1 month old!

I’m a week late in posting this, but Danny & Dean are a month old! We can hardly believe it. How is it that we feel like it’s been forever since we’ve slept the whole night through, yet it seems like the boys can only be a couple weeks old?? Time is flying by right before us and we’re trying to hold on to the moments as they come.

 Dean

Daniel

We haven’t given an update on Dean for a bit because there wasn’t anything to share. Last week I took him to the hospital for his chest x-ray. The Pediatric Cardiologist and the surgeon wanted an x-ray done at 4 weeks old so they could see if there was a change in the mass on his lung. I got a call the next day saying there was no change (didn’t get smaller or larger). The next appointment will be in a week with the cardiologist. He will do another echocardiogram to watch the blood flow to the mass and see if his heart chambers are enlarging.

While we were up feeding the boys in the middle of the night sometime last week, we were discussing our boys’ traits. Daniel is the one who kicked and punched my internal organs during pregnancy and I just knew he was going to be the child that would test the boundaries! Dean was calm and hardly stirred in the womb (unless antagonized by Danny!) and now he’s the one who is testing the limits.

We call Danny “Mr. Patient” because no matter how hungry he is, he will wait and wait until he’s feed. He usually won’t scream, but instead will often put himself to sleep while waiting. Danny makes some of the funniest faces and keeps us laughing at them all the time. The thing that upsets him most is having his diaper changed at night when it’s cold and we’ve unwrapped him from his warm blanket! Even then, his scream isn’t piercing.

Dean doesn’t have a nickname yet. He does seem to carry the Hamby boy trait of loving his food. Once he’s hungry, there’s no transition between calm baby and starving baby. He goes from being perfectly fine to screaming with hunger pangs. The last couple of weeks Dean hasn’t been going to bed without a struggle. We let him scream for a while in bed before putting him in the living room to scream himself to sleep. For some reason Dean isn’t giving in to sleep. I go through the routine of making sure there is nothing wrong with him…fever? Hunger? Dirty diaper? Gas? Need another blanket? Every time (so far) it ends up being one thing; Dean wants you to hold him while you’re standing up. He’s not happy if you sit down or lay down, you must stand up. Well as soon as I stood up and held him he closed his eyes and went to sleep. I’d stay that way for 10 minutes and then put him back in bed. He’d wake up and start screaming all over again. So, for the sanity of the household, I put him in his little saucer in the living room and I go back in the bedroom and shut the door. This way, Dad gets the sleep he needs for work, Daniel doesn’t get woken up to a screaming brother in his ear and I will possibly get some sleep. The first few nights Dean screamed for about an hour. Yes, I let him cry that long. Joanna tells me I’m a mean mom! I went and checked on him several times to make sure nothing else was wrong, but I didn’t pick him up. The crying has progressively become less and less. In fact, last night he only cried one time!! I’m thinking he’s finally learning. Just so we don’t upset anyone by making it sound like Dean is a bad child, here are some of the compliments we pay Dean… “You have an amazing set of lungs!” That shade of redish-purplish you’re turning as you scream is beautiful!” “What a strong appetite you have!” “You’re resolve to stick to your guns is commendable!” See? There’s always a compliment we can pay our little guy, no matter the situation.

Since we don’t have another regular pediatrician appointment until they’re 2 months old, we thought we’d weigh them ourselves and see if we’re doing a good job of fattening them up. Here are their current weights according to our scale:

Dean = 10lbs

Danny = 9.5lbs

Can you believe it?? They’re getting so big! Let me tell you, that 1/2 lb difference between the two is noticeable when you pick them up. They will never catch up to their cousin Gregory’s weight, but we’re trying to at least fatten them up a bit before Gregory arrives in December so our boys don’t look like preemies next to him!

I haven’t taken a ton of pictures the past couple of weeks so there aren’t many to add, the main reason being that we really haven’t gone out much. I’ll try to take more in the coming weeks.  Here are two funny ones that I think already show these two are brothers...

 Dean screaming in Daniel's ear.  Daniel's face is priceless!

Just when Dean was taking a drink, Daniel took revenge and screamed in Dean's ear.  And so it begins!