Dane is four months!

Dane reached another milestone this Sunday, with his four month birthday! He has a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, where he'll receive his four-month shots, will be weighed and measured, and we'll receive some guidance from the pediatrician about his eating and sleeping habits. This appointment is coming at a good time, as we unexpectedly lost the last ~month of breastmilk that I had pumped and frozen. Hence, a much sooner transition to formula. He had his first full day of it yesterday, and while he struggled with gas and kind of general unhappiness, we're hoping a few more days will allow him a little more comfort with it. He did better with the transition than I did, as I was really freaked out about losing all the hard work that I put into pumping and storing the milk, and knowing that even though breastfeeding didn't work out perfectly, at least he'd have breast milk until around 5 months. So, we're starting earlier than expected and it feels like just one more way God is trying to tell me that when things are out of my control, I need to focus on Him, not on how out of control I feel. But I'm also getting tired of this lesson; it feels like one we've been hit over the head with repeatedly the last couple years. We get it! At least I know God can take an occasional rant from me. That's reassuring.

We're very excited to see how Dane continues to grow (the weight and length today will be fun!). He's so much more aware of his surroundings, and starting to interact with things, pulling on his play gym, "talking" to himself in a mirror. He thinks he's one cute baby:)

I had my last day of work on Friday last week, which is both scary and exciting. Mark was on call that night, so I got home from my last day, and not long into the evening alone, Dane started to scream. Not just your average Dane cry either, but screaming, as if he were in extreme pain. He managed to continue this until around 9:40 when I fed him and put him down. Mark got a voicemail where I'm sure I sounded like I was losing it, saying "I don't think I can do this!" I felt like, in the words of Gob, "I've made a terrible mistake!" Mark came home around 1 pm the next day and Dane proceeded to have two wonderful days over the weekend. So, basically, those days make me feel better (or maybe it was just that I had Mark around).

I continue to look for projects and things to keep me busy. I'm working on starting an Etsy store (see more about this on my blog: larissanoel.blogspot.com), so that's an exciting proposition. I'm also heading back to Reedsburg on Wednesday this week, to have a good friend, Andria (prettiestteacup.com), take some pictures of Dane. She's an incredibly creative and crafty girl and I'm so excited to visit and see what she'll think of!

To close out this post, I'll add some of the latest pictures of Dane, the last being his four-month picture.


The swing - it's the only position that almost always quiets a gassy Dane.
Chillin' with Dad on the playmat. Dane has an incredible capacity for entertaining himself with this - sometimes for around 45 minutes!
Spread out on the Shelf.
Sleeping with his shrimp friend.
Happy Dane!
A contemplative four-month-old Dane.

Dane goes to Warrior Dash

Yesterday we all got up early (5am) and drove to Joliet, IL for the Warrior Dash. Larissa and Dane cheered while I raced. This was no ordinary race.... 3.75 miles which included climbing over walls and crawling through barrels. The last 3 obstacles involved 1) running through a knee-deep water/mud pit, 2) jumping over a fire pit, and 3) doing the army crawl through another mud pit. It was like 52 degrees when the race started and the race announcers laughed as they told everyone "You'll only be cold until you crawl throught the mud...then you'll be freezing!" My run went really well for the first 3-ish miles. The problem occured when I hit the first mud pit. About 2 steps into the knee-deep water/mud, I got one shoe stuck in the mud and ran right out of it. It was somewhere at the bottom of this knee-deep sludge and I had no chance of finding it quick. So I threw off the other shoe into the bushes and ran the rest of the race in my socks...which would've been awesome had it not been for the stretch of gravel path. Anyway, after finishing the race (only ~30 seconds slower than my goal time! They haven't posted the "official" times yet and I'm waiting to see if my time is almost an hour slower than it actually was, because the shoe I lost had my timing chip laced into it, so my timing chip crossed the line almost an hour after I first crossed the finish line...) I went back and found the shoe after wading through the mud for a bit. As you can see in the photos, I got a bit dirty... Luckily, after a quick rinse off in some dirty curb-water, they had one hose for all the 2000 participants to wash off with (I wish you could read the sarcasm in that statement...the line was forever long. There had been a fire truck to help hose people off, but it left as soon as the race finished so I waited in line for the hose.)



Notice, I'm running over the fire in just socks...

I knew my shoe was somewhere in there...

A quick rinse in dirty curb-water...

And another great part from the day was how well Dane did. He was a complete angel for the hour drive there, the race, an the hour drive home. We are also including some cute pictures of Dane.



And last but not least, we painted another wall in the apartment this weekend. The first two walls we did several weeks ago and now this new wall is in the 2nd bedroom (currently for the Grandmas when they visit, then for Dane and/or any friends who might visit us...)

a bit of this, a bit of that

So, it's about time for an update post. Things have gotten really hectic with Mark's schedule this month and me being back at Tyndale. For example, Mark left at 5:30 am on Tuesday morning and didn't get home until around 2 pm on Wednesday this week. This month, his inpatient family medicine rotation, that type of on-call night happens every 6th or 7th night. It makes for one very tired pair when I get back on Wednesday afternoon, after doing the night feed by myself two nights in a row. We were lucky enough to have my mom with us the last two weeks, otherwise, there's no way we would have made it unscathed. She's been taking his early morning feed and hence, keeping the moniter in her room all night, allowing us to at least get solid sleep when we can.

All this fun combined to make us reevaluate how much it was working to have me back full time at Tyndale. We tried to work something out so I could do part time, allowing more time at home, but Tyndale wasn't flexible in that way. So, we decided that as of the 24th, I'm going to start being a mom full time. For how long, we're not sure...but it will be a great change to have one of us around to support the babe and Mark, as he gets through this tough year. I'm super excited for the time with Dane, equally afraid of having to do it by myself all day (at this point, he's crying around 50-60% of the time he's awake), and praying that it will get easier, like everyone reassures me it will. I'm already pumped about getting more time to work on projects around the house (I've been searching for good fabric to make some curtains for Dane's future nursery, currently the moms' room). You can look at my blog, larissanoel.blogspot.com for what I'm trying to decide between. That blog has kind of been defunct, so I'm also excited to start working on it again, and turn it into a good place for design and craftiness of all kinds.

We also made a long weekend trip to Green Lake on the 4th of July, where Dane put his sun hat to use and saw Dad being a ham waterskiing for the first time. The weather wasn't as nice as we'd hoped for, and Dane cried the entire 4 hours home, but we survived and got a little extra sleep, thanks to the grandparents.

We've taken tons of photos, so I'm just going to add a bunch here to catch you all up on our latest fun with the babe.
dane has worn a nice path off the back of his hair from his time on his back.
Check out how orange his hair is!

Chillin' with Dad at Green Lake.
And in his hat from Auntie Rachel from Madison.

Fun with his best friend, the playyard Octopus! Ideas for what we should call him?

Happy for a trip outside with Grandma!

His first real smiles for his mom and dad!

During our week with my mom, Dane started smiling his first smiles in response to other people. It's so exciting to start seeing his personality coming out! I didn't believe my mom at first, since we hadn't been able to get anything out of him but crabbiness lately. However, I was able to get a couple giggles and smiles during the week as well, and then Sunday, Mark really got him going. He was smiling and laughing for about 20 minutes, in response to his dad's antics. Here are some fun pictures of his good day!

3 month old comparisons

So just for fun, here are a couple comparison pictures to show how much our babe has grown. He was born at 3 lbs 13 oz and 16.5 inches. He now weighs 8.4 lbs and 21 inches. He's huge! (Or at least he seems that way to us :))

Holy busy, Batman!

As you can tell from the frequency of our posts, and especially by the frequency of Mark's posts, we're both back at work now. Life has gotten even more crazy very quickly; we didn't think that was possible after the last couple months! Mark has been in his first couple weeks of his intern year orientation, which have actually been treating him pretty well, hours-wise. They've been going through the basic stuff like tours and benefit information, etc. Sort of boring, but necessary for starting his next three years of work. He officially starts next week, July 1st, and will be starting on his first of 6 hard months of the year, inpatient family medicine. His average hours per week will be between 60 and 70, with around 3-7 overnight calls at the hospital per month. Yuck. His commute has turned out to be not as bad as we thought it would be; it's been between 25 and 40 minutes on the average (not including a really bad hour and a half during a foray onto a construction area). Commutes in general still stink, but I'm so thankful he's allowing me to be closer to work, as that transition has been pretty tough on me as well. Because I'm so close, I've been able to run home for around 30 minutes during lunch to pump and hold the babe for a few minutes before I have to head back. I'm really glad I can do this, as it's hard to go from being with Dane every hour of every day for the last three months to being away from him for 8ish hours a day all week. Dane is in the very capable care of my mom, who has been enjoying being able to bond with our little dude. We're so lucky to have our moms here to watch him, since one of the hardest things about going back to work would have been not knowing if he was in loving, knowledgeable care during the day.

While he's still not doing a super-consistent job of sleeping, he is getting better, and most nights, we can get a block of five hours of sleep. Still not enough to be functioning on our highest level, but better than the 2 or 3 we'd been getting for the last couple months. He's still really struggling with gas, sobbing uncontrollably for about two hours between each feeding. It's definitely stretching our sanity. It's still incredibly difficult to know that there's sometimes just nothing to do for him. Tonight, in desperation, we made a heating pad out of a sock and some barley, with only moderately beneficial results. One more solution down...huh...what now?

We also went to Mark's residency department picnic Wednesday afternoon. It was great to meet the folks who he'll be spending so much time with for the next three years. We had hoped to bring the Daner-bear, but because it was near 100 degrees and humid, we decided it was better to leave him at home until the weather turned more newborn friendly. Work for me has started with a vengeance, as I'm working on a book tour for NASCAR celebrity Joe Gibbs. His marketing manager with Tyndale is on vacation for a couple weeks, so I'll be coordinating the details of his signings. It's a fun project, but one that's forcing me to get up to speed very quickly. I'm also working on the marketing for a book called Letters to Darcy. It's about a high-risk pregnancy that ultimately ends in the birth and then death of a Trisomy 18 baby girl. The theme of sanctity of life is really brought out, so we'll be working with a number of pro-life organizations to spread the word. It was a hard book to read, as it consisted of a mom's letters to her unborn baby, knowing that she would likely never make it past a few days old. Darcy ended up living to be 11 days old, and the book is a powerful story about respect for life, no matter how short. Check out www.darcyanne.weebly.com to see pictures and learn more about the story. While it was hard to read now, I'm super glad I wasn't reading it while pregnant, as it opens a whole new door of worry about what could go wrong...it was very inspiring though.

Anyway, I've just added a bunch of the latest pictures below. We had one of Mark's swimmer buddies visiting from Boston, Dustin, and he was able to lull Dane during his nightly crabby time, so we suggested he visit more often :) We also painted the living room, which Dane was very unhappy to help me with, and then headed down to the Wheaton Band Shell to listen to a Kids' Night concert. Dane made it through about 20 minutes, and then let us know it was time to head home. I found that Dane likes laundry day because he got to snuggle into the warm laundry until I needed to fold it. It was good for an hour of quiet! Dane will suck on just about anything put near his mouth when hungry, as evidenced by his enjoyment of Mark's nose. The other photos are just random ones from the last week or so. Enjoy!


Grandma Moyer holding Dane after a feeding. Also, we painted a couple of walls in the living room. Like the pattern?






The three of us at Wheaton's Concerts in the Park.








Notice that Dane's arms are still not quite long enough to have his hands touch above his head... I guess that's what having a head in the 50th percentile and a height in the 15th percentile gets you...