Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes I know that I am a few days late on putting this one up but HAPPY THANKSGIVING to everyone. We went to Atlanta for Thanksgiving and spent the least stressful Thanksgiving ever with Jeff, Leslie, Riley and Colter. The turkey was cooked too long and got too hot but still tasted wonderful. Thank you Aunt Cathy for filling me in on how to cook turkeys upsidedown and what to stuff them with. I forgot cream of mushroom soup and we didn't have a meat thermometer but we now know how to make a completely stress free Thanksgiving....Eat lunch. Yes I said it, Eat lunch. Have dinner around dinner time and have lunch. No one was cranky because they were hungry. The babies were still on their schedules for eating and sleeping and everything went well. I was soooo happy about that. I know that Leslie was too!

Well we are back to the daily grind now. Matt has two tests this week. One down and one to go which means that I won't be seeing him much this week. But that is ok. I started baking bread again which I am so very excited about. It is really easy to do as long as Alan is working with me. Some days are better than others. Tater is back to his normal self again. He was really quiet after we picked him up from the kennel. But we did find out that Tater has a girlfriend at the kennel, a little mini Corgi that looks just like him. How cute is that! He will get to see his girlfriend again over Christmas. Well that is all that is going on now. Off to bed I go. Hope you all have a great rest of the week! Oh I will post pics once I get them from Leslie.

Rollercoaster we call parenthood.

I was looking back on the posts from the past month and they look just like a rollercoaster ride. Some days we are on the top of the ride and others are at the bottom and a few are in the middle of a large loop or corkscrew. We have been in a corkscrew this week already. Yes I am aware that it is only Tuesday but it has still been crazy. We found out on Monday that the doctor does not want to take Alan off of his monitor for another 2 weeks at least because he is setting off the low heartrate alarm. This was so discouraging to hear but at the same time we know that it is the best thing for Alan. Obviously the doctor sees something that we don't and wants to be certain that the alarms are just from Alan getting older. Doesn't mean that I am not totally upset that he isn't losing the monitor yet. To make things even better, that was all they told us on Monday. No one could give me an answer about if it was because of his age or if we could get the setpoints changed. Just that we would have to wait 2 weeks. Our nurse did say that she would ask about it but that the Level 3 babies were causing trouble so the doctors were really busy. I laughed when she said that because Alan did the same thing when he was a Level 3 NICU baby. Silly babies. I called today to find out some more info because we are leaving tomorrow for Atlanta and if they are going to do something about the monitor it has to be done today and if I have to hunt down our peditrician for an order I need to leave early. I called again around 10:00am and got some answers! The doctor at MUSC was going to change the setpoints and they would send the order over to the monitor people. Also they would place the order for his download in 2 weeks and the setpoints would get changed today! THANK YOU!! Yeah there goes the round and round. But on a positive note we are leaving for Atlanta tomorrow and I have already baked bread and apricot bars!

More updates on Alan

This has been another really busy week for Alan and Mommy. Monday we had an appointment to have his development evalutated. The evaluator said that he was NOT DELAYED!!! :) We were very excited about that! She said that only thing we needed to be concerned about was his head control because he is still a little floppy. Alan also rolled over for the first time while he was being evaluated! I was very excited but bummed at the same time because Matt was not able to see it. When I told Matt that Alan rolled over, he was excited but you could tell from his face that he was very upset that he missed it. Here is one of the cool things Alan started doing! He can grab his toys now and can pass them from one hand to another!

We also have good news/bad news. Good news: Alan has finished up his two weeks off of caffeine without any problems when they came to download his monitor. Bad news: Alan had two low heartrate episodes on Monday night and Wednesday night. :( The infant monitoring people at MUSC want to check his monitor again to see if they can find the reason for the alarms before they say it is ok to take him off the monitor for good.

But our little boy still has his sense of humor for sure! I caught him with his binky upsidedown on his nose. Not sure how he managed to get it there but he did. :)

We have started trying to get Alan to sleep without rocking him at night. We will put him in bed awake and let him go to sleep on his own. Some nights it works great and other nights not so well. Just depends on his mood. Tonight was one of the not so great nights. He is on round 4 tonight of trying to sleep.

Here is Alan after he FINALLY pulled his little bunny off of his bouncer. Took him a couple of days but when he got it down he was one of the happiest babies I have ever seen!

Alan's eventful week

This week was pretty eventful for Alan. On Monday he was suppose to have an evaluation of his gross and fine motor skills, but our little boy was sick. He was running a low-grade fever and was very congested. Aside from the sickness Alan surprised us anyway. We had him in his papasan seat and he reached up and grabbed the little bunny hanging over his seat. This was the first time that he has ever reached out to any of his toys with a purpose. Most of the time it is just randomly hitting things. Here he is on Friday playing with his hanging toys on his play mat. We are just thrilled that he finally got this skill figured out!

On Tuesday Alan was feeling a little bit better so we decided to let him play on the floor for a bit. I didn't want him playing on his mat because he would get all his sickness germs all over it. Yes I know there are sickness germs everywhere. :) But here is a picture of Alan attempting to roll over. This is as far as he has been able to go but working in the right direction for sure!!


Our little sleepy baby on Friday morning. I brought the camera in when I went to wake him up so we could go to Mommy's doctor appointment. He is so happy in the morning and I wish that everyone could see him like this. He is very giggly and so excited to see me every morning.

Wednesday was a big milestone for gross motor skills. Normally Alan does the "airplane" when he is doing tummy time. Not today. :) He put his hands down on the ground to help support himself. This was something we have been working on for several months now and was one of the major concerns from our doctor. But Alan did great on Wednesday and he even sat and talked to Tater for a bit. We also joined a new church on Wednesday night. We now are members of Open Door Baptist Church and are very excited to have a new church home in South Carolina!

Yes this is the standard laundry basket picture but it also shows that Alan can sit with some assistance now! We did laundry on Thursday and I plopped Alan in the basket so he could be with me while I was doing laundry and folding it. He sat really well with his back against the basket and only tipped forward a few times. I was soooo proud of him!! He is finally figuring things out!

We still have our appointment on Monday for an evaluation and he will have his monitor data evaluated on Monday too. Tomorrow will be two weeks since he was taken off of his medication so he should be coming off of his monitor soon!! YAY!!

Poor baby.

Poor little Alan is sick. :( I hate when he doesn't feel good. Right now he is finally sleeping for, hopefully, the night. He started having really watery eyes and sneezing on Thursday night, then the coughing kicked in on Friday night. Yesterday he was really congested and it just got worse today. His temperature under his arm was 98.6 F which means that it is more like 99.6 F, a low grade fever. Poor thing sounds sooo sad when he is crying too. We are just worried now that he gets worse. We are also hoping that he doesn't get dehydrated and have to go to the hospital. But we are going to see the doctor tomorrow because even with Tylenol his temperature went up some.

Here is a picture of Matt teaching Alan how to cheer for NC State! This was before the sickness got really bad. But we are hoping that he will get to go to a NC State basketball game this season. We shall see how that goes.

Baby Sadie!

We would like to say Congrats to Chris and Amber! Their daughter Sadie was born on Monday night and came VERY quickly! As in 1 hour and 40 min after her water broke....OUCH! Sadie was 6lbs 12oz and 19in long. Yes she was bigger than Alan when he was born. :) But she is such a cutie! Amber and Sadie got to go home today and they are doing well.

Voting deception

Alan and I decided to do our patriotic duty and vote today. Boy were we deceived when we got into line to vote! We got to the elementary school that we were going to vote at and the line outside was maybe 30 feet long. So I decided that we didn't need the diaper bag or the stroller because it would be really quick. I did bring the snugglie and his blanket and got into line. Once we got into the school I realized that we had made a horrible mistake! The line inside when down the hallway and back before it went into the gymnasium. The hallway wasn't the short one either, it went the entire length of the school. 3 hours later we were in the short line to cast our vote and then out the door. I do have to say that nursing Alan in line with everyone looking at me was VERY strange. At least we don't have to do this again for another 4 years and next time we will be doing an absentee ballot, so we won't be standing in line.

A new friend!

Today Alan and I got to meet one of mommy's friends from the Military Brides board on the Knot. We went out to lunch with Tina and her son Brayden along with two of Tina's friends and their kids. We had a lot of fun going to the outlet mall and getting lunch! Alan was sooo good the entire time we were out, other than throwing up on himself. I wish I had gotten some pictures of us together but Tina will be back in town before Thanksgiving so hopefully we can get together again and get pictures then. Well after the fun we had today, Alan and Mommy are VERY tired! Alan is sleeping now and Mommy is thinking about doing the same. :)