Updates on Kiddos (Luke Turns 1 Month Old!)

I'm not dead yet. And that's saying something.

I'm a few days late on the 1 month update for my little man. One month. We've had him for two (now three) weeks. Feel  more like years at this point.

Luke's doing well. He's eating and sleeping and pooping, which pretty much fulfills his job description at this point. He finally passed his hearing screen, was pronounced perfectly healthy at his initial pediatrician visit, and topped out at 9lbs 3oz and 20 3/4" at his 2 week pediatrician appointment. He's seen the pedi-cardiologist, where he was up to 10lbs 6oz at 3 weeks old, and been discharged from them with no problems (after two echocardiograms and an ECG).  Today he had his follow up MRI which we will get the results for on Monday when he sees the neurosurgeon at St. Dominic. Hopefully that will be the last of the baby appointments for a while. Or at least until his 2 month check up and shots.

He's an uber-calm baby, which is a very good thing because his sister is wackadoodle. She finally seems to be getting over her bedtime and bath time panic attacks. She has been getting up an hour earlier every day for the past few morning - first it was 7am, then 6, then 5, then yesterday morning it was 4... Today she did sleep until 7 again, so hopefully we're back on track there too. Yesterday was the culmination of a built up psychosis explosion. Her behavior has been getting worse with the blatant defiance and whining, but yesterday was off the charts awful. She tried to climb the drawers in her chest of drawers and pulled it down on top of herself (during nap time, I might add). She climbed the back of her little recliner and accidentally flipped herself over and landed on her head. She ran face first into a wall. She tried to climb into Luke's bouncy seat and got in trouble, so she looked me dead in the eye and started climbing back in. I pulled her out and told her no. She looked me in the eye, smiled, walked around to the side I wasn't blocking, hopped in, grabbed his pacifier and stuffed it into her mouth with a giggle. That got her in time out. She would ask for something to eat, I'd fix it, and she'd fall in the floor in tears because she didn't want it. This stuff went on over and over all day. I nearly burst into tears on more than one occasion because she was making me nuts on a whole new level and I didn't know what to do with her.

We had been having trouble with her begging for attention as soon as Luke woke up and needed something from us, but this was going beyond that. A few days ago when she was winding up Greg had made a comment about the possibility that her cough medicine was effecting her behavior. I didn't think much about it at the time, because it seemed that it had been going on longer than she'd been sick and she'd taken the medicine back in January without a problem. But she only had a couple of doses back in January and last night I got to thinking that she'd been on the medicine for 7 days already, maybe it was causing some of the issues. I know my friend Allison had noticed problems with some meds her daughter had taken causing behavior side effects a while back, this could be a similar thing. I didn't give her any last night or today and so far she's been her usual chipper, relatively well behaved self.  Suffice it to say, she will not be taking Rynex DM any more.

Greg goes back to work on the 27th, one week and two days away. I'm dreading that day more than I can possibly tell you.