Thanksgiving Travels

We traveled down to San Antonio to see family there for Thanksgiving and to meet Little Sir's new cousin. This was our first trip with Little Sir and I have to say that it was a real beating.

First of all, he hates the car. He hates the car seat specifically, but he hates being in the car also. I know that everyone says "oh, whenever our baby wouldn't sleep we would just drive him/her around in the car to get them to go to sleep, he/she loved it!". Yea, well, no. Not him. He HATES it. So much. It's hard for me to just take him to Square One or to the grocery store because he hates the car so much.

And this was a trip which is 4.5 hours minimum (that is how long it took "before kids"). He hated it so much that he would not sleep, he would just fuss and cry and want to eat and want to be changed and want to just GET OUT of the car seat. On the trip down, we were on a time constraint so we had to keep going no matter what - it took us 6 hours or so, and there was a lot of crying. On the way back, we didn't have time constraints so we stopped several times for longer periods of time to let him get out of the car seat. There was less crying. However, we also encountered a lot of traffic on I-35 and sometimes we were only going 20 mph. That trip took a total of around 9 hours. It was hellish both ways.

We also had a great deal of fun with the Hampton Inn debacle, which I wrote about on my other blog.

But aside from all that, we were glad to see family and there are pictures up on Flickr again.

Little Sir and his brand-new cousin - he looks HUGE next to her!
You might remember this picture of us and 2 other couples - the Williams' who were due 1 month before us, and the Clarks (Christian's sister and brother-in-law, parents of New Cousin), who were due 1 month after us. Here is the new picture of the 3 couples (I could not remove the redeye, no matter how hard I tried!):

I am very thankful to have survived this trip. I have to say that I am not looking forward to trying such a long car trip for a while again, at least until maybe Little Sir is sleeping more than 3 hours at night and we can catch up on sleep somehow while we are there. Also, Hampton Inn owes us a free night...

Happy Thanksgiving

I started this post from my iPhone at 2AM while waiting to see if
Little Sir was actually asleep so I could go back to my bed and sleep
too. I thought it would be fun to list 10 things I am thankful for.
Wow, so much has changed since this time last year...

1) We are both thankful for Little Sir! That he is healthy and that we
had such a great birth experience.

2) For all the new friends I met this year! We met a few fabulous
couples when going through this pregnancy. And I have met some great
ladies (& men) through participating in DFW Blogger meetup events.

3) Security in spite of the current economy. Not job security really,
although at the moment it appears we might have that too, but I am
thankful that we have had people who have encouraged us to live out
our faith in financial matters throughout our marriage so that we have
no debt and feel prepared if something unexpected happens.

4) Wow, am I only at #4? I feel like the first 3 were such big things.
I am thankful for little things too, like the library! Which has saved
us a ton of money this year.

5) Family, always. Although ours are several hours away, we get to see
everyone pretty frequently, which is nice.

6) That we are still employed!

7) The Birth & Womens Center and their staff!

8) Our community group/church

9) This neighborhood and our neighbors here, they are so nice! Also we
love being so close to the lake.

10) My husband - he is a very patient man and a great father! We will
be celebrating our fourth anniversary in a little less than a month,
and we've had all kinds of fun, crazy, difficult and new experiences
so far, I look forward to many more!

Meeting Great Grandparents

You might want to check out my Flickr photostream for new pictures of Little Sir meeting his great-grandparents on my side of the family! Here are a few of the best pics:
GiGi, my Grandma Edinger
Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of Little Sir with Popsey, my Grandpa Edinger.
But here is one of Great-grandpa Royce:
And his wife, Great-grandma Joy:
This was also the first time Little Sir met his cousin Natali and his Uncle Josh and Aunt Christina! Natali was very gentle and spoke to him very nicely. I'm sure he will be a lot more fun for her when he can interact more. I know she is going to have tons of fun bossing him around, and I'm sure he will let her, he is such an easygoing fellow.

Little Sir also spent an extended period of time having a long conversation with Gramp E (my dad). He just sat there and babbled and babbled.

We are looking forward to meeting another cousin this week - brand new cousin Clark, who will be a week old tomorrow!

Smiling?

We took a quick trip to East Texas this weekend, Christian had a business meeting in Austin and flew out of the East Texas Regional Airport while I stayed in Kilgore overnight without him. I got some really good pictures of Little Sir meeting his great-grandparents, but I am still in the process of uploading/shrinking them for the web.

While I'm doing that, here is a video I took of Little Sir smiling - I am not sure if he knows what he is doing yet, but it is pretty cute! In the background you can hear his cousin Natali and his Gram E.

4 week checkup

Little Sir had his 1 month/4 week checkup on Friday and here are the new stats:

• 10 lbs, 8 oz (75th percentile)
  
• 22 inches long (75th percentile)

We had some questions regarding his tummy issues. I am pretty sure he has reflux, he's been expressing pain sometimes after and during his eating. The doctor gave us so gripe water and showed us how to massage his little tummy. Also, we are to keep him upright for 10-15 minutes after he eats to help him digest. It should resolve itself, but if it does not, we could get some medication for him. But I do like that our doctor doesn't just prescribe meds for everything.

He is still doing a lot of grunting, but he is sleeping just fine in his crib.

This week we have been giving him a bottle of expressed milk every day and he does just fine with bottles, there is no sign of the rumored "nipple confusion". Having bottles has also allowed me to leave Little Sir with his dad for periods of time longer than 1 hour, which is great! I got to see the Twilight movie "New Moon" at the midnight showing on Thursday/Friday with some friends. Which severely messed up my sleep, but it was fun to get out!

He's still enjoying cloth diapers, although we do have to add extra liners in the evenings. I was able to try gDiapers for free this week and I have a review on my other blog if you'd like to check it out!

White Rock Lake, Grandparents, and Mac Baby

Last week Little Sir and I took his first walk down to White Rock Lake with Rebecca and Isole (Isole is going to be Little Sir's friend!!...as soon as they are aware of each other).

Unfortunately, Little Sir slept through pretty much the whole experience, but it's the effort that counts! One day he will hopefully love the lake as much as we do.

This weekend, my in-laws dropped by and we took these pictures of Nannie and PawPaw with Little Sir:

Nannie and PawPaw also brought Little Sir's big sister to visit him, and we were excited to see her. I want to clarify for those of you who have asked why I do not post pictures or mention Little Sir's older sister: privacy. I respect her privacy, because I realize that she is old enough to have her own online presence and most likely does not wish for me, her stepmother, to be posting pictures of her or mentioning her name so that it would come up in my blog if anyone she knows Googled her. There is, of course, also the remote possibility of online predators, which I definitely do not want to expose her to (which is another part of the reason that I don't use Little Sir's name, either). She lives in another city, so we were glad to visit with her this weekend and hope to see her again in a few weeks around the holidays. We did get some great pictures of her and Little Sir, so if you are one of my Flickr "Friends and Family" contacts, you can check those out on my photostream. Only "Friends and Family" can see those pictures.

One more fun picture - we start 'em early on Mac here. Little Sir begins life with his iPhone:

Changing minds, changing names

I have decided not to call my son Baby A on this blog because for some reason that sounds like a girl to me. Plus, what about when he's not a baby anymore?

I will tell you what I call him around the house: I frequently call him "Little Sir". I really don't know why, except that "sir" is a sign of respect and I want him to know we value him as a person. And he is little.

So there you go. I am changing all references to his real name to Little Sir except in his birth story and the post announcing his birth.

Privacy, etc

Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up: some time in the next week or so I'll be modifying the past posts to this blog to remove Baby A's real name from most of the blog posts. It's a best practice of most mommy bloggers to remove or somehow disguise the name of their children online to protect their privacy and, as the kids get older, to save them from embarrassment! This is also the reason I do not discuss other children within the family that is us.

I've noticed this blog is getting more and more traffic so it's best to remove the names now, while there are still a small amount of posts mentioning Baby A. I'll just refer to him as Baby A from now on.

Long pants, long pants

Until today, Little Sir had never worn pants! I never really bought any pants because 1) I knew how many diapers he'd go through while he was newborn and I have changed tons of diapers in childcare at church for the last 4 years, so I know that pants slow down the diaper-changing process and 2) it turns out that pants are very gender-specific and since we didn't know his gender before he was born, there really wasn't any way to buy pants without knowing if I was buying for a boy or a girl.

Last week I did buy some pants at Gap Kids but they were too big still - he'll have to grow into them. The same for several gifts we've received with some really cute outfits: they are still too big for him (he'll look SO stylish when he gets big enough, though!)

Yesterday we received a gift in the mail from my boss and his wife, and it contained 2 pairs of newborn pants that actually fit!!
It mainly just really reminded me of this Strong Bad Email from HomestarRunner.com.

Long pants, long pants - always long pants!

Newborn photos

Exciting! We just received our slideshow from the newborn photographer!

Here it is (contains sound, so if you are at work, you might want to put on headphones)

The slideshow contains only some of the pictures, we will be receiving CD's of all the images which we can print out this week, but we thought this was a fun ensemble. I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND Steve Colwill of Poetic Exposure for anyone's newborn photography. He is like a baby whisperer, he is so good with babies. He just put his hands on Little Sir and Little Sir calmed right down. You can see how relaxed he looks in the pictures.

I just love the ones of Little Sir and Christian together.

I am a little self-conscious about the ones with me because I am clearly still carrying quite a bit of baby weight in my face. I try not to let any pictures go out into the public that exhibit the infamous Edinger chin, but I definitely have it in several of these shots. I am now super motivated to start using our new Wii Fit Active and my postpartum ab workout DVD's as soon as I am cleared to exercise at my 6 week appointment.

More favorites...

Birth Center Materni-tea

I am probably spelling this wrong, but last week Little Sir and I attended a Materni-tea at the Birth Center. This is a time when moms bring their babies that were born in the previous month(s) and all get together to tell their birth stories and have some snacks at the birth center. I think Little Sir was the youngest baby, although he was not the smallest. We were invited to this one, even though ours is technically the next month, because I will probably be back to work by the time the next one comes around, and my friend Rebecca went to this one.

At the end, we all take our babies and put them on a blanket in the park next to the birth center and take a picture. Unfortunately, although I brought our camera and had even tested the battery before coming, the battery was dead! Fortunately, one of the moms was Joy from Joy Neville Photography! She took amazing pictures and was kind enough to share them with me!

This is where Little Sir first kissed a girl baby! You can see him in the upper left corner, he is the one with the green diaper, chewing on the girl baby.


Don't forget to visit Joy's web site and keep her in mind for your photography needs!

First bath and new onesies

This week in Little Sir news:

• We gave him a pacifier for the first time per our pediatrician, since he seems to do a lot of "snacking" when he nurses and probably isn't even actually hungry, but just wants something to suck on for comfort. He is getting better at the paci, but still isn't very good at holding it in - it pops out a lot.
• He weighed in at his 2 week appointment at 8 lb 15 oz!
• We started cloth diapering this week, he is finally big enough! You might be able to see his huge bubble butt in pictures. Cloth diapers look bulky but they work great so far!
  
• Since his cord fell off, he is now wearing a lot of the onesies that friends and family have given him. We are attempting to take pictures of each one, so be sure to check my Flickr photostream for pictures of him wearing clothes you might have given him! I try to tag them when I remember which ones they are.
  
• On Friday we attended the "Materni-tea" at the birth center with other babies born at the birth center the month that he was born. Unfortunately, our camera died on me before I could take pictures so I will have to get those from a friend who was there.
  
• At the Materni-tea, when on the blanket with the other babies, Little Sir kissed a girl baby for the first time. Well, it was probably more that he thought her nose might be a nipple and was trying to suck on it. But she made the same mistake and kissed him back. Can't wait to get those pictures!!
• Little Sir is now sleeping in his crib in his room. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but he makes tons of grunting noises in his sleep so we've had to move him for real. He doesn't seem to notice or mind at all.
• He had his first "real" bath last night! No more dirty baby!
  

I have really been looking forward to when we could finally submerge Little Sir for a bath because he HATED sponge baths. We had to wait until one week after his circumcision (which is healing well - almost completely healed).

There are a few photos of his first bath on Flickr, make sure to check the photostream for all the photos (too many to upload into two separate locations)
Here is a fun movie Christian took of Little Sir during his Tummy Time. He does pretty good at lifting his head but he gets frustrated after about 5 minutes and starts fussing so we only do it for 5 minutes at a time:

Everyone asks how he is sleeping: he doesn't sleep too much yet. He's only 2 weeks and 5 days, probably the max he's ever slept in one stretch is 3 hours. Last night he went a little over 3 at one point, but just as often he only sleeps 1 hour at a time during the night.
I am sure looking forward to when he will sleep for a little longer!

Crib tent: keep cats out of crib

Thanks to the excellent idea from one of my commenters, we have ordered this crib tent from Walmart.com in hopes that we can put it on Little Sir's crib and start actually using his own crib without worrying about the cat jumping into the crib with him in the middle of the night and suffocating him because she sees him as a convenient heating pad. It gave me a little pain to pay $62 for this thing, but I think it's really our only way of being 100% sure the cat can't get in, and we can leave Little Sir's bedroom door open to allow air to circulate.

Little Sir just gets louder and louder as he sleeps - he grunts and cries in his sleep. It's very loud when he is there in the bassinet beside our bed, I can't sleep while he is sleeping when he makes that much noise. This morning around 5 AM I put him in his crib in his room so I could get a bit more sleep. I just went ahead and closed his door to keep the cats out for now.

At first I had thought it was a little extravagant to buy a video monitor instead of a traditional monitor, but now I am loving it. I could lay in bed in our room and just click on the video to see if he was actually awake or if he was just making noises in his sleep. It has great night vision as well. I would highly recommend it - Summer Infant Day & Night Handheld Color Video Monitor.

Yesterday Little Sir had his hearing test and passed just fine! It was interesting the way they did it, they just put a tiny thing in his ear while he is asleep and it uses echoes to determine if the ears are working the way they should. It was quick and painless.

Today the plan is for me to go to the grocery store while mom is here to watch Little Sir. I'd also like to see if I can get my hairdresser to allow me to come in already shampoo'ed so that I could get a haircut in under 2 hours (the max time Little Sir can go between feedings).

Tomorrow is our 2 week pediatric appointment, hopefully he is still on track for everything!