One Month

This post is only 5 days late so I think I'm doing pretty well!! Samuel turned one month old on Monday, July 18th. It's crazy to me that he has been here for a month already!! We have learned so much during this last month!! Here are some strengths and struggles that we are going through right now:

Strengths:
Samuel sleeps through the night pretty well.
He is interacting more and has smiled at us a couple of times!
He loves to ride in the car and will pretty much fall asleep when we go anywhere.
He's over 9 pounds now!
We've taken Samuel to church several times now and he has done great!
He has discovered the toys on his bouncer and will sit in it (sometimes) for about 20 minutes.
He loves being outside and will pretty much calm down every time we take him out.
He has strong hands and a strong neck!

Struggles:
He is still pretty fussy during the day.
Sometimes I'm not sure if he's getting enough milk because he will be fussy right after a feeding.
His main fussy time starts at about 5:00, right when Matthew gets home from work! Poor Matthew.
It takes me like a day just to pump enough milk for one bottle. Sam eats a lot!
I've figured out that cheese and spicy foods do not sit well with him. I'm also wondering about caffeine...
The boy has some bad gas!

We love our boy!!

Our Life Lately

Ughhhh I just wrote this post and it did not save!!! I hope I can do it justice again and that Samuel stays asleep for a bit longer!!

Samuel is 3 1/2 weeks old and we feel like we are adjusting nicely. We have our good days and frustrating days, but we are really enjoying our little guy. Here are some things we've been up to lately:

4th of July cookout and fireworks

watching daddy play softball for the first time

meeting Auntie Kay

first church service (the pic is from before church)

going to The Olive Garden for our 2nd anniversary

We also dropped Samuel off at Grammy and Bop's house so that we could go see Larry Crowne. It was a fun date night.

Here are some things that Samuel is up to at 3 1/2 weeks:

He sleeps through the night really well. I usually have to wake him up to eat. He does occasionally have trouble falling asleep at bedtime though.

He is pretty fussy during the day. We think he has lots of gas.

He is getting to like his baths more and more (if he's already in a good mood).

I think he's going to give us a smile pretty soon!

He loves riding in the car.

He loves the outdoors. If he's crying, you can usually just step outside with him and he will immediately stop or fall asleep.

He weighed 8 lbs. 2 oz at his last doctor's appointment and was 21.5 inches long.

He likes to be talked and sung to and loves music.

Some days he will only catnap and others he will take a 3-4 hour nap. We are still figuring out this part of his schedule.

He eats at least every 3 hours during the day. Sometimes he will only go 1 1/2 hours between feedings. He keeps his momma very busy!

That's all I can think of right now. We love our Samuel very much and can't wait to see how he grows and changes!

Samuel's First Two Weeks

I can't believe it's been three weeks since our little Sam was born! In some ways in seems like just yesterday we were anxiously awaiting him to come, and in other ways in seems like he's been a part of our lives forever. I'm going to attempt to write about the days and weeks after we came home and then what it's like with Sam right now. I want to be able to remember all of this years from now!

We came home from the hospital on Monday, June 20th. We were a little bit nervous that Sam would not be able to come home with us because of his jaundice, but by Monday morning he was looking great. So we headed out to start our new lives with our baby! I remember that night Matthew and I hardly got any sleep. We kept creeping to the edge of the bed to check on our precious boy. At one point, we both moved to the end of the bed to sleep so that all we had to do was open our eyes to see him!

Tuesday Matthew and I started to get nervous because we thought Samuel looked really yellow AND he hadn't pooped since Sunday. Now that we look back on this we laugh because we really freaked out about nothing. Anyway, we called the doctor and went in that afternoon. The Dr. said Sam looked great (his jaundice was getting better) and it's ok that he hadn't pooped. If we wanted, Matthew could do a little "procedure" to make him go. But he wasn't worried about anything. We did find out that Samuel weighed 7 lbs 12 oz, so he had almost lost a pound since birth. Still the dr. wasn't concerned.

The rest of the week is kind of a blur. Matthew took off the week so we focused on basically just getting by! Matthew's mom and sister came over a few mornings and let us nap because we were soooo tired. We had a ton of visitors and enjoyed showing off our new baby. We took our first outing to Stonebriar Mall that Friday. We enjoyed shopping and just getting out of the house. Here are some pictures from Samuel's first week:

The hardest thing for me about that week was that I was still recovering from the birth and I couldn't do all that I wanted. My recovery was hard and I am not good at resting, taking medicine, and all that stuff. Plus I just didn't realize how much pain I would be in. It was hard going through that and trying to take care of a brand new baby.

Here is Sam's one week picture:

The second week Matthew had to go back to work. It was hard for both him and me, but my mom came and stayed for the week. She was soooo much help from walking Samuel in the middle of the night to doing our laundry to cleaning the bathrooms to taking care of dinner to vacuuming...I could go on and on. I honestly would NOT have made it through the week without her!!

We did have a couple of outings to the mall to get my hair cut, Grandma's, and Old Navy. We watched a couple of Lifetime movies (in segments while Sam slept) and tried to relax. Thanks for coming, Mom!!

Here is Samuel at two weeks old:

So that is basically the first two weeks of Samuel's life. I missed A LOT but I think you get the jist!! Next up: Our Life Lately! Stay tuned!!