Pop-Pop's Birthday

We took a trip to Japan! Haha, no just the Japanese Steakhouse for Pop-Pop's 60th birthday.  Our camera battery was dead so Micah took these with his phone, not bad considering!
While we were waiting to be seated, a man guessed Ezekiel to be 3 weeks old.  Kind of funny when we told him he's almost 4 months.  He was pretty close though if you go by his weight.  We're guessing he's around 9 or 10 pounds now.  We'll find out in about 2 weeks when I take him for his next checkup at the pediatrician.

It was SO nice to get of the house for awhile.  The food was amazing (it's one of our favorite restaurants).  I feel like I'm pretty easily entertained these days.  Anything out of our ordinary routine gets me excited.  It was fun to watch our food get cooked in front of us.  There were also a couple of crying babies around us while our *ahem* angel baby ;) slept.  Made me feel better to see other babies who would only be happy if you were up standing with them, and yet their moms attempt to get out the house too.


Ezekiel is talking it up these days with lots of smiles for everyone.  Every once in awhile we'll catch him studying his feet but he seems to be kind of over that for right now.  His new thing is putting his fist in his mouth and attempting to chew his elbow.  He's drooling a lot and pulling his ear.  That leads us to think he's starting to teeth.  Haven't seen any little pearly whites poking through yet though.  He still hates tummy time but when he is on his stomach he digs his feet in and pushes, with his upper body dragging along.  Still working on coordinating that :).

Ezekiel's Welcome Home Party

We originally had a baby shower planned in mid March, along with another one planned in my hometown that same month.  My due date was May 2nd, so we thought that was plenty of time.  Ezekiel had bigger and better plans, so the parties were delayed.  Last weekend we finally had a makeup party for him!  We had to wait awhile until we got the green light from his pediatrician to be able to take him into large crowds.  It was nice for our family and friends to finally meet him!

Outings

We've started to get a routine going these days with Ezekiel's wake time.  We start the day off with a bath.  I wanted this to be apart of his bedtime routine originally but I gave up on that for now.  Late evenings is his fussiest time of day, and bath time doesn't seem to be a comfort to him during that time.  Late morning I usually try to do some blanket/tummy time.  He's really against the tummy time, but we're working on it.  Early afternoon is when we try to get out, anywhere.  It's summer time, with highs in the high 90's and heat index in the 100's so that means no outdoors for us.  We usually run errands, or our favorite, go meet up with daddy over his lunch break.  Micah has been pretty swamped at work so unfortunately we don't get to do that as often as we all would like but when we do, it's a treat.  We'll usually go walk around the mall that's around the corner from his work.  Ezekiel is a fan of his car seat and will sleep through pretty much anything in it!  Yesterday we were walking back to the car and for probably the first time ever he opened his eyes and looked around for awhile as if he was trying to gather what was going on.  He's not used to waking up mid day on a weekday to seeing his daddy pushing him around in a huge store. :)

Smiles

These were a nice treat for momma.  He usually saves them up for the ceiling fan or the swaying palm trees outside. :)

3 months!

Ezekiel is 3 months old now!  Can't believe he's been home twice as long as he was in the hospital already.

He has really started to babble and smile.  Especially at ceiling fans and his crib mobile.  Not sure what it is about the fans.  My guess is that because they are dark against the white ceiling he likes the high contrast but who knows.  Micah's guess is that Ezekiel thinks they are big people mobiles :).

We started taking him outside more and he really seems to enjoy it.  He might be fussy inside and then we take him out and he'll just sit contently for quite a while.

We moved!  It was a pretty daunting task with a newborn but between my parents, and Micah's grandparents helping out, we got it done.  We don't know how we would have gotten it done without them.
We're still in the middle of fighting those short sales... we're currently on our 3rd place and we've been doing this since December.  We're hoping 3rd time's a charm... or well, that we make it to closing day at least!

Mother's Day

This past Sunday we celebrated my first mother's day!

Ezekiel was great the entire day.  He was content after pretty much every feeding and just hung out with us happily.  We started the day off with Micah making us breakfast, and opening mother's day cards.

 

Since his pediatrician said it's ok now to take him out into the public, we were able to go to church for the first time since he was born.  It was SO great to be back!  He slept the entire time, even through the loud music.  We went out to Olive Garden with Micah's grandparents for dinner, where he also slept the entire time until the very end when we were leaving.  As long as you get him in the car first, he'll usually be set for sleeping until it's time to eat again which makes it a little easier to take him out.
With this new found freedom of not being housebound we've been thinking of other ways to get out more.  We went and visited Micah at work to have lunch at a nearby park.

Technically this means the two of us could go grocery shopping during the day now, but there's just one problem.  Groceries, an infant, and 3 flights of stairs.  Haven't quite figured out how to coordinate that.  Our carseat is really heavy.  I don't think I could even carry the carseat and a gallon of milk at the same time up all those stairs!

2 months update

I'm sitting here with little man determined to get back to blogging.  It's a great way to keep you all updated, keep a record of his progression for my sake, and a cool way for Ezekiel to hear about his early days when he's older. Every once in awhile we'll have a day like this where I think we're finally getting the hang of things.  There's about 20 minutes of time where he's happily chilling out, laundry is running, dinner is defrosting, and I have a second to do something like this.  Then somehow we get way out of sync and this kind of day doesn't come around again for another week (this is why you haven't received your thank you cards, but I promise I'm working on them and that we are beyond grateful for your generosity!  Really, I don't know what we would do without all of your support!)  I would love to start from the beginning but that would take more time than I have and I would never get to the present time.  So for now, I'll just start where we are, and have the best of intentions of getting a birth story post up some day.

 In short, Ezekiel unexpectedly came 2 months early.  Our lives quickly changed on March 5, 2010.  He spent a month in the NICU while mommy and daddy stayed at the Ronald McDonald House about 15 minutes away.  It was much better than staying the 45 minutes away that we live from the hospital!  He did amazing considering he was born at 31 weeks, and 5 days.  We were able to get two steroid shots in me hours before he was born in order to help his lungs progress.  Normally babies that early would have to be on oxygen but Ezekiel was able to breath on his own from the very beginning.  The only reason he was in the nicu for so long was to start regulating his own body temperature, to steadily gain weight, and to be able to take a whole feeding by bottle and at least be working on breastfeeding (versus by a feeding tube).  We had picked out the name Ezekiel years ago and knew the name meant "God strengthens" but never knew how true that meaning would apply to him.  God truly has strengthened him, and continues to do so!

On GOOD Friday, it was a typical morning where I was sitting in the rocker, holding Ezekiel after his morning feeding.  The pediatrician came by to talk to the nurse to update her on his charges for the day when I overheard him say "baby French can go home today".  I started crying, I couldn't believe they were finally letting us take him home, and it was so unexpected!  It was great timing since Micah was set to leave that next Monday for a business trip for a week to California.  We were so grateful to have that weekend together at home before he had to leave.

Since then it's been a blur of a month.  In some ways it seems like he's been at home for much longer, but then in other ways I still can't believe he's here! His original due date was this past Sunday, May 2nd.  We celebrated his "0th birthday" with a cake and Avatar (aka an excuse for Micah to buy Avatar).

He's still tiny but developmentally he's doing so well.  He had his 2 month checkup today and weighed in at 7 lbs, 4 oz. (born at 4 lbs, 3 oz.)  He's meeting almost all of the 2 month milestones.  At about 5 weeks old during tummy time one night he all of a sudden rolled from his stomach to his back and continues to do that pretty much every day!

  

Well, it's time to get him down for a nap.  Hopefully I can start updating often!