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.

Things here are ok, but very busy. Erin has transformed in the last 2 weeks into a real little girl. She "talks" a lot more, she giggles and she has really started picking her head up and looking around her little world. It's amazing to watch.


Erin's remained pretty mellow, but this transition has been tough on her too. By the end of last week, she wasn't sleeping as well, having real trouble napping and had a shorter fuse than normal. On the days that we are together, she seems to want to nurse all the time and spend very little time playing with me. I'm sure that we'll both settle in better in the coming weeks.

We were so lucky to have Muggy here for the last two weeks. She wins MVP of the Prekker house as she took care of Erin day and night, walked the boys, cooked, cleaned and tried to work on her own schoolwork. It was amazing. I don't know how we would have made it without her. After a very brief rocky start, Erin took to Muggy and enjoyed Muggy's singing (she still hates mine) and their long walks. Mom arrived today to take over baby and household duties for the next two weeks and Erin got to take her afternoon nap snuggled on Gramma Beth. Good stuff.

Matt and I are working a ton and seeing each other and Erin very rarely. I think that Matt worked well over 100 hours last week, so quality time is practically non-existent. We "celebrated" our 5 year anniversary with a 5 minute conversation in the ER during my shift. This is all pretty tough, but I'm sure that it will get easier.


In other news, Haley and Toby had baby boy Keats on Monday and Ann and Chad had baby boy Anders on Wednesday. What a good week for babies. Erin and I got to meet Anders this afternoon and it was crazy to see how much they really do change in such a short time.

12 weeks

Erin has had a little bit better week. She’s still a little more fussy than usual, but it seems to be the combination of heat and wacko schedule that are getting to her. I also read online about “wonder weeks.” There is a book that outlines more difficult periods in an infants life that are related to jumps in development. Apparently they occur at predictable ages and Erin is smack in the middle of one. I’m not sure that I believe this, but sometimes it’s just nice to read something that explains troubles and reassures you that it’s all temporary. Then again, Mom keeps telling me that I should never get used to the good or the bad because with a baby it’s always changing.

Erin has kept me guessing as far as a schedule goes this week. She seems to have thrown out all predictability and that’s been tough on me. Several weeks ago she’d transitioned to eating every 2 hours and was like clock work. Now she’s sometimes eating every hour and other times goes 4 hours. She used to nap after being awake for about an hour and a half and now it’s after 30 minutes sometimes and 4 hours other times. Naps last from 15 minutes to 2 hours. I think that this is making her upset too and it’s making it hard to leave the house to do much because she’s not as happy and she may be getting ready to nap/eat/throw a fit. I think that a few weeks ago I was much more easy going and variability didn’t bother me much, but I’m just not coping all that well this week. Somehow in my mind having things feel settled at home would make me feel better about dealing with the uncertainty of work. I guess I’ll just have to get over it.

Luckily Erin is still sleeping pretty well. We experimented with sleeping unswaddled early this week and it was a failure. That's ok, but it's getting harder and harder to keep her swaddled all night. She is like the incredible hulk busting out of the little bundle with her huge baby muscles. But I've also found that if I reswaddle her and give her the pacifier back she goes back to sleep at night without needing to be fed. Nice. However we have found ourselves in a little bind over the this whole swaddle/pacifier/sleep thing. She does a great job putting herself to sleep when she's swaddled and has the pacifier. I'm sure that we can address the swaddle issue and keep her tightly bundled all night, no problem. However, the pacifier is bound to fall out when she is deeply sleeping and she can't put it back in because she's too little and she can't suck on her hands because she's in a straight jacket. Hmm... dilemma. I guess it just means that for now she's going to need someone with free hands in the middle of the night to help her out.

Work starts Monday for me and it’s a doozie of a day. I have orientation at HCMC from 8-10, my clinic from 1-5, and an ER shift from 5-1. Yikes. Beyond worrying about my brain functioning, I just don’t know that I have the stamina for this anymore. I’m sure it’ll come back quick… or it better. Luckily Muggy is coming on Monday to help out. With 3 adults in the house, I’m hoping that we will be just fine. Matt starts a really tough rotation on Monday as well with long days and lots of call. I’m hoping that he’ll be able to give me a few tips about how to balance home and work since he’s been doing it for 3 months now.

Despite all of my angst about Erin and her schedule etc, she continues to be a wonderful and happy baby most of the time. She’s discovered herself in the mirror and loves to smile and coo at that other cute baby. She likes silly voices, lots of smooches and when we play “this little piggy.” Matt played the uke for her today for the first time and she loved it. She sat there on his lap smiling and cooing along with the music. She seems to enjoy my singing quite a bit less. We spent several evenings out this week with friends and watching the Tour de France and she could not have done better 2 of the 3 nights out. She was delightful. The bad night was pretty rotten for about an hour. This is by no means awful as far as babies go, but for Erin it was so out of character. She wouldn’t sleep, she wouldn’t nurse, she was just pissed off. Luckily she tamed her inner monster and we all survived.

We’re still working on her neck issues. For a while it seemed better, but now she’s got a neck tilt in addition to the rotation and seems to be looking left less again. She hates her stretches so I try to do them when she’s happy and won’t protest too much. Her head shape is still pretty asymmetric even though we’re trying to keep her off her back as much as possible. Accomplishing this is tougher than I though. We can’t do much about her sleeping, she has to sleep on her back. The first week I tried to reposition her head after she went to sleep, but she always moves it back to her favorite position. So during the day she’s only in her bouncy seat for about 20 minutes while I eat/pump and then she’s in her stroller for our daily walk. Other than that she’s being held, in the baby bjorn or on her tummy. Maybe it doesn’t sound that bad, but it’s really tough, especially since she’s still not a huge fan of tummy time. And I don’t have a good place to put her in the kitchen when I’m cooking/eating/cleaning. Again, I’m sure that this is going to improve and I just need to be patient, but again the angst is coloring my world.

We got notice this week that our diaper service is going out of business. I’d been half expecting this, but I’m still really bummed about it. We’d been so happy with the convenience and I love having Erin in cloth diapers. Now we’re in trying to figure out the next step. We have another 3 weeks of service and then we get to keep our diaper pail and the diapers. I’m excited about getting to keep the diapers because that’ll give us about 70 really nice cloth diapers in addition to the ones that we already have. I think that we’ll give washing our own a go and I expect that once we get in the habit it won’t be that bad. So those of you who have done cloth, you can expect me to be soliciting advice in a few weeks.

The other issue that is keeping me up at nights this week is my clinic. My preceptor will be leaving the clinic at the end of September and I will need to work with someone else. My preceptor will be leaving some pretty big shoes to fill. Hands down, meeting and working with her is the best thing about my residency and she’s been such a positive influence in my life. I have two options for new preceptors. One is at the same clinic and I think that she’s great. She’s a pretty recent graduate of the program and is the assistant program director for the peds program. I think that we would work really well together, that we could do a lot of learning together and that she’d be a very positive mentor for me. The other is a very senior pediatrician at St. Paul Children’s. He’s really nice and very knowledgeable and I know that I could learn a ton from him because he knows just about everything. However, I’m intimidated by him and think that I would probably never develop a really close relationship with him. I’m torn. My gut tells me to stay at the same clinic and work with Emily, but maybe that’s just because I know what I’d be getting into. The critical part of my mind tells me that I’d learn more going to St. Paul. Ugh, I’m torn.

Anyway, updates may be slightly less frequent and informative in the next several weeks as our little family makes this transition. Maybe I’ll just have to con Muggy into taking on that job temporarily. Wish us luck.

Happy girl

Oops... the pictures

Big girl (11 weeks)

We've had many reminders this week about how fast time flies and how much Erin is growing up.

This is my last week at home. On July 28 I start back to work full time. I think that being in clinic a little bit this last month has helped me think about being back full time, but I am really starting to struggle with the reality of going back. Not only are the mental exercise and the stamina of working full days going to be very challenging, but I think that emotionally this is going to really tough. I just can't even imagine being away from Erin for more than a few hours at a time. Ugh. We are so lucky to have family to take care of her when we're at work, but I'm still gonna miss being the one to get to care for her during every day. I had no idea how quickly 3 months could fly by.

Erin has decided that she's a big girl this week. It's now hard to get her to sit on our laps because she always would rather stand. She holds her head up high and marches in place on our laps. It's pretty cute. She's also decided that she doesn't like to be held like a baby and she likes to be held facing the world or up on a shoulder. She only likes to snuggle now when she's feeling tired. When she was really little she thought that her hands needed to be involved in nursing, now she's decided that feet and legs must be necessary. Her feet now rest on the arm of the chair or on the couch when we nurse and she loves to push herself around with them. As you can imagine, this makes nursing a little tough and occasionally painful as she doesn't like to let go before she launches herself.

Erin has had a bit of a tough week. I think that she's uncomfortable in the heat and just not feeling herself, so she's been more fussy than usual. On those days she just seems restless and unhappy with everything and we rarely get smiles. It's hard to see a typically happy girl go through the day so serious. I also think that we are still trying to figure out how much sleep she needs during the day and when her ideal bedtime is. She's still not in much of a nap schedule and some days takes a few great 1-2 hour naps and other days she just cat naps in 15 minute chunks even though she seems to need more. Right now she's usually going to bed between 8:30 and 9:30 and is up at about 7:30. Most nights she's up once, but we're hoping that she's going to show us that she can sleep through the night again soon. Not that we are struggling with her up once at night, but I think that even a little extra sleep will come in handy when I'm back at work.

Erin has a quirk when she sleeps for long periods of time at night. On those nights, she is frequently dry when I change her. I'm not sure which it the cause and which is the result, but they really seem related. For example, last night she was changed at 9:00, ate at 9:10 and was up to eat at 5:00. Her diaper was dry. She ate and was up for the day at 7:30. Her diaper was still dry. The rest of the day her diapers are soaked, so I don't think that she's terribly dehydrated or anything, she's growing well and it's not happening every night. I'm just not sure what the story is. I asked our pediatrician about it, but she had no ideas. Anyone else had this experience?

Erin has discovered a love of ceiling fans. I put her down for a nap earlier this week like I usually do with her awake, but tired. I walked into the room a few minutes later to find her still awake, sucking on her pacifier and mesmerized by the ceiling fan. She fell asleep a few minutes later and it is now a common occurrence for her to fall asleep while watching the fan. She has also enjoyed watching the fan in our room, the one int he kitchen and one at a restaurant this week. Whatever floats your boat.

Matt has been working nights a bunch the last few weeks. Being on opposite schedules has been a bit of a pain, but it has let us go to our favorite restaurant a few times for breakfast lately. The other perk is that the Birchwood shows coverage of the Tour de France starting at 7:30 every day. Since we have no cable TV, Matt and I get our Tour fix (ok, I get mine, Matt reads about it online everyday and tries to get us invited over to watch it at various people's houses).