds them of when they were in the womb. Now that he's such a big boy of three weeks, Gavin's over the whole swaddling thing. Here he demonstrates his preferred sleeping position. Seeing him sleep now explains a LOT of what I was feeling during those last few months of pregnancy!

Our little marksman is going to be courted by the NRA if the remarkable aim he displayed this evening continues. Yes, after dancing cheek to cheek with my boy for a while I laid him down for a diaper change and discovered that not only were his shirt and blanket wet, so was MY shirt! Doesn't he look so proud of himself?

Really, though, he's cute even when he's doing something so simple as eating. He's also fairly noisy, with his heavy breathing, grunting, and slurping.

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Gavin was making some funny faces in the living room, so Traci called me in to record. She quickly decided to move to the changing table, where things, shall we say, progressed.

Gavin usually wakes up and lets us know all too well when he's hungry. Once or twice a day, though, we have to wake him up to feed him since his growling tummy doesn't tell him it's snack time. This always turns into a drawn-out process that takes over ten minutes and consists of a dozen or so yawns and roughly 362 different facial expressions. We were able to capture this afternoon's wake up call in still photos.

While he was up, we gave him another bath. This time not a tear was shed! Yay!

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It takes our son about 30 minutes to wake up. After a couple hours sleeping off a bottle of the good stuff, he'll give a few tentative grunts, pause for ten minutes, then do a few sleepy stretches. He waits another ten or fifteen minutes, does a slightly more intense workout, and then dozes off again. A bit later, he'll do his final calisthenics, culminating in a plaintiff wail for more food. This movie was edited down from twenty-five minutes of raw footage, and I had already missed the first grunts before I could get the camera rolling.

Today is Jeff's birthday. Gavin got him an Indiana Jones LEGO set but didn't offer to help assemble. Someday he'll find LEGO building more exciting! Later today the fam will be over to celebrate. Gavin is looking forward to having company!

I am currently taking photos of Gavin every day with the goal of having one photo for each day of his first year. I thought it would be fun to see his progression through the year since he'll be changing so much so quickly. These daily can be viewed on Flickr: Gavin's First Year: Day By Day

There are other photos of Gavin that are only available to friends and family (and friends of friends and family!). You'll need a Flickr account to view these so create one if you haven't already and shoot me a message so I can add you as a contact and hook you up with even more photos of our cutie-patootie!

Gavin now has a new website, though not one meant to in any way supplant this very fine blog of his. The new site, www.muddydiapers.com, will be the official repository for all video productions staring the G-Man. You may ask yourself why I'm not going to just post the videos here on this blog. The primary reason: I'm lazy. The software that came with my computer allowed me to create muddydiapers.com with just a few clicks, and uploading each new video will be as simple as entering a caption and hitting "Publish". As I figure it, if I keep the process as absolutely simple as possible, I'm quite likely to continue doing it, instead of growing bored in a few months and just archiving the videos for future use on VH1's "Before They Were Stars".

So, if you'd like to read about the Guvnor's latest hi-jinks, come here to the blog. If you'd like to oogle excellent still photography of the future Secretary General of the United Nations, visit Traci's Flickr page. If you want to see short clips (and perhaps later, longer productions) of Captain Whizzers being funny, cute, and awe-inspiring, check out www.muddydiapers.com.

Gavin's first visit with the pediatrician was this morning and he's a completely healthy little boy. He weighed in at 8 pounds, 8 ounces after being discharged from the hospital at 8/4 so the doctor was pleased that he's already back up to his birth weight plus a little more. The visit was just a basic examination and we were able to get answers to lots of questions we've had over the past week taking care of the little guy! We'll take him back in a month to begin his monthly checkups.

I just wrote "over the past week" ... Our little Gavin is already one week old! It's hard to believe that it was only last Thursday that I was awaken at 3:00 AM in the hospital by several contractions that told me "this is the real thing." We'd gone in for the induction the night before. I was given Cervidil which was supposed to prepare for receiving labor-inducing Pitocin the following morning. Either the Cervidil was the little push needed to get labor started (the midwife said that it doesn't often cause labor to begin by itself) or Gavin finally decided to come on his own just as I'd hoped. Just ten hours later he finally joined us. It seemed like I was pregnant for so long that I still sometimes don't believe he's actually here!

Tonight we took the G-man out for the first time since coming home from the hospital. Jeff had to test new microphones with singers at church so Gavin and I tagged along. Once he stopped crying half the way there, he slept the entire time! He never even flinched at the loud music and met some new friends.

Today was also a milestone in Gavin's life. He watched his first new episode of Dirty Jobs with Daddy:

We've had Gavin's crib set up since the summer so it was exciting to finally see a baby sleeping in it for the first time last night. He looks so tiny all alone in that big crib!

It's so much fun learning new things about Gavin every day. We learned right away that he doesn't like his arms swaddled and will manage to work them out if they are. He'll often shoot both arms straight up beside his head as a sudden reflex like he's a referee declaring a score. He was obviously paying attention when we watched football this fall. TOUCHDOWN! :)

Gavin and I were each given a clean bill of health and left the hospital shortly after noon today. We have many updates and photos to share but Jeff and I are exhausted so we're planning on napping along with Gavin all day tomorrow. We're just really happy to be home with our little boy!

Thanks for all of your prayers and well wishes. We really felt them and appreciate every one!

For more photos, check out Aunt Kristen's Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fl2nc03

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Keep your eye on him, there are three good touchdowns in this video.

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Aunt Kristen analyses patterns of Gavin's voracious sucking action, and again provides us with a wonderful demonstration.

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Kristen is awed by her nephew's capability of expression.

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Gavin is admired by his maternal grandmother while his aunt devises the maniacal takeover of the baby blog.

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Gavin wows the ladies already with his impressive height and substantial girth.

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Immediately after birth, Gavin was placed on Traci's now-smaller belly, where he was scrubbed dry by four hands. I then cut the cord, and he was swaddled and placed into Traci's arms. He is a bit confused by all the light and sound, thus the crying. The nurses are already talking about the next baby coming down the hall - Gavin was born while the midwife was overseeing three other labors in the same stage.

We're off to the hospital! It's time to force Baby Highsmith from his home of nine months. Tonight is prep work and the Pitocin drip will start tomorrow at 8:00 AM so there likely won't be any baby news until tomorrow afternoon. I'm still holding out hope that he'll decide to make his move before then.

Grandmommy has been given the reigns to the blog and will be posting updates until we return.

Neither did we :). Ha! So much for a 2007 baby or the first of the new year! It never crossed my mind that this baby would be born in 2008 or that I wouldn't be having a December baby. I guess he just really doesn't want his birthday close to Christmas!

I continue to have almost all of the "1-7 days before labor begins" symptoms just as I have for the past three weeks. Baby reassures me daily that he's still doing fine by having play time several times a day. This usually involves kicking my bladder and entertaining everyone by creating waves across my tummy.

I'm really hoping that he's starting to get nervous about being forced out, though, and decides to come on his own before we head to the hospital tomorrow for our 5:00 PM induction prep. I wanted and planned on a drug-free birth for Baby's benefit so an intervention like this would be disappointing.

By the way, Jeff and I are extremely disappointed in all of your early birth date guesses in the baby pool. I'm sure not heading to Vegas any time soon with any of you! :) he he!