On Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 3, 2012 we wel­comed to the world our son, Pre­ston Jack Drum.

It started around mid­night when Jaclyn’s water broke. After a quick trip down Lake Shore Drive we arrived at Pren­tice Women’s Hos­pi­tal and began to wait. At around 8:30 a.m. they had Jaclyn start push­ing and at 11:18 a.m. Pre­ston was deliv­ered. He weighed 8 lb 11 oz and was 20″ long.

Shortly after birth Preston’s oxy­gen sat­u­ra­tion level dipped briefly, so as a pre­cau­tion they moved him to the NICU for obser­va­tion. Thank­fully it was an iso­lated inci­dent and over the next few days he aced all the tests for O₂, blood cul­tures and hear­ing. It ended up being a bless­ing because we got to spend lots of time with Pre­ston and his won­der­ful nurses get­ting super­vised prac­tice feed­ing and burp­ing him, chang­ing his dia­per, and the rest.

On Thurs­day Jaclyn was dis­charged and the next morn­ing Pre­ston was released as well. We brought him home and intro­duced him to a curi­ous but slightly con­fused Lucy. She has sniffed him all over and got­ten in a few licks, and seems fine with him join­ing the fam­ily. Pre­ston is eat­ing like a champ, sleep­ing pretty well, and keep­ing us busy with dia­per changes.

It was a great first week and we are thrilled to have our happy, healthy baby boy finally here!

In Octo­ber we took mater­nity pho­tos. I was at 30 weeks. Here are some of our favorites! Soon after we moved into a larger condo to accom­mo­date our lil guy bet­ter! Who knew a tiny baby needed so much stuff?

Yes­ter­day we had our 20 week doc­tor appoint­ment /​ultra­sound and we found out we are hav­ing a lit­tle boy! All looked good and he is tucked in a ball in my right pelvis. He seems to like it there as he wouldn’t stretch out and made it dif­fi­cult to do the ultra­sound. We almost didn’t find out if it was a boy or girl but he finally stretched out for a few min­utes and then quickly went back to his orig­i­nal posi­tion. We are very excited to meet our lit­tle boy!

We went to Cleve­land this Fourth of July week­end to visit with some fam­ily and friends. While there we got to meet my par­ents’ new dog, Peter Pan. He is a res­cue and is such a sweet dog. Lucy, Bailee and Peter played all week­end and wore each other out. We also got to visit with Danielle, Jess and Lou. Jess is also expect­ing so we got to com­pare our baby bumps. We came back on Sun­day so we had Mon­day to enjoy before return­ing to work on Tues­day. We hope every­one enjoyed their Fourth of July!

After the Run for the Zoo 10k, Jaclyn and Lucy and I spent some time walk­ing around Lin­coln Park and check­ing out the new Nature Board­walk. This is the same area where we took some engage­ment pho­tos. After that day they shut down the boat rentals and started revert­ing the pond to a more nat­ural state with water plants and flow­ers, and added the board­walk along the west side.

We are hav­ing a baby! Our lit­tle bun­dle of joy is due at the end of Decem­ber. We are very excited for the new addi­tion to our fam­ily. Here is a pic­ture of the last ultra­sound at 12 weeks.

Last week­end we planted our flower boxes on a very hot Sun­day. It’s been really hot here but they are really set­tling in now. We also planted a straw­berry planter and already got two deli­cious straw­ber­ries from it.

We had a lit­tle snow recently in Chicago.

This Christ­mas was cel­e­brated in Cleve­land with my fam­ily and Brian’s par­ents. We drove to Cleve­land on Christ­mas Eve. We went to Mass and then had a pajama party and opened our gifts from each other. Lucy and Bailee, my brother’s dog, enjoyed open­ing the gifts the most and made sure that every piece of wrap­ping paper was shred­ded. Christ­mas morn­ing we enjoyed brunch at my sister’s house while look­ing at all the gifts Santa brought the boys. We then had din­ner at my par­ents’ house and enjoyed more fam­ily time. The next day we went to Cha­grin Falls and walked around the town and then had din­ner at Bravo. The rest of our stay was rather relax­ing and included a nice din­ner with Danielle and Louie on Mon­day. We headed back to Chicago on Tues­day and that night we saw our friends Chris, Trayce, Mark and Dave at Chris & Holly’s. Brian and I both had the week off between the hol­i­days so we were able to enjoy some relax­ing days off once we got home. New Years Eve was very low key and we had din­ner at Sepia, one of our favorite restau­rants. We had some drinks after din­ner and were home by 10:30 to ring in the New Year with Lucy! We hope every­one had a great hol­i­day sea­son and we are wish­ing every­one a Happy New Year!

A few pics from this year’s Zoo Lights.