2-month old MD appointment

Hank had his 2-month old doctor's appointment yesterday.  It was about 2 weeks late, but that was the first appointment that we could get with the particular pediatrician that we wanted to see.  There are 11 pediatricians in the practice that we go to and I wanted to be sure and see the one that evaluated Hank during his first week of life.  She is a great and reassuring doctor, which is very important for a new mom!

Here are Hank's stats:

Weight: 11 pounds 8.5 ounces (51st percentile)

Height: 23 inches long (58th percentile)

Head Circumference: 40.5 cm (79th percentile)

Despite being little when he was born, Hank has caught up beautifully!  The doctor told me that they run about 20 tests on newborns in the hospital.  She said that the results come in between the 2 week and 2 month appointments.  She said that all of Hank's test results were normal.  He is a healthy and growing boy!

Hank did have to get 3 shots and 1 oral vaccine at his doctor's appointment yesterday.  He was so happy and smiling at the doctor's office so it made me really sad when he got his shots.  He cried a few big tears, but as soon as we got in the car, he fell fast asleep.  He seems to be feeling good today and it's a relief to have those old shots over with for a couple of months.

As far as development is concerned, Hank has been smiling more and more lately.  No matter how tired I am, his little smile can always melt my heart.  His neck muscles are getting stronger and he likes to try and look around when we are holding him.  He also turns his head to follow mommy and daddy's voice.  He has rolled up to his side a couple of times, but he hasn't rolled over yet.  He still sleeps in his swing.  I have tried getting him to take naps in his bed, but I guess that he still likes to feel cuddled in the swing.  He usually wakes up about every 3 hours to eat......even at night.  A couple of nights ago, he did sleep from 12:30 until 5:30 a.m. and that felt awesome.  I felt like Super Woman the next day!  But last night, he was back to his every 3 hour routine.  Maybe that had something to do with his shots yesterday.  I guess that we'll see tonight......

I will leave you with a few of Hank's latest pictures:

After I put my photo book together, I realized that I didn't have many pictures of Hank and Grandmama.  This picture was taken at my nephew's 6th birthday party last night.  Grandmama just had cataract surgery on both eyes over the last 2 weeks.  After wearing glasses for 65 years, she now just has to wear reading glasses.  We are so thankful that she had successful surgeries!  Praise God!

My sister took this picture of Hank a couple of weeks ago.  This is the only picture where Hank looks like me in my baby pictures.  I love it!

This picture was taken while Russ was holding Hank as I was getting his bath ready earlier this week.  He loves looking around to see what's going on.  I love his sweet, little face!

2-months old (+ 1 day)

Time got away from me and I didn't get an official 2 month-old picture taken of Hank.  Luckily, St. Patrick's Day was the day after Hank turned 2 months old so I took a couple of pictures of him in his St. Patrick's Day outfit.  The outfit seemed to fit him better at the beginning of the day.  By nighttime, the legs looked like high waters.  He is growing so fast!

Bath Time Revisited

Hank loves bathtime so much, it's tough not to post videos of it.

Hank's 1st photo book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Pig Roast

This weekend, Chris and Mandy came to visit, and I thought it would be fun to roast a pig.  So, I took Friday off and built a BBQ pit out of cinderblocks from some plans I found online.  Here's how it went:

This is the site in the backyard.

The first thing I did was turn over the dirt with the tiller, then rake away all the bamboo roots and branches and level the dirt as much as possible.  Then I added the weed block just because I had it on hand.

Then I made a border out of left over pavers I had lying around.  Then I filled it in with river rock that we had left over from landscaping the pool two years ago.  I figured the rock would be better to walk on than mud, and would make it easier to level the blocks.

At this point, I have laid two levels of block.  I got them reasonably square and level.  I'm only going up four levels, so it's not that critical.  I left openings in the front and back for venting and adding fuel.

After the first two levels are put down, it's time for the expanded metal grill.  I intentionally left it short on the ends so that I could add fuel from the top if I needed to.

With the grill in place, I can add the top two levels.  This was the easiest part.

Now I've added the 14GA steel sheets for the lid, and I'm installing grill thermometers.  I used a speed square and a straight edge to find the middle of the sheet.  Then I drilled a 3/8" hole and installed the thermometer.

Grill thermometers installed.

The finished product before I trimmed the excess weed block.

Saturday morning - the fires are lit, and we're prepping the pig.  I built this patio table last year for just this purpose.

The pig, looking up at me accusingly.  She weighed in at 75 pounds.

This is the work area.  We burned maple all day in the firepit so that we would have hardwood charcoal on hand to boost the temperature if we needed to.  Plus it was a bit chilly.

Here is the pig in the pit, rubbed down with olive oil and a secret rub a friend gave me.  I forgot to put the drip pans in before I lit the fire, so I just put them either side of the pig and filled them with PBR.  I don't know if it made a difference or not.

We got the pig on the grill just before 9AM and pulled it off just before 7PM.  What I found was, unlike steel smokers, the challenge is to keep this grill hot enough, as opposed to keeping it cool enough.  With this pit, when you open vents, you get the fire hotter, but you also let out heat.  So regulating tempurature a total guessing game.  We had oven thermometers on each end of the grill, and one on the pig's back.  The first hour we ran a bit hot - probably around 350.  Once we figured out the trick, we managed to keep an average temperature of around 275 for the rest of the day, plus or minus 25 degrees, with a respectable amount of temperature swing considering the equipment and our lack of experience with it.  A bit hot - and the hams turned out a bit dry, but overall it was a resounding success.  If you can regulate temperature on a cinderblock pit, you can dominate using a nice steel smoker.

This is all that was left.  I bagged five one-gallon bags of leftovers, and sent the hams home with Chris.  It was awesome to just pick meat directly off the pig on the grill.  Delicious.

Watching TV

Professional Pictures

Our friend Amanda Langlands is a great photographer.  She recently took some pictures of Hank for us - here are some of my favorites.

A little mischief.

Extreme Close-up

Sweet little face.

Touching Mom's face.  I love this picture.

All of the pictures were so good, it was hard to choose favorites.  Thanks, Amanda!

Smokin' and Jokin'

Our good friends Melanie and Ben Bowzer came over Friday night for some QT.  It was fairly warm, so we made a fire in the fire pit.  Ben and I smoked pipes and drank scotch whisky while the ladies chatted about whatever it is they chat about.  Hopefully about what bathroom cleaners and laundry detergents work the best.  I'm joking, of course.  I learned a valuable lesson this morning - cleaning up after myself is far more important now that Emily is staying home.  I don't do anything different than I did when we both worked, but because she is at home now, when I leave dishes in the sink instead of putting them in the dishwasher, it gives the impression that I expect her to clean up after me.  Not the case - I'm just being lazy.  Well, it's time to step it up a notch.  Point taken.

Relaxing by the fire

Emily bundled up Hank so he could join us by the fire.

Sunday

Every Sunday we travel to Cynthiana for church and lunch with Emily's parents.  Emily's sister attends a different church, and we don't normally see them, but since Hank has arrived, they've been coming to lunch with us more often.  Our niece and nephew love to see "baby Hank".  This Sunday, Kentucky played Tennessee in basketball, and my mother-in-law is a big UK fan, so we ordered pizza and watched the game.

Hank and Aunt Allie



Hank and Sallie Kate



Hank and Weston

Hank and Granddaddy

Asleep in the Moby

All that's missing is the drool...

Mommy's Birthday

Thursday March 3rd was Emily's birthday - happy number ##!  I don't think she's really self-conscious about her age, but I thought I'd rather be safe than sorry.  She wanted an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins with chocolate cake and cookies and cream ice cream, so that's what she got. 

She enjoyed every piece of it.  I took off work on Friday so that I could stay up with Hank on Thursday night, and Emily got some much-needed sleep.  Hank has his good nights and bad nights.  The most he's slept is about four and a half hours in a row.  He usually eats at around 11, then 2AM, then around 6 or so if we're lucky.  He's eating a lot and growing very quickly.

Moby Wrap

After Hank was born, I bought a Baby Bjorn carrier so that I could more easily go on walks with Hank and Scout.  The Baby Bjorn is a great carrier, but the baby has to be 8 pounds in order to use it so it took us until Hank was 6 weeks old for him to be big enough to fit into it.  I didn't intend to buy another carrier, but Russ and I went to a store called "Mother Nuture" the other day and we tried a Moby Wrap.  Hank loved it!  He especially loves being able to face forward while riding in this carrier.  The Moby Wrap is essentially one long piece of material that you wrap in a special way around your body so that it will hold the baby against you.  The material is knit so that it is really comfortable to wear.  Russ loves this carrier, too!

By the way, "Mother Nuture" has a baby scale so I like to go to this store to weigh Hank every couple of weeks.  He weighed 9 pounds and 0.5 ounces last Friday.  We were so excited!  He is a growing boy!  His newborn size clothes are starting to get tight on him.

Daddy's Birthday

Russ had his 37th birthday on Tuesday.  So on Tuesday afternoon, Hank and I made our first trip together to the grocery store.  We had homemade vegetable soup and pimento cheese sandwiches for Russ' birthday dinner.  For dessert, we had "break and bake" macadamia nut cookies.  We wanted to get Russ an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins for dessert, but Hank was starting to get hungry as we were leaving the grocery store so we needed to get home.  Hank picked out a card for his daddy.  On the inside he wanted me to write, "It's been a great 1st six weeks! I love you very much!"  Russ thought that was pretty funny.  I think that Hank is going to be a daddy's boy.  He already looks mesmerized by his daddy in the pictures below.  Isn't that a cute picture where Hank is handing his daddy his birthday card?

Russ is a great father already!  I don' t see how people raise kids without a supportive spouse.  Russ has been very helpful with all aspects of Hank's care.  They are going to have lots of fun together in the years to come!  If Hank grows up to be like his daddy, then he will be a great man!

I'm Hungry!

Hank and I went for a long walk with our dog, Scout, yesterday afternoon.  He was hungry when we returned from our walk, but I had to quickly run to the bathroom before I fed him.  When I got back from the bathroom, Hank had figured out a way to pacify himself.  He had decided to try and see if he could get any milk out of the monkey's ear on his car seat strap.  Looks like we have a creative little guy on our hands!