July 29: Wyatt - our smiley baby!

Yea! Wyatt is finally smiling on purpose. He is also starting to "talk" quite a bit too, which is fun. Interactive babies make life more enjoyable. Now if he would only stay asleep during the day for longer than 15 minutes!! Here are pix of me trying to ca[ture his new faces.

The first picture isn't of his cute smiling face, it is of his cute crossed feet while he's sleeping. I couldn't resist.

July 23: Boys hanging out

Here are some (IMHO) cute pictures of our boys hanging out. Zach is always asking to hold Wyatt (Why-bee bee), or for us to put him on his head (odd yes), or in his bed. So here is one of those moments captured on film.

Happy Birthday Art

Happy 34th birthday Art! This year was not a particularly big celebration, but they can't all be - and next year is a big one!

Art's first birthday well-wisher was not his wife, or sons, or anyone from his family. It was Dexter. This picture shows how Art woke up on his birthday. Yum - cat breath!

Art got 2 birthday celebrations. The first, on his actual birthday, was the "family" celebration. First, Art got breakfast in bed after I took care of the boys and the cat. Art got to sleep until about 8:30 which in itself is a huge treat. Then he opened all his cards and a few small presents. Dinner at - yes, we are ashamed to admit - McDonalds. The reason for there was that 1) easy to drive to (we have borrowed a car for 3 weeks), 2) free parking, and most importantly 3) playground for Zach so we can enjoy a relaxed dinner out. Zach of course had a fabulous time, once he was convinced that the cars from the drive-thru could not get him on the playground. He is SERIOUSLY afraid of cars. Loves them, but doesn't want one moving near him - probably our fault as we are very cautious with him around cars. Anyway, we spent a few hours at McDonalds and let Zach play w/ the kids on the playground. It was a little cold outside - yes, in July! - so it wasn't the best night for sitting around outside.

A week later, Art got his real birthday present - a night out with just his wife. We hired Joanna Trees to babysit the boys while we went to dinner at Curry (Art's favorite currywurst place), then to a cafe to sit outside and have a drink (beer for Art, hot chocolate for me). It was wonderful to be out without the boys. We made it an early evening b/c Art also wanted to watch a movie at home, so we needed to get back at a reasonable time. We have been watching so much Scrubs that we haven't seen a movie in forever. Joanna spent the night, and took care of Wyatt during the movie as well. So nice!

A memorable present came from Jake Shaw. He had bought an Xbox 360 and let Art borrow it (plus some games) for a week. They came over on Saturday after Art's birthday for tea and cakes (they are British, so this isn't a strange thing to do). So Art spent most of Saturday morning, after his birthday dinner with his wife, playing a racing game with Joanna. Later that day he also played w/ the sound on mute while Shayna, Wyatt, and Zach all took a nap.

On Sunday, after Art's birthday, he went to "climb trees" with some guys from work and visiting American professors. Then we went to a BBQ (what Germans call 'grilling out') on Sunday evening with those same guys, and Philip's wife Anne, and 3 kids. This is the family w/ Zach's good friend Luca.

All in all, I think he enjoyed his birthday.

July: Wyatt is 1 month

Here are some pictures of Wyatt on his 1 month "birthday". The many moods of Wyatt - mostly he looks grumpy. We measure how grumpy by the number of furrows on his brow. He rarely cries or complains, but merely looks grumpy. We will say that Wyatt is at "brow-con 4" or "brow-con 2" (as in defcon 1 etc). 6 is the highest. He can actually get 6 furrows on that tiny head. He'll have wrinkles at 2.

Stroller Moses basket

Wyatt isn't the only one using the moses basket attachment to the stroller. Both Dexter and Zachary get in the basket as often as possible...though not at the same time - so far! I think all three of them look pretty cute in the basket.

Feet

I thought this would be cute. And, if only Faye likes the picture of feet, then it was still worth the time to take the picture. We don't have any pictures or an ink imprint of Zach's baby feet and I wish we did. Now I just need to try this again with the addition of Art's foot and Dexter's paw.

Also noteworthy: Zach is wearing his Thomas the Train Engine pjs. He LOVES these, and has a fit when we put him in real clothes. He loves everything to do with Thomas. We are so very happy that we have discovered that the tv episodes of Thomas are FOR FREE on youtube.com. 5-7 minutes of quite!

July 6: Bye Bye Baby Hair

A sad day for many, including mom. Zachary's hair, which had never been cut (apart from two bang trims) in his 2+ years of life, had finally gotten too too too out of control. His little wings over his ears made him look like Sally Field in The Flying Nun (a classic show Staci and I used to love). We knew it would be a difficult task, cutting Zach's hair, because he so loathes anything touching his head. He does not even enjoy to have his hair/head stroked, which is such a natural thing to do when you are cuddling with him. So we realized that the project had "disaster" written all over it, but we had no choice. We set his high chair in the kitchen and put the dvd player on the counter armed with a video that usually makes him catatonic. It worked for a bit, but the second he heard the clippers, he started saying "oww, oww, oww" before we even got near him. I did what I could with the clippers in short spurts, then tried to complete the task with the scissors. It is certainly not the best job I've ever done, but it was not the worst either. I am hoping to be able to polish it up a bit later - perhaps when he is sleeping or something. We just gave up with him after about 30 minutes.

Here are pictures of the "after" look and the set-up of the kitchen & cut hair. We didn't take any pictures during the process b/c it took both of us at 100% to keep him calm and occupied.

I am very sorry for those of you that will be sad by this blog entry. Zach's little curls are gone, and may never come back. His hair is still plenty long - longer than we want it to be, but it's the best we could do at this point. It is a little sad for me even to have all of his fine wispy hair gone. But, he is a big brother now, and needed to look like a big boy and less like a baby. Our little guy is growing up so fast.

June: Counts Boys Hanging Out

Zach appears to love his little brother. He likes for Wyatt to be near him, to hold him, and to check up on him. Zach tries to keep Wyatt happy by giving him his paci, patting his back for burping, 'petting' him when he's sad, and reading books to him.

Here are some pictures of our boys hanging out.

June: Sleepy boys

Zach has taken to wanting to lie down near Wyatt when Wyatt is sleeping, or nearing sleep. Today, I was getting ready to put Wyatt down for a nap in his Moses basket, on the bed in Zach's room, so I could read a story to Zach and then put him in his crib (so that I could then nap!!), and Zach insisted that I put the moses basket on the floor next to his crib: "Wy-Beebe DERE" - meaning Wyatt baby there, pointing to the floor by his crib. Cute!

First Weeks with Wyatt - us getting to know one another

Our littlest angel has been home for 2 weeks now. The adjustment has been hard, as we expected, but so far nowhere near as difficult as we thought. Wyatt being in the hospital for 17 days just might have something to do with us being more patient with the changes!





He is basically on a regular routine now: eats, is awake for about 1.5 hours, naps for about 2 hours, then it starts over. It has been a full two weeks, unfortunately for me, as I was hoping to do some good resting and relaxing. But it has all been enjoyable. Here is a (not-so-quick) recap of what it has been like for us:

Day 2 of Wyatt being home (June 23rd) - we had to take Wyatt back to the hospital for a weight check and his hearing test. He wouldn't stop wiggling during the hearing test, so they asked us to nurse him so he'd be still long enough for the check. He passed in both ears! I was so nervous during the weight check - what if he didn't gain appropriately, would they make him go back into the hospital?! - but he passed that as well. Huge relief!

Day 4 - Wyatt has his first appointment with our pediatrician. I made Art come along too, so he could listen to what the Dr. had to say. In a nutshell, he thinks that Wyatt looks just fine. He did a lot of physical tests with him to evaluate if he thinks Wyatt needs any additional physical therapy. His decision is "not now". He thinks that Wyatt is doing fine - he does still favor his right side, and his spine is curved that way a bit (from favoring it), but he thinks with a few simple exercises that it will correct easily. He said he'll re-evaluate in a month. The Dr. also said that it is best for Wyatt to be on a 3.5-4 hour schedule for nursing. This is a huge relief, because the Dr. in the US recommended every 2 hours for the first months, and it took FOREVER to get Zach off the 2 hour schedule. He also reassured me that babies suck ('nuf said) on their hands etc. for reasons other than hunger. Wyatt basically does when he is getting sleepy and needs a little extra help falling asleep.

Day 5 - PARTY! I was so very exhausted. Today was the first day that I was not able to get the boys to nap at the same time, and I was about to fall over from exhaustion. Luckily, Art came home and took both boys outside; I put my earplug in and took a good hour nap. THEN it was time to party. The party at MPI was hosted by 4 people for 4 reasons to celebrate: Art for the birth of Wyatt, Helge for the birth of his daughter, Patricia for her going away, and one other person for his birthday. It was a cook-out with lots of food. It was a real nice time. Zach loved it because Philip & Anne's kids were there, and Luca (3 yr old girl) and Kieran (5 yr old boy) like to play with Zachary. He had a blast.

Those were the major outings for Wyatt's first week home. I had planned on taking the next week a little slower to get adjusted to things, but that didn't really happen either.



Mon - Wed: Janneke and Annemieke came for a visit. It was great having them here. Annemieke was suffering from a medical issue and had to take things slowly which was good for me since I wanted to continue taking things easy as well. We went to the park w/ Zach a few times, went to the Zoo Park, where all the water and sand stuff is, and went to ANOTHER party at the MPI. This time the party was for the entire MPI, so there were tons of people there I did not know. Zach had a blast playing on the bounce house while Art gave the ladies a tour of his work.


Wed: Janneke and Annemieke had to leave us on Wednesday afternoon. That evening we took our first dinner outing with Wyatt. We went to dinner at our friend's Jake and Maddy Shaw. Both boys did pretty well actually. Wyatt had a minor melt-down before his evening nap. This was also the first time we took an outing with Zach in the stroller and Wyatt in the baby sling (compliments of Monica Battaile!). It worked out very well. We got home at nearly midnight though, so the next day we were pretty tired! Zach went to bed at their house like a pro, no crying, and no crawling out of their bed to come join the fun.

Friday was 4th of July!! Wyatt was a month old! We celebrated the birth of our home country by going to Katrina & Heinze's for a 4th of July party - again w/ Zach in the stroller and Wyatt in the baby sling. It was a very nice party. Zach got to play with Steven and Hannah all evening - so nothing could have been better! :)

General stuff:
Wyatt mostly seems fairly content - he doesn't cry much, but he does generally have a furrowed brow and eyebrows. It's odd really. He still has bad gas, and is quite grumpy when we can't help him get rid of it. He has this awful high pitched squeal that he does when he is in pain - it breaks my heart. It is amazing how much he has improved since birth. It is hard to believe that the first few days we were not even allowed to touch him because, even asleep, his respiration rate would soar from a healthy 40-50 to a scary 120-150. It was terrible to not be able to stroke his cute little arm for the first 2 days. Then came all the mini-milestones that meant progress: he is wearing clothes!, finally strong enough to be given breast milk through a feeding tube, content enough for his air mask to come off, content enough to be held while being fed through the tube, the day we finally saw him awake (he has eyes!), the day we first heard him cry, the day he got moved from his high-care bed to a "big boy crib" (no more heated bed), when he was finally allowed to attempt nursing (not so great those first few times), no more weighing his diapers, when I first got to bathe him, he being awake and alert for longer periods of time - long enough to watch some of the EuroCup with the NICU nurses, his arm and leg getting stronger and full range of motion, then - banner day - the day he got moved from the NICU to the medium-care nursery. There he also had mini milestones that we grasped to with hope: the day the monitors were taken off, the day he pulled out his feeding tube and the nurses didn't put it back in, the day he finally ate an entire meal (80ml) from the breast, and finally the day he came home.

Wyatt has come a long way in his first month of life. We know we are lucky and blessed to have him, and hope that the rest of his months are not filled with so much drama. It is wonderful to have him home and start to get to know him.