When I started this blog, I was on the verge of leaving the world of academia and enter into the life of a suit.  I thought I was clever enough to come up with a few funny ideas every once in a while to post.  However, I quickly realized I have nothing to offer except my pictures of my pregnant wife and newborn son.  There may be a day when I find something better to post than this…….

Well, on second thought, I’m pretty sure I have absolutely no chance.  How do I trump that?  Simple answer, I don’t.  It’s impossible.

As some people know, we’ve had an interesting last 2 months and have finally made it back to Chicago after I travelled a lot for work and Molly migrated south for a good part of the winter.  The bad part is that we forgot our camera.  I made up for it in the first couple hours we were back home though.  We also finally made it back to the pediatrician for a 3 month checkup.  We’ve been anxious to know where he stands on his size, he’s kind of a little guy.  The pediatrician told Molly not to worry  that he is smack dab in the middle at the 50th percentile.  That is until she remembered that he is actually 3 months old and not 2, that dropped him down into the 25th percentile.  This news completely dashed any hopes I had of having some of my posterity reach the 6′ plateau.  He is pretty strong though, so maybe a cornerback, or a 2nd baseman.  Dustin Pedroia isn’t a big dude and he won the AL MVP.  He obviously doesn’t let this affect him because he is still the happiest baby I know, he’ll smile at just about anything, even my dad.

Here’s a few more pictures as proof:

Here are a few of the first smiles that were caught on camera.  Now, these are not the first ones ever, but we have not been able to get him to do it for the camera.  On Sunday we sat looking through the camera at him for a good 15 minutes waiting for him to smile, but he wouldn’t.  Once the camera was down, the smiles came back and were gone before we could get the camera up.  However, our patience paid off and we were able to get a few.  And, we love him!!

One of the first questions people always ask when they hear we’ve had a baby is normally, “does he look more like mom or dad?”.  My answer to that question was always I have no idea.  He has darker skin and really dark hair, which matches perfectly with my white skin and reddish hair.  So, I guess I always assumed he looked more like Molly.  That is until we looked at the pictures below.  I could not believe how much he looked like me when I was a newborn.  So, sorry son, you might end up with fair skin and red hair after all.

Here’s newborn Griff.

Here’s me as a newborn.

Here’s Molly.

What do you think?  Who does he look like?

We officially welcomed Griffin Turk Watts to our family this week.  Griff was born October 26, 2009 at 7:18 AM.  He weighed in at a whopping 6 lbs 11 oz and 20.5 inches long (which by the way is longer than my nephew Ryne, take that Brad).

I imagine that most of the posts for the next while will be baby related, makes sense right?  I think so.  Have you ever heard of a 3-D or even a 4-D ultrasound?  I know I had never heard of such a thing until Molly told me the other day she was going to get one.  I don’t even know what 4-D means.   I took some Linear Algebra classes in college where we discussed such abstract things but I intentionall purged my memory of all of that as quickly as humanly possible.  For those of you who don’t believe that 4-D is possible, just look at the top of the first picture below, yeah, it’s in 4-D.  (And no, I still don’t exactly know why it’s 4-D)  As you can, this type of 4-D was much more enjoyable and memorable than my college experience. 

Just waving at us.

Saying hello. 

Technology is pretty unbelievable.

Molly and I had a wonderful visit with an Ultrasound machine today.  This week will mark the 20th week of Molly’s pregnancy, so for those of you familiar with the progression of growing baby, we are in a prime spot to find out what kind of baby we’re going to have.  Some people decide to wait and never find out until the baby is born, we gave all of about .0001 seconds to that idea, (and that’s a little generous, it was probably even less than that) there’s no way we weren’t going to find out.

I’ve always felt for some reason that we were going to have a girl.  Maybe it’s because my dad has put a bounty out for the first granddaughter in my family and having never won any kind of contest in my life (you know, like drawings in school for candy bars or a new trapper keeper) I thought this might be my best shot.  Even after I had a dream a few weeks back about having a little boy, I stayed true to my initial thought.  Molly on the other hand, never having been much of a betting woman (even though she picked the right horse at the Preakness) just flat out refused to say one way or the other.  She didn’t want to be wrong so the best way to avoid that possibility was not even making a guess.  Solid rationale, but lacking in the fun category.  Just between me and you though, I think she was definitely leaning towards a girl also.

Side Note:  Another probable reason for Molly’s wanting of a girl is because we had a name that we both liked for a girl, but not for a boy.

Well, like any good role model will tell you, you’ve got to follow your dreams, and that’s what I should have done, because we found out we’re having a BOY!!!  As you can clearly tell below.

We were able to get a few good shots of the little man from the ultrasound, here’s my favorite though.  During the ultrasound, I leaned over to Molly’s belly and said a quick, “What’s up son, how we feeling?”  and amazingly, right after I said that, this is what he did.

He gave me the thumbs up.  That’s what I’m talking about.

This one is Molly’s favorite.  We couldn’t be happier to have a son coming our way, even if we don’t have a clue what his name’s going to be.  For now, Tiny will do.

Tiny here told us that he/she really likes the intraweb and wanted to get an early start on his/her intraweb fame.  Sometime towards the end of October he/she will be able to officially grace the web with his/her presence.  We can’t wait to welcome a new member of our family!