Sunday, June 28, 2009

Six Month Stats

I am such a slacker. Monday I took Jacob in for his 6-month check up and all week I have thought "I'll wait to post the stats until I have a cute picture of him to put with it." Of course, in order to get a cute picture I would have to get the camera out.

Jacob weighed in on the 22nd at 15.3 pounds which put him at 12th percentile for his weight. I have to admit being surprised about this one. The doctor is still pleased with his weight gain - up 2.5 pounds since his 4 month visit, but I am surprised he went from 15th percentile for weight down to 12th. I realize that he is still small for his age, but I don't think he is that small. I think there was a screw up. Anyway.

Jacob grew 2 inches in the last 2 months and is now 25.5 inches long (15th percentile) and his head grew to 42 cm (10th percentile). Both of these had measured in at the 5th percentile for his 4 month check up.

Over the last week, Jacob has decided not to sleep through the night and that he needs to eat sometime between 1am and 3am. We have been given advice from a couple different people to simply console and soothe him and put him back to bed. Maybe that works for their kids because their kids aren't really hungry when they wake up in the middle of the night. But this is one of the only times that Jacob really screams. He feels like he is starving. I will just keep hoping that Jacob goes back to sleeping 9-10 hours before waking up hungry.

He has also started to try to get somewhere, which at this point he has to accomplish by rolling. He acts like he wants to crawl, but really doesn't have the strength yet to hold himself up enough to really attempt it. He is getting stronger and stronger everyday though as he realizes that being on his tummy can be pretty fun afterall. And I think that he has made the connection that if he wants to go somewhere, he will have to do it on his tummy and not his back.

Here is Jacob from when he rolled himself under his activity jumper. I guess it can be as fun underneath as it is sitting inside. Justin and I were both pretty impressed that he rolled over the bar without a single noise to signify that rolling over the bar didn't feel good. Silly kid.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Six Months Old!

It is hard to believe that our little guy is already half a year old. One picture shows him smiling, the other really shows how big he is getting.

Jacob is really growing up - he loves to roll over from his back to his tummy. He is getting lots better at being on his tummy, although after a while he is really ready to be back on his back, but he has a hard time getting there. He really wants to be mobile, but lucky for us he isn't there yet.

A couple weeks ago we attempted to start Jacob on rice cereal, but he wasn't taking to it so well and after a few days of trial, he was spitting up a lot so we quit. Today we tried again and he is taking to it far better! He has also made the move into his crib in his own bedroom and seems to be doing great. We think that he is sleeping better and we like having our room back to ourselves. Now to get his little mini-crib moved out of our room so I have better access to my dresser.

As Jacob has gotten bigger, he has become very squirmy - especially during church. He loves playing with his daddy and sticking his tongue out when Justin plays with him.

Jacob's 6-month check up isn't until the 22nd, so we'll have stats up in about a week.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

One drama after another

It seems like it is one thing after another in our family. I'm sure everyone feels that way, but I just have to say that I hope that we are done with hospitals for a while.

I am guessing that Justin's body was going through withdrawals and missing all the attention of being in the hospital so he needed a trip to the ER on Thursday night.

Justin was bathing Jacob and after getting him out of the tub and handing him off to me to get ready for bed, Justin complained that his back was hurting him. Those who don't know Justin very well probably don't know that Justin is NOT a complainer. I am the complainer in the family. In fact, Justin doesn't complain to the extent that a lot of people didn't realize how sick he was when he was suffering through ulcerative colitis and needed his large intestine removed. After just another minute or so, he said, "My back is really killing me - I think I need to go soak in the tub."

After a soak in the tub, that didn't do much to help, Justin decided to take a vicodin (leftover from surgery #3) and take a rest in bed for a while. After about a half an hour, the pain was so intense that he threw up and decided to try to soak again.

We called the "Ask-a-Nurse" through our insurance, and after Justin answered a lot of questions about the type of pain, where it was located and the intensity we were instructed to go to an ER. I called my mom (because I always call my mom at times like these) and she asked if Justin could be having a problem with kidney stones. And we thought that I was the only one in our family that had kidney stones.

After being at the hospital for a couple hours, we were told that it was in fact kidney stones. We didn't get home from the hospital until 1:30am and after I put Jacob back to bed and made sure Justin was ok, I went to a 24 hour pharmacy to have the prescription for pain-killers filled (which according to Justin is way better than vicodin).

I'm guessing that most of our blog readers are lucky enough to not know how painful kidney stones are. When I went through them (twice) before I was told that the pain of kidney stones rivals the pain of labor. Having now experienced both, I would have to agree. I did think that my labor pain was worse than the pain of the kidney stones, but not by much. And I never experienced regular contractions - only the ones brought on by pitocin (and my understanding is that these are far more evil contractions than non-induced ones are).

Now we are hoping to be able to make it at least a few months with no more medical problems or sicknesses!

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Swim time


Today we took Jacob swimming for the first time. It was a lot of preparation for a little bit of time at the pool, but we think we have everything we need for the summer to visit the pool (first time we have been to our neighborhood's pool). We know it is important to protect any baby's skin in the sun but Justin and I are both so fair-skinned, Jacob doesn't have a chance. We dowsed him with baby sunscreen, put a UV protectant shirt on him, he's got a hat, and his float is equipped with a shade.Jacob didn't know what to think at first. Then he got used to being in the water and seemed to be having lots of fun. Then he was done and ready to go home. All in all, we were there for about 40 minutes.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Traveling

In the past year, we have been lucky enough to have Justin here in town for 48 out of 52 weeks. That will soon be changing though since Justin may be gone part of next week, will be gone 2 weeks in July, 5 weeks in Aug/Sept and probably another week that I don't have a time frame for yet.

Whenever Justin travels (which we are very used to - the first 3 years of our marriage Justin was gone more than he was home) we try to look at the positives. He gets frequent flyer miles as well as hotel points which has saved us lots when we take our own trips. And it usually saves us money for him to be gone since we are only feeding him for 2 or 3 days out of the week and the rest of the time it is on someone else's dime.

We have now learned that we will no longer be saving money when he travels though. PWC has now said that lunches, even if you are traveling, must be paid out of your own pocket. The thought process being that if you are in town, you would be buying your own lunch, so when you are out of town you should buy your own lunch as well.

Is Justin the only one at PWC (this is a nationwide policy - not just his office) who takes his lunch to work? Going out to lunch adds up rapidly! The cost of going to lunch (not even a really nice lunch) is about equal to the cost of breakfast, lunch and dinner eaten at home. Even when we were both working full-time, we rarely went out to lunch when we were in our offices.

BOOO PWC on such a bad policy!