Week 1: Doctor's Appointments, Meeting New Friends, and a Party!

Week 1:  Sunday, October 12th, 2014

Grant is now a week old, and we are starting to get to know him a little better, and what each of his cries mean.  He still just has his basic needs of eat, sleep, and poop, and his entire life right now is focused on that.  In this picture I think he is upset that we woke him up, and then he probably realized that he had a poopy diaper.

I love that onesie, mainly because he SO didn't nail his own birth.  It was ROUGH.

One of the many fun things about Grant these days is his dream smile.  He still doesn't smile while awake yet.  However, after we have fed him and burped him for a while he will start to fall asleep and occasionally his mouth will curl up into a smile for a moment.  Other times it is obvious that he is just dreaming about eating more, but those rare times that he smiles are to die for.  The only problem is that they are extremely hard to catch on camera.  This is the best picture I could get.

Grant had a very busy week.  He had his first few pediatric appointments.  On Wednesday he went in and we found out that he had lost a lot of weight since his birth just 3 days before.  He was born at 8 pounds 3 ounces, but by the time of the appointment he had dropped an entire pound, and was 7 pounds 3 ounces.  They warn you beforehand that they will lose weight, but the doctors like to see babies lose 4% to 8%.  Grant lost 12%, which concerned our pediatrician a little.  She told us to feed him strictly every 2 to 3 hours instead of letting him let us know when he needed to feed.  We scheduled another appointment for two days later, and when we went to that he had only gained a little less than an ounce.  It was very frustrating for us, especially my wife, Katie.  She felt like it was her fault, and that she wasn't producing enough, but it had more to do with Grant having trouble latching, and then when he did latch, not being able to get enough on his own.  So we came up with a plan to get his weight up.  We are going to stick to the feedings every 3 hours, we are going to have him breastfeed for 20 minutes, and then supplement that with 15 minutes of pumping and some additional formula.  Hopefully that helps get his weight up!  Other than the weight issue, he seems to be very healthy.

In addition to his checkups, Grant met a bunch of family and friends this week.  He met his Uncle Jim and Aunt Val while still at the hospital:

He met his Uncle Dan and (Soon-to-be) Aunt Mary:

He met his Great Aunt T:

He met my cousins L, M, and K...which make them his first cousins once removed (I had to look that up).  Realistically, though, he will most likely be calling them cousins or aunts.  Unfortunately we only got a picture of Grant with M.

And he met our friends Bonnie and Linton, who made a day trip down to Charlottesville:

At the end of a fun first week of life, Grant was invited to his second cousin Little M's 1st birthday party!  For those of you who are curious, Little M and I are first cousins once removed, L and Grant are first cousins once removed, and Grant and Little M are second cousins.  It was a great party with lots of babies and toddlers in attendance, and Little M was loving it.  Little M is adorable, and probably smiles more than any baby I have ever seen.  And she was being so sweet to Grant.  Little M's Aunt K was showing Little M how to kiss Grant's forehead, and then Little M would copy her.

My favorite part of the party happened near the end, when we were trying to get a video of Little M kissing Grant.  We had gotten a few pictures, and she had done it multiple times, so she probably wanted to move on to the next fun thing.  While we were shooting the video, instead of kissing Grant's forehead, she had a sudden jerk.  We are not sure if it was from being anxious that everyone was looking at her, or that she might have heard a noise somewhere else in the room and wanted to look.  Either way, it looked like she hit Grant in the head.  It was so innocent, and really just a high five to his forehead instead of a kiss, but the video looks like footage from the Blair Witch Project.  As soon as Little M pats Grant, the camera falls and there is pandemonium.  It was HILARIOUS.

This coming week is a big one for Grant.  He has a professional photo shoot, as well as a HUGE college football game.  Come back next week to find out how it went and to see more pictures!