Everyday w/ JPK

Looking back now almost 13 days to the minute since Randa awoke and her water broke, I want to review that first week of this boys life, before reviewing the second.

Recovery started well with R on her feet after 24 hours. Isaac slept with me the first night which freaked out the night nurse, but was great fun for us. R had lots of annoying monitors and not the best bed for him that first night. So in addition to skin to skin soon after birth I got to bond even more with him through the night. I felt plenty guilty then, but by day two he knew who had the good stuff.

R’s sis Paula flew in Tuesday and was a great help. Having your own personal mom-baby nurse / wonder-aunt to help is definitely recommended.

After two and a half days in the hospital the three of us headed home with the help of P. I and R were both doing really well, recovering and progressing nicely eating, pooping, sleeping, etc.

Isaac got pretty hungry while working through the colostrum for a few days and became a sucking maniac, I resorted to a pacifier fairly quickly though attempted not to let him get too confused.

By Friday he had dropped to 6lb 3oz (~10%) just toeing the line enough to get us a trip to the lactation nurse at the hospital to weigh, feed then weigh again. While there, he had his first real milk burp. It had finally come! The next stage had begun. We went in again on Sunday and he was already up 6 oz.

My mother replaced Paula on Saturday and lent a very helpful hand until Monday when we began week two. Just the three of us.

more images from the first week can be seen here…

So today was long and started early. In fact it started yesterday morning for me.

R had two hours sleep and I had none when her water broke at 12:40 am. Things progressed smoothly, until they didn’t, we were both exhausted and made the choice for pain relief for a little rest, but the slippery slope soon led us to more interventions, complications, a big scare then an emergency c-section.

My brain wasn’t really functioning as I was 90 percent asleep when the C was called, definitely the chaos that ensued was one of the scariest experiences of my life. I felt completely powerless and until they got Isaac’s heart rate stabilized, which took a millenia of 2 minutes, I was not aloud in the OR.

I was in shock after that. I had some fun with Isaac but was nowhere near okay until we got back to Randa. They are both doing well now, and after a day or two more here at the hospital we’ll get to go home.

Isaac Kaffer was born at 12:16 pm January 25th, 2010

So I’ve been working late nights these past two weeks processing an amazing amount of images for a wedding I shot at the beginning of the month.

It’s been a rough week, not rough like I’m having a bad time or I’m working too much, but rough in the sense that, we’re on the cusp, week 39 is coming to an end.

Every little thing I do has an air of tying up the loose ends on a life that will be intensely different shortly.

It’s a welcome change but stress is a constant. From what I’ve been told I’m about to enter into the time warp and before I know it our unborn son will be ten and soon thereafter twenty.

With that in mind I came across this image from the wedding and found a bit of allegory in it.

I hope it finds you well, good night.

so it’s been a bit crazy trying to get everything organized to ready our lives for the baby, hence no blogging. I have been doing some recording of favorite songs for Tim’s blog, so be sure to give a listen and maybe throw one together of your own.

So I was a little distracted over the last few weeks making prints for xmas gifts and didn’t want to spoil any of the surprise for those few who received their gifts on time.

This is one of my favorite photos from the past year, and may be a good example of my scattered head, when compared to the others that hit me. I’m not really sure what my photographs represent or how I may be represented by them (which is something I’m always struggling to get a grasp of as a small business marketeer). I feel time is running a bit short though as the great unknown is set to begin with the birth of our first son within the month.

I half hope that he will bring with him some inspiration or aspiration toward a grand goal, but I’m not so optimistic to think that life could be so straightforward. My optimism lies with the fact that I only seem to meet my goals under solid deadline, and having the extra crunch of childcare, may force the structure by which my work and family will benefit.

So I’m still slowly working back through what I’ve shot in the last year, sequentially backward. I’m skipping over a lot to the images and posting the ones that are striking me most, particularly the verticals as I want to get those old posts off the first page quick and also I like the fact that the images are more than twice as big.

(aside). Today I borrowed a mixer from a friend and am totally stoked as it surely means that I will be recording my best cover(/s) ever for this years ircmt (listening to this really makes me miss old dumpster piano). Anyway with the extra umph this mixer gives me I won’t need to strain the hell out of my voice in order to get decent levels.

This image is from two days spent in Niagara Falls after R’s brother’s wedding. It was sweet! Though I have probably been through Niagara Falls 20 times, I’ve never actually stayed anywhere near the falls. I had never been to Goat Island which is where this was taken and my new favorite place to view the falls, by far.

So it’s like eleven degrees outside now. I’m not really into it at this point, I definitely feel like some hibernation is needed. I’m also denying the fact that it’s December, the year is almost over, I’m 30, etc. I’ve been listening to these 75 favorite songs of 2009 on Gramophone and recording a version of one of my favorites for this.
Anyway life is very good, most of my complaints revolve around other people complaining. Here’s a reminder of how beautiful this middle of nowhere is.

My friend Tim said that like 99 percent of blogs died in 09 and I believe him, because he knows his interwang, and he’s a librarian, I’m pretty sure he took an oath, not unlike the masons. Anyway so I tried for a while but uploading massively small image files on stolen spotty interinter is a major pain. But I am resurging tonight by posting this image. Which if I cared enough to learn anything I would try to make it bigger for you.

I’m entranced by this. I feel like it’s someone else’s, it’s that good, I do remember hoping it would be good while taking it but I never thought it could be quite so, but then again maybe it’s just hitting the right spot right now.

Here’s a view of Palouse Falls a little ways back from the edge.

So we almost made it a whole year in this day and age without internet, I feel like I could write the epic blog of our generation about just that subject…

A lot has changed in my life but I don’t really care to share that as my life is only tersely why I put pictures into this thing. The pictures are the characters and you get to write the plot infer stories and develop your own timelines and arduous screenplays. That said here’s shane with knit panties.