My, How Time Flys

Well E had his 2 month doctor’s appointment yesterday. I can’t even believe he’s 2 months old already. He’s gotten so big. The doctor said he had grown even more than she thought he would. He’s still petite, but he’s a strong, strapping young lad who’s very healthy. He weighed in at 9 lbs, 6 oz and is now 21 inches long. He appears to be learning right on track too. He is starting to smile at us when we smile at him, and sometimes just when he has to pass gas. He looks around all the time and focuses much longer now on our faces and he also follows objects with his eyes. He got his vaccines yesterday (poor baby). That is such a hard thing to watch as a parent… a nurse comes in with a bunch of needles and sticks them into your baby and he starts crying and screaming as you unsuccessfully try to comfort him. Then on our way out he fell asleep (probably from all the trauma) and you think, “Hey, he’s okay.” But once we got home and some time passed, E started heating up and it was obvious he was extremely uncomfortable. He’s doing better today though, so that’s good.

The other giant development coming up… E will be starting school (daycare) on Monday. We found a great place where we like the environment and the staff. I’ll be going with him on Monday and hanging out there with him and the teachers for a while… yes… I have a hard time letting go. If I’ve learned anything from the movie ‘What About Bob’ with Bill Murray, it’s all about baby steps. And I have also been assured by the daycare director that infants are usually not kicked out for excessive crying. I had to ask because we have one fussy baby but apparently that’s normal for little ones. I warned both the director and the teachers in the infant room about his temper tantrums but they shrugged it off. I guess they’ve seen it all before and it’s no biggie… and that makes me feel really good. I really hope he likes it there.

January 15, 2010 Posted in: Loo's Views & Baby News No Comments

Brrrrr….

It is cold out there today. E woke up this morning at 4:00am because he was hungry. I slowly crawled out of bed, turned off the baby monitor and proceeded to his room. Even though the heat kicked on, it was still a little cold in the house. So E and I went out to the couch for an early breakfast. Since it was quiet and not much else to do, I checked the weather to see what the day had in store for us. Well, it was 16 degrees out… 16! That is way too cold for us. We live in Texas for a reason; to avoid this super frigid winter air. And I know it’s even colder in other parts of the country, but Ethan and I are not planning to leave the house at all this weekend. Stay warm, my friends.

January 9, 2010 Posted in: Loo's Views & Baby News One Comment

Happy New Year!

I can’t believe it’s 2010… Marty and I can officially say, “Our son was born last year.” That is so weird. 2009 completely flew by and I’m sure with E approaching 2 months already, we’re expecting 2010 to fly by even quicker. With 2009 officially over, I honestly have to say… it was a great year. Looking forward to great things as we start a new decade.

January 2, 2010 Posted in: Loo's Views & Baby News No Comments

Baby Scrooge

So Christmas morning was very interesting. I don’t know exactly what I had been expecting. Yes, I knew Ethan was only 6 weeks old and I knew he liked to cry a lot… but for some reason I had a feeling that he’d get a good night sleep on Christmas Eve and wake up happy and ready to open presents on Christmas morning… in my mind, he was even smiling (even though he really doesn’t do that yet). This was not the case. Christmas morning Ethan ate and ate and cried and cried. He was almost inconsolable most of the day and we were just happy for any moment of peace and quiet. We were supposed to have Christmas dinner with friends but unfortunately they had come down with colds and we decided to keep Ethan home and so we had peirogies for dinner and pie for dessert. It was probably better that we stayed in because Ethan really was behaving badly and was not in a mood to be social.

Luckily, most of that has passed in the 2 days following Christmas. It must have been the “6-week growing pains” because since then he has been much more angelic. On Sunday, he even quietly watched some football with Mom & Dad in between naps and he let us get a little yard work done in the afternoon. When he did get fussy, it didn’t even seem that bad. Let’s hope this is the start of a well-behaved, smiling-and-cooing, sleep-in-late baby. I probably just jinxed it.

December 28, 2009 Posted in: Loo's Views & Baby News One Comment

Twas the night before Christmas…

It’s been just a few days since our last visitors left and it’s been nice and quiet around the house (if you don’t count periods of constant crying). Still though, I just can’t believe Christmas morning is less than 24 hours away. We have our little fake 3 foot Christmas tree set-up and decorated plus a few other little holiday decorations strategically placed throughout the house. I can only interpret Ethan’s crying as what must be his anxiety to open the many presents under the tree. Ethan has presents from family and friends and I know he can’t wait to see and play with all of his new wonderful toys.

Ethan is almost 6 weeks old now and he has grown so much. Besides crying, sleeping and eating… we’ve also discovered that he loves ceiling fans and fixtures, standing on someone’s lap (with support of course), sleeping on Mommy or Daddy’s chest, and bath time most of all. He’s started to grip things with his hands. He held onto one of his rattles the other day for over 10 seconds and also has a really good grip when tugging on Mommy’s hair. It’s incredible how much he’s learned and how he seems to get cuter and cuter each day.

December 24, 2009 Posted in: Loo's Views & Baby News No Comments

Almost 3 Weeks Old

With almost 3 weeks under our belt (that flew by fast)… I must say… raising babies is hard stuff! Today I was driving around running a couple of errands to get me out of the house and I saw people out with their young children and I just wonder how they (and everyone I know) made it though the first few weeks. Some days are awesome; Ethan sleeps a lot, wants to play a little and will sleep in 4-hour spurts at night. Then other days, he spends every waking moment crying, wailing, and otherwise torturing me by refusing to sleep at night.

When he’s awake and looking around curiously, it’s the cutest thing ever. Today, I thought I’d try to add up the amount of time he spends awake and not crying. It was going so well. However, after 20 minutes of successful happy-awake-baby-time, Ethan proceded to projectile vomit all over himself and me. Funny thing… even after that happened, he didn’t start crying until 10 minutes afterwards and then he fell asleep 10 minutes after that. I felt so bad for him.

He’s so angelic when he’s sleeping. Just listening to him as he makes little cooing noises is so friggin’ adorable, I just want to pick him up and tell him how cute he is… but for one thing, he would have no idea what I was saying and secondly, the likelihood that he starts to cry is very high. I know it’s probably bad but I really don’t want to wake him up now to change him but I know I must. I wish he’d sleep through diaper changings but we’re not quite there yet. Any day now… right???

December 3, 2009 Posted in: Loo's Views & Baby News 2 Comments

That’s my boy!

Ethan Samuel Timmens arrived into the world on Saturday, November 14th at 1:48am weighing 6 lbs 7 oz, 19 inches long with a full head of dark hair (now I know why I had such bad heartburn). He is absolutely gorgeous and perfect in every way!

We brought Ethan home yesterday and I think he prefers his new accomodations much better than he did the hospital. So far his favorite thing to do is sleep and even though his hours are a little different than we’d like, I’d have to say we’ve been pretty lucky so far. He cries for normal things so far like being hungry, being tired, needing to be changed, and being gassy. I’ve only cried one time and that was for the first diaper changing after his circumcision. He sounded so upset and there was nothing we could do… heartbreaking.

He is so cute all the time but when he has his eyes open and stares at me, I completely melt. Precious doesn’t seem to want to meet our new family member. We’re trying to let her get to know him on her own time and so far she has only approached him twice to sniff him quickly and walk away, completely bored and disinterested with him. She’ll come around eventually.

We’re so happy to be home. Everything still seems surreal. Surely, each day will likely bring new adventures and discoveries (and things to cry over… both good and bad). Thanks to all for the congrats and well wishes. Ethan can’t wait to meet everyone!

November 17, 2009 Posted in: Loo's Views & Baby News One Comment

37-Week Reflection… Pros and Cons

We are now amid our 37th week of pregnancy. According to the calendar, we’ve got exactly 19 more days to go until we reach our due date. I am now at that point where it looks like I am actually smuggling a soccer ball or small watermelon under my shirt and I feel like I’m about the size of a bus.

Since I’m approaching the end of my pregnancy and feeling it more than ever now, I’ve come up with my list of pros and cons of being pregnant. If the shoe was on the other foot and it was up to men to have the babies, I wonder if we’d be living on a desolate planet.

The Pros of Being Preggers

Knowing we’re having a baby!
People/strangers are much nicer
Never got morning sickness or nausea (very lucky)
Feeling our little son move around in the belly (there’s nothing quite like it)
Eating healthier meals overall since I’m eating for more than one
Can’t clean out the cat litter box
No worries about waking up hungover
Can use the pregnancy card to get out of certain things (I should have used this/need to use this more often)
Soon we get to meet our baby (hurry up and get here already)!!!!!!

The Cons List

Being so tired but not being able to sleep
Weight gain (it just makes it harder to do anything like stand up, roll over, can’t sleep on my stomach, plus the fear of stretch marks, my ankles have pretty much disappeared and I feel like I deserve my own zip code)
Having to pee 1,000 times a day
Can’t eat sushi or drink diet coke (plus a whole bunch of other delicious things restricted from the diet)
Forgetfulness and clumsiness
Moodiness (this is a rare one for me but it does happen)
Acid reflux
Fear of labor

I think that’s pretty much it. With all that being said, the pros definitely outweigh the cons. Soon we’ll have our baby and all the little discomforts will fade away and become a distant memory. Any day now…

October 28, 2009 Posted in: Loo's Views & Baby News One Comment