Merry Christmas to all of you! We were lucky enough to be visited by Santa Claus last night on Christmas Eve. I know most kids aren’t lucky enough to see him in person, so we feel very special that he took the time out to see Kyle personally. Mrs. Claus was also there to pay a visit to us, and if she wasn’t married already, I would have asked her out as she looked great. Enjoy the video clip!

 

 Podcast Video [2:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Last night, Barbie and I watched the movie “The Siege” which stars Denzel Washington, Annette Benning and Bruce Willis. I had never heard of the movie before, but it came out way back in 1998. The ironic thing about this movie is that is a story about some terror cells that are bombing areas of NYC, and it was made a full 3 years before 9/11. While watching the movie, you have to keep reminding yourself of this fact, as there are scenes where it is clearly apparent that the government agencies DO NOT and SHOULD NOT work together on fighting terror. At one point, Denzel (FBI) even tells Annette (CIA) that she will need to go through the formal procedure request to get some information about a particular terrorist. The movie in itself is pretty good, although they do try to make Bruce (Army General) seem to be the bad guy b/c he is using military force to stop terror, which is odd given today’s state of the world. As Barbie said while watching the movie…”Does art imitate life, or is life imitating art?”

OK…here is the video of Kyle’s first bath. It happened last week while I was at work, and Barbie was kind of enough to film it for me so I wouldn’t miss out on all the fun. Of course, we have to thank Mimi (Barbie’s mom) for taking the time to actually record it also…so thank you! Without further ado, enjoy the video clip, although I must warn you I couldn’t figure out how to blur the particulars.

 

 Kyle's first bath [7:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So I finally got some time to put together a video movie of Kyle coming home from the hospital. Unfortunately, I am still testing the software, so you will see an Adobe logo in the top right corner, but it is good enough. What I am finding though is that I am quickly running out of space on my server for these video files, so things may have to change rather quickly for me regarding where these files are stored, but you as the reader won’t notice anything. The only thing you should be concerned about is that you are on a high speed connection when watching this as it is quite a large video file for only being a few minutes long…again, something I am working on improving. Anyways, enjoy, and if for some reason it freezes up while you are playing, or the downloading stops, you may have to re-click it to start it again. I suggest watching it in the popup window option.

p.s. Currently, you will need Quicktime to watch it as I wanted a good quality, but don’t have enough memory space right now to enable the flash and windows media options (all soon to come). Either way…enjoy!

 

 Kyle coming home [13:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hey all,

I am working on getting something nice setup for Kyle videos, but this should work for now. This is him just a day or two ago during one of his feedings. He’s such a cute guy!

 

 Cute Kyle [0:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Swaddle [1:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Introducing for the first time, Kyle Cecil Graver. Kyle is our new son and is in very good health. Unfortunately, he was 6 weeks premature, so he has to stay in the NICU for a few weeks until he can maintain his body temp, eat from a bottle or nurse, and keep his oxygen levels up. Luckily for us, he is already breathing 100% on his own, but still needs to work on the eating and maintaining of his temp. Once he conquers the first of many of life’s hurdles, we will be able to bring him home to his newly decorated baby room. Of course, he is the cutest kid in the world as you can tell from the pictures below, and is already starring in his own videos (see below also). I plan on trying to create weekly videos for all to see, as I want to make sure everyone can enjoy the greatest kid in the known world.

Now, we all know how Kyle came to be, but I’m sure a lot of you are asking where did the name come from. Well, after much consideration of literally thousands of names, we were able to limit it to just a few. Of course, finding out that it was a boy helped narrow the list quite considerably, but there are still a ton of boys names out there. Anyways, the name Kyle was simply a name that we both liked (very important), and a name that wasn’t too common, yet not so uncommon that it was out of the ordinary. Where the name “Cecil” came from is plain and simple, it is the name of Barbie’s grandfather. It was a great honor to be able to name our son after such a man.

So, finally the pictures. Here is Kyle’s very own gallery, so you can always check there for the latest photos. Below are just a couple of the ones that we have taken so far.

 

 Kyle's first movie: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download