September 30, 2004  
We got a double stroller today! Last night at church, I was telling a friend of mine about our tiring trip to the zoo. She told me that they had a Graco double stroller sitting in their attic, so she brought it over today! It's one of those really heavy, front and back seat kinds, but after Monday's excursion, I decided that the extra weight, to lift only a couple times instead of constantly, is worth it. 

My friend brought it over today while Phil was home by himself with both kids - for a few hours. I had a very lengthy dentist appointment - four fillings!! I just had my last appointment in June, and they told me everything was fine. That was a different place than I'm going now...obviously my gut feeling was right in that they hadn't been too thorough. Although, two of the cavities, they told me today, could have been caused by childbirth - specifically, pushing. An upper molar on each side of my mouth had fracture lines in them, which she said can be caused by either tooth grinding (which I don't do) or by clamping down really hard and exerting unusual pressure. That, I probably did do since the pushing part was so hard this time (even though still very fast - I guess I'm just a really good pusher)!

While I was gone this morning, Ethan successfully took his first bottle! We tried it a couple weeks ago when I had my first dentist appointment, but it was a bottle of formula, and Phil said he didn't seem very taken with it. He didn't drink more than about a quarter ounce. This time, I had just this week pumped a good amount of milk, when I was feeling engorged early one morning. He emptied the whole bottle! Yayyyyy! I never could get Natalie to take a single bottle, at least after we finally had breastfeeding going. I don't plan to bottle feed Ethan either, but it is nice to know I might have the ability to occasionally be away from him for more than a couple hours.

One more thing I wanted to mention, that I forgot yesterday: we love Mycolin drops. I think I've written before how he's such a messy eater; he moans, groans, and grunts when he nurses, so I know he must be taking in a lot of air. He gets really fussy, even though I burp him all the time. Gas comes out of both ends - a lot. I never could hardly get Natalie to burp at all. It got worse in the evenings. After a couple particularly rough evenings when I began to wonder about the dreaded "C" word (colic, that is), we got some Mycolin and gave Ethan his first taste of something other than milk. Within 60 seconds, his face de-scrunched and his whole body calmed down, and he stopped screaming. He licked his lips and seemed to say "ahhhhhh" with his whole body.

September 29, 2004  
So much has been going on, and no time to do updates. So I'll try to remember everything I've been wanting to write about!

Ethan will be seven weeks old this week. The time is just really flying. He already looks so different than in that picture below. He's lost more hair (people at church joke that he's getting his daddy's hair line, only he still has more of it). We think it's going to stay dark, like my color. Natalie was born with dark hair but it ALL fell out and then came back in blonde. Ethan's still got all of his hair on the top and back (just not in front - just like Phil). I would think that if he was going to lose it all like Natalie did, that it would have by now. I hope so anyway. It will be nice to have him have my hair color. My mom and Grandma Hedrick were going through some things this last week because my grandparents moved to a new house this week. They found a hospital announcement picture of me, and it is just unbelievable how much Ethan looks like me. I'm going to get Phil to scan in the picture so that I can post it on here. Ethan is still not sleeping very well at night, but for the past couple nights it's gotten a little better. He's still waking up to eat several times, but at least he's not staying awake for several hours in the wee hours. It seems hard to imagine that it's been over six weeks now since I've really had good solid, at least 3 - 4 consecutive hours of sleep! I have my "six week checkup" next week - that's right, I have my six week checkup at 8 weeks post partum. That's the soonest they could get me in. (This should be the last time I have to go there, anyway.) Overall I think I'm feeling pretty good and have healed up well, but one thing that is still bothering me is my lower back.  After delivery, for a couple days I couldn't stand fully upright because of a pain right in my lower back and on my right back hip, and it's still hurting there. I think that's the only thing that I am going to have to mention as something that still isn't right. Sometimes it hurts so bad that I have to sit down. And, holding a (probable) 15 pound baby, in a 10 pound baby carrier, all the time doesn't help that!  Although, I'm happy to report that we finally found a sling position that he likes - instead of the cradle position, which most young babies like, he wants to be held upright, belly to belly. The sling holds him behind his head and under his bottom, and he tucks his legs up inside the pouch.

Ethan is smiling now, and it is so cute. His entire little round face just lights up. The other morning, the final time Ethan woke for the day, he nursed and then just sat there looking at me, looking like he wanted to chat. So I said, "good morning sweet boy!" and he gave me a huge, mouth-opened grin.

We're trying to venture out more these days. On Monday, I took Natalie and Ethan to the zoo, all by ourselves. That was a tiring adventure. I held Ethan in the front carrier and pushed Natalie in the stroller.  It worked, but it made my back hurt pretty bad, and we only made it for a couple hours before I had to call it quits. I'm trying to keep Natalie out and doing things as much as possible though, because though I'm happy to pretty much stay home and nurse Ethan all day, reading or trying to doze, Natalie needs to do things. At least a few times a week. If we don't, she starts getting really whiney and not fun to be around. She's doing a good job at the adjustment, I think, but it's hard to not get frustrated at her constant "whys" and "no, mama, don't WANT to's" when you are sleep deprived. Speaking of which, I've discovered the definition of "tired": when, the moment you close your eyes even briefly, a flutter of dream-like images flips through your mind, as if your brain is desperately trying to have as many dreams as possible in that small instant.

Natalie is really just exploding with language and also imagination right now. It's so cute just to watch and listen to her conversations and games she plays when she doesn't know we're paying attention. She insists, every day, that one or more of the Wiggles are coming over. She always unlocks the front door for them, so several times a day we go and relock the door, only to discover it open again later. 

September 14, 2004  
Yesterday, Ethan was one month old! Here he is at one month. What a cutie pie:

I've decided to take his picture every month with the blue teddy bear. It was in his hospital newborn picture, so we will really be able to see his growth in relation to it.

He had his one month checkup yesterday. He has really grown! Not that I was surprised; he's a little round ball and feeling heavy. He is now 12 pounds 12 ounces in weight, and pretty much out of 0-3 month clothes already (they generally top out at 11/12 pounds and 23.5 inches long). His length is 23.5 inches, and his head circ is 16 inches. That's 97th percentile on weight, 95th on length, and 95th on head. A month ago, he was right around 50th on everything. Nope, my kid doesn't miss too many meals. Everything else looked good too; even though he's currently already on his second cold of his short life, his lungs sounded good. Ethan left his...um...mark at the doctor's office this time. We're always  a little concerned when the boy is unclothed for any length of time. When we have to carry him around naked, it's like a ticking time bomb.  (Just yesterday alone, I got pooped on once, and later on, right before we decided it was now bath time, I was peed on too.) When he was on his back on the baby scale, naked of course, he decided it was time to empty his bladder - all over the wall. He made good distance.

At one month, Ethan is already trying to roll over (I don't think it'll be long) and he's working on giving us a real smile. Once, about a week ago, I smiled at him and he smiled back, but it was more just an imitation and not a happy, social smile. His sleep schedule is still about the same - he's developed a pattern of waking for at least a couple hours in the middle of the night - often from about 3 am till 6 am. He's not hungry - he's just awake and happy to stay that way! We're working on this...you can't just tell a newborn to go to sleep, though. As much as I plead with him in those middle of the night chat sessions, he just does his own thing. :-) 

September 7, 2004  
Well this is a first. Right now, both kids are napping. Yes, Natalie is taking a N-A-P! A little earlier, I put in a Bob the Builder DVD for Natalie to watch, while I dozed off with Ethan. Then I went upstairs to check my email and lay down up here for awhile. After her video was over, she came upstairs and I told her it was "quiet time". I gave her a few books to read, and put her in her bed. After about ten minutes, she started calling me to come get her out, and I went over there and told her "Five more minutes. This is quiet time and we're going to do this every day now." I told her she could either read her books again, or lay her head down on her pillow. She laid down, and five minutes later, I went in to check on her and she was asleep.  She's never taken naps, and until recently, not really needed them either because she'd go through the whole day not acting tired or cranky. Lately she's been both by mid-afternoon. Maybe she isn't sleeping so soundly at night these days. She doesn't wake up as far as we know, when Ethan cries at night, but maybe she is waking up at least some, and just going back to sleep. Whatever the cause, she is really needing an afternoon nap now, so I'm glad this worked today. Hopefully it will continue. I even got to lay down and rest for a few minutes!

Ethan is going to be one month old next week already! The time is going so much faster this time around. With Natalie, that first month seemed to crawl by, with every day in slow motion and me feeling like I'd never get to that first benchmark, the end of the first month. The weeks are just zooming by right now. We're still not sleeping at night, but we're working on it. Last night was bad, but the night before that, he slept through the 3 am feeding (waking at "only" 1, 2, and 4 and not 3 am also). We've decided he just doesn't like the bassinet, so we might just give up on it. Natalie loved it, and slept in it until she was 6 months old and her arms and legs hung out from all sides. Ethan just doesn't sleep in it at all. About the only time we've gotten him to sleep in it is when he's slept propped up in the Boppy, which was wedged into the bassinet. He really likes the Boppy. (Natalie never used it much.) Last night, we brought the Pack n' Play upstairs into our room for him to sleep in, because he does great in that during the days. He didn't sleep too much last night, but he did sleep in it some. Right now he's napping in it, and sleeping soundly of course - it's daylight out.

We've also found that Ethan doesn't particularly like the sling...the sling that grandma Hedrick and I made for him; the sling that I would have loved having when Natalie was a baby since she LOVED being held in a sling. I'm not giving up on it yet; I'm hoping maybe when his neck support gets better and I can hold him facing outward, he'll cozy up in it better, but for now he doesn't like it much. Of course: just when I had the likes and dislikes of one baby figured out, along comes another one with totally different tastes! 

We had our first (non-church) outing on Friday night. We went over to Easton to walk around and get some ice cream. Ethan did fine for awhile, but then he decided he had enough, and screamed the whole way back from Maggie Moo's to our car. I didn't bring the Baby B'jorn carrier with me (which he has used and been okay with a few times), so Phil and I were each pushing one stroller, Natalie in the umbrella stroller and Ethan in his car seat in the other stroller. So we couldn't pick him up and carry him, since both of us were pushing strollers. So he just cried in his car seat the whole walk back (and we parked on the complete other side of the shopping center). I felt so bad listening to him carry on like that for the whole walk. He didn't even want his pacifier, and got more and more angry sounding every time I tried to give it to him. We think it was because he was in car seat overload - he'd been sitting in it for a few hours (we only thought to realize this afterwards) while I was running a wedding rehearsal that evening at church. Oops. So, apparently one thing he dislikes is being in the same seat for four hours straight (minus a couple nursing times, of course). I'd feel the same way. The next time we take a stroller outing, we'll be bringing the front carrier along with us too, just in case.