Home again, home again

We had a great trip to Portland, but it's really nice to be home.

Erin did fine on the plane rides. She is certainly more difficult to travel with now than she was at 5 weeks, but we managed. She is very curious about everything around her and had a tough time relaxing enough to sleep on the flights . I had to do a lot of nursing to keep her calm. We also discovered the perils of disposable diapers: they leak like crazy. It was tough to keep enough clothes in her diaper bag to keep her clean all the time.

We got to see lots of family and friends and Erin liked everyone a lot. But then again, she's never really met anyone that she wasn't fond of . She also loved being around other kids. She's too little to play with them, but she is captivated watching kids play. Lucy was a constant source of wonder. We picked up Brennan at school one day and Erin was mesmerized by all of the kids playing on the playground. It's fun to see her so aware of everything going on around her.

Sleep was less than ideal while we were in Portland. We'd managed to get to a point here where she was only up once or twice a night and was going to sleep pretty easily most of the time. In Portland, we didn't really have the option of letting her do any crying and Erin was restless sleeping in a new place. Thus, we were up 4-5 times per night and she spent more time than usual in bed with me. She also got harder and harder to put to sleep as the week went on. This continued for her first night back here, but now we're settling back into more of a routine. Thank goodness, it's hard to get back from a vacation and feel way more tired than when I left.

Matt and the rest of the Prekker clan keep exclaiming on how much Erin's changed this week. I noticed it too, even being with her every day. First of all, I think that she's put on a bit of weight this week. She did a lot of comfort nursing at home and it shows. She is also much more coordinated and now manipulates her pacifier and toys much better. She's trying to get her hands on everything and we can't eat with her on our lap anymore. She's stronger and almost always wants to be standing and it takes less effort to keep her standing now. She is also very close to sitting on her own. In fact, she can sometimes sit for a few seconds before toppling over. She's also close to rolling from her back to her front. However, she's not that motivated about this rolling thing and may never follow through considering that she would end up on her tummy and she doesn't actually like that much.

We got to meet Keats while we were there. He's two months old now and is such a cutie. He's very alert and takes in the world around him, but seems to have less of Erin's constant movement. We also got some quality time with Anna. It's going to be great when they are all old enough to really play with one another. For now, Anna plays and the other two watch.

A few firsts

Erin got another rave review at her doctor's appointment. She charmed our pediatrician with her drooly smiles and her silly giggles. She impressed her with her new ability to grab her pacifier and put it in her mouth and Erin got a clean bill of health. She now weighs 16 lbs and is 26.1 inches long. What a big girl. This puts her at about the 80% for height and weight. It was great to see that she's growing so well and is right on track for her skills.

So for the firsts:

1. The pediatrician recommended trying some cereal at bedtime to see if that would help with our sleep woes. She was encouraged by the month when Erin slept through the night almost all the time and thinks that she might be getting to the stage where milk is just not satisfying enough. So we tried a little rice cereal with dinner last night. Matt got all excited about this, and I admit it was amusing, but part of me is having a tough time because I just don' t feel ready for real food yet. And it's hard for me to adjust to the idea that my role as nutritional provider will be changing. However, the occasion was so funny and we got some great picture of the mess.


2. Erin had her first fever today. She got shots yesterday and did fine in the evening and was only up once at night, but woke up this morning with a fever to 101. She didn't seem to feel her best today and had a hard time napping early in the day, but you could tell that she was trying to be happy most of the time. The fever was gone by late this afternoon and I'm hoping that it's not coming back. I think that it was probably from the shots, but she's also snuffly today, so who knows.

3. Erin and Matt went for their first run together. We've still been using the carseat in the stroller up until now. I love having her face me and getting to watch her during our walks, but we took the plunge today and Matt ran with her sans carseat. He said she did great and had lots of smiles for everyone who saw them.


I guess that's about it for firsts, but it seems like a lot for two days. Erin's new trick today is to bypass her feet and get her hands right down to her girlie parts and grab whatever she can. It's sort of funny, but it takes a quick mama or dad to keep her hands out of the poop. I think that Matt and I had better get used to having quick hands because I think that this little girl is going to give us a run for our money. At least she will assure that there is never a dull moment around here.Erin was in her Johnny Jump-up today and I noticed that she wasn't jumping, she was just spinning in a circle. I looked closer and her leg was pinned up under her. Oops, she is tough to get into that thing. So, I fixed her leg and then she got mad and started crying. What a weirdo.

Erin and I head to Portland tomorrow. We leave Minneapolis at Erin's bedtime. This is either going to go really well, or really poorly. I'll let you know when we get back...

Night owl

No, Erin's not the night owl, that's me and I'm usually in bed by 9:00 these days. However, compared to Erin and Matt, I'm burning the midnight oil!

We continued to have some trouble with Erin and her sleep for many nights, however things seem to have taken a positive turn over the last few nights and we are all resting much better again. The weird thing is that she's started skipping her third nap of the day and that leaves her ready to call it a night at 6:00 - 6:30. This gives us lots of time in the evening to play around the house if we are quiet, but we don't have much time to play with her and it makes it downright impossible think about going anywhere for dinner. It also leaves me wondering if I should get ready to eat at 5:30, or risk cooking after she's in bed and eat at 7:30. I was telling Gramma Beth about this all tonight and she just laughed. She reminded me not to over think things too much because nothing lasts and this is likely just another passing phase. Always good advice.


Matt is recovering from Neurosurgery and seems to think that he should head to bed about an hour after Erin. You can do the math, but it means that I am spending my evenings trying to be very, very quiet.


Now that Erin is well rested again, she is the happiest baby. It is so easy to get a smile from her and she spends her days laughing at random times. We put her in her Johnny Jump-up last weekend and she loves it. She's not real sure about the jumping thing yet, but she loves to be standing upright and spinning herself around. Unfortunately the only doorway that it can hang on is the one to the bathroom, so she's spending a lot more time in that room than ever before.


Erin has finally decided that my singing is a step up from silence. It's taken awhile to convince her, but she has stopped screaming whenever I start singing. Now I'm singing to her before her naps during the day. But I'm afraid that in addition to my poor voice quality, my repertoire is very limited. We usually sing the same two verses of "you are my sunshine" and "Clementine" over and over again. Maybe we'll take this month to learn a few more songs.

Erin had a great time this weekend meeting her second cousins. Claire and Ellie are Matt's cousin Dan's kids and they are 17 month old twins. They drove up from Omaha for the weekend so Dan and Ann could go to the Vikings game while Jan, Dean and I watched the girls. Man, twins are tough. There just never seem to be enough hands and that was with a few adults around. I'm not sure how people manage it. Erin got a kick out of watching the girls toddle around her, it won't be too much longer before she'll be joining in the fray.

In other exciting news, I finished my month at St. Paul Children's. It turned out to be a great month with only a few irritations (my puke of a medical student, my constant attachment to my breast pump and Erin boycotting sleep). But while I enjoyed myself a lot, I am so glad to have a few weeks to myself now. So now I'm loving my time with Erin, catching up on sleep and tackling silly jobs like cleaning out the kitchen cabinets. I am thrilled to have the time to spend just goofing off with Erin and on insignificant jobs. Next weekend Erin and I fly out to Portland to reconnect with family and friends. I can't wait.

Erin has her 4 month check up tomorrow. This means more shots for her, but I think that she'll handle them ok. It'll be fun to see how much she weighs these days, she certainly seems to be getting big. In fact she seems downright sturdy. I saw Anders last week and he still seems so tiny and fragile. It's hard to believe that Erin was that size just a short time ago.

Belated updates

The weeks just seem to be rushing by lately. Each day Erin seems a little bit heavier when I pick her up and her abilities seem to develop between the time I leave her in the morning and when I get back at night.

Her favorite new position is on her back, grabbing both feet and trying to get them to her mouth. Each time you put her on the changing table and get her clothes off, she gets a hold of her feet and opens her mouth expectantly. I can't wait until the day that she actually brings them all the way in. It is too funny. I used to have to hold her feet carefully when changing her diapers so she didn't drag her heels through the messy diaper, now she holds them for me. What a helpful child. She's also started to tolerate tummy time a lot better. She can get her head and chest up and has rolled from her front to back a few more times. Somehow this was a milestone that I was obsessed with. I feel much better now.


Erin is also "talking" more and has started really laughing. Raspberries on her belly, getting a handful of someones face and having Duncan lick her are almost guaranteed to get some giggles out of her. Duncan and Erin are still very much in the throes of their love affair. They spend lots of quality time staring into each others eyes. It's hysterical. I also think that these then and now pictures are pretty funny. Somehow he's just never far away.

Somehow my wonderful sleeper has morphed into a .... well I'm not sure what to call her, but I wouldn't call her a good sleeper these days. There is a lot more crying and protesting surrounding sleep. She is suddenly starting to fight sleep which is very new for her. She is also starting to be up more at night. After sleeping through the night most of the time for almost a month, she is now up 2-3 times a night and is tough to get back to sleep. What happened? My theories are numerous and range from her growing awareness and fascination with the world around her to my work schedule. However, I think that we're going to have to intervene soon to save some sanity for Matt and me. We're both working long hours with overnight call and now are struggling through nights at home too. During the daytime I'm optimistic that this is going to get better and that we're not doomed with this forever, but at 3AM I feel pretty crummy. I know that it could be worse, but it's still tough.

Even given some trouble with her sleep, I think that Erin has adjusted well to me and Matt being gone during the day. She's lucky that often Laura or Jan and Dean come to our house to take care of her, so she's in a familiar setting with people she adores. She's given them all a run for their money on occasion with napping strikes and fussiness, but in general she's still a happy kid and I'm so thrilled that she's with people who love her so much.


Work is going ok for both me and Matt. Matt's finishing up the last week of neurosurgery and man I'll be glad to see that one go. I'm not sure how Matt manages to make it though his days and still come home upright, but he does. I've got one more week left at St. Paul before I have some time off. I can't wait to have some time to reconnect with Erin, hopefully improve her sleep a little bit, take a trip home to Portland, boost my diminished milk supply and spend some quality time with my friend Ann and her new baby Anders. That being said, I am really enjoying my rotation. I've gotten to work with some fantastic staff and some really great residents. Some of being a resident is getting easier just because I've done some of these things before and so I get to enjoy it more with a little less stress. That being said there are certainly still challenges and I've still got so much to learn. I've also got a twit of a medical student who is driving me bonkers. It's like pulling teeth to get him to do anything and I'm losing my patience. Oh well, just one more week...


Erin and I head to see her pediatrician for her 4 month well child exam in a little bit. I'm excited to see how much she's grown. Dean got her on the scale the other day and thinks she's topping 16 lbs. Our little turkey.

We're managing to do just fine without our diaper service. So far it's not much of a hassle at all to do an extra two loads of laundry a week. However, I have been tempted by the brand new diaper service that just opened up in the cities. I think that we'll keep on going on our own for now, but it's great to know that it's out there if we need. For those in the cities who are thinking about cloth, their website is www.dogooddiapers.com.

I just went back to look at all of her newborn pictures and I'm astounded by how different she looks. Matt thinks that Erin is looking a little more like me as she grows. In looking at pictures of me as a baby, she seems to have my nose, my dimples and maybe my eyes, but I still think there's an awful lot of Matt in her. Her hair is coming in much lighter than her newborn hair and is a light brown now and her eyes are darkening to a grayish greenish brown. I'm not sure exactly what color they will end up, but I think that they will be something hazelish.

Ok, after whining about Erin's sleep, tonight is going great so far. Maybe she's turning into a contrary child. Wish me luck.

4 Months Old-- Yargh!

Yesterday was Erin's four month birthday. Typical for our hectic schedule lately, mom was on call at the hospital. Erin and I spent the afternoon at Grandma and Grandpa Prekkers for some playtime and BBQ ribs. We got this great pirate (or biker gang?) shirt from Brandi, my residency classmate, and it finally fits. The weather turned cool today for the first time this fall, so Erin didn't mind the long sleeves.



I've been on vacation this week, and full-time parenting has been an adjustment for both me and Erin! We've settled into a 3 nap-a-day schedule, and bedtime is consistantly around 7:30 pm. She'll go a couple days sleeping thru the night, but then relapse into the 2-3 a.m. fussy time. This mirror is a big hit to get her distracted for daytime naps.



Erin's hand coordination is getting better day by day. She can grab toys in her chair or on the play-mat. She also can hold up her 4 oz glass bottle by herself (using both hands) when mom's gone. The cloth diapers are still a little bulky to let her roll over consistently. We are impressed by Erin's neck strength on her tummy (not too hard to imagine her starting to crawl).



Early September is a great time for the garden as well. We're done with pole beans, snap peas, and cucumbers for the year, but the tomatoes are in full swing. We planted a c0uple baby pear tomato plants (yellow and red), and although August was dry, they're doing well. The harvest today made a good picture.

It's been another busy week around here. Fran and I have been on opposite schedules at the hospital, thank goodness for Grandma Beth around the house with the dogs and Erin.

Erin's holding her head up much straighter lately. She can grab toys nearby, but hasn't figured out how to let go-- a source of some frustration. Oscar has kept his distance for the most part, but Duncan loves to stare at her and lick her feet.

Bedtime has been between 8 and 8:30 p.m. Some days she'll sleep straight thru until 6 or 7, but when I'm up early to go to work, Fran has ended up feeding her around 4 or 5 a.m. Our schedule makes a consistent routine difficult. We're happy she's such a good napper.



Last week we were invited to a BBQ with some friends from Grinnell, lots of new babies! Erin is the oldest of these four by a couple weeks. We hope she'll have some good playmates in this group.


We haven't posted any video in awhile... here's Erin in her blue chair just after dinner. We didn't manage to capture her cooing and squealing on the clip-- she's been experimenting with her voice more and more. Fran and I are losing hope that her first word will be 'mama' or 'dada', we've realized it probably will be 'duncan'!

Erin's three and a half months old! She seems to be growing up more each day. The newest thing is her hand and arm coordination, instead of flailing around aimlessly, she can reach out and grab toys or our hands. She also wants to hold her bottle with both hands now (when mom's gone). Grandma Beth is staying with us and, as usual, is a huge help. Erin was missing Muggy for a day, but now has had several very smiley days in a row.
She is definetely enamored with Duncan and watches him intently whenever he's in the room. Duncan's very gentle with her, but doesn't understand "personal space" (see above)!

We're very excited for DR and Jenn and new baby Shea, can't wait to meet her. I'm nearly halfway done with neurosurgery, and Fran's been in the ER this month. Makes the time we have with Erin that much more special.