New Pics...mostly

I think I have all of these in order. The first picture is from a going-away party we had for one of the faculty members. The women pictured here is a different attending who helped me take all of the 3D ultrasounds and 3D ultrasound movies while Richie was still in utero. This was the first time she got to meet him after we was born. She immediately jumped up, took him from my arms, and kept him for about 30 minutes until the next baby arrived. :-)


Here is a picture with GG before going to the hospital.


Aunt-Stinky (I mean Judge-Aunt-Stinky) arrived the same day as GG. (She'll love this picture!)

GG was not ready for this one, but it's SO FUN!


Now, she's ready!



Everyone loves to feed the Hoss! (I think we've really settled on Little-Man.)


A little blurry I know, but my boy's face says it all!


Here is a sullen shot of my Little-Man and Aunt-Staina's Nose! Actually, it IS a good picture of her smile.


This is a more respectable picture of the two. These was taken a day or two after GG had her spill while we were regrouping at the house.



Uncle-Curly (Aunt-Staina's new Hubby) gettin' his feeding-action on!


After GG's fall, we've had a nice stream of family coming to help take care of GG. This is my Aunt Sunnie. I suppose that would make her a Great-Aunt Sunnie.


This is just a cute picture of my boy curled up in my bed.


These were actually taken today in the rehabilitation center where my grandma' continues to make a strong recovery after her fall. This is Little-Man's Great-Aunt-Carole (AKA Dama)



Just because she was a cop in Atlanta, worked for the UN in Cambodia and teaches Women's Studies at Kent, it does not mean she cannot be spontaneously domestic. At least from time-to-time.



Time to bust out some smiles!







Hey, Boy! Don't pull that shirt any lower!


Given her 6 cracked ribs and two small spine fractures, she making a wonderful recovery! Knock-on-wood, she keeps it up!

Nap

His head thrashes from side to side.
He wipes his arms across his face as if to brush of his need to sleep.
Thrash, thrash, he heads goes again since it is the only thing he has any real level of control over.
He yawns for a moment.
Then, Silence.
He breaths.
He breaths again.
He flexes his hips and starts thrashing his head from side to side.
Then, Silence. Before starting all over again.
Occasionally, the Silence is broken up by a quiet, little, FART.

My boy took a late nap in his swing this evening. We ate dinner while he bubbled and squeaked in his sleep. Rocking from side to side.

He wakes with smiles and fussing...Time to change and feed!

We readied all of the bottles for the night. Packed to cooler with ice-packs. Got a bottle ready to eat now. I lifted him up out of the swing to take him upstairs and, for the first, he slept through the transfer to his crib. I watch, waiting for him to wake while I type. I Love my boy!

Night before last, he slept 8 hours and 15 minutes straight. ML had to pump in between but he slept through it. Last night was only 6 hours. But, we'll take it.

I have not posted it yet, but my grandmother had a fall while she was visiting and ended up in the hospital was several broken ribs and a couple of small cracks in her spine. She's doing very well in one of the local rehab hospitals and getting herself put back together so she can get back home to Miami.

Been a while...

Well, life got crazier by a notch. During the second day of my Grandmother's visit, there was a little mishap while she was plugging in her cell phone (yes, my 95 year old grandmother was plugging in her cell phone) and she fell. Unfortunately, she broke some ribs on the way down and landed her butt in the University of Maryland Trauma hospital for a few days. Now she's in semi-acute rehabilitation a bit North of the city, but she is making great progress...although she is still, occasionally, in a significant amount of pain as you might imagine.

This has taken up what little free time I had, but here are the Richie updates:
Three time, he has slept over 7 hours straight for us. Hooray!
He has started swiping and grasping. (A little late with the swipe but early with the grasp.)
He has started working on sitting up!
Oh, and he continues to smile a lot and be cute as a bug, when he's not being grumpy and resisting napping like he did today. Really, he has been quite good on the napping overall.

I'd upload more pictures, but the camera is in the bedroom and I don't want to wake up mommy to get it.

Next Round of Visitors

Last night, my Grandma' Gert and my older sister arrived to visit for the weekend. There was a lot of running back and forth from the airport and, other than the person helping my granadma' grabbing the wrong suitcase and leaving her at the curbside before she found out, it was pretty uneventful. (Fortunately, the guy who's bag it was, was still there.) My sister babysat all night! (Bad news for ML's sister, a new bar has been set.) Richie apparently had another 7 hour night, or at least close to it. He was a little up-and-down for the first few hours. He woke just before I left for work so I went upstairs to say hi/goodbye and, in classic baby form, he puked all over my shirt! (Thankfully, it was just a scrub top.)

I've got lots of pictures to put up once I get some time on my big computer, but here is one to tie everyone over!

Crib and decorations: $55.00 on Craig's list
New mattress: $32.98 at IKEA
Snuggly sleeping outfit: $0 from Sister and/or friend (don't remember which)
A 10 week old sleeping 7 hours straight on a Friday night:
PRICELESS

A very strange thing happened last night and this morning: after sleeping for about 6 hours, Richie awoke around 3a and, supposedly, ate a normal meal. I don't know for sure, because I slept through it since it was a work night. A couple of hours late I woke and started my day. By the time I head down stairs to make breakfast, everyone else was still asleep. Another rarity. When I was getting ready to head out the door I heard a loud cry from the nursery. Mommy and I converged at roughly the same time to see our little man crying and thrashing around, which is normal for him. I picked him up to comfort him while mommy fixed the bottle. After the handoff so Mom could feed, he starts flicking the nipple out of his mouth! We are interpreting this as his signal that he does not want to eat. He's done this on several occasions lately. She tried a couple more times, but, for the first time in his short life, he wasn't hungry?! One would think that he was seriously ill, but the steady stream of smiles would suggest an alternate diagnosis.

In other news, when we woke around 3a to feed, we could see in our baby monitor that he had rolled up on his side!

Let's see, things I'm thankful for: Richie is able to fall asleep on his own, in his own crib, without us in the room! He's only goes #2 every other day, although we're having to give him some grape juice to make it a little less traumatic. He spits up very little, although he spit up on me tonight. And, he smiles when I kiss him goodnight. In addition to being a good sleeper, what more could I possibly ask for?


Here are some new cute pictures from today...

Since everyone wants some new news, I thought I've give you some!

Richie had his two month doctor's visit last week and got his first BIG round of shots. He was apparently all smiles and putting on a big show when he first got to the doctor's. Then the first shot came and all of the smiles left and his face went flat. The second shot brought on a scream of the likes that Mommy has never heard before. That was followed by 2-3 minutes of crying until he was put into the car seat. Actually, he cried a little bit in the waiting room: he heard another baby cry so he cried for a moment and then listened to hear the other baby, and then cried a little more before listening again.

Fortunately, for the Hoss, Daddy had the forethought to weigh him before the appointment have give him a clinically significant dose of Tylenol about 20 minutes prior to getting the shot. 10 to 15 mg of Tylenol per Kilogram! Words to live by!

In other news, Hoss weighed in at 13 pounds 3 ounces, putting him in the 90%'ile for weight. He measure 23.5 inches in length, putting him in the 75%'ile. And a head circumference of 15 6/8 inches which is right at the 50%'ile.

Since the appointment, his feeding has slowed down a touch and, in the last few days he's started sleeping for 6 hour stretches at night! In fact, the last two nights, he slept for 6 hours, woke for a feeding, and then slept for 5 more hours. Yes, we are counting our lucky stars!

Now that he's had his two month shots, we can taking him out without having to worry about it. Oh, wait, H1N1 flu. Oh well. :-)