Thank you for all of the well wishes. Thankfully I'm all better now and no one else seems to have caught what I had. We still don't know what I had, so I'm just happy that I'm better.
We had a pretty busy week. I had two afternoons out of the house for work. On Tuesday, I had to take a 200 question test for residency. We are not formally graded on the test, but the program says that it helps to find areas for improvement. I think that this year we're going to identify many areas for improvement. It is always really discouraging to take a test and discover questions about things that I've never heard of. Oh well.
I also had clinic last Thursday. I have discovered both that my brain is totally out of commission and that I'm now very biased about children. Until I had Erin, I was an equal opportunity child lover, now I am horribly biased and believe that my baby is the best and cutest baby in the whole wide world. This makes work a little awkward, but I'm sure that it'll get better. I've also found that instead of just being pretty slow, I'm now slower than even I thought possible. I'm hoping that this picks up a bit as my brain turns back on.
Erin has stayed with Jan during my time away. She seems to really love this time with Gramma and I hear lots of reports of how well she does in my absence. I could not be happier that she gets this quality time with family and that she thrives when I'm gone. What a good girl.
Erin has recently started to differentiate between people she knows and people she doesn't. She is still mostly content to be held by the non-regulars, but is more reluctant to smile and show her sparkly personality than she is with those of us she sees all the time.
This week Erin has also decided that she likes to stand while we're holding her. Her chunky little thighs wobble under her weight, but she loves to try to hold herself up. She's continued to be a baby on the move and spends considerable time during the day kicking her legs and swinging her arms. I think that she's practicing for the next time Matt tries to get her in the water.
She continues to be fascinated by Duncan. I think that the big googly eyes and the black and white face are especially appealing to her baby senses. She will watch him intently any time that she can see him and in turn Duncan likes to sit near her bouncy seat, at my feet while I hold her, or next to her blanket when she's on the floor. I have a feeling these two are going to be great friends someday soon.
We saw the physical therapist last week for Erin's neck. We confirmed that her head is quite asymmetric with a flat spot on the back right side of her head which pushes that side of her forehead forward a bit. If we don't get it to round out in the next little bit, she would qualify for one of the craniocap helmets when she is 4 months old. We got some stretches and some strategies to address her neck problem that should help a lot and hopefully we can avoid the helmet. No one wants their baby to need a helmet. So far the stretches are helping a ton and she now spontaneously turns to the left pretty regularly and I think that her head shape is improving too. The only downside to the strategies is that we are supposed to change her so that she has to look to the left to see us while we're changing her. I never thought that it would be so hard to change her while she's facing the other direction and it has led to some rather awkward diaper changes and a bit more mess than usual. I guess I'm not an ambi-changer. We head back to the PT in 3 weeks to check out our progress.
We headed to Dekalb, IL last weekend for a wedding reception for a good friend from Grinnell. It was great to see Ted, meet his bride Ani and catch up with one of our old coaches from Grinnell. Erin did remarkably well for the long drive and only had one true meltdown in the car. That being said, she did not seem to enjoy spending quite that much time in her carseat and would give us the saddest look, complete with her bottom lip stuck out, each time we put her back in it. Poor girl. There was this great little house on the grounds where the reception was and Matt though that it was great to feel like a giant next to it. Silly guy.
Things should be a bit more settled this week, but I'm counting down the days until I go back to work full time. We've discovered that Matt's on every 3rd night call for my first week back. It should be just delightful. This is really going to be a shock to the system for our little family.
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