Parker Riley Barnes, aka "The Hulk"

He finally showed up! I had to go in and be induced, but Parker Riley Barnes consented to be born on May 15, 2012 at 6:41 PM. He weighed a whopping 9lbs 8oz. The entire stay at the hospital, every nurse that came in exclaimed over how big he was.

He's a big boy!  85% in weight, 92% length

When we finally got to go home, we were unsure how Zoey would react. After all, we had disappeared for two days – the first time in her entire life we spent a night without her – and come home with a new child. She was thrilled! She had an amazed look on her face and just wanted to look and look at Parker. She kept saying “BIG baby!” I think she expected him to be the size of one of her dolls.

He's bigger than a burrito from Gorditos!

Since then, she's mellowed out a bit towards him, but still wants to hold him quite a bit. Unfortunately, that usually coincides with when I'm feeding him, which doesn't work out so well! The only time she's been eager to give him back was last night when she was holding him and he audibly pooped, causing her to recoil and say “Here you go, Mama” and bolt from the chair.

This is the best game EVER!

This onesie was made at my baby shower; Misty had us all create custom dino clothes for Parker

He has a nose!

She also likes to play with him on his floor gym. She mimics what he's doing, giggling the whole time. So far, his tummy time has been pretty impressive – he's already rolled over a couple of times, once at two days old and again at four days old! He also managed to push himself from one side of the mat to the other. I'm pretty sure he's going to be a professional athlete.

They'll always play this nicely together, right? 

Trying to crawl and getting pretty upset at the lack of traction

Things I've learned:  

1) the rocking chair needs a more comfortable pad. This wouldn't be an issue if Parker would learn to sleep in his crib at night instead of demanding an all-you-can-eat buffet between 11PM and 4AM. I know I could move to the living room with him and have more comfortable seating, but for some reason, I'm convinced that staying in his room will lead to him figuring out the whole night/day thing faster. There's no evidence of this, but hey – it's only been four nights...and last night, he actually slept in his crib for almost 45 minutes, so I got a little snooze in the middle of the night, which was wonderful.

2) Boys are expensive. Did you know most insurances don't cover circumcision? Neither did I, until the pediatrician told me. Yikes. We could save money on food simply by being too tired to make food. However, Zoey is not too tired to eat, so we have to make meals anyway.

3) If you get a spurt of energy, use it. It's different from when Zoey was born, because with her, all we had to worry about was us...and we didn't care all that much about ourselves during the initial sleep-deprived weeks. Zoey pretty much insists that we continue life as normal whether or not we have any energy. The saving grace has been those caffeine-fueled spurts of energy that lead to prepping food for quick cooking later on. Not taking advantage of those moments means that we are all cranky and irritable when it comes to making dinner – Zoey because her meals are late and lacking and Randy and I because we have no energy and everything takes too much work to make, especially with a cranky toddler. If we were smarter, we'd have done all this in advance like we kept talking about.