Vegetable Shots???

Hayden had his 5-year checkup today. We thought he was going to have to get one shot, but he managed to make it through unscathed. He's up to 46.5 lbs and 45.5 inches, which makes him 90th percentile in weight and 95th percentile in height. They checked his hearing and vision and other than hearing phantom "beeps" on the hearing test, he passed with flying colors.

Developmentally, he's fine. Although the only things they asked were whether he could identify 5 colors, skip, speak in past tense, tell a story, and engage in dramatic play. Maybe the nurse didn't want to take my word for it, because even though I told her he had that all covered, she still quizzed him on the color of his shirt, etc. Come on now, if you want to test the kid, pull out some medical manual and ask the kid to read it to you. Or grab a map and ask him to identify all the states and their capitals. Or ask him to count to 100, or for fun, have him count by fives. But colors? Don't insult the boy.

The doctor asked him if he eats his vegetables. He said no, he doesn't like vegetables. So the doctor, in a total deadpan, says that's fine, that he can just come in for his vegetable shots every week. And tells me to set up the appointments with the nurse when I leave. I love our pediatrician. Don't you know the kid was begging for green beans at dinner tonight.

Took a few pictures of the baby girl today. Trevor was willing to give her a kiss in exchange for some candy.

FIVE!!!!!

I can't seem to grasp the reality, but apparently we are now the parents of a five-year old. This sounds cliche, but it really does just seem like yesterday that he was born. Sean and I were parent-helpers at Hayden's school yesterday, and the teacher started circle time by lighting a candle and saying "Five years ago today, a light came into the world..." It really chokes me up, I'm such a sentimental sap. So here is a glance at our little light on his big day:

I KNOW I shouldn't complain, but...

I wish Miss Juliette was awake a little more during the day. Seriously, most people would be soooo thankful to have a 1-month old that sleeps pretty consistently 7-hours in a row at night and mostly just sleeps and eats during the day, and rarely cries. And I am happy and thankful, really. But I wish she would wake up and play with me a little more so I could get to know her. And really, open those eyes during the daytime so I can take a picture or two, please. You turned one month old today and I mostly ended up with pictures of you sleeping and pictures of your pretty blonde hair. Oh well, it's obviously better than being up all night with a screaming colicky baby.

And hey, I saw a movie this weekend. How lucky am I to have Sean mind the store while I go to see a movie with a girlfriend and have a yummy lunch? I saw Juno. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes quirky movies (think Napoleon Dynamite, Royal Tennanbaums, Rushmore...).

A few new pictures...

On the KodakGallery site. Now that I'm done with the birth announcements, I can post pics without spoiling the surprise.

Shhh...don't jinx it...

If I tell people, it might jinx things, so I'm only telling my closest friends (the internet). Miss Juliette slept 7 hours in a row last night. Sleep, glorious sleep. We usually set the alarm so I can wake her every 4 hours, but when Sean tapped me in the wee hours and said "are you getting up to feed her?", I said "Is she crying?". He said "No" so I promptly went back to sleep and didn't hear a peep from her till 7 am.

Miss J also had her first international visitor last night. Our friend Mike made the trip from Aberdeen, Scotland to see the new addition and have dinner with us. So for those of you in Hungary, Canda, Chicago, Pennsylvania, etc., what's your excuse for not visiting? What's that? You don't work for an oil company that pays your $5k airfare for you to attend some bogus training class and visit friends? Oh well, we're here and the doors are open if you can make the trip. We don't even make guests change diapers.

Once an engineer...

Always an engineer. I chart everything. If there are numbers, a chart must be created. Sean charts our utility usage. I chart the baby's milk intake and weight. Really quite sad, but her weight seems to be on a good course and she has a second chin now. Dr. Injac always says 11 lbs. is the magic number for sleeping through the night. Which, based on my extrapolation of the chart, looks like it will be on about Feb 10th. So only 28 more days before I get a full night's sleep. Although my old boss used to laugh at my sad attempts to plan the unplannable in life. But a girl can dream, right? Well, not if you're not getting any sleep.

Little Milestones...

Well, I survived my first day alone with all 3 kids yesterday. Although around 8 am, I was thinking I should call Erika and beg her to come rescue me. But I managed to get Hayden to school almost on time and we all had our hair combed and wore clean clothes, so I was pretty pleased with myself.

Finally placed the order for Juliette's birth announcements. Unfortunately, my address list is hopelessly out of date so I'm going to be struggling. If you're a friend and read this blog and you've moved since Trevor was born (June 2005), you'd better send me a note with your current address or you might not get an announcement. I went with a completely different style than the boys' announcements, so it took me forever to design, but I'm looking forward to the finished product, which has already shipped and should arrive here on Tuesday. But I felt guilty not having a matching announcement to the boys' that I could frame with theirs so I made one in that style too. I think it turned out pretty cute.

I also think I've done pretty good so far with Juliette being the 3rd child. I think I have at least as many pictures of her as I did of the boys. Maybe because it's easier with the digital camera. I was still on film when Trevor was born.

The other milestone is that we had our first date night tonight since Juliette was born. We went to see a play. It was nice, although it felt a little strange to be away from her so long. Poor Michele and David were saddled with all three of our kids and their son too. They're troopers though and came through with flying colors. Poor Logan looked exhausted by the time we got home though. Not fair keeping a 2-year old up till almost 11 pm. I wonder if Michele longs for the days when babysitting only involved watching Hayden. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago...

Clean Bill of Health...

Took Juliette to the pediatrician yesterday, for only the 5th visit in her 2 short weeks of life (NOT counting the 3 visits from the pediatrician before we left the hospital and the 3 days in the NICU). He has pronounced her to be perfectly healthy and in no further need of constant attention. She's back up above her birth weight (7 lb 4.7 oz last night) and has actually gained about 2 oz. per day over the past week (1 oz. per day is normal).

He said her jaundice looked much improved and didn't even feel the need to do a blood draw to check her bilirubin level. Which is nice because her poor heel looks like a pin cushion.

He even said I don't have to wake her at night to feed her. So I actually got 4 hours of sleep IN A ROW last night. But I did end up waking her up finally at 5 am because it didn't seem like I should let her sleep any longer and I'm not sure she'd ever wake herself up to eat.

All in all, pretty exciting, although I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not shuttling my newborn back and forth to the doctor's office. He doesn't want to see her again for SIX WEEKS!

I had my 2 week check-up yesterday as well. It was pretty uneventful. My OB/GYN said he was glad we made it through the whole ordeal of this pregnancy. I think he was pretty fed up with all my complications and being paged at 2 am on the weekends. I never blogged it all, since I was on the bedrest, but I ended up with cardiac issues, allergic reactions to medication, and a lot of annoying midnight trips to the hospital with contractions <5 min apart. So we're both glad that I'm not pregnant anymore, but the end result was worth it and Juliette is the perfect little angel so far.

I'm working furiously on her birth announcement, but working furiously means sitting waiting for her to wake up and open her eyes so I can take a picture. I also was hoping for a picture of all 3 kids together but I'm starting to think that's just a hopeless dream. We'll see what happens. There may be a lot of candy and bribery involved.

No Words...

Status check...

Saw the pediatrician again today. Juliette's bilirubin is up slightly to 16.2 (from 15.5 on Monday), but the doctor says that isn't really statistically significant. On the bright side, she has gained some weight: 4 ounces since Monday (she's up to 6 lb 12 oz). Of course, this means the bottle feeding is working so we're staying the course on that end. But we're free from blood draws till next Monday, which will be a nice relief for the baby girl.

I rented a scale today so I could measure how much she's consuming at each feeding. It's accurate to a tenth of an ounce so you weigh the baby before and after a feeding and you can tell how much they've eaten. Juliette is really sloppy with the bottle a drools half of her milk out the corner of her mouth so I can't tell how much she's taken. And of course, I've had no way of tracking how much she takes if she's breastfeeding. So the scale should help. So far I've measured 3 feedings today and she took almost twice as much from the bottle as from the breast, which is quite disappointing. But the jaundice really zaps their energy so I'm hoping this isn't a long-term issue. You do what you have to do though, right?

Juliette had her first trip to the baby gym today and quite enjoyed it. She seems to have a 20-min period of alertness in the late afternoon. I'm trying to convince her that earlier in the day gives better light for picture taking, but she seems to like 5 pm and 3 am best.

Here she is enjoying herself in the gym:

Here is what happens when the big brothers wake up from their naps and say "I remember this toy!"

But big brothers aren't all bad, and can be especially sweet on occasion.

Home again...
As you can see, the family is resting at home again, although clearly some of us are getting more rest than others.

Juliette was discharged from the NICU on Saturday. After they discontinued her phototherapy, her bilirubin rebounded slightly from 9.5 to 11.3, but the neonatologists said it was still low enough to send her home. When we saw the pediatrician on Monday, she was up to 15.5, so we're going back for another check tomorrow (Wednesday). Hopefully, we've hit a plateau or gone down. A bilirubin of 20 or more is kind of the magic number that will send us back to the hospital. The pediatrician is optimistic that we'll avoid that, but indicated some babies stay at the ~15 level for several months, especially breastfed babies.

Juliette lost a few ounces since we left the hospital, so we're trying to feed her more agressively now. The pediatrician recommended that we bottle feed her, since she's very drowsy and it takes less effort for her to get milk from the bottle. Which means I spend about 20 minutes pumping milk, then 20 minutes giving her a bottle. And the process repeats itself about every 2 hours which doesn't leave much time for anything else, like sleep. So I'm hopeful that she's gained some weight at her check-up tomorrow and maybe we can stop the bottle feeding soon.

Sean goes back to work tomorrow. Poor him and poor us. The daytime should be fine, since Erika will come back tomorrow and will be in charge of the boys during the day. But if he has to go to work in the morning, that leaves me on my own for the night shift. He usually takes the diaper phase of the feeding process which buys me an extra 5 minutes of sleep at least. I will miss those precious minutes.

Oh well, been at the computer much too long. I'm so relieved we're starting to get some semblance of normalcy to our routine and I finally had some time to take a few pictures today. One is posted above and a few others are on the KodakGallery page.

Happy New Year!