A week of pictures

This week was our first with me home. I was definitely nervous about how it would all go, and so was able to have my mom down for the first couple days, helping with a couple doctor's appointments and doing morning feeds so we could get an extra hour or two of sleep each morning. It was odd to be home, but good to have help for the first couple days. Mark was on call Wednesday, which meant that he was at the hospital from 7 am on Wednesday until 2 pm on Thursday. We decided that I would take that opportunity to head home to Reedsburg with my mom and Dane for a visit. We had the pleasure of having one of my best friends, Katy, and my grandma and aunt down to see us. Dane made everyone smile, as he was very happy and kept giving his great grandma big smiles in response to her nursery rhymes. Friday, another great friend took Dane's first professional pictures. We had a lot of fun with colors, but realized that his 20 minutes of wakefulness meant for a quick shoot:) We're looking forward to seeing the fun results.

Mark worked a half day Friday and joined us for a birthday dinner (for me and my mom on 8/11) in Reedsburg that evening. We went to a new Italian restaurant called Calabria, and Dane was mesmerized by the plethora of ceiling fans. We followed this up with my absoute favorite - cherry pie with my mom's homemade piecrust. It was a treat! My parents gave us a break on Saturday morning and Mark and I replayed one of our very first dates, mini-golf in Wisconsin Dells at Pirate's Cove. While I didn't beat him by 10 like the first time, we did tie, which he was okay with. (Mark also said I needed to point out that I was one stroke ahead going into the last hole, which was the ball-return hole where you just putted into this big funnel and the ball ALWAYS goes into the hole in one stroke...except that my ball somehow stopped right at the hole without falling in, thus resulting in the tie.) Then we realized how exhausted we were, and in lieu of our original plans to do a waterpark, we headed home early after a burger and some fried cheese curds. Welcome to WI:)


Grandma and Grandpa Moyer took Dane on an excursion to pick up 4 dozen ears of sweet corn, to make 1/2 of the freezer corn she'll make this summer. We got home, ate tacos and an ice cream b-day cake for dinner and then watched the Beatles' movie, A Hard Days' Night. Dane was great for most of the weekend, taking to the formula quite well. He's been waking up slightly earlier, due to the more quick-moving digestion...yes, lots more poopy diapers now!

We made it home in record time today, with a very quiet ride from the babe, thankfully. We're now back, with Mark on call again tomorrow, so if you feel like dropping me a line, I'll be alone with the Dane-man from 7am Monday until ~1pm on Tuesday. We're looking forward to Mark getting home and then not being on call until Sunday. It will be good to have some more time together! It'll also be fun to help move Mark's brother, Steven, into his new apartment down here in DeKalb to start his first year of law school at NIU. We are excited to have him closer and to be able to see him more often!

Dane's been growing in leaps and bounds, with a gain of almost three pounds this past month! It actually brought up a warning when the nurse input his new weight into his chart, with the computer warning that he was growing too rapidly :) He also gained one inch, which is all to say that he's catching up with his growth curve. He is now at 6% for head size and 1% for weight, where he used to be at all 0%. Yay!

Lastly, Dane had his first "solid" feed today. We gave him some infant oatmeal mixed with his formula and he took it really well. He isn't quite big enough for using a spoon yet (still not enough head control) and the information from the pediatrician said that we should avoid giving it to him in his bottle, so we gave him about 2 ounces of watered down oatmeal with one an eyedropper. But he took it really well. It was a bit hard to tell how he felt after taking the oatmeal because he then entered his normal 4-10pm evil demon grumpy period.

Dane loving his oatmeal...

And lastly, a movie we took of Dane when he was really happy earlier today: