Playdate

 

Ok, maybe not a real play date, but the first time Max has met someone his own age. Barrett and Max are closer in age than wei yan and uncle josh. Perhaps they will grow up together just like josh and wei yan did in greenville - as grandpa chan predicts.

our mornings

in the mornings a lot of times i'll tuck max in with dad while i brush my teeth and grab a bite to eat before it's time for dad to go to work...

 

max is sleeping, but his eyes in that pic are a little open. and in the words of my pediatrician, yes it is a little creepy ;-)

Grandma's got the touch!

My mom left on Sunday, but while she was here she got Max to smile a lot! I joke that we're in survival mode so we are just concentrating on keeping the kid alive, whereas when she was here she had lots of extra energy to play with Max. I still say that he smiled a whole lot more when she was here - and here is some proof!

 

 

 

breastfeeding is hard

max weighs 11 lbs 5 oz now and gaining about an ounce or more a day - which is all what it's supposed to be. i've been dealing with some pain that has always kinda been there (max does better on one side than the other) and when he started his last growth spurt he really took out some frustration on the side he doesn't like as much. so it's been tough. i finally broke down & went to see a lactation consultant a week and a half ago, went to a nursing mothers of raleigh support group meeting and also rented a hospital grade pump - the other pump wasn't working that well for me most of the time. it was all going pretty well before that or about as well as i was expecting breastfeeding to be. so i keep telling myself that one of these days it will be easier and this will be the last thing we need to get over, but i'm guessing that is not true, that as soon as we get past this there will be something else. max no longer wants to go 3 hours between feedings consistently, but i guess i've traded 45 min feedings for 10 min feedings every hour or two. so it's been long enough that i don't think he will go back to the 3 hrs between feedings at this point.

i woke up this morning only to realize that in 3 weeks i go back to work! yikes! today i was in bed til 12:30 - max was in bed with me after 8am and we napped between feedings. so i wonder if i'll be ready and need to figure out the pumping thing before i go back as well! oh, and i tried to give max a bottle for the first time last night (pumped to give the problem side a rest) - he cried and fussed the whole time and ended up taking both sides anyway.

my mom was here for a week and so our house is cleaner, we're all very well fed and max got lots of cuddles and love last week.

growth spurt at 5.5 weeks continued

Just kidding. He totally fakes us out. He's back to 10 feedings a day and hasn't gone more than 3 hrs between feedings (and that's maybe once a day). Not too bad, but yeah, he eats for a really long time still. Anyway, just gotta keep through. Hopefully Wei Yan and my mom can hold out on the temptation to "just give him a bottle" - while the intentions are good to let me sleep & rest, I don't want to go through the not being able to keep up with his demand thing and trying to breastfeed & supplement with formula all by myself at home while everyone is gone a week from now. Max started this growth spurt Sunday - so someone please tell me it will be over soon. On the plus side, he is growing - for good or bad. He started using his hands to push off my chest and pull on me when he's really hungry. He also learned today that if he spits up in his mouth and then blows out it's really fun (too bad I was talking right to him when he first did this this morning). And he's hang onto my shirt when I'm feeding him and roll onto his side when we put him down on his play mat.

Growth Spurt

So right at the end of our 1st trip seems that max started a bit of a growth spurt. Incidentally, we caught the Duke-Carolina basketball game and Max stayed up for all of it and we made him do the UNC cheer. His arms are too short to make a C and therefore the C-A-R-O-L-I-N-A cheer will really have to wait...and "A" is totally out of the question with those short arms.

Oh, yes, growth spurts. So he was really getting frustrated with my milk flow and causing a bit of pain and then I was not able to pump very much. Kind of panicked, and went to see a lactation consultant. Course now his growth spurt has slowed down a bit from the last few days and he was much calmer. We also weighed him Tuesday (he has crusty cradle cap on his eyebrows & ears that is REALLY gross and spitting up a lot but dr says it's normal after hearing all about it) at 10 lbs 5 ounces. And then today at 10 lbs 10.5 ounces (when I left the lactation consultants office) - so yeah, that just confirmed he's growing like crazy the last few days and everything is normal. Technically I do need to make sure I can pump enough when I go back to work, but guess we can worry about that when Max is NOT going through a growth spurt.

First Road Trip

 

This past weekend, Max got to meet his yeh yeh (grandfather) and see his ma ma (grandmother) again. He also got to meet lots of uncles and aunts and family friends. His yeh yeh made red eggs for everyone to eat for good luck.

If he hadn't gotten stuck on I-40 during rush hour when an accident happened, that trip to Greenville (NC) would have been his longest.

Happy to be 1 month old....

 

Ok, so he's really happy about something else, but I was actually able to get a picture of him smiling on Wednesday. We can't wait til he starts smiling at people socially, but this will have to do until then!

Happy 1 Month!

 

Today Max is 1 month old...well, technically he is 4 weeks old.

Not all things on newborns are proportional. His little arms barely reach to the top of his head! Pretty much all bodily secretions are HUGE compared to this "little" 10 lb guys. And his burps and farts are already as loud as those of a full grown adult. We both still jump when he poops his diaper it's so loud! Things I had never thought about before...

Heels are #1 and Bruins are #2 in the men's basketball rankings this week! Nice!

Changing every day!

 

Today Max went with me to an old friend's house for lunch. He stayed up for quite a while there - so I got a pic of him with his eyes open. He got bopped on the head by the 2 year old - but he slept through it...even the subsequent apology. I wasn't as upset as I thought I'd be, but I think that's because I really trust my friend (we've known each other for 13 years now) and he really didn't get hit very hard at all. I was also more interested in seeing motherhood in action - how my friend taught her son right from wrong, that there were consequences to his actions, that he needed to apologize, and that there is forgiveness and unconditional love.

Oh, I also stopped by Target on the way home. I used to think that I'd always just wait til hubby got home to run errands. I mean, why would I deal with the hassle of bringing a kid along, but I guess I've just been so stir crazy & feeling house-bound, that it just felt good to get out & do something normal. And maybe it's a way to prove to myself that the baby is not going to stop me from being able to do normal stuff like go to Target. I made it back just in time - he got hungry just as we were driving home! I knew I was playing with fire!

His baby acne seems to have emerged today. :-( Here is the exact face we get when we try to burp Max most of the time (well, unless he just falls asleep right after his feeding):