From Wit’s End

My boss told me at 5:00pm on Friday that I would be going on a business trip this week. So here I am, writing from a hotel room not even a day’s march from Gettysburg. I’ll be attending meetings at one of our suppliers for about a day and a half, and I’ll be home Wednesday in time for dinner. Every once in a while it’s nice to cross the Mason-Dixon line, if only just to visit.

He’s already put up some pictures.
Ours will be coming along shortly.
Stay tuned…

CAUTION: Painfully cute pictures ahead.

Zonkered. Dead Tired. Running on Fumes. Plumb tuckered out.

It’s been a fairly bad week. For some reason, even though Jack is sleeping about six hours a night, something about our sleeping pattern this week has drained me of all my gumption. It’s been all I could do to keep from slipping into a coma at work this week. My boss noticed, and I told him that I would try to do better. I guess we’ll see.

Rachel left this morning to visit her sister Emily in Virginia for the weekend for a much-needed, much-deserved break. She is under orders to get a really good night’s sleep tonight, and will be back Sunday evening. In the meantime, I get to be with Jack all weekend. It’s particularly fun right after he’s eaten: he really gets into smiling and cooing with his Dad. Here’s to Father-Son quality time!

This evening I serendipitiously discovered that making a certain noise made Jack smile. So of course, not only did I do it over and over again, but I also attempted to get it on video. I got it on the third try, along with the great treat of Jack’s face going through a complete gamut of emotions in only a few seconds. Take a look by clicking on the picture below. I’m pretty sure you’ll want to watch it at least twice.

[31 seconds, 7.8 MB AVI file]

Oh, and as Dave Barry might say, “Goo-Gitchie-Goo and the Smile-Fuss” would make a great name for a rock band.

Well, Jack drank his last ounce of Momma’s milk early this morning. Rachel’s supply just kind of petered out this week, and she even got a little bit of mastitis, so that’s the end of that. Rachel’s a little glum that she couldn’t give him more than that, but we’re thankful for what she was able to give him, and we’re glad that there is a viable and nutritious alternative so that Jack can continue to grow.

Jack was weighed at the doctor today: 8 pounds, 12 ounces! That’s another gain of nine ounces in about four days. So Jack is back up into the 25th percentile in the weight chart. He’s still a little below the mean (about two standard deviations), but he’s growing apace with his fellow infants once more. Thanks for your concern and your prayers!

We got our “new” car! It’s a dark green 2000 Toyota Corolla with only 48000 miles on it. It’s just like the white Corolla (a.k.a. “Hope”), except where “Hope” has Power Nothing, the green Corolla has Power Everything. It even has cruise control! So now it is officially our road trip car. And from this day forward, it shall be called “Peace”. My first car was a dark green Saturn, and I called it Grace, my second car (which eventually became “ours”) is a white Corolla, and I called it “Hope”. This third car is a Dark Green Corolla, and I am dubbing it “Peace”. Get it? Green “Peace”??

…anyway, on Saturday morning, I’m going to take it to the dealer for an oil change, and in the afternoon I’m going to get a brand new stereo installed. Oh yeah, and pictures forthcoming, too, I suppose. Wait for it.

I have some pictures that I should put up, both of Jack’s baptism and Grandmother McCune’s surprise 80th birthday party. But there are only so many lucid, non-working hours in a day. I’ll get to ‘em. Your patience is appreciated.

UPDATE: They’re up, here and here.

That was a bit of a scare. I woke up to Jack fussing a little bit at around seven-ish this morning, and fed him the bottle of formula on the nightstand as Rachel had instructed me. There was four ounces in the bottle, and it was the new type of formula that the “substitute” pediatrician recommended yesterday. Jack took three ounces of it, and then didn’t want anymore. Rachel woke up while I was feeding him, and we just hung out as a family. It was pretty cool. Jack was awake and in a good mood, so I decided to take him out to the den so that he could be with his “friends”, the plaid couch and the fan. I put him down on the couch and turned on the computer to check my e-mail. But I couldn’t stay away from him for that long, so I made faces at him and he was smiling and having a good time. Suddenly this white stuff came out of nowhere and flowed all over the couch cushion. I cried out in shock and dismay (I admit, more at the mess on the couch than anything else) and took Jack back to Rachel and to find a burp cloth to clean up his face with. He had spit up some of his breakfast, and it was the most spit-up I’d ever seen come out of him.

Rachel held him on her lap and cleaned him up okay. For a few minutes anyway, everything seemed okay. But a whole bunch of white stuff went all over the place again, more than the first time, and it was in his mouth and his nose. He didn’t make any noise, and Rachel cried out in shock and dismay. “This isn’t good,” she said. She immediately started the anti-choking measures that the nurse showed us before she and Jack were discharged from the hospital. “Where’s the phone? Call 911!” I found the phone and typed in those three digits. Just then Jack let out a good wail, so I didn’t press the green button that would actually call the number. “Get the nasal aspirator!” Rachel said. I got it, and Rachel sucked out his nostrils. He wailed once or twice more, and it was apparent that he was breathing properly. Rachel got Jack’s wet clothes off of him, and I held him against my chest the way he likes me to, careful to keep him upright in case anything else came up. He burped, sighed, and promptly fell asleep on my chest, wearing only a diaper.

Rachel called the pediatrician on call and he said it was too soon to tell if it was the new formula itself or that we just gave him too much. So I guess we’ll try again with less formula and some pumped breastmilk and see if that’s better. With lots of hugs and cuddles and a few tears and prayers of thanks, we should hopefully make it through the rest of the day quietly. Between this past week with Nik here, the spit-up incident this morning and spending this past weekend up at the farm, we have a bit of laundry and chores to do today. Jack’s waking up in his swing now. I think I’ll go hold him for a while.

Jack’s gained nine ounces in the past five days! He’s still decidedly below average, but things are looking up. For you statistics enthusiasts, he is about four or five standard deviations below the mean. For those of you who are not enthusiastic about statistics, he is now eight pounds, three ounces when he should weigh about ten pounds. The doctor gave us this even-higher-density formula that was designed for premature babies, so that should help us out, too. On the way home, Rachel resolved to alter our feeding method of Jack: Instead of fighting with Jack over his nipple confusion and lazy sucking, we’ll just feed him out of a bottle so that he doesn’t burn any unecessary calories by being frustrated at the breast. While I feed Jack formula, she’ll pump, and he’ll also be fed the natural momma’s milk by means of a bottle. It’s not what we would prefer in an ideal world, but if it’s what gets our son to grow properly, then we will do what we have to do.

Just click on a picture to view a larger version of it.

		Movies! Surprise! (62 secs, 17.0 MB AVI file) Birthday Prayer for Grandmother (69 secs, 18.1 MB AVI file)