Alex has been busy over the last month.  He’s getting really good at "cruising" around the furniture, and he even figured out how to crawl.  Mostly, he crawls Army-style, but if he sees something across the room that he really wants, he’ll pick up his belly and crawl on his hands & knees.

Alex inherited a rocking chair from his cousin Annie.  It’s a good place to sleep or watch his favorite TV shows, like Lingo on the Game Show Network.

 

We celebrated Alex’s cousin Olivia’s 4th birthday (her first birthday in the US) last month. 

   

He gets confused sometimes by Daddy’s brothers.  They look like Daddy, but they aren’t him!  This is Uncle Andy.

Since he’s getting bigger and now has 6 teeth, Mommy thought Alex might be ready for some more grown-up food, but here’s what happened when she tried to feed him beef stew…

A couple of days ago Alex got into the dirty laundry and decided he wanted to try on Mommy’s uniform.

He really wanted to be like Mommy, so he even tried it with a bra!

Here he is today, on his 10-month birthday.

See you all again soon!

Here we are before:

During:

And after our little outing:

Mommy must have looked funny carrying Alex down the middle of the street in blustery snow, because one lady peeked her head out of her door to ask if we were ok!  We were fine, Mommy’s just a little crazy!

P.S. How about those Indianapolis Colts?  

Daddy let him ride forward-facing in the Bjorn.  Now Alex can see where he’s going!

Daddy put together the exersaucer, so Alex has a whole new way to play!

And Mommy and Daddy started giving him some rice cereal-his first non-milk/formula food.  He’s not too sure about the cereal itself, but I think he likes the spoon!

Alex continues to increase his ability to move around the floor by rolling, but doesn’t seem to realize that he needs to get his belly off the floor in order to crawl!

 

 We all got to spend a whole week hanging out together, but then Mommy had to start work at NIOSH (the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) on Monday and Daddy started working (his same job as in Michigan, only from home now) today.  Alex gets to play with Grandma Mary during the day…

…and hang out with Mommy & Daddy and watch his favorite team on TV in the evenings.

Alex almost didn’t recognize Mommy today when she came home from work in her new Public Health Service uniform!

Can you believe that Alex will be 3 months old tomorrow?  We can’t!

First, Mommy found out that she had to work at the Michigan Department of Community Health in Lansing for the month of June (instead of working from home like she thought she could).  So, starting Monday June 5, Mommy, Alex, and Mommy’s mommy (Grandmother Susie) moved into a hotel in Lansing for a week so Mommy wouldn’t have to commute.  That was convenient, but we missed Daddy!  So, we moved back home to Ann Arbor and Mommy found carpools to commute with for the rest of the month.  Grandma & Grandpa Luckhaupt came and stayed with Alex for weeks 2 & 3, then Grandmother Susie returned for week 4 to watch Alex and supervise the moving guys.  Thank goodness for Alex’s wonderful grandparents or Mommy never could have made it back to Lansing for 4 weeks and she might not have completed her preventive medicine residency!

Then last week (Mommy’s 4th week in Lansing), things got even more hectic for Alex!  Daddy went to Cincinnati to close on our new house (which Mommy & Alex had only seen in pictures) on Wednesday, and the movers came to pack up our condo in Ann Arbor on Thursday.  On Friday, the movers took all our stuff away, and Mommy, Grandmother, & Alex followed them to Cincinnati after Mommy got off work.  After spending the night in a hotel with Daddy, Mommy and Alex finally got to see our new house on Saturday.  I think Daddy was relieved that we liked it!

Unfortunately, we barely had time to unpack a few things before we had to go to bed to rest up for our big car ride on Sunday.  We had to drive all the way to Atlanta for Mommy’s training for her new job as an EIS (Epidemiology Intelligence Service) officer with the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).  Although her position is at NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health) in Cincinnati, she still has to go through training in Atlanta for 4 weeks.

So now we’re moved into another hotel.  (At least it’s a Residence Inn)  Daddy & Alex get to hang out and bond while Mommy goes to training for these 4 weeks.  Then we finally get to really move into our house and get settled in Cincinnati at the beginning of August. 

This has been a lot for a little guy who will just be 8 weeks old tomorrow to handle!  But Mommy & Daddy think he’s really being a trooper!

      
(This outfit was a gift from Aunt Jill before he was born.)

On Saturday, Aunt Jill (Mommy’s sister) and Uncle Dennis arrived to meet their new nephew.  They quickly fell in love!  Mommy & Daddy wanted to show their guests the town of Ann Arbor too though, so Alex had his first (non-family) babysitter on Saturday night.  Friday night when Benny (from church) offered to babysit sometime I bet she didn’t expect us to take her up on it so soon!  Alex got to join the grown-ups for brunch on Sunday and a walk around the U of M campus.

By the end of the weekend, Alex was pooped!

After the epidural was placed, Mommy started feeling really funny, and it was discovered that her blood pressure was about 70/30.  That’s a scary feeling!  She was given drugs and fluids to raise it back up.  Apparently, this is not an uncommon occurrence when epidurals are placed, but it was annoying 3 days later when the 2 bags of fluid that were pushed through the IV showed up in Mommy’s legs & feet!

Mommy was feeling pretty good most of Tuesday afternoon after the epidural stabilized, and so we waited some more.

At dinnertime, Mommy was really hungry, but she was restricted to a clear liquid diet, so she ordered a "feast" of vegetable broth, jello, juice, and lemon ice.  Unfortunately, it all came back up even faster than it went down!  But the nurses and doctors said this was a good sign that labor was progressing.

As the contractions started to get stronger, the epidural medicine had to be slowed down so Mommy would be able to push.  That made quite a difference in Mommy’s comfort level!  Finally, about 10:00 pm Mommy announced that she was feeling the urge to push.  So she started pushing…

…and pushing…

…and pushing…

…And when she thought she couldn’t possibly push again, she heard the doctor mention the possibility of a C-section, so she pushed some more!

And finally, at 12:44 am on Wednesday, May 10, Alex arrived!

As you might be able to tell from the pictures, Mommy felt very good and relaxed once she saw her precious baby.  But soon things got difficult again.  Alex was breathing fast right after the breath, so the first breastfeeding attempt had to be postponed.  Then when it was time to try, Alex wasn’t interested, and Mommy almost reached her wit’s end trying to get him to eat before he was 12 hours old (because it’s a rule that baby’s have to eat in the first 12 hours).  She finally had to give in and pump the colostrum out to feed him from a bottle.

Since feeding got off to a slow start, we stayed at the hospital until Friday morning, and by then we were ready to leave and get on with Alex’s first week at home.  Stay tuned for pictures from that first week!

Here we are posing at church on Easter Sunday, waiting for our egg to hatch!  Either I’m getting even bigger, or this angle just makes me look bigger.  We saw the nurse practitioner at the OB’s office today, and she said everything looks good.  It’s just a waiting game now…

I’m getting nervous, but my mom says that if labor and delivery were sooo bad, there wouldn’t be so many little brothers and sisters!

We’re looking forward to a visit from Grandma Mary & Grandpa Joe this weekend, as well as a co-ed baby shower at church.  It should be a fun weekend!

Stay tuned for more pictures!