Two weeks to Santa Day

So it is officially two weeks to Christmas. Seems like the year has flown by. We have not done any shopping for the few presents we are going to be buying this year, and that includes buying anything for Aiden. Not that he will need much with all the aunts, uncles, and grandparents spoiling the little guy. But still you want to go back and say "This is what e got him for his first Christmas". We've got less than 2 weeks to figure it out now.

Aiden continues to frustrate me with the rolling over thing. He rolled over twice today, but when the camera was there, nothing. Think the kid is camera shy or something.

The nights have been better with the Oatmeal Cereal. Last night he did get active between 5-6am, but when I moved him from his crib to our room in his bouncer he settled back down just fine. In fact he was sleeping peacefully when I woke up about 7:05 and realized mommy hadn't gotten up yet either. Her alarm failed to go off this morning, so she was a little rushed getting to work this morning. Oops.

Took awhile to get him to settle in to sleep tonight. In the end I left him awake in his bouncer with his little musical aquarium playing and by the time the 5 minutes of music had played out he was asleep, so that was good.

on course?

Alrighty then.

So Aiden has now been on the Oatmeal Cereal instead of Rice Cereal for 3 days. He seems to be taking to it very well. No constipation so far. Rice Cereal we would have some hard painful bowel movements every couple of days regardless of how much prune juice we gave him. With the Oatmeal Cereal we have not given him any prune juice at all and he seems much more comfortable. His sleep has not been terrific, but it has been okay. No sleepless nights since we made the change. Saturday night was probably a downright GOOD night for him. Last night was okay, but mommy said she was up with him several times between 4am-7. I never heard him.

We have him sleeping in his bouncer so that he is upright a little bit and that seems to be helping his tummy out quite a bit. Last night we put the bouncer inside his crib (prior to that he had been set up right next to our bed) he did okay in the bouncer in the crib from 11:30-3:45. At some point between 4 – 7 mommy brought him out of the crib back to our room.

He does make some noises in his sleep… not fussy noises, just kind of little baby sleeping noises. I don’t know if momma is so keyed up to the sounds he makes that these noises woke her up, or if he was actually fussy. She wasn’t really sure if he was fussy or not, just that she was up several times.

I need to reiterate that Aiden is a very happy baby. It has been awhile since I talked about much other than the sleeping problems and the tummy problems and the skin irritants. But during the day, when he is awake, he is a very happy, active baby. We get lots of smiles and giggles. He thinks Daddy and mommy are the funniest things on the planet. I think if momma and I were getting decent amounts of sleep we would have no complaints at all.

We watch Extreme Makeover Home Edition every Sunday, and watching that program and others like it, just make us realize exactly how lucky we are that Aiden is as healthy as he is. There is so much more that could have gone wrong. So many families out there who have such stories of struggle and hardship, just keeping their little ones alive. In the meantime, Aiden is thriving and we complain about lack of sleep. Every night I thank God that Aiden is as healthy as he is. I also ask that he take away the skin irritation and let the Acid reflux fade out so that Aiden will sleep, but primarily I am thankful that we have a healthy happy little boy.

A couple of pictures I can share with you this evening… and I am going to try to link in a video from my mother’s picasaweb site that she took while here over the weekend. We took more pictures over the last couple of days, but I am not allowed to share because they are for the Christmas Card. I guess after Christmas I can share that one.

That’s gonna about do it for tonight. I’m working on a little fun entry for somewhere in the next few days. 10 rules to live by for new dads. Just a fun little list of things to expect. That should be fun!

Sunday Update

Tomorrow I will try to make some time for a full fledged update for you, as well as bring in some photos that were taken over the weekend.

My mom and Danny came in for the night Saturday, and we had a good visit. Aiden has had a couple of decent nights. Not great nights, but acceptable. At least he is sleeping.

We've had a few more instances of him rolling over, but have still failed to capture it on film. He gets shy around the camera I guess.

I am still fighting with the computer to one degree or another. I will get it all sorted, but Vista seems to have a lot of compatibility problems with already in existence software. Almost makes one consider buying a mac.

As I said, I will give a longer update tomorrow, but I told myself I couldn't go to bed tonight without at least posting something, so there you go!

Stupid Windows

It has been a busy couple of days around the house here. Aiden had a grumpy day today. I tried him on solids again, and he did better, since I mixed the rice in with his apple juice it probably tasted better, but about 5pm he got really grumpy, and grumped all the way until momma put him to bed a little after 11. He is now sleeping soundly, which may be a result of all the energy he exerted grumping for 6 hours.

This update is a little late in coming as my computer has continued to act up on me since we had the little issue with the firewall a month ago. Windows Live Messenger along with several other programs boot up and then stop working. It tells me it is looking for a solution, but no solution is ever available. So tonight I decided to try reinstalling Vista to see if that takes care of the problem. Well it takes about 4 hours to reinstall Vista, and once that process was completed, the same problem still occurs. I find it slightly amusing that the main program I need that fails to work is a Microsoft product. But anyway.... I don't think this would be a really big issue, except that it crashes Windows Explorer whenever I try to launch the Control Panel. That is a problem.

So I think tomorrow, or sometime over the weekend when I have some time, I will be downgrading back to Windows XP. That should be a load of fun. Hopefully not too much of a nightmare.

So I may miss a day or two of updates if the computer is busy loading files and getting right with Microsoft. But I will be back soon!

What is he doing?!

Okay all you bright people out there. Or people with more time to explore than I have. Aiden is doing something for which I cannot find any sort of reasoning. I am going with it being a part of the teething process, but go out there and show me something to back it up...

Aiden has started to roll his tongue around his gums. Basically massaging his gums with his tongue. I have tried to look this up as baby licking gums to no avail. If you can find something on this, it would be welcome.

After our first night of Aiden rolling over from his tummy to his back 3 times, he has not done it since. I don't know what the magic was that cause him to roll over so easily on Saturday night. Maybe it was all the football on TV, but no successes since then.

We'll keep on trying. And trying to catch it on video!

A Different Night

One of the new things I have been trying the last few nights is giving Aiden a little extra formula in between his 7 and 11pm bottles. He seems to get fussy right around the 9 o'clock hour, so I gave him an extra 3 ounces the other night and that settled him right down, so I have continued to do it.

Last night, after finishing his extra bottle and his 11pm bottle, Aiden slept until 2:45, when he started grumping. I got up, gave him his pacifier and went and got his bottle ready. I sat down at the computer to wait for him to grump again. He didn't until almost 3:30. I got him up and tried to feed him, but he was not even remotely interested. Over the next 45 minutes, every time he fussed a little I offered the bottle, he would take a couple of sips and then go back to sleep. Between 3:30 and 4:15 he drank 2 ounces. Then I decided to put him back down. He got back up a little after 5 and Raquel gave him a little more. But he did not have a full fledged bottle between 11pm and 9am. Is this progress? We'll have to wait and see... But tonight when he fusses I am going to try the pacifier and go back to bed instead of assuming he is hungry and getting ready to feed him.

We'll see how that works out for us. :-)

Pictures

So it has been awhile since we had any pictures of Aiden posted. So tonight instead of posting much of an update, I am going to post a few pictures from the last couple of days for your enjoyment.

FLIP!

It was an eventful day for Aiden today. We had another very rough night last night, just hoping tonight will be better. I'm not entirely convinced the problem isn't that he is still hungry. By the 2.5-3 ounces per pound he should be getting anywhere between 38-45 ounces of formula a day. We are giving him a little over 30 ounces a day. Now the Rice Cereal should make up some of that difference, but how much? Who knows.

I gave him a little extra formula between his 6 and 10 o'clock bottles tonight and (for now) he is sleeping. We'll see how it goes.

Grandad and Nana came to town today to visit. This is the first time they have been able to make it down since Aiden left the hospital. It was nice to spend the late afternoon and evening with them, and grandad and I spent the evening cheering on Pitt and Oklahoma as they took on the #1 and #2 ranked teams in the land. Can you say welcome to the Championship Game Ohio State?!?!

And then.... after grandad left, I decided just to give Aiden a little tummy time, since he was pretty awake and active. Well what should I see, but he flips over from his belly to his back. I put him back on his belly and he does it again! I had to wake up momma and have her come downstairs and see, and he did flip again for her, but we didn't catch it on video. We'll be trying tomorrow to get that one.

We did take several pictures today that I will get posted tomorrow, the camera isn't convenient for me to grab right now, so it will just have to wait. hehe.

Here's hoping we get some sleep tonight!