So Thursday morning I said to
Alan, “I have a half-baked idea for you…” and Friday
afternoon we found ourselves driving to Long Island. My grandma
is selling her house and my parents and sister were going to
help her do some packing. I was missing the family and thought
it would be fun to surprise them. Since it was our first
overnight trip, I had no idea how much to pack for Lex – so I
packed just about all of his clothes :) Somedays he wears the
same thing all day, but other days we go through lots of
clothes. It all depends. I figured better safe than sorry (or
doing laundry). The trip down was rainy but smooth. We stopped
a few times to feed Lex. We hit rust hour traffic at one point,
so we stopped at McD’s and had dinner. By the time we were on
the road again the traffic was flowing again.

Saturday my parents got there. We stayed inside as a
surprise. My sister walks in, sees us, smiles and waves “hi”,
then does a total double-take. It was beautiful. Then my mom
walks in, sees us, and yells for about 2 minutes. Heheh… it
was awesome. Then she walks over and takes Lex out of my arms.
After his hugs the rest of us got some hugs too. Its tough to
surprise my mom – which made the whole thing that much more fun
:)

Overall we had a really nice weekend.
We didn’t get much packing done for my grandma, but I think she
was ok with that. Visiting is always more fun than working :)
She was also happy to show her new great-grandbaby off to all
of her friends and neighbors.

The drive
home took just about forever. We ended up stopped on I95 for a
little over an hour due to an accident. Then we stopped to help
a guy jump start his car (there were lots of cars that couldn’t
start after that, probably from people running the AC and radio
without the car on). Spent about 20 minutes helping this guy,
but no luck. He think he had electrical problems ’cause the
battery seemed ok. So we moved on. Our quick dinner break ended
up taking an hour because Lex was sick and tired of his car
seat. He screamed every time we tried to put him back in it. So
we hung out in the parking lot for awhile
feeding/changing/soothing him. Finally back on the road in time
to hit construction in the next city. Overall the drive was a
long one – but well worth it!

Now we’re
home and I promised Lex a few car seat free days. I think he
appreciates that. He slept sooo much yesterday. I think he was
recovering from the weekend. I was hoping it would carry over
into last night, but no such luck. Oh well.

We got Lex’s 1 month
professional pictures back today. Although they took a bunch of
poses, we only got two of them. They were all a lot of fun
though. We tried to get a proof sheet of all of them (in case
anyone else wanted to order some), but they wouldn’t give them
to us. Something about people scanning them in and putting them
online ;) In addition to the free pictures we got with our
coupon, we (by “we”, I mean “I”) ended up buying an additional
pose too. Olan Mills printed all of the poses and it was weird
sending a bunch of them back. I’m sure that a lot of people end
up buying them just because they are there and ready to go. I
thought it was weird that this lady had a bunch of pictures of
our kid and we had to send them back. Probably instead of
“weird” I should be saying “good business”.

Also, upon special request,
we set up an email account for Lex. I’m not gonna post it
online though, so if anyone wants it let me know and I’ll send
it to you. Keep in mind that he can’t read yet though, so
anything that’s sent to him will be read by us :) No top secret
stuff until he’s a little older.

I think Lex thinks he has two mommies – a
daytime mommy with hair and no glasses, and a nighttime mommy
with no hair (all pulled back) and glasses. He always looks a
little confused to see me at night.

Anyway, we had a great 4th of July. We went down to Alan’s
parents house where they had a backyard picnic with all of
their neighbors, many of whom we’ve met before. I posted
pictures (as well as another week of random, around the house
pictures) at photos.datdec.com. Check them
out.

Happy 4th of July to all! We’re starting
the day here with a beautiful sunrise. Hope you all have a fun
day with lots of grillin’ and fireworks, or however you choose
to spend your day. We’ll be spending it with a block party down
at the in-laws. Should be a good time.

We went to the drive-in last night and saw
Star Wars and Mr & Mrs Smith. It was a lot of fun. Lex was
very well behaved – if you can use the word “behaved” for a 5wk
old baby. He slept almost the whole time, waking only for food
and a diaper change. I have to confess that I slept through
parts of both movies as well (hey, I’d been up since 6am!). It
ended up being a late night. We got home at 2:30am, nursed
again, and got to bed around 3:30am. Then up again at 6am for
the hungry baby. And on that note, he just fell asleep so I’m
going back to bed.

Lots of developmental changes
this week. Lex is starting to find his hands and feet lately.
He’s becoming a master at punching his little hands and kicking
his little feet. On the playmat he is able to bat at some of
the toys – though I’m not sure he really knows what he’s doing.
It’s cute to watch anyway :) He is also able to get his fist in
his mouth now (not the whole thing, but some of it) and he even
got a finger in there once, though I haven’t seen that again.
And he’s grabbing at stuff! Mainly my shirt, my hair, the burp
cloth on my shoulder, etc. When I put him up to burp he ends up
holding on to the burp cloth and/or my shirt and taking it with
him.

He also is smiling a lot
these days. Sometimes it seems very social (I smile at him, he
smiles back) and other times I think it’s still reflexive (big
smile followed by big burp, for example). Either way though,
it’s adorable!

He’s quite a strong baby
too. He pushes himself up with his legs and stands there for
almost a mintue (with a little help from us on the balancing
part). He’s getting more control over his head as well, though
he still has a ways to go with that.

Today we went out for a dessert run (after lunch!! gotta
kick this dessert habit!) and we sat on the beach by the lake
to eat. It was a beautiful day and Lex finally got a dose of
sunshine after the muggy, overcast, stormy week we’ve had.

On a down note, I fear we may be facing
a colic baby :( The past few days he has cried for several
hours, almost unconsolably, every evening. Tonight it was
almost exactly 5-9pm – what they call a “PM fusser”. It was
awful. We have this soothing CD (sort of melodic womb sounds)
that calms him down when we play it *really* loud, but as soon
as we turn the volume down he’s screaming again. Alan and I
broke out the ear plugs :) When we finally got him to sleep at
9pm we hit the sack as well – talk about an exhausted family.
However, right now he’s lying in my lap calm, peaceful, and
smiling away. That makes it all worth it!

PS – Happy July!

I posted the week 4
photos online. Nothing too exciting, just lots of
sleeping and hanging out pictures. I also posted a picture from
my 41 week ultrasound. I realize this
is an old photo by now, but I wanted to put it up anyway. It’s
actually a neat ultrasound picture for two reasons – because
you can clearly see a face, and second because Lex was born the
next day. It’s almost like a newborn picture, but not quite. I
thought it was pretty cool.

Went to the doctor today for a check up.
Lex is now 10lbs and 8oz. He also has a bit of a diaper rash
that we’ve been trying to treat with Desitin. The doctor said
to try vaseline or something. We had A&D; at home and it
seems to be getting better already. Otherwise Lex is a very
happy, healthy boy.

This afternoon a woman from our child birth
class came to visit with her new baby. She is moving to Boston
so it was nice to get to visit before she left. Her son,
Desmond, was born on two weeks after Lex. It’s amazing to see
how much a baby changes in two weeks. We had a nice visit and
got to talk about our labor and delivery experiences,
parenting, baby stuff, etc. It was fun.

We took Lex to Olan Mills today for a
professional photo shoot. Today is his one month birthday and
we had a coupon for a bunch of free photos, so we figured – why
not? It turned out to be a good time and Lex did a great job.
We went through two outfits (one from my Grandma and one from
Alan’s mom) and we took some pictures with his superman blanket
and some with a blanket my Grandma made for him. We go back on
July 9th to see the proofs and pick the pose we want for our
free pictures. I told Lex that if he enjoyed his modeling
experience he could talk to Lauren’s boy and get some advise :)
Lauren, I’ll keep you posted! Afterwards we bought a little ice
cream cake to celebrate (well, actually Alan and I just wanted
some chocolaty desert so the whole one month thing seemed like
a good excuse ;) ).

So yesterday was a very busy day, but much
better than Thursday. We started off at the office repo-ing a
Subaru that Alan had co-signed for and the company apparently
stopped paying for (long story). We then headed to Manchester Subaru to see what we
could do, as we were very shortly going to be faced with owning
two Subaru’s and having two car payments – not what we needed!
The guys at Manchester Subaru are fantastic (if you’re looking
for a car definitely talk to them!) and basically swapped the
two cars for a new one. So we traded in two silver Subaru
Forresters for a new silver Subaru Forrester :) Since we only
had one on us we had to drive back home to pick up the other
one and then back to Manchester. Lots of driving, but well
worth it.

Alan’s mom met us at the
dealership and played with Lex while we took care of the
paperwork and all. Then, since we had to come back to
Manchester with the second car, we met his parents at The Olive
Garden (yummy!!!) for dinner. It was great.

I was worried about Lex and the heat and the driving, but
he pretty much slept the entire time. I then started worrying
that he would be awake for three days! So far we’re doing ok.
He slept some during the night and he’s napping now. Such a
good baby.

It’s amazing how many random
people come up and talk to you when you have a baby. We got so
many compliments from people at the dealership and the
restaurant. One customer at the restaurant even came over from
his table to tell us that Lex is an adorable and well behaved
baby (Lex slept through dinner). He then told us that his
daugher (or son, I forget) is having twins. Babies make for
great conversation starters.

As a
development milestone, Lex woke up right at the end of dinner
and started sucking on his finger. Until yesterday he hadn’t
been able to coordinate getting a finger into his mouth. He was
really good at sucking on his arm, his hand, my shoulder, my
shirt, etc… but hadn’t been able to figure out the single
finger in the mouth thing. He seemed to enjoy his finger for
about two minutes, then he decided that he wanted breast
instead :) Smart baby.

This morning he
also had another first (at least first that I’ve seen). I had
him lying on the playmat that Mike sent us (thanks Mike!!!) and
he started batting at one of the hanging toys. In the past he
has hit them, but it seemed entirely accidental. This morning
he was looking at the toy and consistently hit it when he put
his arm up. I got some of it on video so I’ll have to figure
out how to get those videos online.

Anyway, I think I’ve written enough of this book for now.
In summary – new car (just like the old ones), Manchester
Subaru is great, everyone loves Lex, and he’s starting to get
coordinate. Overall a very good day. Today is supposed to be
record breaking temps (over 100) so we’ll spend the day in our
air conditioned apartment. More news leter.