Lily update
Lily had her 1 month check-up yesterday. She's now up to 10 lbs exactly and has grown to be 21.5 inches long. The doctor was impressed. 
Evenings continue to be a struggle but for the most part she's a pretty content baby. She (of course) has recognized 
helloheather from very early on, but now recognizes Nate (and looks for him if he disappears from her field of view) as well as me.
She's also starting to recognize objects from around the house. The old clock in the family room, the bird mobile above her changing table.
Things are happening more quickly than I remember with Nate. I'm surprised, honestly surprised, that she's now a month old.
four at four weeks
Lily is four weeks old today. I've been back at work for two weeks now and life has proven to be...challenging.
I'm still amazed that we have another child. It feels so different from when Nate was a newborn: helloheather and I could concentrate 100% on him when we wanted to. With Lily, I feel a lot like the 3rd wheel (despite clearly being the 4th...) in our family. Nate takes a lot of energy and time and with Lily nursing, there's very little time for me to spend with her.
In many ways, she feels like a stranger. It doesn't help that I don't get much of a chance to photograph her. I think with Nate I got to know him, in part, by simply observing and photographing him. And it doesn't help that, most nights, she cries from about 6pm (when I get home) until about 10pm.
But last night she was content and happy. Last night she fell asleep in my arms (and against my chest) as I walked around while helloheather and Nate ate dinner. And last night helloheather took some photos of us.
We're having a visit from friends a couple times next week, which will be great. Then Lily's baptism-combination-Mother's-Day-celebration with family on the weekend.
And we will see how the next month progresses. I'm hopeful we can help Lily adjust more in the evenings and figure out how we can become a better family of four.
Lillian Claire photos
Lillian Claire Bernhard
Born: August 2nd
Weight: 7lbs 14oz
Length: 19"
I'm working on a larger post about Lillian's birth but it's been slow going. I have, however, been able to upload photos from our stay in the hospital. No captions yet, but I'm working on those.
http://bernhard.us/photos/v/family/lillian/lillian-birth/
wherein life stresses me out…
It's been a complex and difficult couple of weeks.
We've had a family member pass away suddenly and unexpectedly. We've had other family members hospitalized and/or have medical procedures. We've had family members lose their jobs. We've had medical problems ourselves, some of which are still unresolved.
We have stress thinking about the pending birth of our second child (a child who still doesn't have a name) and the changes that will bring.
Oh, and our cat is sick. She has to be put on an even more special food than what she's already been taking and will start getting cortisone shots which, if the diagnosis is wrong, could actually make things worse.
I'm trying to think positively though. I'm still employed and financially things are improving for the company. Also the company went 100% business casual which is a nice change. The weather has been improving and I've been able to get out during lunch. Also bernhard.us et al will be migrated to new servers in a couple weeks which should make things much faster and more stable.
familial update
We received very little of the big snow fall that came through the Chicago area. In part because a lot of it was due to lake effect and in part because the storm seems to have tracked further south. But even so, people on the south side of Crystal Lake got more snow than we did, so we must have been right on the edge of a snowy band.
Nate went through a growth spurt not too long ago, where he grew over an inch in just 2.5 weeks. He was hungry all the time (no wonder) but now the appetite is more normal, so I think things have slowed.
I made a ha-ha-lame joke last night about how it's better to be European than Europoopin' and then had to explain the joke to Nate. He loved it and I'm just such a great dad, right? (You should have seen the look helloheather gave me...)
Nate's time at his new preschool seems to be going very well. A small class of kids more his age was definitely a good change. Our school-art-on-display collection is growing again, which I love. Having stuff on the cabinets, doors, etc. is so cool. When helloheather cleaned house (we had completely run out of space to display stuff) it felt so empty and naked in the kitchen.
Child number two is rapidly approaching his or her birthday. We've changed doctors (yes, somewhat late in the game) but we're both very glad we have. The previous practice was not being supportive or informative. The new doctor also delivers at the hospital 5 minutes from our house rather than the one 25 minutes away. An added bonus.
My parents (and paternal grandfather) felt the 3.8 earthquake we had in northern Illinois on February 10th. They were only 5 miles away from the epicenter though. People as far away as Madison, WI felt the quake actually, but neither helloheather or I woke up.
We did have an addition to our family, photographically speaking, at Christmas. Thanks to a generous gift, we're now the owners of a Canon T1i Digital Rebel. It's a very good upgrade to the Rebel XT that we've been using since 2006. The auto-focus is faster, the ISO range expanded, a bigger and brighter viewfinder, the shutter is quieter, and it has a big and detailed LCD. Exciting stuff.
Our Second Child
I'm very ashamed that it has taken me this long to post an ultrasound picture of our second child. In fact, I just realized I never posted anything when helloheather made the original announcement. Wow, now I feel even worse.
I had no idea that with a busy life and a busy 3 year-old, time could move so quickly.
Here's the ultrasound from 11/4/2009; a profile shot.
Nate is very excited about being a big brother. He's convinced it's a girl, but mostly I think because he knows almost no one in his peer group who has anything /but/ a little sister. I'm not so certain it's a girl, but we have been concentrating more on picking a girls name than a boys. Or, at least, there have been more...shall we say...spirited discussions of said topic.
Either way, the baby is coming and two and a half months away is no time at all. The March 29th due-date is really, frighteningly, close.
I am not sure I'm all that ready. But, I am ready to catch up on a lot of this stuff.
Nathan photos – April 2007
Slowly catching up on uploads to our gallery. Here are photos from April 2007
Photos – February and March
Photos of Nathan from February and March have been uploaded and (mostly) captioned.
Memorial Day Weekend 2007
This past weekend was a lot of fun. It started off a little shaky with us needing to drive Nathan around at 4:00 AM on Saturday trying to get him to sleep (thus preventing us from leaving early Saturday morning). He had been up every 45 minutes to an hour since midnight and the lack of sleep pushed us back to a noon departure. But Saturday was very rainy, traffic was light, and Nathan slept much of the way to the lake house.
The weather only improved during the weekend but not really enough to go swimming. We went out on the boat a couple times though and Nathan seemed worried. He didn't really like the life vest and being in the sun so much, so the trips were short. But that's not to say he didn't have any fun out there. He liked the wind blowing in his face and liked looking at people as we went by. Serena and Charlotte came up for a visit on Sunday which was fun. Charlotte is getting so big, it's hard to believe.
On Monday we went to the Wisconsin Rapids Municipal Zoo. It's a small thing with only a few animals, but Nathan was very interested. We first stopped at the petting zoom where he actually became a bit scared at the noises the baby pigs were making. As a result he was a bit unsure of the lambs, the calf, and the goat and her kid. (He would actually clutch very close to me when we'd go near one of the pens.) But he was very interested in the hen and her chicks and all the ducklings. For the rest of the zoo Nathan was happy and very engaged. When we visited the pen with alpaca, donkey, turkeys, and two very large goats, he was most happy. He kept saying "Hey!" or "Eh!!" to the goats (which were laying down near the fence). When the tom turkey would make his call and stomp his feet, Nathan would stare in fascination. Surprisingly, he was also rather interested in the large tortoise sunning itself near the door in another pen.
As the sun was setting, I decided that, even though it was too cool for swimming in the lake, Nathan should at least experience the water a bit, so I rolled up my pants legs and sat down on the steps leading into the water. Nathan loved dangling his feat in the water, kicking and splashing, and wanted to jump in.
Tuesday, on the drive back, we stopped off in Milton to see Aaron and Charlotte where we had lunch at a local diner.
All in all it was a nice respite.
10 minutes
After arriving home last night, with the skies threatening, I started mowing the lawn. (I needed to have it completed before the weekend.) The wind was tremendous and I ended up with face full after face full of grass clippings and dust. This might be a minor annoyance were it not for my allergies. I won't go into any detail, because it's not really important, but suffice it to say, my sinuses and eyes were not doing well by the end of it all.
But that's not the point of this post. The point is what happened after.
Within 10 minutes of me completing the lawn and putting everything away:
- Dinner came out of the oven
- helloheather wrapped up her gardening and moved the car into the garage
- Nathan went to sleep for an evening nap
- It started to rain
It was like some sort of dinner nexus came together and we were able to relax and eat. With the temps dropping by the minute as the rain came through, and the strong winds blowing the trees to and fro, it was really quite wonderful. I love a good spring rain and a cool spring breeze.
Later, Nathan woke up from his nap and all three of us danced in the living room to Eli Paperboy Reed's "Take My Love With You."
It was a really nice evening.
Productivity
We worked in the yard a bit today. Nathan helped quite a bit.
We ended up getting quite a bit done on the back planting bed. It was a great feeling. Nathan was very content to play in the mulch and attempt to stab himself with various gardening implements.
Photos of Nathan – December and January
From the "Better late than never" department....
I have uploaded photos of Nathan (and family) from December (with captions)
http://www.bernhard.us/photos/nathan-122006
and photos of Nathan (and friends and family) from January (currently without captions)
http://www.bernhard.us/photos/nathan-012007
Nathan at 10 months
It's hard to believe the explosive rate of change Nathan has been exhibiting in his tenth month. There have been so many changes and developments that I'm afraid I'm losing track.
After he learned how to crawl he very quickly (within two days) was able to pull himself into a standing position using table legs, couches, coffee tables, our legs, doors, pretty much any surface taller than (or more vertical than) floor level. His proficiency in doing this has become so high that it would appear he's been doing it his whole life. He's working on getting better at moving to a sitting position from standing and already has shown marked improvement.
He's also been letting go of the things he uses to haul himself up with. Last night he stood, unaided, for four or five seconds. This is amazing to us.
Two weeks ago Nathan, with only two attempts, was able to climb a single step up from a sunken living room to the kitchen in the house of helloheather's mom and step-dad. He just crawled over to it, grabbed hold and hauled himself up as though he knew in advance exactly what he was going to do.
At the end of March, we took Nathan to the park and for the first time put him in a swing. It was a cold and damp day but he didn't seem to mind. He had a blast, especially when crazy daddy would "zoom" to him on the downward leg of the swing.
This past weekend he was able to spend time with torapines with whom he seemed completely enamored. He would give her such piercing looks and smiles; I think he was trying to show off in some cases...it was very cute. At one point, torapines raised her hands up and with a big smile said "yaaaaaay!" He immediately mimicked her. Every time she would do this, he would follow with both the same tone of voice and waving his arms around. It was wonderful to see.
Feeding him "solid" food has become a bit of a challenge. He's discovered that making raspberries while eating is a great way to spread his food from mouth to parent, and onto everything in-between. It's as if he's carpet-bombing the area with food droplets. But the interesting thing about this behavior is that he's actually trying to slurp the food off the spoon and that sometimes he just gets confused and blows out instead.
As helloheather pointed out in a recent blog entry, he has experienced the joy of being upside-down and now wants to be upside-down all the time (when picked up). From your arms he will throw himself backwards in an attempt to communicate this desire. But if you're not expecting it it can be very startling. Even though I now have learned to expect it, I still find it a bit stressful. Here's my child trying actively to experience gravity it one of the most abrupt ways available to him...I feel like I should carry him around wrapped in some sort of airbag suit...
In order to bring things full circle, I'll leave you with this: Because pulling himself up to a standing position has replaced jumping as Best. Activity. Ever., he's very excited to have helloheather or I hold his hands and allow him to "walk" all over the house. He walks in that typical "on the toes" baby sort of way, it's very cute. He receives so much joy from this activity and it makes us both very happy to see him so engaged.