Started fighting bottles yesterday and being overly fussy. This morning he decided to barf and it included mucus chunks - lovely. Was fussy at daycare - we didn't realize he was sick-sick until this afternoon, he probably should have skipped daycare today. He's all snotty, 99.2 fever, and coughs once in a while. Also barfed again while sleeping in his crib tonight... got it everywhere too, so into the bath he went.
So, he'll probably be home tomorrow - not sure if I'm staying with him or Christina is yet, we'll figure that out in the morning. Since both of us have scratchy throats also, who knows, it may end up being both of us.
Been slack on the posts because I've been too busy catching up on sleep.
This last week was Evan's first week of daycare and we also started him on Zantac for reflux because he was still spitting up too much and screaming and fighting bed time. You could hear the gurgling and him fighting to choke it back down.
Well, either daycare or the new meds that we started last Saturday changed him completely. That first Monday night this week he slept from 8:45pm until 6:00am. And the next night? 8:00pm to 6:00am. In fact, all the nights but one this week have been fantastic. He's a completely different baby, peaceful, calm, sleeping well. The fussy moments are the exception, not regular anymore.
Daycare's been going fairly well too. It's both very easy and very difficult to drop him off there. It's certainly a relief to go to work in a way, but it's also hard to leave him at daycare all day every day and then only see him a couple hours in the evening before he crashes for the night.
Guess we'll have to get used to that because I'm not sure Christina will work 20 hours/week from home and stay here with him like she was considering. While there are distinct advantages to doing so and it'd be nice for him to stay home, her sanity is important too and after a while you just get burned out. It helps that he's doing well at daycare too and that we're pretty happy overall with the people and facilities there.
Other than Evan stuff, we've just been working, being glad that college football is back, and getting some quality video game time. Beat Overlord 2 which was just as funny as the original and now I'm playing Halo 3: ODST which is harder than any of the previous 3 Halo games I've played.
Carolina's had a pretty good football season so far. 7 yards from being undefeated after we lost a close one to Georgia. Made up for it by beating #4 Ole Miss here in Columbia this last Thursday. We haven't been to a game yet, we missed the first two. Looking at going this upcoming Saturday to the SC State game though, so that should be fun.
We also went to Melting Pot again last night to celebrate Dave and Christina's birthdays like we've done for a few years now:
And then just to add another photo to this post, when we came back from visiting at Tim and Kristi's today for the Michigan game, this guy found his way into the house somehow:
Whew... we have went through some of the toughest times the last couple weeks with Evan.
He went through a phase for a while where he fought us every time we had to lay him down to sleep. Past fussing, past crying, he'd get hysterical sometimes even.
Thankfully that seems to be behind us. The night before last he finally, officially slept through the night for the first time. I kept reading and hearing about the 11pm magic hour for that last bottle at this age, so I fed him around 8pm or so and instead of letting him sleep until 1-4am as he was doing, I woke a sleeping baby...
And it paid off, he slept from 11:20pm until 6:15am that night.
Of course, he couldn't do it two nights in a row so he only made it from 10:30pm until 4:30am last night.
But the important part is that for the last few days he's going to sleep peacefully. Sometimes with even one small fuss or peep. He just gets tired, we walk him a little in his room until his eyes get heavy, lay him down, and he's out.
Today's been okay so far too, a little more fussing, but that's because it's Saturday and there's football on. Seriously I don't know how parents watched sports before DVRs were invented... haha. And I've got him this afternoon by myself because Christina went to a funeral service today. The wife of her direct supervisor at work died last week in a freak car accident where she drove off the road herself for some reason or another. Didn't seem appropriate to bring a 10-week old either.
I think it has finally started - he slept last night from 9:20pm until 3:45am and he did almost as well the night before. This new formula is helping. Doctor gave us samples of Enfamil AR which has the rice starches in it. He had been too gassy still and has mild reflux so he wanted to try this before drugs like Zantac. We mix in some of his base formula because the thicker stuff had him really stopped up at first and that's worked out really well.
Also a nice long weekend because we have Monday off for Labor Day. Think we're headed over to Tim and Kristi's for dinner tomorrow night and I'm going to go golf Monday morning. Should be interesting since I've never bothered to do anything but driving ranges before.
Add to the weekend that college football is finally back! Carolina won an ugly season opener on the road against NC State last Thursday night, but it's a win! And Michigan's up 24-0 on Western Michigan right now, so life is good. I guess it's probably too much to ask that Middle Tennessee State beat Clemson, eh? Haha.
Evan did really well today with his 2 month checkup and shots. He got 3 shots and one oral vaccine. Cried for about 30 seconds, then he was fine. Slept on the ride home, even when we stopped to get my hair cut. Then had a bottle when he got home and crashed after that. Much better than we thought he'd do.
Working from home today for half the day. Boss agreed to let me do that one day a week to help Christina get caught up with sleep and work hours. So, I try to do it on Wednesdays so it is the middle of the week. He also agreed to let me get a new computer at work since mine was getting a little old - and agreed on the price which included a better monitor. I'm used to my 24" Dell Ultrasharp at home so that's what I ordered for work - much better than the 19" one I was using before.
Been messing around with running a good number of virtual machines and testing things out, so the new system will be a nice improvement there. I'm going to try to get rid of some of our older server hardware by capturing those boxes to a virtual system and hosting multiple of those on one of the newer, faster servers. Cool technology and the best part is the bulk of what you need to do it all is free.
New month, new blog post. That's about the extent of my energy lately.
Just getting to that burned out stage where it's like bottle, diaper, burp, bath, sleep, bottle, diaper, burp, sleep, bottle, diaper... blah blah. One day is blending into another... haha.
He is starting to get a bit better though... his tough days/nights are there occasionally, but he's more peaceful in general now. Like he's learned to just "be" I guess... and smile and laugh and coo and all that stuff too. He has been recognizing us for a while.
What he's not doing is sleeping through the night yet - that can't come soon enough. With the start of the semester and losing our 40 hour/week grad student help work is overwhelming and getting little sleep isn't making things any better.
Evan sure does have his funny and cute moments now already. Instead of placing pictures right in the blog like I have been doing, I'm going to just link to my Pbase site like I used to do with photos before. So, click the photo/link below to go to the gallery of images, newer ones are always at the bottom of course:
