Northwoods baby (8 weeks)

Matt and I headed up north this weekend with Erin to meet Bumpa and spend the weekend at the cabin. It was not our most enjoyable trip to the cabin ever, but we all managed to survive...

It took me part of Thursday and most of Friday to get us all ready to go. I'm used to packing for the dogs, but packing for me, Matt, two dogs and a baby was a little bit more work that I'm used to. I was really organized, which helped, but it still took a ton of time to get everything together and packed into the car in the moments while Erin was napping or playing happily. We finally got out of the door at about 6pm when Matt got home from work. We managed to get stuck in bad traffic getting out of the cities and then needed to pull over several times to nurse or calm Erin. She was great for about half the trip and the other half was really trying. I ended up sitting in the back with her most of the ride up. It took us about 5 hours to get to the cabin so we got in just after 11pm.


Erin was exhausted when we got in, but had trouble settling in and didn' t have the greatest night. She slept fitfully until about 4am and then needed to come into bed with us to settle back down and sleep after that. I don't think that any of us slept all that well with this arrangement, but at least we were sleeping.

The next day dawned cold and rainy. We knew that Saturday wasn't supposed to be very nice, but in fact it was pretty miserable. We couldn't play outside and spent most of the day huddled in bed to stay toasty. The highlight of the day was Erin meeting her great grandpa, but even Bumpa wasn't feeling all that well so it was a little subdued. They did each manage to coax some smiles from the other so it was great to watch their introduction. We got pizza from town that night which later didn't agree too much with either Erin or me. During dinner the lights started flickering and then went out altogether. Turns out a tree had fallen in the wind and was leaning on Bumpa's electric line. We were the only ones sans power. We spent the rest of the evening without power with a very restless, cranky baby, two restless dogs and two restless, cranky parents. Good times. We could not get Erin settled and she slept in 10-15 minute bits until 2am when I gave up and took her to bed with us. Again she slept very fitfully until 6am when she was up and cranky. Around midnight we heard someone with a chainsaw and the power came back on about 12:30. Apparently the power company came out in the middle of the night to restore the power. Very impressive.


Luckily Sunday dawned clear and warm and we were able to frolic in the lake for the morning with the dogs. As you can see, Erin was not too impressed with the lake. I guess she enjoys her water like her milk: nice and warm. Unfortunately we had to head home in the afternoon, but the drive back wasn't that bad. We made it home in 4 hours, but I did have to sit in the back placating Erin the whole drive home.

Erin's inner monster came out this evening as she screamed hysterically at Gramma and Grampa Prekker, Dad and me over dinner. She seems to have tired herself out at this point and is sleeping soundly now. We'll see how the night goes.


Tomorrow I head back to my continuity clinic for the afternoon. During this next 4 weeks, I'll be in clinic each Monday afternoon before heading back full time July 28. These afternoons will give Erin some more quality time with Gramma and Grampa Prekker and Auntie Laura. I hope that she treats them well.

Other than our misadventures this weekend, Erin is great. She slept through the night for the 3 nights before we left. She is more interactive and smiling more every day. She is starting to coo occasionally, but still seems to prefer grunting noises. She hasn't repeated her rolling performance, so I think that we'll be waiting a while before that one shows up again. We discovered on our trip that she loves to watch the dogs in the car and smiles when they poke their heads up over the backseat. Erin has her 2 month check up on Thursday and we are all excited to see just how big she's gotten since her last visit when she was 19 days old.

Hibernation

She did it! Last night Erin slept through the night-- a previously-unheard-of 11:15 pm to 6:30 am near-hibernation. Besides yawning a couple more times than usual, she didn't seem bothered by it. She probably wondered what her parents were so excited about over breakfast.

Erin is growing up quickly. Each day I look forward to coasting down the driveway after work on my bike and sneaking a glimpse of Erin or Frances in the kitchen window. The dogs bark and run to the door, Fran sticks her head out into the kitchen to say 'hi', and Erin just looks around with her big eyes and flailing limbs. She's started smiling and giggling when I change her diaper first thing in the morning. She's also outgrown most of the newborn clothes.

I switch back to the ED next week, and the shiftwork will disrupt my regular contributions to Fran's daily routine. No matter what time it happens to be, I'll be no less excited to get home on the bike and see what 'first' Erin has accomplished that day. Life is good.

-- Dad





Ok, my turn to write about what led up to her sleep marathon. As I think that I mentioned in an earlier post, Erin got a yeast diaper rash while we were in Portland and we've had a really hard time getting it to clear up. This is probably because, as I discovered several days ago, she has thrush too. Hard to clear up one without dealing with the other. So, we decided that we'd give the old remedy for thrush a try. For those of you who aren't familiar, gentian violet is a permanent dye which is used to stain some samples to look at under a microscope, it also kills yeast and is non-toxic and over the counter. The downside is the mess and oh what a mess we made. I put a little on her tongue and nursed her which resulted in picture number one. Messy, but not horrific. I then put a little more on her tongue and nursed her on the other side. This went well for several minutes until she gagged and projectile vomited copious amounts of lavender milk all over herself, me and the couch. It's a very good thing that the couch is already purple! After frantically trying to clean up the mess, she finished nursing and conked out. I was certain that since she'd lost so much of her meal that she'd be up soon, but the little girl surprised us by sleeping the whole night. How lucky are we. I know that there are no guarantees that this will become a habit, but it was pretty nice.

The naked baby in the sunshine is our attempt to help clear up her bottom. The girl loves to be naked, but I don't trust her indoors so turned the patio into a nudist colony (Oscar, Duncan and Erin participated, but I opted out). Since we were outside, of course she kept her fluids to herself for a change and just enjoyed the sun on her nether regions.

Business in front, party in the back

Erin has a baby mullet. For a short time it was cute and now it just looks really funny. She lost a bunch of hair on top and has rubbed all of the hair off of the sides of her head, giving her a dramatic line between the thin hair on top and the plentiful long hair in back. What a look. I feel like we need to start attending NASCAR races or drive an old pickup truck and start calling her Cletus.


Last night went fantastic. We've had a string of 4 really good nights where she goes 6 hours between feeds and she's been going to bed earlier which is really nice. Last night she went to bed at 10, slept until 4 and then skipped her 6AM feed and slept until 8:15. It was so nice to get two really good chunks of sleep, the only downside was that I felt like I was going to explode by the time we got up this morning. I figure it's a small price to pay for some good sleep.


Dean encouraged me to come clean about the pictures from Erin's trip to Jan and Dean's last week. In fact, Erin was not spoiled by her grandparents, she has picked up her parent's vices. Yes, I have a coke habit and Matt occasionally gets sucked into the Bachelor, but we never knew she would pick these things up so soon.

We've had great weather here recently and Erin and I have been enjoying our long daily walks with the dogs a lot. Erin will stay awake for most of the walk, but usually conks out at the end. This explains the huge number of cute sleeping carseat pictures that I have.

Matt's doing a great job with the garden. The peas and beans are way taller than Erin, our blueberry plants have rebounded nicely from the rabbits' winter pruning and our tomato plants look great. Jan and Dean came over yesterday to help watch Erin and work in the yard. It was so much fun to play outside and get my hands dirty in the yard. I've just been pretending not to notice how much there is to do outside, but it was fun to notice and get to tackle some of the jobs. We mostly did clean up and weeding and next week I'm hoping to do some planting. I can't wait!

Funny girl

Seven weeks

It turns out that Erin is a very talented little baby. Unfortunately she has a talent that won't win her American Idol or even America's Got Talent. The other day as I was changing her diaper on the changing table she managed to shoot poop all the way to the wall. For those of you who haven't seen the nursery, that means that she shot her poop about 7 feet and made an enormous mess. What a gal. Looks like we're going to have to do naked baby tummy time in a different location as she can't be trusted to keep her bodily fluids within a reasonable range.

Erin has been sleeping really well for the last few nights. She even surprised me by going to bed by 9:30 or 10 the last two nights. What a treat. She's then up once in the middle of the night and once between 5-6 and then back to sleep until about 8:30. She's also been going back to sleep in her crib in the morning instead of in bed with me and I certainly sleep better this way.

Both dogs needed vet checkups this week, so Laura, Jan and Dean watched her while I took trips to the vet. According to the pictures, it looks like she was naughty while I was gone. Looks like what they say about Grandparents spoiling grandkids is true.

Unfortunately I think that Erin has some thrush. She managed to get a diaper rash in Portland when she was in disposable diapers and we've been struggling to keep it cleared up here. Yesterday I noticed that she's got a white tongue that doesn't rub off. So today we're going to go try to find some gentian violet and make a huge mess trying to get this cleared up.

Speaking of big messes. I was feeling guilty yesterday for not having started her vitamin drops yet so we tried them out. Despite what the bottle says, I don't think that they really have a great fruity flavor because they smell horrid. Erin confirmed that the taste likely matches the smell when I gave them to her. She got the most startled, sad look on her face, like someone had just told her that there was no more breastmilk coming ever, and opened her mouth and let it all dribble out. She then refused to have her pacifier put in her mouth for the next half hour because she was so traumatized. I think that she managed to get some of the stuff worked into her neck folds because she still stinks like vitamin drops. Yucky stuff.

Erin spent a lot more time this week looking at the toys attached to her bouncy seat and swinging her arms at them. I'm not sure that the movement is intentional at this point, but she certainly notices the toys and watches them attentively. She's also managed to find her fist to suck on when she drops her pacifier. She doesn't have the finesse to get a hold of her thumb or her fingers, but she just slobbers over the whole thing. Now she usually has at least one hand/wrist dripping with drool every time I get her out of her carseat. It's also gotten pretty hot these days so I've spent the week trying to figure out a way to keep her swaddled while not overheating her. I think this might be my favorite, but it looks so ridiculous. She smiling even more frequently, but I still haven't been able to catch much of a smile on camera.

Otherwise we had a great week. The weather is nice and we've been out for long walks with the boys. We went to the peds banquet on wednesday to watch the third years graduate and Erin was a perfect angel. I finally bit the bullet and went for my first bike ride of the season. Jan and Dean came over to watch Erin while I went out riding. Man am I out of shape. I met with a trainer in Portland who warned me that I'd probably lost about 5lbs of muscle, but I doubted her until I tried to actually use my legs while biking. I guess we'll have to keep working on that one.

Despite the saying about waking a sleeping baby, there is nothing that Matt likes to do more when he comes home from work. His favorite game to play is "see how close I can get to her before she wakes up." Needless to say Erin never manages to sleep for much longer after Daddy comes home.

6 weeks

Erin has had quite a week. She settled back into a quasi routine at home very nicely. Nights have been going fairly smoothly and in fact she had her first Daddy only night yesterday. I spent the night in the living room on the pull-out and Matt did the whole night time routine and feedings. He did a great job. Erin was a little tough on Dad at bedtime, but rewarded him by sleeping from midnight to 5am. Unfortunately Matt was a little worried about the prolonged sleep and woke up to check on her every hour. We're going to try to make these Daddy nights part of our routine so that when I'm back on call in a few months things go as smoothly as possible.

We got to celebrate Matt's first father's day today. We had great weather and we headed to Stillwater to watch a bike race. We then headed to Jan and Dean's to meet Laura's new puppy and have a nice relaxed afternoon and dinner. It felt like such a treat to have Matt to ourselves all weekend long. Hopefully Erin and I don't get too spoiled.Erin's major accomplishment this week is her ability to roll over. She'd made some pretty good attempts to roll from her back to her front when we were in Portland, but she never sealed the deal and she hasn't tried this much since we got home. However, last night as I was giving her some naked baby tummy time she proceeded to roll from her stomach to her back... five times. The first time I figured it was a fluke, but then she rolled each time I put her on her stomach. She wasn't quite able to replicate her feat today, but I think that it's harder to roll with her bulky diaper on. We will see if this skill sticks around or disappears like her ability to find her fingers to suck.

Erin is otherwise growing like a weed, improving her head control, starting to notice and swing at toys and smiling a lot more. She still smiles randomly, but is working on a great social smile which she seems most likely to give at 5am. I'm worried she may be developing into a morning person. Erin's baby acne continues and her hair can best be described as a baby mullet. How charming.

5 weeks

Erin and I just returned last night from our wonderful trip to Portland. We were out there for a week, which explains my lack of posting. Erin had her first and second plane rides, she met lots of family and friends, we went to Erin's first parade and Erin continued to get bigger and stronger this week. We missed Matt an awful lot while we were gone.The plane rides went very smoothly. Andy traveled with us on our flight out and it went great. Erin slept for most of the trip and we nursed successfully (although very awkwardly) on the flight out. She didn't have any trouble with her ears during take off and landing and she didn't fuss at all the whole flight. The flight back home went just as easily. She slept soundly and was nice and quiet without any blow-out diapers. I was thrilled!We were able to get a few visits to Papa Joe and Jeannette which was great. Papa Joe got to meet his newest granddaughter and just for fun helped us come up with a scheme to stick the airlines with a box of poopy diapers... he's very devious. Papa Joe also offered to feed Erin her first taste of ice cream when the time is right. I can't imagine anyone else more qualified to do it.Erin also got to meet her aunties Rachel and Jan, her uncle Nick and her cousins Lucy and Brennan. Lucy was very interested in all things Erin and accompanied us to watch every diaper change. She also picked out most of Erin's clothes while we were there and was the official keeper of the "fire-pass" which is Lucy's name for the pacifier. Lucy also informed me that she really did want Baby Prekker to be a boy and that maybe Erin could go back in my tummy and be a boy when she came out again. Erin is getting more active and lively every day. She loves to thrash her limbs around after being freed from her swaddle. When she's swaddled we like to call her the "baby burrito." She has started smiling more often and is generally most smiley first thing in the morning and sometimes even giggles in her sleep. I'm not sure if this will last or she will become surely in the morning like a good Lee girl. We started noticing how much she loves being held so she can sleep with her head tipped all the way back at the most uncomfortable looking angle.


Sleep was a bit of a problem in Portland. I figured that we would run into some trouble with the time change, but she surprised me by refusing to sleep for more than an hour or so at a time for the first few nights. It was painful, especially considering how well she was sleeping at home before we left. She did, however, manage to start sleeping better by the last few nights in Portland. I think that it was a combination of a new crib in a new place, lots of activity during the days and a complete lack of any kind of routine. Luckily she really slept pretty well our first night home. I hope it lasts.We got to spend lots of time with my good friend Laura and her daughter Anna. We went to the junior rose festival parade, visited Laura's store and had a great time together. We also got to see my friend Haley who has baby due in August. We can't wait to come home this fall and see another new baby!