One month

As of yesterday Daniel is one month old. He is too big for newborn diapers, and he is quickly outgrowing all the newborn clothes. (I'm still trying to squeeze him into them anyway.)

It's too fast!

Vaseline face

A couple weeks ago Will had a cold. A runny nose combined with the cold, dry weather meant the skin on his face got really dry and chapped. So a couple of times we put vaseline on the chapped skin before bed. Apparently it helped a lot because Will really liked it. He would say, "More. More. More." softly until all the chapped skin was covered. Then he would say, "That nice." (It was really freaking cute.)

Fast forward to today. He's long over the cold, but apparently he remembers how nice the vaseline felt because he found it and got into it.

The best part was when Brian brought him to show me I said, "Oh, Will." and he got the saddest, most heartbreaking look on his face. I think he thought we were mad at him.

Here he is with his shiny face. And hand.

Gobs of vaseline in his hair and on his ear.

It was pretty awesome.

After this I'll quit with the Easter pictures

Here's Will after finding his basket. For the record, we do some candy and a book for each basket. I figured by doing a set thing every year I can avoid going overboard on the presents. Because sometimes I just want to buy my kids everything. So a book every year it is. Will got a book of Danny and the Dinosaur stories; Kalena got a book of Berenstain Bear stories.

(I love this shirt SO MUCH.)

Kalena with her basket. Or as she says it, "backsit."

Actual things that Will said as these pictures were being taken:

"No egg!" (Definitely an egg)

"There it is!" (Still looking in exactly the same spot.)

It's fun to watch kids miss eggs "hidden" in the most obvious places. We hide hard boiled eggs, but we only got through 2 rounds of hiding before Will started peeling one to eat it. My kids really like hard boiled eggs.

Weigh in again

Daniel had another weight check today and he's up to 8 lbs 6.6 oz! That means he's gained 9 oz in a week. The pediatrician said they want at least an ounce a day so 9 oz definitely meets that! Now the doctor has to call the oxygen company to have them come out and do their testing. Apparently they'll take Daniel off oxygen and then monitor him overnight and send the results to the pediatrician. Hopefully that will happen soon. It's a little tiring being tethered to the oxygen tank all the time.

Doesn't he look ready to have those tubes off his face?

Fancy dressed up pictures

I promised fancy dressed up pictures so here they are. I took about a hundred. There are about 3 good ones. Most of the pictures of Kalena look something like this:

I finally got her to look at the camera AND smile at the same time. (15 pictures of her- she's looking and smiling in 2 of them.)

Will didn't really want to cooperate at all. Which is too bad, because you don't get the full effect of his darling outfit in these pictures.

And finally, Brian with the kids. One of the neighbors was doing yard work, and apparently that was FAR more interesting than the lady behind the camera. (That would be me.) 

There you have it! And next time I'll bombard you with pictures of the kids in pajamas with Easter baskets. Or pictures of the kids looking for eggs. Or both! I keep taking pictures like I'm a photographer even though I am so NOT.

Easter egg time

We dyed Easter eggs yesterday which the kids thought was thrilling. And by that I mean they thought it was fun dropping eggs in the different colors and then they wanted to eat them all. 

Kalena was very careful dipping her eggs.

And pleased with the results.

Will preferred dropping them in- sloshed a lot more egg dye around. (He does look focused though, doesn't he?)

 Happy about it all.

Check out these next two pictures and tell me these kids don't look like siblings.

Same expressions and everything. I couldn't have posed these pictures any better. Fancy dressed up pictures coming next time!

Sad face Will

Will was seriously brokenhearted yesterday when he threw his spoon on the floor at lunch and nobody would pick it up for him.

I love the single tear from each eye. 

More thoughts

After some excellent comments on my last post, I wanted to clarify something- I most certainly understand why people do testing, even if they wouldn't terminate the pregnancy. Testing gives you more time to process. It give you time to prepare, mentally and emotionally. There's definitely nothing wrong with wanting to know ahead of time. In fact, before Daniel was born I wondered if people who were surprised by babies with Down syndrome (or some other diagnosis) wished they had done the tests.

I was serious when I said that I'd thought about it a lot. I considered how things would have been different if we'd known before he was born. I thought about how I might have felt about a prenatal diagnosis (obviously I thought about that, since that's what I wrote about last time.) And it's only now, on the other side of things, that I'm completely sure not testing was the right choice for us.

And now I'll stop talking about this.

My thoughts on prenatal testing

If you've read my Finding Out post, you know that Daniel's diagnosis was a surprise. We opted not to do prenatal testing (for any of my pregnancies) for a couple big reasons.

First: I am young. At 29 my chances of having a baby with Down syndrome were roughly 1 in 1000. I have no risk factors. The risk of miscarriage caused by the more invasive testing were considerably higher than my risk of having a baby with Down syndrome (or any other chromosomal abnormality) was. The odds were in our favor, so why do the testing?

Second: This is probably a bigger reason than the first- we wouldn't have terminated the pregnancy.

So the question a couple people have asked since he was born is: Do I wish I had done prenatal testing so that I could have prepared for this? And having had a chance to think about it (a lot) my answer is no. If we had gotten this diagnosis before he was born I would have wondered about false positives. I would have worried about when to tell people. I don't know that it would have felt real.

Getting the diagnosis after he was born was certainly a lot to take in. But Brian and I both manage pretty well with changes that come our way. I think if we had gotten the diagnosis before he was born, that's all I would have thought about. Once Daniel was here though, HE was what mattered. Yes, he has Down syndrome. He also has a lot of hair, and big feet, and blue eyes. He is soft and tiny, just like our other babies were. Daniel is a baby, not a diagnosis, and I thinking getting a prenatal diagnosis would have made that harder for me to see.

So no, I wouldn't have done things differently. Besides, now that he's here it's impossible to imagine not wanting him, not having him, not loving him.

Fattening up!

Well, as of Monday Daniel is back to his birth weight! Just barely, but still. Of course, now the pediatrician wants to see him keep gaining like that, so one more weigh in before they'll look at taking him off oxygen.

What do you think, do his cheeks look chubbier today?

I have many, many things I intend to write about (and about a million half done posts in my drafts folder) but I keep getting distracted. I guess having 3 kids under 4 will do that to you. However, if there is anything at all that YOU want me to write about, let me know and I will. (And I promise I'll do my best to not just let it sit in my drafts folder forever.)