One month old!

Yesterday Daniel turned one month old! To celebrate, I posted new pictures. My mom has been here for 10 days and just went home this morning. We had a good time and she was such a help. Having a mom who specializes in early childhood development is really very handy.
In the last month:
We celebrated Kenny's 24th birthday:

Took a few baths (Daniel is like his mommy, he loves water):

Slept some:

Bought a BBQ:

Swung (thanks for the swing, Candace, it works great):

Comes to terms with the puppy:


Adored each other:

Enjoyed grandma:

Lost a lot of weight (only 3 pounds above my prepregnancy weight:

Rejoined the world as a family:

The puppy and the baby

I've had quite a few inquiries into how Lucy has handled having a baby in the house. She was definitely confused and concerned at first, but I think she is a great puppy-big-sister.
To start the confusion, I was gone for 3 days when the baby was born, so Lucy was already worried and confused from that. Kenny only came home 2 or 3 times each day to let her out and play with her, but she spent most of those days in the kennel. Needless to say, she was VERY excited when we got home, and probably wasn't paying much attention to the bundle I was carrying.
Once she realized Kenny and I were both making a big deal of the blankets in my hand, she got a little more interested. When she heard hiccups coming from on top of the bed she got VERY interested:

What is making that sound? Mom, please fix that noise.
I don't think it took her too long to realize that there was a another human, and we love that human. And then came the whining. She whined a lot at first- not in a I-need-attention-and-am-jealous way, but in a is-the-baby-OK-can-I-please-inspect-him way. You see, Lucy loves to "inspect" the baby. We have to bring the baby within noses reach, or leave him on the edge of the bed (with supervision of course), and Lucy will give him a thorough sniffing:


She's learned she isn't allowed to lick his face but sniffing the diaper is fair game. It's so cute, she follows me around and just "hovers" near the baby all the time. She has to always be near him:

But not TOO near him- she's too nervous to get too close. The other night I had him on the floor for "belly time" (trying to strengthen those neck muscles) and I sat down next to him to watch and be near him. I sat down, Lucy sits down. I lay down, Lucy lays down. I sit back up, Lucy sits back up. All the while we're both watching the baby closely.
All in all, I think Lucy is happy as a big puppy-sister and will do a good job of watching out for Daniel and keeping him safe.

New most favorite photo ever

So I decided to take a billion pictures of my son in hopes that one would turn out perfect. So I whipped out my fancy white blanket my work sent and went crazy with the camera. We definitely got some good ones, though I'm no master at working Kenny's camera, and the lighting was mediocre. With some photoshopping, we got some acceptable pics, including this, which may just be my favorite picture EVER:

I actually made a new siggy for my boards at pregnancy.org:


And he didn't even make a mess on the fancy white blanket at all.

Nothing new to report

Well, things are looking up. Daniel's bili levels are down to 13 or so, so yesterday they decided to take him off the lights and see how he does. I can finally cuddle with him again!
Seems like every other night is rough- last night was a bad one, and I'm pretty tired. Danny doesn't even cry, per se- I think lori's description of "snarf snarf" sounds is pretty accurate. It's easier now he is off his lights and we can cuddle though.
The good news is Kenny has already programmed himself to sleep right through it. You may think I'm joking that that's good news, but I'm actually really happy. The poor guy goes to work at 6 am and I actually told him he's welcome to sleep in the other room so he can have enough energy for work, but the sweetheart said he'd rather have no sleep and stay with me:). Honestly, it's like we're on a second honeymoon again, Daniel has brought so much love into our house. I know it's cheesy, but hey, I'm full of baby hormones and am allowed to be cheesy.

I wish I had more exciting news, but life at our house is just a blur. Daniel lost his umbilical cord stump the other day (hooray, that thing was GROSS), Lucy seems to have finally adjusted to having a baby brother, and I'm still healing nicely. Kenny is back at work and that seems to be going well. His kids are all way excited for him. Mom comes down from the 14th to the 27th and we are SO excited to have her here. We still need to get Becky down here sometime too. And I think Jeanette, Kenny's sister, may come sometime next month. We're getting a queen bed from one of Kenny's coworkers this week so we'll actually have a guest bedroom for all our many visitor.

It wouldn't be a blog post without a picture, so here we go:


(this pic is a few days old, I'll probably some new ones alter today)

My glow baby

Because of his high biliruben/jaundice levels, poor little Daniel is now stuck on his little blue tanning bed at least 20 hours a day.


He doesn't seem to mind:

But I sure do. I miss cuddling with him! I just want to hold him! Still, it seems to be working- his levels are down to 17 now, as of this morning, and odds are we only have a few more days on the machine. He's also finally gained a few ounces and only woke me up once every 3 hours last night.

Other exciting news:

WE HAVE CURLS! I was bored while breastfeeding when I looked down and noticed some great curls on the back of his neck. Our dreams of having a hobbit baby may yet be fulfilled:)

Here's one of his favorite expressions- it's even better with the eyes open:

(this is one of his favorite faces to pull, only one step up from quasimodo-face. When his eyes are open he looks like Zoolander, much to my dismay). But nothing beats the Elvis impersonation:

(oh, I was so close to getting a real smile on camera)

And I'll throw this pic in just because I love it:


Other new pics up at http://picasaweb.google.com/jooniper/OneWeekOld

Now for something completely different

I know my blog has gotten (and will continue to be) pretty baby-centered. For those who are bored of it, here's something completely different.
Kenny, being the great guy he is, used some of his time off to weed the front yard. When he moved the utility box cover, this is what he saw:

Some of you may note the toad. Others may see the spider. Let's look a bit closer:

The toad is cool. The spider... is some unholy child of ungoliant and scared the crap out me. And I'm not even afraid of spiders. One more closer look:

When Kenny sprayed the thing with bug spray what we thought was the abdomen broke off and dispersed 100s of directions... what looked like a large abdomen is actually hundreds of baby spiders (all now dead).
Tell me that that thing doesn't give you the heebie-jeebies.
And if that freaked you out too much and you need cheering up, here, have a random youtube video of the most amazing dog ever (I HIGHLY recommend watching the whole thing):

At home now

Well, we actually got home Monday around noon, and I've just been off in my own little world and not updating anyone:). Here we are coming home from the hospital (in a premie outfit my mom bought us, already a bit small)):

During the day, I have this chill, calm, adorable little boy. He never cries, he just sleeps and sleeps. This is a good representation of him while awake:

Like I said, pretty chill.
At night, though, he becomes wide awake and wants lots of lovin. Our three nights at home have been fairly rough. Part of the problem is the kid has my metabolism- he likes lots of light snacks and isn't too into meals. 8 minute feedings every hour or so. And 8 minutes- that's being generous- I have to poke him constantly, make him naked and cold, blow on him, wiggle him... just to get him to stay awake long enough to get some food.
And my poor chest- I'm pretty sure I have enough milk right now for three or four babies. It ACHES.
Last night, we decided to not allow the snacking (and the pediatrician confirmed this morning). If he wants to eat, it'll be more than two hours apart and hopefully he'll therefore want more. The problem with this is it means that once an hour he lets us know he wants to eat and I have to turn him down. I never thought I'd be into pacifiers but we'll apparently be using them plenty at least for now.

Kenny, bless his heart, is my knight in shining armor. There isn't much he can do at night, since I'm the one with the built in baby food, but finally last night I was breaking down from lack of sleep and he tookt he baby upstairs for 2-3 hours stints and kept him happy enough considering our new no-snacking rule. It was bliss- I got some sleep! Probably 6 hours total, and never for more than two hours at one go, but ah... it was great. Now Kenny is the sleep-deprived one, but the good news is he got 5 hours of Mario Kart in on the wii:). He goes back to work next Monday so I'm taking advantage of him while I can. Hopefully we'll have resolved some of the night issues by then.

This morning at the pediatrician they checked his biliruben levels for jaundice- at the hospital he was "slightly jaundiced". Now, he is glowing in the dark, apparently- his level was at 21.5 or so. 20 is when they start worrying the doctor a bit. Jaundice happens in about 60% of newborns and generally isn't a concern, just something to be aware of. But if it gets too high (30 or so) it can cause mental retardation and stuff, so definitely something to be aware of.
So they are giving us a biliruben light for a couple days- not sure yet if it will be the blanket or the tanning bed.

We've already had a couple outtings to get more baby things. Here he is dressed and ready to go:


And he had his first bath- it was just a sponge bath since his umbilical cord stump hasn't fallen out yet:

He's making some baby gang signs:).
Kenny and I are both so happy and so in love with our son. I'm healing quickly and Kenny is really getting the hang of being a daddy (though he still hasn't changed a diaper:)).