To Calvin, who is six months old today!

Well, Calvin, you are now a half a year old!  The time is just going too fast.  The past month brought wonderful advancements, but it also brought some challenges for you and for your parents.  For the first few weeks of the month you struggled with your acid reflux, eventually leading to you losing an entire pound!  After juggling your medications you are now doing much better, but this will be the first month that you have not gained any weight.  What you have not gained in size, though, you continue to make up for in your other advancements!  Last month you realized how much you enjoyed standing to play, and this month you have learned how to push and pull yourself into that favorite play position!  You have also started to travel!  Thankfully you don't get very far, but you can crawl, in your own creeping sort of way, for very short distances.  You will be able to go much farther as soon as you figure out how to hold your head up off the ground while you are moving!  But our favorite new trick of yours is your new ability to play peek-a-boo!  For months we have played this game with you, covering our faces and then surprising you to make you laugh, but just two days ago you started covering your own face and waiting for us to ask "where's Calvin?" before uncovering and laughing up a storm!  It is so wonderful to have you engage with us this way, and we see this as a very fun milestone!

This past month has been very special to us for another reason, too:  it held the start to this year's holiday season with Thanksgiving and the start of Advent.  This is our favorite time of year, and now we get to share it with you, introducing you to the traditions, spirit, and love of the season.  We had a beautiful Thanksgiving, and decorated the house for the Christmas season.  You were awed by the lights on the tree, and seem to love singing carols with your parents every night (mostly you love sitting on your father's lap and banging along on the keys while he plays the piano).  You don't even seem to mind the cold air!  This season is not just new to you, it also feels new to us because it holds such a special new meaning to us now that you are here.  We have so much to be thankful for!

Two-way play

After nearly 6 months of one way play, our son is finally joining in the fun.  Oh sure, in the past he would grab, chew, and throw his toys, laugh at his toys, and even laugh in response to our antics, but we still consider this one way play.  After all, we would be practically standing on our heads to elicit said laughter, while Mr. Calvin was simply a laughing lump of baby.  Don't get us wrong, those days clearly beat out the days when he didn't even acknowledge our existence (a trait that is sure to return in about 15 years), but they don't hold a candle to the new and improved Calvin, now with real interactive mode so that he will actually take part in the play, rather than just laugh while watching.  Go ahead...laugh while you're watching!

Just call us the Nielsons.

As of yesterday we are now a Homescan Consumer Panel member home, which is a fancy way of saying that we are now an A.C. Nielson family.  We aren't reporting our TV preferences, though, we are reporting our household purchase information.  The job came with its own fancy gadget - a scanner, which we use to scan and record all of our purchases when we bring them home, and then to connect to Homescan division of A.C. Nielson and upload our purchase information.  It doesn't take very long to do, and each time we share information with them we get points, which we can eventually redeem for gifts.  So, our opinions matter.  Or if they don't, we are going to make them. 

And, since this blog really isn't about us anymore,  we'll now move on to news about Calvin.  First and foremost, he is feeling much better.  Although he is still waking once a night, a habit he developed during the reflux issues of the past few weeks, in general he is sleeping well and is having no trouble eating.  He has also discovered his tongue.  He can roll it and twist it, chew on it and use it to spit raspberries.  It's very cute, but very messy.  He has also learned how to pull himself up to a standing position when sitting in front of something (which means that we have to be careful where we put him).  He has not really crawled since the couple of times a week or so ago when he traveled about four or five feet, face planted firmly on the ground.  Evidently he has wizened up and will wait until he can get his face off the ground before trying that again!  And we stopped trying to feed him cereal after we switched him back to the liquid Zantac, but will likely pick it up again some time in the next week or so.  And that, is the Calvin news.

Happy...Black Friday?

Okay, that just sounds wrong.  We understand the premise, but it's a rather dark moniker for a fairly cheerful day (fairly being the operative word here - we're sure it's not cheerful if you are getting trampled in the opening lines at some super store).  We have always enjoyed the day after Thanksgiving.  In our home it is the start of the Christmas season and traditionally we have spent the early part of the day shopping and the latter part decorating followed by a nice dinner.   We did things a little backwards this year, but we still got all the major ingredients in there.  And having Calvin sure has added a lot to the spirit of the season.  If nothing else it added the not-to-be-missed impromptu visit to the pediatrician's office over a holiday because, of course, that is when children opt to get sick.  Luckily Calvin does not appear to be sick in a contagious kind of way, but he sure has been struggling with his reflux over the past few weeks.  We thought to head off any necessary holiday doctor visits with the appointment we made earlier in the week, but even after several days of the new medication in his cereal he was really going downhill and was having all kinds of trouble eating.  After this morning's appointment we will be returning to the first medication - the one that was working before we were told to stop it (don't get us started).  We are praying that this will make a difference soon, and it might already have - he was full of smiles for all his adoring fans as we traversed the crowded mall with Curtis in this afternoon!  So, happy black Friday!

Thank you Mr. Esophagus

It's been a rough couple of weeks in the Ophoff home.  Calvin's pediatrician decided to change the dose on his Zantac - cutting it nearly in half.  By the end of the first week following the poor kid was pretty cranky, but by the end of the second week he was downright miserable, so we complained and the doctor gave a script for Prevacid capsules, the insides of which were to be dissolved, as the nurse told us, in his breastmilk.  Ha ha ha.  Over the weekend we tried everything - the little pellets just would not disappear into any amount breastmilk and getting them down his throat was not nearly as easy as getting them stuck to the side of the medicine dropper, the spoon, his face, his bib, our hands.  He was getting maybe half of the medicine, which is why he was still a bear when Cortney called back yesterday morning and a different nurse told her to try water instead (never mind that breastmilk is 90% water).  After a polite but frustrated conversation we finally scored an appointment with the doctor in the afternoon.  The look on his face when Cortney told him the pellets didn't seem to dissolve was near priceless.  No, he said, they aren't meant to dissolve, you put them on his food.  Ahhh...and therein lies the problem.  We  had diligently been waiting for 6 months, as recommended by the AAP, and countless other organizations, and the nurse who had told us to dissolve the pellets was apparently visiting from another planet.  In cases like these, the doctor told us, it is going to be better for the patient to start a little early on solids so as to get him the medicine and give him a little more in his tummy to weigh down his milk (they make dissolvable Prevacid, by the way, but it has Aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, in it, and babies just don't need that). 

And that is how we came to this morning, with mom preparing whole grain brown rice cereal and dad giving the wee one a pep talk that went something like this: "it's a one way hatch!  Food goes in and it doesn't come out!  Mr. Esophagus is our friend!"  But let us tell you, the esophagus isn't the problem it's the tongue.  All in all the first feeding went very well!  Calvin even seemed to enjoy it.  More than a couple of times he reached for the spoon and pulled Cortney's hand to his mouth, but every other spoonful or so would be pushed back out by the tongue.  We realize that it is a learning process - for all of us.  We think it is also a bib destroying process.  The good news is, we all had fun, and he got probably 95% of the medicine, which was the whole reason we had to start this now anyway.  First feeding?  We'll count it as a success.