The week in review - Week #6

Week 6 saw a major milestone reached - Caitlin's grandmother turned 60 on Wednesday. To celebrate, we all took her to dinner. We got her a digital picture frame loaded with about 200 pictures of Caitlin over the last several weeks. It couldn't top the gift she'd been wanting for over 30 years and recently received though, a Grandchild. :)

Caitlin did pretty well this week. She's still spitting up from time to time but it's better than it was. We've also started a nightly ritual that has its good and bad side. Every night from about about 6:00-9:00 Caitlin keeps us entertained with what seems like endless screaming. Nothing seems to slow it for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time. No matter what we do, it just continues. We can feed her, walk around with her, put her in her bed, her bouncer or her swing and still the screaming continues. That's obviously the bad part. The good part of all this? On these nights, she's also sleeping as long as 5-6 hours straight! This week there were no exploding diapers to report. At least nothing out of the ordinary. :) Caitlin seems to be more and more aware of her surroundings with each passing week and maintains eye contact for longer periods of time. She also continues to get stronger and is holding her head up and looking around on her own for several minutes at a time. I think her eyes are getting bigger by the day and right now they look either blue or green depending on the light.

I used to think that new parents must be crazy. All too often I've heard new parents go on and on about how their baby is the most beautiful baby in the world and I've always just rolled my eyes, chalked it up to parental blindness and gone about my business. I always swore that I would never be one of "those" parents who brag about how beautiful their baby is while the rest of us wonder if they are in need of an eye exam. Luckily in our case, Caitlin actually is the most beautiful baby in the world so it makes it okay for us to talk about it. :)

This week we will finally start settling into a routine in the Vargas house. I'll be starting my normal schedule (10-7) and Toni will be returning to work full time. Caitlin will be spending her days at her Nana Bev and Grampa Bob's house. It should work out nice. My mom only lives 1 mile from our house so it won't be a problem dropping Caitlin off in the mornings or for Toni to pick her up after work in the evenings.

I hope everyone has a great week!

The week in review - Week #5

This week on Wednesday the 13th, Caitlin celebrated her 1 month birthday. To mark the occasion, Toni took her to get pictures taken. We won't get them until sometime after next week but when we do, I'll be sure to post them. Caitlin is definitely getting bigger and maturing. She now focuses more on people rather than staring off into space and has even smiled a few times. Physically, she's had a few changes as well. Her eyebrows have grown in and today we tried weighing her and figured out that she's tipping the scales at around 10.2 pounds. The gain in weight is starting to become more evident every time we have to lift her! :)

As far as spitting up goes, Caitlin has her good days and bad days. We talked to the Pediatrician and she gave Caitlin a prescription for what is essentially infant level Zantac. I don't really think it's helping but we'll keep trying it for a little while and see how it goes. We've tried changing her formula to a different brand that the Pediatrician recommended and that seems to help a little. Of course, either formula the Pediatrician wants her on costs twice as much as the regular stuff!

Caitlin has also been continuing to keep us on our toes with her exploding diapers. This week, much to Toni's delight, I was on the receiving end of one of Mount St.Caitlin's eruptions. While changing her diaper, Caitlin decided she wasn't quite done yet and proceeded to resume what she had been doing. All I can say is that if "distance pooping" were an Olympic sport, Caitlin would be the Michael Phelps of it... Yes, like a squeeze bottle of mustard Caitlin erupted right at me. My arm, shorts, leg and even the carpet fell victim. It was so bad that I had to turn the diaper changing duties over to Toni and go take a shower. Toni has been enjoying telling everyone about my experience so I figured I'd post it here for everyone to enjoy. I think I'm going to look into getting a rain poncho or something for future changings. Note to self - always keep your mouth closed when changing Caitlin. :)

Friday Toni and I had our dentist appointments. Everything went well there and the Dentist told us that if Caitlin gets our teeth, she'll be in good shape. :) Toni also had a Doctor appointment and everything went well there.

This weekend we also had some visitors. Grampa Andres, Toni's sister and her family came out to see Caitlin. Everyone enjoyed spending time with Caitlin and I think she enjoyed seeing all of the new faces. :)

This coming week, I will be working 7:30-4:30. We're going to be down 2 people (half our team) and we need someone covering the open and closing hours so I'll be doing the opening shift for just next week. Toni will be working from home next week and then will return to work the following week. Hope everyone has a great week!

The week in review - Week #4

Today marks 4 weeks since Caitlin joined our family and I still honestly feel like it's been a lot longer. Caitlin is still keeping us on our toes everyday. She had an appointment with the Pediatrician early in the week and everything went well. Caitlin is still eating a lot but she's also spitting a lot up as well. The hypo-allergenic Similac doesn't seem to be helping with the spitting up problems. If it continues this way, we'll probably switch back to the normal stuff and see how she does with that. In a good deal of our pics with Caitlin we have spit up stains on our shirts! Friday night I was actually on my 3rd shirt within an hour of getting home! Caitlin spit up on the first one and then while I was feeding her later my stomach started burning badly. When I looked down at Caitlin, she was happily peeing with no concern for the fact that her diaper was full and it was running onto my stomach! What a way to welcome Daddy home from work! :) This week also had a couple more exploding diapers and Toni was the victim of both of them. Holding Caitlin on your chest when the diaper explodes isn't a good place to be..

Toni also had an appointment with her diabetes doctor this week and everything went great! She's still considered pre-diabetic but doesn't need insulin or even to check her blood sugars anymore!! Everything from here on out can be controlled with only diet and exercise. She's already lost a staggering 33 pounds since Caitlin was born and the Doctor would like her to lose another 15. Overall, the news was great for her!

Other than that, this week was fairly quiet. Toni is going to start working from home tomorrow and she'll do that for 2 weeks before physically going back to work. My job is going alright but I really keep hoping the lottery will come through for me soon. :) I've added a short video of Caitlin sneezing. If you have speakers I encourage you to listen to it. Her sneezes are hilarious. She more sounds like she's growling, especially the 2nd sneeze. :) This coming week should go pretty fast. Friday we have our dentist appointments and then Toni has another appointment with her Doctor immediately after that to see how she's doing. I hope everyone has a great week! Go check out Caitlin's picture section at the upper left of this page. I've uploaded several more pics!

Caitlin's checkup

Today Caitlin had an appoinment with the Pediatrician and everything went great! Caitlin has grown 1 inch and is now up to 9 pounds, .05 ounces. The dr. Said that we can up Caitlin's formula to 4 ounces from now on instead of the 2-3 she currently gets. The dr. Also suggested not burping her as often because she's probably taking in a lot of air when she gets mad when we try burping her because she's still hungry and that's probably causing a lot of the spitting up that Caitlin has been having. The Dr. Also said that she wants Caitlin to stay on the hypo-allergenic Similac for a while just to be on the safe side as well. Caitlin's next appointment is in 5 weeks for her 2 month checkup and vaccinations.

The week in review - Week #3

Ya know, it really doesn't seem possible to me that Caitlin is only 3 weeks old today. In my mind, it seems like she's been with us for 3 months, not 3 weeks. Today Toni and I decided to get out of the house and leave Caitlin with her Nana and Grampa Bob. We went to see The Dark Knight and then went out to lunch. It was nice to get out of the house for a little bit for a "date morning". :)

Unfortunately, Caitlin seems to be crying a lot more than she was before this week so sleep is becoming harder to come by for Toni and I. She still has a voracious appetite and seems like she's getting longer and heavier. She also picks her head up on her own and doesn't really need us to support her head much when we are holding her. She has even started focusing in on different things for longer periods of time and soon I expect that she'll start recognizing and reacting to Toni and I when she sees us with something other than endless crying. :) Next weekend we're going to go look into getting pictures done somewhere. We'd like to try to get monthly pictures taken so we have pictures to chronicle her growth. She's still keeping us on our toes with exploding diapers and spit ups as well. Lesson learned - never hold Caitlin on your lap if you're wearing anything you value. :) Speaking of which, I think I have found what has to be one of the worst smells in human history - spit up hypo-allergenic Similac. The closest thing I can imagine would have to be on the sweltering summer day of July 4th, 1776. Picture it, no air conditioning and 56 grown men in powdered wigs and heavy wool clothing gathered into Independence Hall. Then, after days of drafting The Declaration of Independence, John Hancock suddenly asks, "Whose cheese is this?" Okay, so maybe that's not how it happened but you get the idea. :)

On the job front, things are going okay. My area is understaffed to say the least. My area is supposed to have 6 people but is currently running with only 4 including me. There are no plans to add any staff and all hiring has been frozen until further notice. One positive though is that I have executive management who is honest. He's not standing up in front of our team and telling us something he knows to be a lie like "there's plenty of work to keep us busy" or "No one's gonna go losing their job". He's being very upfront that he doesn't know what will happened but isn't ruling anything out. My direct manager also is very honest when he says that he has no idea either. It's nice to be working for people who value honesty and live their lives by it, not just when it's convenient for them. This week I will be starting my new 10-7 shift and tomorrow Toni will be taking Caitlin to the Pediatrician for a checkup. I'll try to post more tomorrow to let you know how it goes.