Our little pumpkin

I (Bridget) like to call Cooper my little pumpkin... seasonally appropriate I think. Here is a shot of Cooper and our Halloween pumpkin.

Holding Pacifier

Only on day 13 and Cooper can already hold in his own pacifier! Okay, I'm sure this is just where his fingers wound up but I like to pretend:)

Like Father Like Son

I think it's easy to see the resemblance between Cooper and me but others have indicated that he also looks a little bit like Bridget.

I don't quite see it yet but I do think there's hope for a Lil' Papi impersonation! :-)

Celebratory Outfit

Marcus never should have given me editing privs to this blog! I get to sneak on a Yankee photo:) This is just the first of many Yankee outfits. I have a feeling it will be an on going battle between Marcus and my father... who will Cooper root for?

Cooper at the tanning salon

Ok it's not really a tanning salon but a remedy for Bilirubin ( http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/bilirubin-15434 ). I'm happy to say that Cooper's doing better but he's still at the salon until tomorrow morning.

During our visit to MGH, however, we found out something surprising...Cooper had grown 3 inches in 3 days. I started doing the math and determined that at this rate he would be 547.5 feet by age 18. Certainly troublesome for a family that only owns a 22.6 cubic foot refrigerator. Obviously humans don't grow at a linear rate of 1 inch per day, however, I suspect that Cooper is still going to be a big kid. The question is, how big?
Mom is 5' 11.5" and dad is 6' 1". If I applied an average of our heights, then Cooper is destined to be about 6' tall, however, anecdotally kids always seem taller than their parents and it's likely a result of many variables. I decided to do some online research to see if I could find some more "legitimate" answers.

I came across a utility on About.com called "Height Predictor - How tall will your kids be?" http://pediatrics.about.com/cs/usefultools/l/bl_height_pred.htm
How Perfect!!! Of course there were a few caveats about accuracy that preceded this exercise such as: "Your child has a 68% chance of being within 2 inches and a 95% chance of being within 4 inches of this predicted height. Keep in mind that other factors may influence your child's growth, including his overall health and nutritional status." Heck, it's easy to predict a height that has an 8 inch spread. As soon as I read that I should have stopped wasting my time but I was still curious and moved forward. His predicted height came back as 6' 3"--at least it confirmed my anecdotal evidence that kids often become taller than their parents. But how can two people shorter than 6' 3" can produce a taller kid?

I looked at another article on Nature.com that described a human height study involving ~63,000 individuals. http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v40/n5/abs/ng0508-489.html
In that study they indicated that there are 54 variables that influence height. I have no way of telling whether or not those 54 factors were included in the About.com height utility but if they were, each factor (if weighted equally) would average to 0.037 inches of that 2 extra inches of growth (beyond the tallest parent's height). I'm probably simplifying this study too much but I guess my take away is that there are a lot of variables affecting height and one cannot manipulate them all enough to produce a substantial growth difference beyond what is already genetically inclined.

When it comes down to it, I don't really care about his height. At this point I just want a healthy Cooper that likes to sleep between midnight and 6am. Is that too much to ask? :-)

Welcome home Cooper

The whole family finally transitioned back home today. By the looks of it, Cooper and Bridget were starting to get used to the hospital amenities.

Day 2 - Still tired from the move...

...but not too tired to show off his nifty Halloween costume!

If I had to guess what Cooper's thinking, I would suspect he's hoping his head won't get as big as mine. Sorry buddy...genetics is not your friend in this case.