Who is that masked man?

Newest Sweetie Reid, like his brothers, has positive blood. His mother, Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen, has her father’s negative blood. Not good. The mother’s blood forms anti-bodies to fight the invasion of the baby’s positive blood. Some of those anti-bodies enter the baby’s bloodstream and attack the baby.

Fortunately, Reid has as little of that as could be hoped. Even so, in the days following his birth last Thursday, he was a little jaundiced and had to go “under the lights” as you see here. His brothers were told he was getting infused with super powers.

Baby and mother are doing fine. In fact, baby and mother attended older brother Mack’s soccer practice Monday evening, just four days after the birth by C-section. Now that’s a Soccer Mom!

Newest Sweetie

Grandpa has a brand new Sweetie today — Reid Fisher, third son of Jill and Byron. Reid and Fisher are both fifth generation family names.

The little guy was two weeks early, but weighed in at 7 pounds 3 ounces, and is 19 inches long. He and his mother are both doing fine.

Photo taken about three hours after Reid’s birth.

Each of the six of Grandpa’s Sweeties have, oddly enough, been born on days of the month that are prime numbers: 7, 13, 13, 19, 23 and 31. Thought you’d want to know.

Dudes

NewMexiKen doesn’t usually include the Sweeties in the main blog, but what the hey, it’s my blog and I’ll blog them if I want to.

Taking a grandpa leave-of-absence

NewMexiKen is busy visiting some of The Sweeties. I’m telling them they should move to New Mexico because we not only have Santa Claus, we also have Santa Fe!

(And, when you think about it, Santa Fe is a fantasy a lot like Santa Claus, only in earth tones.)

Blogging will ebb and flow as computer time not devoted to Dragon Tales permits.

Lions and tigers and bears

Veronica, official daughter-in-law of NewMexiKen, wonders what Sofie’s dad has done to their child (who turns two this week):

For many reasons, Sofie is lucky to have Ken as her daddy. He is, simply put, a perfect dad who spends every minute that he’s not at work doing something for or with Sofie. However, I can’t help thinking that somehow, somewhere he’s failed.

Here’s why: Today, Sofie and I were playing with finger puppets. The theme of our puppet show was zoo animals. I held up the lion puppet, and Sofie roared. I held up the bear puppet, and Sofie growled. I held up the elephant puppet, and Sofie made a trumpet-like sound. I held up the tiger puppet, and Sofie said “Wack it, Tiger. Ball in the hole!”

Aidan, the third of the five Sweeties

	… is two today.
	Here’s the story of his arrival.

Cheating

When NewMexiKen visits Mack, the oldest of The Sweeties (he’ll be five in December), the first thing out of his mouth is, “Can we play Dragon Tales?” Dragon Tales is a television program for little kids, animated as they all are. Like most of these programs it has an on-line presence with stuff about the show, pages you can print and color, and games. And it was this particular program and its particular games where I first let Mack play with my laptop. (He has enviable skill with the touchpad.)

While Mack still usually starts each session with the original Dragon Tales, he now often takes a look at sites for other shows and their games. Among his favorite are games which are played like the card game Concentration. Cards are turned face down; you turn them over two at a time to see if you can remember which is which and find the two that match. The on-line games for little children keep this simple with maybe only eight or ten pairs. Still I have marvelled as four-year-old Mack does exceptionally well finding the pairs.

Recently he advanced to a real game with 25 pairs of animals printed on one side of wooden cards. He did very well at first, competitive even with his parents. Then he began to beat his mother 14-11, 15-10, etc., and she was trying. This frustrated her, as one might think. She asked Mack how he did it. I mean, he was matching animals she didn’t even think he’d even seen at that point in the game. Short answer — it seems Mack had memorized the grain patterns on the back of the wooden cards.

Clearly a clever little boy. What I can’t figure out is how come a kid this smart has never thought to ask his parents to play computer games on their computers. He thinks mine has an exclusive.

Sweeties rule

Functional Ambivalent can’t get enough of The Sweeties.

Little does he know that NewMexiKen.com is going to change to BomPa.com and go to an “all grandchildren, all the time” format.

Now there are five

Grandpa has a brand new Sweetie this morning — Alexander James, the son of Emily, official younger daughter of NewMexiKen, and her husband Rob.

Baby and mother are fine.

Photo taken by Auntie Jill when A.J. was about 50 minutes old.

The Sweeties know what to be thankful for

Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen, reports on Mack, official oldest grandson of NewMexiKen (nearly four):

At preschool yesterday, each child colored a picture of Pilgrims. Then the teacher asked each one what he/she was thankful for. She wrote the response on the picture to send home.

I’m sure most kids said “Mommy and Daddy” or “My sister” etc.

Mack’s paper said, “I am thankful for cookies with goop.” (That’s what he calls Oreos.) I was so moved.

Halloween

NewMexiKen doesn’t usually put photos of the Sweeties in the text, but screw it, I’m depressed. We need some smiles around here!

Into the mouths of babes

Jill, one of the two official daughters of NewMexiKen, reports:

[Three-year-old] Mack and I picked out some lovely ripe cherries at the market today. We’re going to chop them up put them in homemade ice cream.

At lunch I diced some of them and gave them to [8-month-old] Aidan.

He grabbed a couple and stuffed them in his mouth. Immediately, his eyes shot to me with an expression that perfectly conveyed two thoughts:

“My God, but I do love you, woman.”

and

“Exactly what else have you been keeping from me?”

Look out, Barry!

Three-year-old Mack informs everyone (through his mommy) that he was one of only two kids to hit a home run* during his at bat at tee ball class today. Yay Mack!

*”Home runs” are conditional in many ways. Some, but not all, of the factors that contribute to a tee ball home run include:

1) How well the child hits the ball off the tee.

2) The speed with which the instructor reaches the child and redirects him towards first base after the child goes tearing indiscriminately towards left field.

3) How many of the children playing in the field are actually paying attention to the at bat, rather than standing at the bleachers asking their mommies for goldfish crackers.

4) The “coming within ten to twelve feet of second base is close enough” clause.

5) Which child fields the ball. It’s usually Zachary or Carson (“The Big Kids”), and no way are you getting a home run. But if your ball accidentally trickles right up to the feet of Noah (“The Kid Who Won’t Participate Without His Mommy”) you stand a chance.

Update: Lest it not be clear, Mack’s mommy provided this report.

Valentine cousins

Halloween photo added

Halloween 2003

Chile pepper

New photo added to Halloween 2003

Happy Halloween

Halloween photos

Loving brother

Two important food groups

NewMexiKen fed his grandson the breakfast of single adult males this morning — chips and salsa. Hey, he asked for them.

Big Brother and Mommy

Aidan Gabriel

By Emily [with permission]

This is Emily, Jill’s sister, writing to tell you that Jill and Byron have a beautiful new son, Aidan Gabriel. Aidan is gorgeous and everyone is doing well.

After 48 hours of labor (yes, that says 48), Aidan was born at 8:59 PM, Friday, September 19. He weighs a perfect 8 pounds and is 20 inches long. After all that labor, you’ll be happy to hear that Aidan arrived through a non-surgical delivery. He is a perfectly healthy boy. Both Mom and baby are doing very well.

All this in a hospital that had no water due to the hurricane that hit Virginia Thursday. In fact, the hospital had cancelled elective deliveries, so they had the floor to themselves. The strange part of this story is that Jill was also born in a building with no running water. She was delivered at home and the water in the house had been turned off to fix a leak. (There’s a story Aidan will get sick of hearing!)

Aidan is a cutie-pie with sandy hair, blue eyes, and a small cleft in his chin (like his daddy). He seems very curious and was eager to look around and meet his family members. The whole time we were there, he made sweet, soft cooing noises. (Just imagine the story he was telling after 48 hours of contractions!)

Mack has already talked to his mommy tonight and can’t wait to head to the hospital first thing tomorrow morning to check out his new sib.

To quote Jill, “Thanks for all your warm wishes and loving thoughts during the last nine months. We can’t wait to introduce everyone to our new little guy. — Love, Jill, Byron and Big Brother Mack”