It has been an eventful couple of weeks.

Current Weight & Height (At home measurements): 12 pounds, 23 ½ Inches

A couple of weeks ago, Don and I celebrated our 4th Wedding Anniversary. It was a half work day for Don, so he took Morgan to work with him so I could have the morning off to pamper myself. Instead of doing that I ended up going in to work and working a half day in the office. Then I raced to the nail salon before coming home to get ready for dinner out at 555 East Ocean. Tamara (Don’s co-worker) came over with her boys to baby sit. This was our first time away from him since he’s been home. We just went to dinner and came right back. It was the perfect amount of time away, not to long, not too short. Thank you Tamara!

This past Monday Morgan and I went to the hospital for an errand and while we were there we stopped by the NICU to say hi. We got to see Dr Cho, Nurse Holly, RT Glenn, and Nurse Geena. They were all impressed at how well he is doing. Glenn is reading the Blog ‘“ Hi Glenn J. Holly says she can’t read the Blog yet, because she’™ll miss him to much ‘“ what she doesn’t know is that if she wanted to, she could visit him anytime. But I understand that for her this is a job, and if she got involved with every patient after they went home, she wouldn’t have anything left for the ones still in the NICU. Still, if she wanted, Don, Morgan and I would love to continue the friendship we forged in the NICU, but that is Holly’s call. And we understand either way. And of course, we’™ll see her at the NICU reunions.

This Saturday was Don’s 40th birthday! One of my gifts to him was an afternoon with the guys to see a movie, something we can’t do anymore. He went to Hollywood and saw Shoot Em Up ‘“ I think he enjoyed it. After he got home, we packed up and headed to Auntie Laurie and Uncle Jeff’s for Don’s Birthday Party. We spent Saturday night there so I could be there early to help with set up. Don went over to Cousin Tony’s to watch the Rams game ‘“ after a heartbreaking loss, he reunited with us for his Birthday Party with the Haas Clan.

All the local Haases and the DeMarcos, were in attendance. We took the opportunity to ask Uncle Mike and Auntie Dia to be Godparents ‘“ they said yes ‘“ so now I have to figure out the when and where and how for a christening. Uncle Jeff and Auntie Laurie were asked a long time ago (before we were even pregnant) to take custody of our kids should anything happen to us ‘“ they also said yes. So Morgan’s future is secure no matter what happens. Christening is going to be a new experience for me. The Mormon church doesn’t christen, when a new baby is born he or she is given a blessing and a name, this is done during the regular Sunday Sacrament meeting, and no godparents are named. Since I want to make Mike and Dia’s godparent role official, we will do a christening, probably in an Episcopal Church, at the same time we will have Jeff and Laurie sign papers to take physical custody should anything happen to us, that way we can honor both sets of Aunts and Uncles and their very important roles in Morgan’s life.

Morgan is spending more time awake during the days. When he’s awake and alert, he likes to be held in either a standing or sitting position. He has very good head control, much less floppy than it was when he first came home. I tried him in his Bumbo Seat last week (A Bumbo is a foam seat that supports a very young baby in a sitting position). He liked it at first and then after a minute or 2 he started to cry. I tried it again today, a week later, and he sat in it for about 15 minutes, just looking around, and then he got tired, so I took him out.

He is starting to show interest in reaching for things, but mostly people, he’s still not interested in toys. When he is on his tummy mat, he pushes with his legs trying to ‘œcrawl’ off the mat. He also can roll over to one side, but hasn’t rolled to the other side, yet. He chews his fingers a lot these days, and even sucks on his arm. He gave himself his first hickey on his arm ‘“ it scared me because I though it was a bruise and I didn’t know how he got it, then I realized it was a hickey!

His Thrush seems to be getting better. His clogged tear duct got worse for a couple of days last week, but now seems much better.

He still varies from waking ever 2 ‘“ 3 hours to sleeping 4 ‘“ 5 hours at night. I learned from watching Auntie Laurie this weekend that I should wait to feed him until he’s really hungry and awake, this way he eats more and will sleep longer at night. This seems to be working. I usually feed him as soon he shows signs of being hungry because I didn’t want him to get too hungry and thereby too fussy.

I am sad to say that we have given up breast feeding. It was gradual, but more and Morgan refused to breast feed, which I guess is pretty common when they have mostly been bottle fed. Bottle feeding is so much easier, and he didn’t want to do the work of breast feeding, after less than 5 minutes he would push off and refuse to go back on and fuss and cry until I gave him a bottle. So, we still have breast milk in the freezer, and he’™ll get that until it’s gone. I really, really wanted to breast feed. I thought there was no way I would give up, but we went through so much and tried so hard, again and again and again, that when it came down to it, I was as ok with it as I could be, because I knew that we had exhausted every possibility to make this work. In a perfect world he would have been breast feeding from day one and not had the option of a bottle, but we weren’t in a perfect world, so we had to make the best of what we were given and mover forward from there.

I am still working from home, as Morgan is still on the apnea monitor. He has about 1 episode a week, so we are getting close to him outgrowing the need for the monitor. So maybe in a few weeks he’™ll be ready for daycare and I’™ll be back to work. We’™ll see’¦

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