One Month!

I know he was 4 weeks on Saturday and now I'm writing that he's 1 month and doesn't 4 weeks = 1 month? No. It doesn't, apparently. At least he was born on the first, so that makes it easy!

Kasper at 1 month.



At 0 months and 1 month. That month really did something for his skin, huh?



The little dude is pushing 10 bills and according to our tape measure hasn't grown an inch. That can't be right seeing as how he can't straighten his legs in newborn sleepers anymore. We'll have to get a more accurate measurement next month at the Dr. The larger crotch area demonstrates our cloth diapering practices. We started this past weekend and so far so good. They are a little large for him, but he'll grow into them soon enough.

Kasper has been sleeping 5-6 hours for the first part of the night for about a week now. I think it has to do with his sleeper.

Here is Kasper in his sleeper. He's not sleeping. This is just to show what he looks like in bed.



Rob feeds him a big bottle before bed which I think fills him up so he can sleep a little longer. I nurse him when we wakes up at night then he usually gets 2-3 more hours before being mostly up for the day. Some mornings I can squeeze another hour out of him.

We still don't have a sleeping or activity schedule. I'm not going to get worked up about that yet. I'll give him another couple weeks before I try to figure out how we'll structure the day. According to one book, activities for babies under 2 months include diaper changes, eating, looking at faces, etc. Check. We do all those numerous times a day, so I guess he's getting enough activity.

In other news, I am 99.9% sure Kasper started to SMILE yesterday. I know any baby under 6 weeks who smiles is farting, but I am SURE that he smiles in response to us. We were reading a book yesterday and he started to smile at my voices so I put the book down and tickled him. Sure enough, more smiles every time I tickled. He even smiled when Rob got home to tickle him. I'm marking it anyway. Maybe he's an advanced smiler. I'll try to catch one on camera one of these days.

I took about 100 pictures to get a decent one today. And it's not even as good as when he was freshly born! I thought some of the "outtakes" were funny.










The one month old is awake. Time to go!

4 weeks

4 weeks! Almost Kasper's one month birthday!

This past week was the best yet, I think. Rob's first week back to work was very difficult on me, so this week I made an effort to get out of the house as much as I could. On Monday, I met my friend Erin and her 2 kiddos at the mall for a little play time. It was nice to chat with another Mom! On Thursday, Kasper and I hauled it all the way out to Woodbury to have lunch with Rob. We went to Chipotle and Kasper was a good baby and slept the whole time. I was even able to push him and stopped at Target before heading home. He was certainly a hungry boy by the time we got back. On Friday Kasper and I walked around the Mall of America for about an hour or so. It's not easy having a winter baby - it limits what I can do to get out and get some exercise. I so wish it was nice out and I could walk around the lakes. Maybe once it gets above freezing I'll think about it.

We had an outing on Wednesday as well - to the Dr. Like over 50% of babies these days, Kasper has himself a mild case of reflux! It was making meal times unpleasant and I could tell it bothered him throughout the day. Case in point, I laid him down in his crib to document how big he's getting...



I called the Dr. for suggestions on how to relieve the pain and they said they wanted him to come in the same day. Good news is he is gaining weight like a champ and is up to 9 lbs 10 ozs! Bad news is he has reflux and has received his second prescription of his young life. (The first was for thrush. Look how cute he is receiving thrush meds. He's so excited that he's going to get some food, then sad)





It takes a bit of time for the reflux meds to start working, but we have made some changes that have made some major differences already. He barely spit up yesterday! I think the reflux was also affecting his sleep. We received a Rock and Play sleeper at one of our showers, so I broke that baby out.



It allows him to sleep at the appropriate angle to keep his reflux down. After putting him to sleep in this thing, he has been sleeping for 5-6 hours, waking up to nurse then back down for another 3 or so hours. It's been great!

Other pics from Kasper's 4th week alive:

Rob, a baby and a dog. Making it work



I call this series "Kasper Faces" or "This is what happened when I just kept shooting"














I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. He's such a sweet calm baby on his changing table. We spend some good time on there smiling at each other. It helps that it's some of the best light in the house.

A cute one from today:



Isn't he getting big??? What happened to my little baby?

Sleeping with Papa



Super cute new outfit from Andrew and Lauren. LOVE.



Ok! Enough!



So, 4 weeks ago I was in a hospital room awaiting the arrival of our sweet baby. Today, we have an alert little dude who is already so interactive. I don't know where the time goes.

Comparisons

So far, we've heard that Kasper looks more like me than Rob, so I gathered up some baby pictures of the both of us to compare. Sandra sent a couple of Rob's and I was able to get my hands on the 3 pictures of myself as a baby. I think that's all that exists! Quite a difference from little Kasper. I think we have over 1000 photos of him already and he's not yet a month old! Anyway...

Here are some of me:

2 weeks



4 weeks



6 weeks



Some of Rob





And some of Kasper for the comparisons:





Personally, I don't think Kasper could look any MORE like Rob!! They look almost identical!



If Sandra wasn't in this picture, I would maybe think this is my little one!



So although he has dark hair like his Mama, I think he's a dead ringer for his Papa. He's going to be a handsome boy!

3 weeks

I survived my first week alone and so did Kasper! It was about as difficult as I thought it would be. I now REALLY appreciate having Rob home for those 2 weeks. It's a lot easier when there are 4 hands around versus only 2. We spent the week hanging out and trying to get some sleep. Kasper has his days and nights mixed up, so he sleeps a lot of the day and is then up from about 2 am to 10 am. It's horrible. Other than that, there isn't really a whole lot new! We're going to continue to figure out how to survive with this new little one.

Trying out our playmat







Second bath, which went MUCH better than the first! We needed to use some warmer water!







Rob worked from home for a couple hours one day this week.



He's getting so big already! And it looks like he might be losing some of his hair on top



We get sleep however we can!



Getting better at tummy time!



Rob's turn to babywear! Notice the lack of real sleep in his eyes



Let's hope for another good week coming up!