Introducing...Nathaniel Frost Cason

As many of you will know from Christi's Facebook, our Nathaniel was born on September 1st. He weighed in at 7lbs, 13oz at birth and he is, of course, absolutely beautiful. He was a total surprise as Christi had come to think it was a girl and so had I. I was completely shocked when those boy parts came flopping out. Previously, we had mentioned that we had an ultrasound picture with the sex info written on it, stashed in an envelope that I had hidden from Christi. Well, we successfully avoided the temptation, but were convinced it was a girl due to Christi's feelings, cravings and the fast heartbeat we always heard on the doppler in the Dr.s office.
Enter Nathaniel.


The first thing the nurse pointed out was the size of his hands. He really does have big hands and feet for a newborn. You know what big hands and feet mean don't you? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It means shoes and gloves will be hard to find when he gets older...why? What did you think I meant?


So the name...we had been thinking about Xander, but Christi really didn't like it much. She was thinking Zane, but I didn't really like that one, so we were tossing out some names and Christi said Nathan. I've knew a Nathan and didn't like him much, so I threw out Nathaniel, which we thought sounded better anyway. We hemmed and hawed and mulled over a few others, then when it came down to it, we asked the kids to vote, for Xander or Nathaniel. We went with their choice. I think Christi is just beginning to warm up to it. The middle name Frost comes from Christi's mom's family and was originally after Robert Frost.
Just a week after Nathaniel was born, his first checkup with the Pediatrician revealed that his bilirubin was high and the Dr. sent us back to the hospital for a dose of light therapy. Christi stayed at the hospital with him and he was home the next evening looking a much more normal shade of caucasian instead of jaundice flavored yellow. Most of the kids have had a bit of jaundice after birth, but he is the first one called back in for the light treatment, although Morgan did get the lights while he was in the NICU at Loma Linda.
Nathaniel is now home enjoying Mommy and his brothers and sisters, all of whom want to pick him up and carry him around all the time. We're sure happy to have him home and will enjoy watching him turn into the little person he's going to be.

Welcome Home Nathaniel!!

An anniversary, of sorts

It was 3 years ago, on Saturday that we began the filming for our TLC show Kids By The Dozen. Christi and I have been reminiscing a bit as our little Laura Mae (She was in the belly for the filming) has been asking to watch the show very frequently in recent days. "Watch Mommy-Daddy!" she says and we or one of the kids will bring up the show on the DVR.

Christi and I were talking about that first day, meeting the crew and the producers. We had already met Laura Swalm by that time as she had come out for the initial meeting with the executive producer, Bernadette McDaid. On the first filming day, however, she arrived with an assistant, two cameramen, Dane Lawing and Ronny and our sound guy, Brad. We were introduced to everyone and over the course of that week, we got pretty familiar with them. Christi reminded me how nervous she was on that first day, compared with 4 days later, we came to expect to see the crew sitting around the living room every morning, Starbucks in hand waiting for us to get the kids up and presentable. We had a lot of fun filming that show, we got to see a lot of cool insider stuff that happens when filming TV shows (we still point out stuff on other shows) and we made some friends. Christi is still in touch with Laura via Facebook and Chad still talks to the production assistant Trevor.

It was really a great time and I think we'd do it again if the chance came up.