One month!

Well, technically one month and 3 days now, but Evan had his one month appointment at the doctor today. He is now 10lbs 11oz!! That's 3 whole pounds over his birth weight! That puts him in the 75 percentile for his age. He is also 22.5 inches long, 1.5 inches longer than at birth. Also 75 percentile for his age. He is thriving! He also had his second Hepatitis B shot today. He had been so good up until that point and when the needle went in the leg his face got bright red and he let out a good scream and cry. Tired him right out though, he was asleep by the time we were pulling out of the parking lot.

Evan spent the night in his room for the first time 2 nights ago. He seems to like it or at least we don't hear his disapproval! I have sure slept a lot better without him in the room. He grunts and snorts a lot when he's not quite awake but not all the way asleep yet and that was keeping me up a lot at night. Now I only hear when he cries which is really the only time he needs me. He's also sleeping a lot better during the day. Not quite sure why or how anything is different from last week but he catches cat naps, hour long naps and really long 2-3 hour naps throughout the day. We have had much more pleasant evenings now! One thing that has helped is that Sam and Christie suggested an exercise ball to us. We were over at their house Friday night and we knew they had used it to calm Sammie down when he was a baby and now they're using it with Charlie. It worked like a charm. I just sat on the ball and bounced while holding Evan when he started to fuss and it calmed him right down. We bought one the next day and it has worked to calm him down every time he starts fussing (unless he's hungry of course!). It relaxes him so he can start calming down enough to fall asleep.

As you saw from the previous post, the cats have been driving us somewhat crazy - mostly Bella. Since she can hop a double baby gate we shut her in the office and the other two were contained with just one baby gate. Well she pulled up a ton of carpet while shut in there which of course infuriated us. So almost immediately after Jack saw that he started to install the bi-fold door on the laundry room that he was so hesitant to install for months. It opens pretty easily so we have to "bolt" it each night with a spring loaded curtain rod. What a hassle!

We're embarking on our first road trip with him tomorrow! We're heading up to Maine for Thanksgiving and looking forward to the adventure!

Jealous older siblings

So my cats have had to make some adjustments since Evan came home. They've been shut out of our room almost consistently and have had to deal with a lot less attention. Phantom and Callie are mostly ok with it, just occasionally cozying up a little more than usual. Bella is pining for attention. The more we ignore or try to shoo her away, the harder she comes back to love on us and get some affection herself. We finally started trapping them downstairs with 2 baby gates on top of each other so we could get some peace and quiet at night since Bella wasn't taking the hint with the squirt bottles. Well, that didn't work. Check it out...

Ninja Cat from Jennifer McDade on Vimeo.

A few videos

This one is from our first week home with Evan. He still has very strong legs and can launch himself with them. He was able to army crawl up Jack twice!

Army Crawl from Jennifer McDade on Vimeo.

This is from Halloween (obviously). It cracks me up how he's not moving at all and is stricken with the hiccups.

Flying Penguin from Jennifer McDade on Vimeo.

Towards the end of Evan's cries he usually does the CUTEST pouty face

Pouty Face from Jennifer McDade on Vimeo.

While trying to calm Evan down Jack decided to multitask and get a workout in

New Daddy Workout from Jennifer McDade on Vimeo.

Trial & Error

These past few weeks have been a lot of trial and error with Evan as we are learning how to read him and getting to know him. One success we've had is that he sleeps very well at night - at least during the hours of 11pm-6am. He'll get up to eat but usually not less than 3 hours apart and sometimes as much as 6 hours and he'll go right back to sleep after eating. Sometimes he'll go back down for one more stint in the 5am-6am range but that's not always the case.

We're still working on getting some better naps during the day and every day there's a different magical mix that results in a good long nap. He seems to have a different preference every day. He can catnap pretty easily, but he needs at least one solid 2-3 hour nap every day to be reasonably pleasant in the evening. He has both enjoyed and heavily refused a good nap in/on the swing, Mom, Dad, the carrier and the bassinet. We've tried it quiet and with background noise, light and dark, walks in the stroller, rides in the car and it still seems to be a different combination every day. I feel a sense of accomplishment if he gets a good long nap.

We had our first dinner outing and it was a success! We all went to Chili's on Saturday after Evan took a very long nap. We made sure he had a good full belly before we left and were surprised when he started fussing once we got our appetizer. I gave him a pacifier and that did the trick for the rest of our time there. He dozed off a few times but stayed quiet once he had the pacifier.

Overall Evan is still a fairly mellow baby and when he fusses we can usually figure out what he needs. Usually it's sleep, and that's not always the easiest to encourage when there's a different magical combination each day, but we're working on it!

Singing boy

Singing Boy from Jennifer McDade on Vimeo.

Growing boy!

We have a healthy eater. We took Evan to the doctor on Monday for another weight check and he gained almost a pound since his appointment a week before! As of Monday he was 8lbs 2oz (7lbs 5oz the week before) and I swear his cheeks are chubbier even since then. He has graduated from most of his newborn clothes to 0-3 month clothes already!

We are blessed with a very mellow baby for the most part. Only twice since we brought him home has he had a fit that we couldn't figure out the reason for. All the rest of the time he's perfectly content with a full belly either awake or asleep being held or in the swing! He's been sleeping pretty well at night and even went a 6 hour stretch a couple nights ago. He just started using pacifiers a couple nights ago too.

We've been skyping with the out of town family which has been great. My parents just got their laptop yesterday so they got to "see" us last night! I'm a computer science major and this technology (which isn't that new) still amazes me!

As for my recovery - it's going very well! I'm down almost 30 pounds and that feels GREAT. It's crazy how normal I feel after being pregnant for so long. I've already forgotten most of the discomfort I was feeling towards the end.

We have been so taken care of - we still haven't cooked a single meal since we've come home and haven't tapped into my frozen meals yet. Leah organized a bunch of meals for us all the way from Virginia. Now we're getting meals through our church. It's been such a huge help so we can spend all that food shopping/prep/cooking time loving on Evan instead.

Well that's about all that's new with us!!

First Halloween

We didn't really celebrate but we had a nice day. It was unseasonably warm out but windy. Still, we took a walk and just in time too. It started raining not too long after we got back in. We didn't buy any candy for the kids this year since we weren't sure if we'd be home or not. So we copped out and put a sign on the door saying that we didn't have candy since we had a sleeping newborn. It worked, and the rain must have deterred a lot of trick or treaters. We weren't bothered at all.

We enjoyed watching the Yankees kick butt! But Evan peed through both of his baseball outfits before the game began. To be fair, he would have been wearing one if the game didn't have a rain delay.

We got a costume from Stacie that her girls didn't use. We put it on Evan just long enough to get some pictures but then took it off since it was such a warm day. He was so cute though! Here is our little penguin!