Since We've Been Home

We got home on Saturday, New Years Day and have been enjoying having Miles here with us.  We can't believe he's already one week old and we already can't imagine our life with out him.

Miles is a very sweet and calm baby.  He maybe has cried a total of 10 minutes throughout an entire day period and is generally easy to soothe.  He's still sleeping NON stop and wakes up about every 3-4 hours to eat.  Our first 3 nights with him were a different story.  Around 11pm when it was time to go to sleep, he would wake up, and fire off and cry on and off for 3 or more hours.  Brooks and I weren't getting a lot of sleep, but that was expected with a newborn.  However, since Tuesday night, he has been sleeping beautifully, and only wakes up every 4-5 hours to eat.  Brooks decided in the middle of the night as Miles was crying after being nursed, getting a diaper change, and being swaddled that it was already time to let him start crying himself to sleep.  I wasn't ready to do this yet, but Brooks encouraged me to stay in bed, and within 6-8 minutes, Miles was fast asleep.

 Here is where Miles camped out on his first evening home.  We took this same picture with Gavin the day we brought him home from the hospital, too.  

Miles:

Gavin:

Gavin is loving his little brother and is always eager to check on him and make sure he's okay.  HIs reaction and response to Miles being apart of our family has been an answer to prayer!  

We went on a family outing Wednesday to our park with Gavin to give him some time with Mommy and Daddy out of the house.  It was a fun, fun day!!  He pushed Miles in the stroller all the way to the other side of our compound and was very proud of himself.  We realized that Miles has found his thumb and enjoys sucking on it-- something we DON'T want him to do, but may not be able to do anything about it. Brooks and Gavin rolled around the little hills, went up and down the slides, and ran around like crazy.  Something Gavin has learned, thanks to my dad, and their numerous outings to the park-- is to pee in the bushes.  Gavin has done it so much, that now, he doesn't even tell us he needs to go potty, he just walks to the bushes, stands there, and turns around and looks back at us and waits for help.  He's a boy- what can we say?  

Hello!!! 

Brooks has been home for the week with us, which has been WONDERFUL.  He goes back to work tomorrow and I'm really sad that we won't have him around.  Gavin has attached himself to Brooks and wants to do EVERYTHING his daddy is doing.  Brooks had to bring home his work with him so Gavin set up his own work station using his tool chest and computer.  He sat and worked next to Brooks all morning one day.  So cute!  

We gave Miles his first sponge bath on Monday and he did pretty well with it.  He cried, which was expected, but was very calm and relaxed afterwards.  His umbilical cord hadn't fallen off yet and his circumcision is still healing and we can't get it wet for another week or so (the circumcision procedure they do here is with a plastic ring) so it looks like we'll be doing sponge baths for a few more days.  Miles umbilical cord actually ended up falling off Monday night-- at 4 days old.  That seemed fast!  

On Monday, we had to take Miles to the doctor for a few tests to be run that didn't get done while he was in the hospital.  One of them was to check his billirubin levels for jaundice.  His numbers were great when we left the hospital on Saturday so we weren't really worried.  We were shocked when the doctor came in with his results and he was 14 points away (on the scale they use here) away from needing the light therapy.  We were stunned and told to come back the next day to repeat the same test.  We went through this with Gavin and instantly knew what to do.  I fed Miles every 2-3 hours for 24 hours and we put him in the sun ALL day Tuesday.  He literally "baked" in a window with no clothes on.  It worked because when we went back to the doctor and did the same test again, his numbers dropped almost 80 points!  Woo hoo!