I'll have to keep this quick since the little one is sleeping, and heaven only knows how long I've got before he wakes up. He's at least figured out that nighttime is for sleeping, and he routinely sleeps six to eight hours at night. That's pretty nice. We're going to start having him sleep in his own room now. Should be interesting. He may sleep well at night, but not so during the day. He'll be up every hour or two, eat a lot, nod off for ten minutes, then be back up and want to eat some more. It makes it rather difficult to get much done because while he's awake, he (of course) wants to be held. Not to mention that he thinks I'm a buffet, and he wants to take his time to let the first course settle before going back for seconds. I might as well go topless with how often I have to whip 'em out. It's easy to think I'm exaggerating, but when Vanessa and Rachel were here, they were shocked to see him eat three times in ninety minutes. That's not something he does all day long (thank God); I would think there was something wrong if he did. I'm trying to work towards him eating just once while he's awake, and then sleeping for several hours. I think that would be better for both of us. But we'll see. His body knows what it needs better than I do, so we'll go by that rather than the clock.

   Steve went out of town for two days this week, and it was just me, the baby, and the puppies for the first time. Of course that's the status quo while he's at work, but it felt different this time. The beginning of the first day was the worst. The idea that I was going to have to work out how to meet everyone's needs on my own was rather daunting. But the idea proved to be worse than the reality, thankfully. It really wasn't so bad. Not that I'm in a hurry to repeat it. But it did bring home to me how much I rely on him for little things like taking the dogs out while I'm dealing with the baby, being there to hold and entertain Will while I do other things like fix dinner or work on a home improvement project. I feel like we've made leaps and bounds in that area lately, and I'm very happy about that. Tami and Ira came up last weekend and spent some quality time with us. Remember what I said about two blogs ago, thinking I should ask them up and have Tami watch the rugrat while Ira and I and Steve do some projects? :D Yea baby, yea! Tami got her grandbaby fix while the rest of us put in a new bathroom vanity in the upstairs bathroom. For any of you who have seen it, you'll understand that was a long time coming and much needed. After we were done with that, Steve and Ira jumped on the ball and installed some latice in the front yard for our new wisteria plants to climb. Add to that the new paint and hardware on the kitchen cabinets, and we're talking some noticeable changes. There are certainly more things we need to get done, but all in good time. I do what I can when I can. My mom is coming next week and is staying almost two weeks, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get a lot accomplished while she's here. I have a lot of painting I want to get done (yes, it seems we're always painting something) and it's hard to keep clean so I can drop everything and take care of lil' Will when he's feeling needy. That's where Mom comes in. I'll put her to work. She can have her own quality grandbaby time, and maybe she can do a little cooking too. She's quite a good cook and is always coming up with tasty dishes. But it's really up to her. She may have her own ideas about what she wants to do while she's here.

   Will has started doing this new trick. He knows (like any child) that crying will bring attention. So when he's in his carseat or bassinette and he's fussing, I'll go get him. Well, when the little tyke sees me standing there, putting the burp cloth on my shoulder to pick him up, he gets the biggest smile on his face. His expression is the perfect "I WIN!!" that it always makes me laugh. I just try not to let him abuse his powers over me.

I'll have to keep this quick since the little one is sleeping, and heaven only knows how long I've got before he wakes up. He's at least figured out that nighttime is for sleeping, and he routinely sleeps six to eight hours at night. That's pretty nice. We're going to start having him sleep in his own room now. Should be interesting. He may sleep well at night, but not so during the day. He'll be up every hour or two, eat a lot, nod off for ten minutes, then be back up and want to eat some more. It makes it rather difficult to get much done because while he's awake, he (of course) wants to be held. Not to mention that he thinks I'm a buffet, and he wants to take his time to let the first course settle before going back for seconds. I might as well go topless with how often I have to whip 'em out. It's easy to think I'm exaggerating, but when Vanessa and Rachel were here, they were shocked to see him eat three times in ninety minutes. That's not something he does all day long (thank God); I would think there was something wrong if he did. I'm trying to work towards him eating just once while he's awake, and then sleeping for several hours. I think that would be better for both of us. But we'll see. His body knows what it needs better than I do, so we'll go by that rather than the clock.

   Steve went out of town for two days this week, and it was just me, the baby, and the puppies for the first time. Of course that's the status quo while he's at work, but it felt different this time. The beginning of the first day was the worst. The idea that I was going to have to work out how to meet everyone's needs on my own was rather daunting. But the idea proved to be worse than the reality, thankfully. It really wasn't so bad. Not that I'm in a hurry to repeat it. But it did bring home to me how much I rely on him for little things like taking the dogs out while I'm dealing with the baby, being there to hold and entertain Will while I do other things like fix dinner or work on a home improvement project. I feel like we've made leaps and bounds in that area lately, and I'm very happy about that. Tami and Ira came up last weekend and spent some quality time with us. Remember what I said about two blogs ago, thinking I should ask them up and have Tami watch the rugrat while Ira and I and Steve do some projects? :D Yea baby, yea! Tami got her grandbaby fix while the rest of us put in a new bathroom vanity in the upstairs bathroom. For any of you who have seen it, you'll understand that was a long time coming and much needed. After we were done with that, Steve and Ira jumped on the ball and installed some latice in the front yard for our new wisteria plants to climb. Add to that the new paint and hardware on the kitchen cabinets, and we're talking some noticeable changes. There are certainly more things we need to get done, but all in good time. I do what I can when I can. My mom is coming next week and is staying almost two weeks, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get a lot accomplished while she's here. I have a lot of painting I want to get done (yes, it seems we're always painting something) and it's hard to keep clean so I can drop everything and take care of lil' Will when he's feeling needy. That's where Mom comes in. I'll put her to work. She can have her own quality grandbaby time, and maybe she can do a little cooking too. She's quite a good cook and is always coming up with tasty dishes. But it's really up to her. She may have her own ideas about what she wants to do while she's here.

   Will has started doing this new trick. He knows (like any child) that crying will bring attention. So when he's in his carseat or bassinette and he's fussing, I'll go get him. Well, when the little tyke sees me standing there, putting the burp cloth on my shoulder to pick him up, he gets the biggest smile on his face. His expression is the perfect "I WIN!!" that it always makes me laugh. I just try not to let him abuse his powers over me.

The last few days we had a couple visitors, Vanessa and Rachel McGarry, and they must have been sent by providence. When Vanessa called me up and said they wanted to visit for a couple of days, of course I said by all means! And then I found these strange words coming out of my mouth without checking with my brain first: I'm gonna put you to work. Surprisingly, they were entirely agreeable to that, so I was as good as my word and had them help Steve and I sand, prime, and paint the kitchen cabinets. I can't get over how big a deal it was to have their help! We spent about three days working on them, and I'll be finishing the last of them up tomorrow on my own. Without them, it would have taken me weeks to do this task because of the amount of time Will takes up. It even worked out that Steve had two days off and was able to lend a hand as well. I'll bet he was really glad to go back to work today and escape being a slave to my home improvement drive. While Vanessa and Rachel were here, our running joke was that they were my slave labor and I only paid them in pizza. Gotta keep up their strength somehow, right? I told them they could stay as long as they wanted, but they decided to only stay three days. My charm must be wearing thinner than it used to. :D As soon as I'm finished with the kitchen (for the immediate future, that is) I'll post some before and after pictures so everyone can appreciate all the hard work that went into it.

   I have been going through Will's clothes lately, pulling out all the ones that don't fit anymore, and he's only wearing his 3-6 months now. Amazingly, he's already outgrown some of those onsies! He's not even three months old yet, and they are too small! Pretty much all the shirts and pants still fit, and even some of the sleepers (but not all), but it sounds like we're going to be breaking out the nine month outfits in the next couple of weeks. Geez!

 Well, it's HGTV time- gotta run!! :P

I think I'm going to be doomed to only doing a blog once every three or four weeks at this rate. Sigh. Oh, well. It's better than nothing, right? I was kind of thinking about just letting the whole thing go, but I was talking to grandma Vanderburg yesterday and she was telling me how much she and grandpa like being able to keep up with us and Will via the site, and I was reminded that that was the whole idea in the blog in the first place. So. Here I am with a renewed effort. Not to say I'll be blogging more often, because that probably just won't happen. Things are going pretty well with all of us. Will and I have finally started getting a bit of a routine down, although every day is always going to be a little different. I can never seem to get much of anything done when it's just me and him, which is pretty frustrating for me. Even when he's asleep, I still can't do a lot of what I want to because he doesn't stay asleep long enough or it involves me being out in the garage doing home improvement stuff (and I tend to get pretty involved in that and lose track of time) or something similar. It certainly doesn't help that it's winter, so I can't leave the fire untended without it burning itself out before too long, and it's too cold to take Will out on a walk with the dogs. So I have to wait until Steve gets home to do a lot of things, but I don't want to just dump the baby in Steve's lap as soon as he gets home and say "have fun." That's not fair to him, especially after a long day of work when he's tired. So I try and compromise on that. My mom is coming back to visit for about ten days in March, right at the same time Steve is going to Boise for a fire-weather conference, which works out quite nicely. Maybe something I could do in the meantime is have Tami and Ira come up some weekend and Ira and I can do home improvement projects and Tami can have baby time. That could make everybody happy. Hmmm. I like it. Of course, Tami will probably read this before I get around to asking them how they feel about that. So feel free to comment, Tami! :D

I've been reading the Cesar Millan Dog Whisperer books and implementing his recomended techniques as much as possible, and that has done great things for our dogs. It's so amazing how such simple things can make such a huge difference, number one being, of course, exercising the pups properly every single day. Hence my frustration at not being able to take Will on a walk with the dogs. That won't be the case in a couple of months, obviously, but that doesn't help me one little bit right now. So I do what I have to in the meantime. We go walking in the dark after Steve comes home. I know Ramsey especially needs a lot of exercise because he's such a high energy young dog, and he has a natural tendency to be dominant, which we don't want. So we have to walk that out of him. Then he won't be obsessed with playing fetch 24/7. Of course, that is a lot easier said than done, but it's still do-able.

Will recently turned two months old, so I took him to the doctors for his shots. That's your cue for the collective "oooh" of pity. Nothing wrong with his lungs, let me tell you. Of course, by the time I got him bundled up into his car seat, he was asleep, so I guess it wasn't too traumatic. He weighed 9 pounds 14 oz and was 25 inches long. Considering that was already a week ago, he's over 10 pounds now and who knows how long! That's an increase of 7 1/2 inches and about four pounds since his birth. It seems that every time I put an outfit on him fresh from the wash, it's smaller than it was before. I'd think that my washer was shrinking everything except it doesn't happen with OUR clothes, just his. And, obviously, I know he's growing like he intends to be taller than his daddy at age two. Heaven help us.

Will turned two months old last Thursday, so I took him into the doctors for his shots. Poor little guy! I wanted to do all of them at once so that he wouldn't have mulitple days of shots to look forward to. That kid sure can scream. And since he was getting four shots, as soon as he'd start calming down from one, they'd be ready to give him the next. Dr. Merrick said that Will has a heart murmur, but it's faint and functional, so nothing to worry about. This is certainly the first we've heard of it; I don't know if it's just something everyone kept missing or if it's a new development. We decided we'd go ahead and make an appointment with a pediatrician to have it checked out and get him circumsized. Well, the pediatricians office said that you won't find anybody who will do circumcisions on children between the ages of two weeks and one year old. And once they hit a year old, a urologist has to do it. Apparantly it's got to do with the way the blood vessels are developing. So there is no way we could have taken care of this when he was two weeks or less, because they also won't do them on premies because their bodies have enough going on. I guess we have ten months to weigh all the pros and cons and decide if it's really something we want to have done. We probably still will, but we'll see.

My baby beet is going to be two months old next week! Wow. Of course, that means he has to go in for his two month immunizations. Poor little guy. Or should I say, poor rapidly-growing guy. He is getting huge. He's already wearing a lot of his 3 to 6 month clothes, and has outgrown his smaller sized 0-3 month stuff. He can still wear some of it, but not much. It's pretty much all his length. He is still a skinny-minny, just very tall for his age. Of course, nobody can grow that fast without eating a lot. Right now it's all I can do to keep up with him. I really want to get ahead of him in my milk production so I can have some bottles built up so Steve can feed him sometimes (during the night, perhaps?) and also to be available if we had anyone watch him for a little while. His eating schedule is kind of interesting; he eats like there's no tomorow in the evening. He'll eat smaller meals three or four times in about five hours. He's also generally more fussy in the evening (fussy for him, that is) and spits up a lot. But he'll routinely drink me dry and still be hungry. The rest of the day, however, he'll eat for a good long while and then just sleep for hours, like a "normal" baby is "supposed" to do. The quotations are there because I don't think the term normal should be applied to anyone and there really isn't much of a supposed to for individual babies. They're going to do what they're going to do. At least, in my opinion. Anyway, I'm able to pump several ounces of milk every morning, and generally have to give him that at night after I'm dry. It's kind of bizzare, but I guess it works.

    He gave me his first social smile the other day. It was so great. I had just finished burping him and was just talking to him, when he smiled at me, looking right at me. Usually his gas smiles are very brief and he has his eyes closed. This one was definitely different. Steve's been trying to get him to smile at him ever since. My mom went back to Utah last Tuesday. I had been wondering how I was going to manage without her while Steve was at work, what with needing to take care of the dogs and feeding myself and dealing with any grumpiness on lil' Will's part. It's certainly been easier than I thought it would be, thanks in part to the patience of our pups. Steve was working evenings the first week or so and I thought that was great because he could get up in the night to rock or burp Will if he was just fussy but not hungry, and then we could all sleep in if we wanted to. He's on morning shifts right now, and I find that I can also really appreciate that schedule because he's home during the evenings when the little beet is most fussy, so he can deal with him while I make dinner or whatever. It's very cute to see daddy and baby taking an afternoon nap together on the couch when Steve gets home. It's very tiring to be so cute, I guess. And that applies to both of them. :D

Long time no blog. Sorry. I've been in baby heaven, just got back. Will is doing quite well, aside from an eye infection he's getting over. He hit his three week growth spurt, and has been growing like a weed. Since he's now almost five weeks, I'm waiting for the growth spurt to pass. Anytime now. Of course, we have the six week spurt coming up awfully fast. He used to eat every 3 to 4 hours, occasionally sleeping 5 or 6 hours at night. Now I'm lucky if he lasts 4 hours. It's not uncommon for him to need to eat every 2 hours or a little less even. He was born at 6 pounds 2 ounces and 17 1/2 inches long. He's now 7 pounds 6 ounces and 23 1/2 inches long. He actually grew an inch and a quarter just in the last week. He's definitely showing more preference for the evening. He's most awake and active between six and midnight. The kid's gonna be watching Jay Leno before he's a year old at this rate, I swear. 1 AM seems to be his magic hour; if he's been fussy and awake up to that point, he's drop like a rock at one and sleep for at least three hours. It's interesting. And yes, he does get fussy and keep me up sometimes. He's still a really good baby, and believe me, we appreciate that. My mom is staying with us right now, and it's so great to have an extra set of hands around, especially when Will is a little fussy and I want to take a nap, or she'll start dinner while I'm feeding him etc. Since Steve has gone back to work now, it's really nice. Obviously she won't be here forever (we get about two more weeks), but it'll really help me to figure out a routine that works for me, Will, and the puppies. Tami came to stay with us for several days when we first brought Will home from the hospital, but she really didn't have anything to do. Will was still not really doing anything but sleeping and eating, and didn't have any degree of fussiness to speak of. Poor Tami. She pretty much played fetch with Ramsey the entire time she was visiting. Ramsey loved it, of course, but I can't speak for Tami.

   It's amazing how as soon as you have a baby, your life becomes all about convenience. Disposable diapers? Bring 'em on. A home cooked meal turns from chicken pot pie made from scratch to Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese. One corner of our living room has turned into the baby shrine: playpen, changing table, a bookcase with bins for his clothes and blankets, large packages of diapers and wet wipes (we buy in bulk of course), and stroller. The baby himself floats around the room on a cloud of parent. Up to today he still had a little jaundice, but it's officially gonzo. We've been putting him in the sun on a regular basis since we brought him home, but the last couple of days have finally been warm enough that we could put him out to sunbathe in nothing but his diaper, and that really helped. He's a strong little kid, especially for a preemie. He has no problem picking up his head and even holding it upright while we're holding him on our shoulders. The other day he actually stood for a few seconds on Steve's lap, with Steve only holding his hands to balance him. So my huzzy is finally understanding why I complained so much when I was getting kicked the last month or two of the pregnancy. I am so happy to not be pregnant anymore. I can't say I hated it the whole time, but I probably won't be in a huge hurry to repeat the process. Especially since I'll have a little one to care for already. I can't imagine being that sick with morning sickness with a young child. It was so bad I literally could not get off the couch to do anything but run to the bathroom to throw up for weeks, even with the meds. Hopefully it won't be quite like that the second time around. But that's a ways off yet. Right, Steve?

For those of you whom I don't talk to on a regular basis, I'm sorry for the delay in "what happens next?" from my last blog. After failing his first sleep test and having to spend three more days in the NICU, Will was given another sleep test. This one he also had a few apneas on, but because he was already on caffeine to stimulate his brain's signals to breathe, they decided to send him home anyway with an apnea monitor. This is hooked up to him and will alarm if his heart rate is not within normal bounds or he stops breathing for more than 20 seconds. He has not set it off once since he got it Tuesday. Once they discharged him from the hospital, we basically took the baby and ran. We knew they were going to be releasing him and we had some time before all the paperwork was done, so we went back to Tami and Ira's and loaded up the cars. Will was discharged at about 2 PM and we were in Julian by evening. Tami and Ira came with us, and Tami stayed with us until Saturday to help out. It's still so surreal to both me and Steve that Will is actually here, we're parents after the false starts and all the waiting. Even as I write this, Will is sleeping on my chest. I can't ever seem to put him down. Even when I have a lot of other things to do, I have a hard time laying him down in his playpen to sleep. He's always in such a deep sleep by that point that he has no idea he's not being held; it's all me. It's like I have to make up for the lost time when he was in the NICU. But it's also really beneficial to him to be close to us because he's a preemie. Our body heat means he doesn't have to work as hard to produce his own and he can work on growing. He doesn't sleep very well if he's a little cold. He squirms a lot and talks a lot. But when he's warm, he sleeps so soundly I sometimes check the monitor to make sure he's still breathing. That's definitely one nice thing about that monitor; it's a third pair of eyes on him. When we're sleeping, I can rest a lot easier knowing that the monitor will wake me up if something goes wrong with Will. He actually sleeps in the bed with us right now just because it's so bloody cold up here. We use a good space heater in our bedroom, but he still is too cold on his own. He's a really good sleeper (thank GOD!) as long as he's warm enough. He usually only wakes up twice a night to eat, and will go pretty much straight back to sleep when he's done. He's still got a little jaundice, so he gets to sun bathe every day in the window. We're raising SUCH a Californian; blond hair, blue eyes, goes tanning in the winter, is already addicted to caffeine and attached to his electronics (ie his monitor). Sigh. Oh well. Could be worse, I guess. Steve's a Californian, and he managed to turn out okay. :D One thing that's been happening pretty frequently the last day or two is he's spitting up a lot. Last night he spit up so much of his dinner I had to feed him again. It seems to be the worst when he's lying flat on his back. If he's even a little bit elevated or on his tummy (resting on our chests), then he won't spit up nearly as much. He's a stubborn burper, and that certainly doesn't help him any.

     So we brought Will home Tuesday evening, and Wednesday we got 16 inches of snow. Only appropriate for a meteorologist's son, right? Quite the grand homecoming. Of course, Will slept through most of it. One track mind, this kid. :D On the other hand, being a massge therapist's son, he also responds amazingly well to being touched. Almost without fail, if he has a need or is just being a little fussy, simply putting a hand on him will calm him down. I've even found that when he has the hic-ups during the night after a feeding, simply putting my hand on his chest and tummy will drastically reduce the amount of time he'll hic-up. And he responds really well to having his tummy massaged to help his little digestive track. He's a Vanderburg through and through, so he gets a lot of gas. Therefore, having his tummy massaged really helps him. He certainly can hold his own with the farting. Now we just need to teach him how to burp.