Joining the choir

Though Calvin has drawn lots of oohs and aahs, kisses and hugs, and pets and pats from his loving choir family, up until now all of this doting activity has occurred while he was sleeping.  It's quite likely, in fact, that the choir was beginning to believe that he suffered from narcolepsy.  The truth of the matter is that they had only ever seen him on Sunday mornings at church and, thankfully, most mornings that has coincided nicely with his nap time.  Tonight was their chance to actually see that he has blue eyes, and that he is capable of interacting with his environment because tonight was the annual choir beginning of the season potluck.  Overall it was an uneventful event.  We got there just as the little man was waking up from a nap, and his daddy successfully fed him a bottle while standing in the middle of the festivities.  His mommy pulled off a discrete diaper change, and then he spent some awake time mingling.  The down side, of course, is that evening is his fussiest time, but, as previously noted, he pulled off a fairly uneventful evening.  And there was no shortage of loving arms to allow us a chance to get and eat our food.  Calvin may not be ready to sing in the bass section with his father just yet, but he sure is scoring points with the other singers!

Special visits - two of them

Two months old and still more special people to meet!  This afternoon Cortney's cousin Kate (Calvin's first cousin once removed) and her husband Alerk came for a special visit all the way from the Netherlands.  This was the first time we'd seen them since their beautiful wedding last summer and it was wonderful that they had time to meet Calvin during their short Ann Arbor stay (for a weekend wedding).  We rendezvoused at the Hiller household in order to maximize cathing-up-with-family time for all involved, and we had a great time hearing about their new life abroad (especially the strange toilets that are designed so as to allow the "user" to "inspect" their "deposits").  Calvin was even, for the most part, on pretty good behavior, smiling while awake and purring while asleep with a fairly minimal amount of fussing between.  And it must be an odd thing to be a baby, because when he fell asleep Kate and Alerk were sitting in front of the window, but when he woke up they were gone and another new person was in their place (or perhaps they had just morphed into a single female form...a baby can never be sure).  This baby confusion was brought on by the arrival of Karen, who has worked with Cortney's dad and been a family friend for over 29 years.  Just to prove both this and the fact that Cortney was, in fact, a baby at one time, we have included here the picture of Karen holding a very tiny Cortney in the same rocking chair back in 1977.  Clearly Calvin, seen here in the middle of a big open mouthed smile complete with laugh, is less camera shy than his mother was.

And... we have a thumb sucker. (redux)

Last December (Dec 19) we were very excited to blog the news that "Rasberry," at fourteen weeks, was an avid thumb sucker.  We'd just had an ultrasound that clearly showed the-baby-we-now-know-as-Calvin contentedly sucking his thumb.  At the end of the entry we vowed to stock up on pacifiers early.  Funny thing about that - he does always want to suck  but he will rarely take a pacifier (although he enjoys gnawing on them if you hold them in his mouth).  But today he relearned the self-soothing technique that he so often enjoyed prior to his birth.  And he is just suddenly good at it again, too!

We also want to share with you his new bedroom upgrade.  Our friend, Amy, made him a really cool pillow rendering of his name.  She paid us a special visit last week to bring it to him and we finally got it upon the wall today.  It really makes his room look cool and it also adds a lot of love! 

A pool party

Last night was Calvin's first trip to a pool.  Unfortunately for him it was only that, a trip to the pool and not an actual swim in the pool since he's a little young for chlorine and is still having some trouble with the skin on his shoulders.  But we weren't really there for the prime swimming anyhow, we were there for dinner.  Not as weird as it sounds, since we were joining Jon's bosses and their daughter and friends for a poolside evening complete with dinner from the country club.  It was beautiful and cool evening and both the food and the company were great, so we think Calvin had a nice time even without getting to go swimming.
In other news, we are finally experiencing baby meltdown.  Calvin's sleep schedule has been off for nearly a week now and sleep deprivation is starting to set in - for all three of us.  We figure it's about time since we hadn't experienced true lack of sleep yet, even when he was a newborn.  The real problem of the weekend, though, was that he was also having some trouble nursing, so we visited the doctor again today.  As always, Calvin wowed them with his rate of growth - he weighed in at 11 pounds, 3 ounces (a pound more than he weighed a week ago), and measured just shy of 24 inches.  Grow baby grow!  Obviously, nursing trouble or no, he is getting plenty to eat!  The visit did offer some hope of relief on all fronts and that relief is spelled z-a-n-t-a-c.  The pediatrician thinks that Calvin might be struggling with heartburn (guess he should lay off the chocolate and pizza...) so baby Zantac should help.  We are keeping our fingers crossed.

Celebrating two weeks!

Well, we are now two weeks old!!!  Calvin really started celebrating this milestone overnight by sleeping for nearly six hours straight - yay!  It was the first night that we did not set the alarm in order to wake the sleeping baby and force him to eat.  Since he's been gaining well we decided to let him dictate the night time schedule, especially since Cortney is now dictating the daytime schedule.  So far so good... Then during the day today Calvin celebrated his two week old status by visitng the church office, where they had been awaiting his appearance just as eagerly as we had been awaiting the chance to introduce him.  Though he slept through the whole visit a good time was had by all.  Following that stop he was treated to a nice French Quarter style lunch in Ann Arbor by Cortney's parents.  Of course, all he got out of the lunch was a flower and a nap, but we didn't hear him complaining.  After lunch he showed how mature he was by spending nearly an hour in a very alert state, taking in the sights of the world around him, especially the back side (that being the hypnotizing black and white side) of Baby Whoozit.  Who knewzit that toy could be so entertaining!!!  The day of celebration was capped off with a wonderful visit by his Aunt Ann, who was kind enough to take him out for a walk in his sling and hold him on her lap all evening, even when he decided to be a little ornery towards the end of the day.  Of course, ornery is what his parents are looking for at 11pm in hopes of another long sleep overnight.  Here's to keeping our fingers crossed...