Yesterday, we had our first so-called “big” day since coming home from the hospital. It started off with our first morning alone at the house. Just the three of us. Trying to get going. Once we finally did get our acts together, we headed to the pediatrician for Oliver’s first appointment. Everything checked out fine, but they wanted to check him for jaundice again, so we had to head down to a different medical office for a blood draw (Oliver’s numbers were great, by the way).
We then headed to Dierberg’s to pick up a prescription for Sarah. I sat the car with Oliver. And I sat. And I sat. And I sat … Probably took over a half hour, and we just sat there doing nothing. It’s about as fun to write and read about as it was to actually be there.
At home, we all ate lunch and awaited the arrival of Grandma Annette. Once she got here, we gave Oliver his first bath (see picture below). Because his umbilical cord is still attached, it was more of a sponge bath. He was really calm about it, which we all found surprising. For example, he just closed his little eyes and let the water run through his hair as I rinsed away the baby shampoo. He smelled much better afterward, and he was ready for a nap with grandma so Sarah and I headed upstairs for over two hours to catch up on sleep ourselves.
Refreshed around 5 p.m., we got ready for some visitors, one of my longest and best friends, Jason, and his wife. They got here around 5:30 p.m., and we hung out for a half hour, just long enough to keep Oliver’s stomach at bay, since he was due for a feeding.
After that, everybody was gone and it was again just the three of us here. We had a relaxing evening, catching up on some old episodes of “How I Met Your Mother.” With a late feeding at 11 p.m., we finally were able to sleep around 12:30 a.m. Oliver did pretty well overnight and we don’t have anybody coming over today, so hopefully everything will go smoothly.
So far, the most exciting thing that has happened today is Oliver breaking his personal record by tooting about 10 times in a row. Gosh, does he make me proud.
Category Archives: Family
Lots of naps today
Today was full of many naps, and it wasn’t just Oliver getting into the act. He had a nice feeding going at 1 a.m. this morning, but was fussy afterward. We ended up giving him another half feeding around 2:30 a.m. and yet another half at 4 a.m. He didn’t sleep until 4:30 a.m.!!!! We were sooooo tired. I could barely move last night, and we kept thinking of things we’d need that were either down the hall or downstairs. Man, it was tiring.
Luckily, my mother-in-law is staying with us for a couple days and she was able to help with calming Oliver in the morning and taking care of some diaper changes. I ended up taking a nap from 8 to 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 to 5 p.m. I still feel tired, too!
Hope tonight’s a little easier …
A Valentine’s Day feast even fans of La Choy meal-in-a-can dinners would refuse
Sarah and I celebrated our seventh Valentine’s Day together today, but this one was a little different. For the past six, I have prepared a special meal for my sweetie. Some of those meals were quite memorable. Like our first, when I bought a bottle of wine and then, minutes before serving the food, realized I didn’t own a corkscrew. So what did we do? We took out a screwdriver and tried hammering the cork into the bottle. As we were doing so, the bottle split in half, nearly slicing Sarah’s arm in two (she was holding the base of the bottle; real smart, right?). We had a good laugh, and Sarah stuck with me for some odd reason.
The Valentine’s Day meals were equally delicious and creative each year. One year, I made a Thai dish. Another we had a pork loin encrusted with my own mix of special secret ingredients (OK, Cavender’s and Italian dressing, so sue me). Most of the time, I’d steam some asparagus and have a fresh salad to start things off.
Well, this year was a little different. Due to a little snowstorm that blew through the area two weeks ago (thanks a lot, Mother Nature, you heartless wench!), our lamaze class got pushed back an extra week. So our final class was tonight, Valentine’s Day.
With only an hour or so between work and the start of class, we decided to share a romantic dinner out — at the St. John’s Mercy Medical Center cafeteria. I helped myself to a large serving of sweet and sour chicken that even the most ardent fans of La Choy meal-in-a-can dinners would have probably not found overly tasty (see the photo below and notice the fake smile smirk). Sarah had some pizza that reminded me of a ketchup-on-bread sandwich.
Yep, it was a holiday for the ages. And our last together as just the two us. I’m sure this meal will be ingrained in our memories for all of eternity. The things we do for love …
Lopinots have big heads, and our son appears on his way to being a true Lopinot
Lopinots have big heads. It’s true. We have noggins much larger than you’d find on a typical American male. I’m unaware of many people with heads larger than ours, other than alleged steroid users. Yes, I have cried myself to sleep at night in a huge pillow (thanks, Mike Myers for some classic “HEAD!” jokes).
Well, it turns out that Chester Justin Jr. Wallace Michael Christian my pending son appears well on his way to become a true Lopinot, at least in terms of his giant melon. Yes, his head is looking quite large. “How large?,” you might ask. Well, let me tell you.
Sarah and I went in for a sonogram today (see the sonogram picture below — his left ear is in the Mountain Time Zone, while his right is here in the good old Central), and the kid’s head is running just over two weeks ahead of his body in terms of growth. If we interpreted the numbers on the computer screen correctly, he’s at the 99th percentile in terms of space occupied by a cranium at this point in the pregnancy.
Sarah is a few days beyond 33 weeks pregnant. Right now, his estimated weight is 5 pounds, 6 ounces. I’d venture a guess that at least 4 pounds of that total weight can be directly attributed to his giant chrome dome.
Oh well. As my friend Susan said today, “You know what they say about guys with big heads? … Big hats.”
(And please, no jokes about delivery here — Sarah’s already worried and she reads this blog religiously. Well, OK, maybe she reads it once a week, but still.)
As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be
Sarah and I had a good cry tonight after reading a book together. It was like we were 5 years old, watching “Old Yeller” for the first time. I started the book, and the cry built up and up. Sarah had to take over with a few pages left.
The source of tears wasn’t some classic masterpiece tearjerker. It was a children’s book, and we were reading it to our unborn son. The book is titled “Love You Forever.” My sister and her husband mailed it to us, which was pretty cool. The crying? Not so cool.
So what, exactly made us cry? I don’t know.
Perhaps it was the emotion of being just a few weeks away from being parents to a sure-to-be beautiful son.
Perhaps it was the song the mother sang throughout the book:
I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
As long as I’m living
my baby you’ll be.
Perhaps it was the fact that this mother and her son continued to get older together with each turn of the page, and she continued to hold her son and sing this song to him. Just seeing that kind of love and thinking about being old and and still so much in love with our son brought joyful tears to our eyes.
Or, perhaps it was the end of the book, when the mother was too old and sick to finish the song, so the son, now a young man, picked his mother up and sang the song to her. Then he went home … [hold on, I’m having trouble typing – please give me a minute] … and sang it to his new baby daughter. Whew…
Is that weird? Are we freaks for getting so emotional? It’s a children’s book, for christsake. I totally need a blast of testosterone tonight. Wow.
UPDATE: Detached retina leads to emergency surgery for daddu
Arriving home from work tonight, I went upstairs to swap out my work attire for something more comfortable. Then I heard an unusual sound: Our answering machine was chirping. “How strange,” I thought, as I went over and tried to figure which button would play back the message. My mom had left a message for us, and she spoke in a quiet, tearful voice, asking us to call her cell phone.
My heart sank? Something terrible had happened. I knew it.
Of course, I picked up my phone and called her to get the scoop. I was so nervious that I was on the verge of tears myself. Thankfully, no one had died or been maimed by a wild boar. However, she told me that my dad’s retina became detached and he’s having emergency surgery at 8 p.m. (right about now, actually). I’ve been reading up on it (click here for a good description), and the success rate for this surgery is 80 to 90 percent. It still makes me nervous, and I can understand why my mom is a little freaked out.
Anyway, I hope it goes well. Please keep your fingers crossed for him.
UPDATE (10:25 p.m.): The surgery went well. He’s still knocked out, but my mom and sister are supposed to be bringing him home tonight in about an hour. For the next two weeks, he’ll have to keep his nose pointed down so this little bubble in his eye will help the retina heal/reattach. Scary stuff.
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