Inevitable Comparisons

Why even bother pretending we won't compare the kids?

Here they both are at about a week old:

Garin was bigger from the onset (over a pound larger and two inches longer) and the length shows in the picture, though the weight doesn't really. We think that Nyle might not have lost much weight post-birth since Garin looked much skinnier after a couple days and Nyle didn't change that much. Although Garin still has his signature belly and Nyle has never had much of one, so they do seem to have different body types. And clearly Nyle has a tad bit more hair.

Christmas Pictures

Kind of managed to get a posed picture of the two kids together

(Nyle is yawning, not screaming):

But Garin most enjoyed posing for his solo shots. He dressed himself this morning and, yes, those are boxers he's wearing over his green pajama pants. Very festive. He also decided that, as he was clearly Rudolph, we were all reindeer: Jess was Dancer, Mel was Vixen, and Nyle was Cupid.

What's in a Name?

With these sideburns we could have called the new one Elvis.

But we didn't . . .

(these pictures are from day 2 when he was still a little squishy looking, he's cuter now.)

Nyle is named for our good friend Amy (who really should update her blog) who complained that no one ever names babies after her. Her middle names are Lynn Elizabeth so Jess realized we could use Lyn(n) backwards plus the E from Elizabeth. Isaias is because we have many Isaac's on Mel's side of the family, but that's too common for us to like so we went with a variant that also happens to be the name of a greek orator (but we used the Spanish spelling, not Latin or Greek).

And just to be fair and give Garin's name history too: he's named for Jess' advisor and mentor Michael Gagarin. We joked that the baby might be done before the dissertation was finished and perhaps she could just turn in her first-born for her degree. And Francis is Mel's grandmother's middle name.

And Garin's last name is Miner Drewes while Nyle's is Drewes Miner. This way we all kind of share names but we all kind of have our own names too. (And Mel just enjoys breaking with tradition for the hell of it.)

Welcome to the new blog

Can't promise that this blog will be updated more frequently than the old one, but at least I can say that there will be pictures of two cute kids here, rather than just one.

For example:

Stay tuned for more . . .