Life Lately

Sitting here getting ready to go to work, and can't believe that Baylor, soundly sleeping in his crib (tucked in a ball on his tummy, the only way he likes to sleep now) is already SEVEN months old!  He's an amazing little dude and I'm so thankful for our little family of three.

His latest milestones...

• Sitting very solidly all on his own!
• He rolls himself onto his tummy a lot (thus the sleeping position), but during playtime he gets frustrated with not being able to get very far.  Through reaching really  hard and shifting himself around a little, he can usually grab a toy that's just out of reach, but definitely hasn't figured out the crawling business yet!  Though it's hard to see him get so frustrated, I know several parents have told us to enjoy this time where he "stays where we put him" ;) 
• He's eating all sorts of baby foods...green beans, squash, carrots, apples, bananas, peaches, pears, oatmeal cereal!  We have yet to find something that he seems to have a distaste for - Baylor Kent loves to eat!  (And along with that, he loves to make a mess!)
• Bath time is becoming fun!  He now sits up on the reclining infant seat we've had for the tub.  I guess he could just sit in the bath without it, but Mommy still uses it "just in case".  He loves to play with his bath turtles, and seems fascinated when I glide them across the water to him!  He also kicks sometimes and pats his hands down on the water, learning to splash!
• He's pretty social with other babies at daycare (and at church he likes to grab for his buddy Cade when he's around!) When  he was the littlest one in the infant room, other babies came by and tried to steal his pacifier (but apparently he tried hard to keep it in his mouth!)  Now, I've gotten a couple of reports that he's stolen pacifiers from the littler ones (like his buddy Felix, my coworker Aaron's son!)  So I guess it comes full circle...
• He's doing pretty well with independent play (especially if he's sitting up - once he gets on his belly he usually starts crying for help pretty quickly).  But he also loves to be held and walked around by Mommy and especially Daddy!  (Rides on Daddy's shoulders are the best!)
• A little bit of babbling, a lot of just "Ahhhh"s.  I have heard him say dadadada or tatatata.  And I swear he says something that sounds like "Heey" whenever he sees someone for the first time in a while, but of course, he's just 7 months old ;)
• He sleeps wonderfully through the night (although, we did just have a screaming fit around midnight, but that's going to happen with babies!)  Usually 11 or 12 hours at night, so his naps during the day are pretty short.  
• His smiles and baby laughs are the best!  Mommy and Daddy like to act crazy to get those laughs...he's also becoming ticklish!
• He's putting on some pounds...at his checkups he was always in the single-digit percentiles for his weight, but at his 6-month checkup he was up to 39%!  No longer our little "chicken legs" baby :)
• No teeth yet!  Plenty of drool, but that's been for awhile.  I'm sure that first tooth's arrival will take us completely by surprise!

I know I haven't posted many pictures on here (maybe just from when he was born?), but of course there are hundreds...so I thought I'd post some favorites from each month!

Month One

 When he lost his cord!

 

 Getting ready for first family outing - a 4th of July party!

  Back when his smiles were probably just toots ;)

Month Two

 Month Three

Month Four

 Meeting a baby bunny, ahhhh so cute.

 One of his first times to hold his own bottle!

Month Five

 He was a bear for Halloween!  (of course!)

 Loooves to make a mess with his solids :)

Month Six

 First hotel room experience, he got a kick out of the mirror!

 Meeting sweet cousin Nora!

 Strike a pose

 We had Christmas at home this year instead of going to Texas...while we missed everyone very much, it was nice to be staying in one place at Christmas time!  Baylor love the wrapping paper the most :)

 Stocking time

Christmas aftermath!

 Month Seven

So much fun to see how he's grown!  

Other tidbits...

My first class

Yesterday I started teaching my first class at work!  The team of (three) statisticians offers up classes such as introductory statistics, design of experiments, intro to JMP software, etc. for the engineers and scientists to gain more statistical knowledge.  The class I'm teaching is Statistical Methods for Reliability (analyzing time-to-event data).  I've taught with Dan before, but this is the first course I'm developing and teaching by myself.  The last time they taught Reliability was around 2007, so it's a bit overdue!  And it shows...I had a full enrollment, and even had to open up the capacity a few times to get in everyone on the waitlist.  Pretty exciting!  I was nervous leading up to it yesterday but I think it went pretty well.  We did a little in-class experiment where we created our own "time-to-event" data by drawing M&Ms from a bag and recording the amount of time until a yellow was drawn.  Kind of a contrived experiment, but I wanted to win them over with food ;)  We'll have five more weeks of the class.  I'm developing the slides as we go, so I'm feeling the pressure a little bit since I also have plenty of other regular statistical consulting work to do!  But it should turn out well.

We're gaining two sisters!

 Toward the end of 2014, my brother Dave, and Brad's brother Jared both got engaged!  Dave and Addie will be married at the beginning of April, and Jared and Kay-Lee will be married in October.  So exciting!  And I couldn't ask for better sisters-in-law.  

I just booked a ticket for Baylor and me, to get down to Texas for Wedding #1.  It will be Baylor's first flight!  I ended up not getting him his own seat, we'll see if I regret that decision...the first leg is just an hour long flight to Jersey, then a 4 hour trip to Austin...whew.  And it will just be me and Baylor, since we don't know Daddy's availability yet - he may have to come just for the wedding weekend.  Because......

Brad got a job!

 He'll be working for the Office of the State Comptroller, and he starts on Thursday!  So so proud of him, and this is definitely answered prayer.  He's been on the job hunt for so long, and this sounds like a great opportunity.  It's 75% travel, as he'll be going around to various towns in upstate NY, in an examiner position where he makes sure they're using their resources efficiently.  So that will mean some adjustments for our family.  He'll be staying overnight sometimes, leaving Mommy and Baylor to do the full nighttime routine!  And that means I'll be doing daycare drop-off and pick-up sometimes, so I had to switch back from the 9/80 schedule to the standard work schedule in order to be able to get back to daycare in time (just can't do it with a 9-hour workday!)  I'm sad to lose all those Fridays off, but last week I started on this schedule and it is nice to be done after 8 hours!  And worth it, for Brad to not have to be fretting over finding a job, and doing something he likes.

It's taken me about a week to get this blog post published (I've been working at it in the early hours while I pump before work!) but I'm finally done, woohoo!  Would like to publish more often with lots of great Baylor updates, but we'll see what I actually have time for ;)

4.5 Months!

Started this post, well, about 2 months ago, then baby probably woke up...I'm just going to post it as-is, then on with the new!

Quick update...again during baby's naptime :)

Man, the time has flown by.  Even at this point, I'll look back at his newborn photos and think how much he's grown!  Baylor is a happy, sweet little 4.5-month old.  He's been at daycare for a couple months now, and seems to have fallen into a good routine there.  Sometimes he doesn't nap as much due to every baby being on a different schedule (and it can be hard to sleep when a fellow baby is wailing!).  But in general, he seems to do well, Miss Jaimee usually reports that he's smiley and gets held a lot, and we're very happy with our choice!

At his 4-month checkup, he was 13 lbs 1 oz and 25.5" long!  He's in a low percentile for weight but around 75th percentile for height.  Tall lanky boy :)  But we are seeing some little leg rolls still, which is always fun.

He's had a lot of developments already, of course, but lately...he loves to be walked around, and he keeps one hand on Mommy/Daddy and the other stretched out to see what he can reach for.  If he does grasp something, it almost always comes to the mouth for investigation :)  He's not a huge fan of tummy time but is getting better.  No rolling yet, although now that we're sleeping him in the crib sometimes (!) he'll roll from his back to his side while he's being wiggly (and resisting sleep!)

Two weeks ago we started him on rice cereal, as the doctor suggested sometime between 4-6 months and he seemed ready.  (At daycare, Miss Jaimee reported that he saw Carina eating her carrots and seemed super jealous!)  It's typical for the baby to start off with a reflex of pushing the food out with their tongue, but he took to it very quickly.  Now, it's like we can't feed him fast enough!  Whether I nurse him fully beforehand or leave him a little hungry, he always gets super excited when he's eating - a few cautious bites, then he'll start impatiently kicking his legs, even screaming, as I move the spoon away to scoop up the next bite.  I think this boy will definitely enjoy his foods!

He sleeps very well...since about 2 months I think, he's been going 6-8 hours at night.  We've had him in the Rock 'n' Play by our bed but recently started transitioning to the crib in his own room.  Sometimes his arms and legs go wild when he doesn't have the RNP to 'snuggle' him, but sometimes he's pretty chill and falls asleep nicely.

We've gotten great baby smiles for awhile now, and just recently some baby laughs!  It's always something new and different that Mommy or Daddy do to generate that sweet noise, so we get lots of practice acting totally silly.  He LOVES riding on Daddy's shoulders, and while it terrifies me, I have to just not think about it too much and appreciate that he's having so much fun ;)

Now that the weather's getting colder, I'm starting to worry about keeping him warm enough...I've definitely had those winter days when even fully bundled, I still get so cold just being out clearing off the car.  So I worry - will we be bundling baby enough?  It is nice to have remote start, I'm sure that will come in handy.  Just yesterday I had the first morning routine of being frozen out of my car...it seems like way too soon for that!  I'm basically in denial and have been wearing fleeces when it's really coat weather...it's like when I bust out the heavy coat, it's admitting that winter weather really is here.

Baylor has had lots of adventures already, from meeting all of his grandparents, and other family and friends, to going out to parties/game nights with us...we went to a Harvest Festival when Dad and Lucy were in town, and he had lots of fun looking (but no touching!) at all the animals in the petting zoo.  The piggy was his favorite.  The not-so-fun adventure was when he got a really high fever.  He was around 2.5 months...Mema and Poohbah happened to be in town, and they had left for the night and we were watching the Baylor game.  Baylor had been out of sorts meeting them - fussier than usual, not really able to settle down.  He was finally napping in the RNP in the living room with us, but still seemed unhappy.  I noticed he looked a little flushed - felt him, and he was burning up.  Used our forehead scan thermometer to read 103.5.  Eek!  Called the pediatrician right away.  Since it was after hours, we had to wait for the doctor on call to call back.  He chewed me out for not having a rectal thermometer (okay, sorry, but dude, tell me what to do with my sick child!) and had us go to the ER.

We got to the ER around 10:30 pm...didn't leave until 6:00 am.  What a horrendous night.  They first talked about doing chest xrays in case of pneumonia, etc., a urine test, and blood test.  They did the urine pretty quickly, ruled out UTI.  But drawing the blood...was such an ordeal.  The first nurse tried a hand and a foot, and couldn't get it (meanwhile of course he's upset about being poked).  We had to wait an hour for the other nurse to come try...she did the other hand and foot, and finally got something.  They told us it'd be an hour to run it at the lab to see if his white blood cell counts were good.  An hour later, the second nurse is coming in with the kit...starting to get ready to draw his blood again.  Then she says "Oh, did you hear?  His sample clotted at the lab, we need to get another one."  At this point, I was exhausted, had been nursing him on and off all night and holding him when not nursing just to comfort him, it broke my heart to see him hurting, so I excused myself for this round.  I went in the attached bathroom and just cried...Brad stepped up and held him for that blood draw.

While we waited on this sample, the nurse came and informed us that this part of the ER (I guess the children's part?) closed down at this time, so we needed to move him to a new room.  We walked him down several hallways, past sick adults on cots all over, to a new place.  Of course, the new nurse assigned to him had to get a fresh batch of vitals...meaning a rectal thermometer, just as he was starting to get some sleep.

Finally, finally, the blood sample came back and we were cleared to go.  He still had a fever, but with Tylenol it went down later that day.  We were all exhausted.  Mema and Poohbah met us at the doctor for the follow-up that day, it was really nice to have them there for support!