Whew

I can't believe how the last 5 weeks since Caleb's birth have flown right by!
Things have been transitioning well. In my opinion it's easier to go from 2 to 3 than it was 1 to 2, but much of that may be related to life circumstances at the differing times. Or the fact that Caleb is a laid back, calm and mellow boy as opposed to a tornado of energy like his older sister.
I took him in for his one month appointment last week and he weighed 8 pounds 8 ounces (put on a whopping 2 pounds from birth weight!) and 21 3/4 inches (grew over 2 inches in a month.) He's doing great. Last week he went through a growth spurt and I wasn't sure I was going to survive it. He wanted to nurse every 1 1/2 hours. My body was so exhausted after a few days I wanted to give up, but then we came out of it. He continued eating every 2 hours or so I and just kept feeding him on demand. I again started feeling exhausted and depleted and took a trip to the library for "Babywise" because I forgot how/when to start a schedule. I did a schedule with both Noah and Ellie and both were sleeping through the night at 7 weeks. Today I started Caleb on a schedule and, hopefully, in the next few weeks we'll get some good night time sleep. I forgot about the whole eat/play/sleep routine and was just basically nursing him to sleep all day long. He wasn't a very alert baby. Then he started doing this:
Sorry it's blurry; I took it with the camera on my phone and it obviously lacks quality.
Anyways, he started smiling and I realized he is quite fun while awake. So we've been interacting (as much as an infant can) today and it's been enjoyable.
He went to his first concert on Tuesday night. Kind of. Tim knows the original members of the Christian band, Relient K, from high school - one of them more than the others because they went to high school and youth group together for awhile - and when they come to town on tour we go support them. Usually we stop by and say a quick "hi" to his friend, Matt, before the concert but this time we actually went in a couple hours early and visited which was nice. Tim enjoyed having a longer amount of time to catch up. Anyways, because we didn't think it would be wise to bring a one month old into such a loud venue, Caleb and I waited on the tour bus while they played so Tim could go in and watch. So he kind of went to his first concert.
What else have we gone through this first month? It feels like a blur. Well, he has already had his first ultrasound. I took him into the doctor for what I thought was reflux and they sent me for an ultrasound to see if it was something I can't even remember the name of now. But if he had had it, he would have had to go in for surgery to repair it. Thankfully, all checked out fine and it really is just reflux. So we're dealing with that.
A few days later he had his first visit to the ER. I was changing his diaper that morning and noticed his belly was all bruised looking, black and blue and purple. I asked Tim what he thought and he wanted me to call the doctor. Since it was a Sunday afternoon we got the on-call pediatrician who advised us to go in to the ER since he wasn't even 3 weeks old yet. The ER doctor told me it was a broken blood vessel from when his umbilical cord fell off. We discovered a few days later it wasn't even that! When I had taken him into the pediatrician's office about the reflux, his umbilical cord fell off while we were there. Instead of a nice, clean break off, it was gooey and interesting looking and the pediatrician said there was a granuloma forming (or something like that) and he put some silver nitrate on it. Now, I didn't see him put iodine on it but he must have and the stain from it must not have shown up right away or something because that's what we think the coloring was from. I know this only because there came a day where I was giving him a bath and the "bruise" started coming off when I was bathing him. Now, we had tried washing it off before to see if maybe it was just that but nothing happened.
Basically my son likes to stretch us with funny little oddities.
The kids have adjusted well to him. Noah went through a phase where he started doing "silly faces" or saying "silly words" or doing "look at me" type things. I know part of this is being a 4-year old boy but you can tell when you watch him that it also involves him feeling like he doesn't want to be lost in the chaos of Ellie and a new baby. Ellie went through a phase where she was quite needy and clingy. I think that as much as Noah didn't want to be forgotten, Ellie wanted to make sure she is still loved. There have been lots of extra "I love you"s and hugs going around as well praise for Noah.
We are excited for spring and summer! The list of projects has already started forming and indoor projects have been started. Outdoor projects are still being dreamed up - they're always being dreamed up as we look outside or get ideas. The other afternoon, though, we had some gorgeous weather and were playing outside and staring at the back of our lot which is actually almost separate from the rest of our backyard by a chain link fence. We like to throw out ideas for what to do with it and I think, eventually, it will become mainly garden/food related. It will be a slow transformation, that's for sure, but one we're excited about. Right now we have an apple tree back there, but the past couple years something has been getting to it and destroying it before fruit is produced, so we want to start spraying it. We also have some raspberry bushes from a shoot my aunt gave us last year and some strawberry bushes we are excited about.
There is change going on all around us right now it seems. Some dear friends of ours, Matt and Jeana, are moving back to California (boo.) Our close friends, Jack and Kelly, just completed a move up to Spring Arbor for a teaching job Jack got at the college (yea!) Our brother-in-law quit his job to start his own business. It is a scary time for them financially with going through this, but God already is blessing them and the process has strengthened their faith.
I look forward to what the coming months will bring. Changes in seasons. Changes in lives.