Another milestone

This was a big weekend for us.... Daddy took Nathaniel out for a few hours on Saturday. They ended up at the mall and Nathaniel slept for most of that time. I think they both had a good time. I was glad to get a few hours to myself. I ended up going shopping and found some pants to bridge the gap between pregnancy clothes and my old clothes neither of which fit right now :-( We also had Nathaniel sleep in his own room last night. I was up every two hours again, but he went back to sleep relatively easily each time. Hopefully we are making progress. Finally, Nathaniel was given a bottle this weekend and he seemed to do really well. That's what I hear anyway. It was recommended that I be out of the room when we tried to give him a bottle for the first time so while I was taking a nap yesterday (we'd been up since 3am!) daddy fixed a bottle and gave it to our little guy. He ate so fast! I guess the bottle is less work. We will probably only bottle feed once or twice on the weekend just to keep Nathaniel familiar with it. This definitely opens up possibilities for me now:-)

Alone time!!!!

Ahhh. I hardly know what to do with myself. Ken just left the house for a two hour excursion with Nathaniel (and a friend with his 18month little girl). What to do with this precious time? Go shopping? Work out? Shower? Clean the bathrooms? Read? Bake? So many options... and only two hours till he gets hungry.

Need sleep (updated)

Mr. Fussy Pants has been keeping us on our toes these days. We are very very very tired. I think he might be going through a growth spurt. He wants to eat every hour or two which is very tiresome. I put him in the car today and we drove around doing errands. He slept through Winco, Costco and Fred Meyer. Now why can't he sleep during normal sleeping hours? Now I'm tired and he's wide awake. I hear weeks 6-8 are supposed to be more challenging in general... and I was just starting to feel I was getting the hang of it. I had my 6 week checkup last week. They said to take it easy for a few more weeks. Uggh.

A few more words on the subject...when I sat down to write this blog the other day I forgot what I had planned on writing :-( This only further supports the fact that I have lost my brain. My loving husband would point out that it's been missing since June last summer. Anyway, I cannot remember when I fed Nathaniel last or changed his diaper. Ken will ask me these super-stumper questions when he comes home from work and I just give him a blank look... I know I did it just not sure if it's been two hours or not. And the real question is whether or not we expect him to be hungry soon..if only I could remember... I give Ken the same blank look in the morning when asked how many times Nathaniel and I were up last night. It all runs together and apparently I just can't put anything more in my short term memory banks. So please forgive me if I flake out on you... it's definitly not intentional.

One more confession... I let Nathaniel sleep in his carseat yesterday. Is that bad? He finally fell asleep when we were out running errands. When we got home I was exhausted so I just shut the car off and slept too in the garage for about 15 minutes.. then I remembered the groceries! After bringing them all in he was still asleep so I brought his car seat inside and let him sleep for another hour and a half before he woke up and wanted out of his carseat. Hey.. whatever it takes.

Reading already!

I recently found out there was a library just up the road from us. So last week I stopped in and asked if there was any benefit to reading to a 5 week old. She said Absolutely!!!! Guess I walked into that one, what do you expect a librarian to say? So I came home with a few books to add to a small collection we already have. It seems that Nathaniel is quite captivated by them. Smart little cookie!

Daddy and Son Bonding

When Daddy comes home from work he usually take over for me so I can get a small break for the evening. I'm not sure what deep conversation they are having here, but it's such a precious picture to me. Now that Nathaniel has taken to books, we've started to put him on the living room floor with lots of toys around him too. He seems to like the little noise makers. We are finding more and more things to keep him entertained and keep the fussiness at bay :-)

Happy Boy!

What a sweet little boy. We had lunch with Oma, Aunt Bethany and Bethany's mom and sister on Saturday. I was able to snap this photo while he was in Oma's arms.

Spring has Sprung

This last week we enjoyed some beautiful sunny days and went for many walks outside. On Friday we were even bold enough to weed the garden. We are hoping to have a bountiful garden this year since we were unable to enjoy it last summer.
The last two days have been dominated by rain showers. We are hoping we don't have any additional leaks and have been monitoring our windows from the leaks we had in December.

Out to lunch

Today we thought we would treat ourselves and go out to lunch. When we got to the restaraunt our little Mr. Fussy Pants was starting to wake up. I changed his diaper hoping that was his problem (I just fed him an hour ago) and then we sat down at the table. Menus in hand, the fussing continued.... Maybe we were too brave to think we could have a sit down dinner at a nice restaraunt. We've been trading off on holding him during our dinners at home, so I'm not sure why we thought it would be different when we were out and about. Actually, I had hoped he would be asleep while we ate. Ken asked to be sat in a place where we wouldn't bug other customers... apparently the 16 yr. old that was seating people was not in tune with what that meant. We were sitting in the only area of the restaraunt with other customers! With the cries becoming louder and louder I thought surely we were going to have to have them box everything up and take it to go. Then I had a fleeting thought. I had a baby bjorn carrier in the car. Maybe we could stick him in that while we ate... granted it made my eating a little more difficult... but we were both able to eat our lunch hands free. Today I'm loving the baby bjorn!

Wraps

I have been trying to get up the courage to use this "Moby Wrap" which one of my friends made for me. Basically it's a long piece of fabric that you can wrap around yourself a million times and then put your baby between yourself and the fabric and walk around with your hands free. My sis-in-law (Amy) had one with Mya and seemed to like it a lot, another friend (Jenn) highly recommended it, and my friend Bonnie liked hers so much she made one for me so I thought I would try it out. I've had a couple of tutorials and used a Cabbage Patch kid for practice. I felt a lot more comfortable stuffing a doll into the wrap than Nathaniel who is much more wobbly and vocal about me maneuvering him. Anyway, yesterday Ken went to play racquetball with a couple of friends and I thought here is an opportunity! It was such a nice sunny spring day and so I wrapped myself up and then had Ken spot me while we put Nathaniel in it. So Nate and I spent the afternoon walking up to the club and then around the track... every once in a while we stopped by the racquetball courts to watch Daddy play. I was starting to get tired after about an hour of walking around the track and we started to head for home. Wait a minute those clouds look ominous. Hmmm. Can I make it home before the rains? Probably shouldn't risk it. It's one thing if I get wet and soaked, but Nathaniel is probably not going to take it as easily as I can. So we went back inside and walked around a bit more. The nice thing about Portland is if you don't like the weather just wait a few minutes and it might change for you. We walked home under beautiful blue skies with a few white puffy clouds.

Too good to be true

Nathaniel slept 5 hours on both Friday night and Saturday night. I was hoping that was some sort of pattern... I could get used to that! But last night he was back to the up every 1-2 hour routine. Days like today I desparately try to cherish these moments knowing they will be gone sooner than I think. Last night he was being fussy and I was trying to sooth him. After hours of getting him relaxed only to have him start fussing again we had this brief moment when Nathaniel laughed. It was two little laughs and then he went back to being fussy. I think he was laughing AT me :-(

The smiles make it all worth it though... we tried to catch them with the camera the other day when he wasn't so fussy.

One month old

Our precious little gift turned 1 month today. I can hardly believe it's been 4 weeks. My how time flies! We weighed him at the clinic today and he is... drumroll please.... 9 lb 13oz!!!!! What a big boy! Ken mentioned the other day the carseat felt heavier. Um, it's not the car seat that's gaining weight.

I was thinking about his birth day (which seems like yesterday)and that warm slimy boy they put on my chest a month ago. It may sound gross, but it's a sweet memory to me. I didn't spend too much time thinking about the contractions and labor itself... they tell me it's supposed to fade from my memory.

This week we tried out the "New Moms Group" offered by Providence to all who have had babies within the last 6 months. New moms are constantly coming into the group and old moms (with babies older than 6 months) exit the group and start a smaller play group. Anyway, a few of my friends have tried the group out and had great reviews I actually have a few friends in the mommy stage right now and don't really feel like I need to make more friends but thought I should at least go once and check it out. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the group. The facilitator was a trained lactation consultant/Doula and had great insight to some of the questions that the new moms had. I think it will be beneficial to continue attending. I did meet some nice gals too. For now I think it will be my Monday "social outlet".

Today we went to a lactation consultant to see if there is anyway to improve comfort during feeding time. The lady we saw was super helpful and gave us a few pointers which will hopefully pay off in the coming days/weeks.

My aunt took a few pictures of us the other night. I loved this one the most.

A good day

Today has been a good day. The diaper rash appears to be getting better. I finally called the Advice Nurse and she said stop using baby wipes, give him a bath in soda water two times a day and use bag balm instead of diaper ointment. So far its looking promising :-) Today I got a 30 minute nap when Nathaniel was napping! Hooray! When he woke up he started to fuss a bit, so we decided to go for a walk. We walked up to the Athletic Club on the corner only to find that I didn't have my membership card. We have yet to take our picture for their files so that when we forget our card they can wave us through without any hassles. The lady was really nice about it though and let us in :-) We walked around the track for a while and then headed home. In the lobby though there was a massage therapist who offered a complimentary massage... hmmm this is the first massage I've been able to have in 10 months. No one would give me a massage in Israel because I was pregnant :-(. So Nathaniel waited patiently (well mostly) while I received a fabulous back rub. I think this lady deserves a special designation on her business card. She not only gave me a phenomenal back rub but when Nathaniel started to fuss she kept him busy by rocking the stroller with her foot! That's TALENT! Anyway, it was a nice afternoon.