Visiting Grandma and Grandpa Galicic

Andrew is the first grandchild on my side of the family, and the second one on Micah's side. My parents love being grandparents. My mom would always ask me when we were finally going to have kids. I always gave her the same answer--after we had been married for five years. And we were able to keep to our wishes. But my mom has been waiting to be a grandma and now she finally is. It is fun watching my parents with Andy. They love to hold, cuddle, and talk to him. I'm sure they are going to love spoiling him someday soon.
The second week we were home from the hospital my mom had the week off and was able to stay with me and Andy during the day. It was wonderful to have her help; and she made dinner every night for us. During the week we took Andy for a walk, gave him a bath, and packed boxes for moving. And since that week, Andy and I go over to Grandma's every Thursday after we go to Bible study. We spend the day with my mom, and it is nice because she gets to spend time with Andy and I get a nap.

Moving On Up

At our dr. appointment we found out Andy is now over 8 lbs. This means he can now move out of newborn diapers and into size 1, which is nice since size 1 are cheaper.
And 8 lbs. is the "magic" weight when he now fits into the cloth diapers we have for him. So we will switch over to doing cloth after we move. We wanted to do disposable diapers for a little while until we felt comfortable with the whole diaper changing thing. And it actually isn't as bad as we thought it would be. The only hard part about it has been when he has a blow out and gets his diaper and clothes all messy. And in the first week or two we were still learning when to change his diaper. There were a few times when we changed it a little too soon and either had to change his diaper again 5 minutes after the first change, or even worse was when he would be going while we were in the middle of changing him. But now we have a good handle on diaper changing and feel ready to go to cloth. The only thing holding us back is that we want to wait until we are settled into our new house. Speaking of which, we now have a moving day--it is this Friday, August 1st. We are so excited. We have been waiting to move for a little over a month. And we have been packing for many months. I can't wait to get moved in and unpacked. Then I will feel ready to switch to cloth.

One Month Check-up

Last Thursday we took Andrew in for his one month doctor visit. We found out he now weighs 8 lbs. 11 and one half oz. and is 20 inches long. (He was 7 lbs. 1 oz. and 17 and one half inches long at birth.) We were excited to find out he had gained almost two pounds since leaving the hospital.

Fun with Andy

We are having so much fun being parents. It is fun to take Andy on walks, take naps, sit with him on the couch, and do other fun things with him.

He already likes being read to. Sometimes I just sit with him and read whatever I'm reading out loud to him. He quiets down and loves to listen. I hope he loves books as much as I do.
We are excited for when he gets old enough to interact with us more and respond to what we are doing. He is starting to seem more aware of what is going on around him. He can now track our faces when we look at him and then move from side to side. It is fun seeing him grow and learn new things.

Productive Day

I finally feel like I was able to get some things done. It is amazing how little I have been doing lately. It seems like all I do is feed Andy, hold Andy, change his diaper, put Andy to sleep and play with Andy. Don't get me wrong, I love doing all those things, but we are going to be moving in two weeks and I feel like I should be getting more done. Today was my first day all alone with Andy. I have been lucky enough to have Micah at home for two weeks and my mom helped out for one week, so this is the first week with no one else around.
Andy has been getting on a schedule and has started sleeping on his own, which means I now have time to do some of the things I have been wanting to do while he naps. This is a list of what I got done today: packed two boxes, wrote some thank you notes, watered the plants, read a couple chapters of a book, did my devotions, checked my email and wrote some blog posts. That may not sound like much, but it is by far the most I have been able to get done lately. It sure felt good to be able to be productive.

3 Weeks Old

Last Thursday Andy turned 3 weeks old. We decided it was time for him to learn to fall asleep on his own, we also thought it was time to try out the pacifier. Andy did not like sleeping alone, and always wanted to be held or sleeping on someone. It started the first night after he was born. Any time I tried to put him in the little bassinet he would whimper and then kind of cry, which meant I couldn't sleep. This continued to happen when we got home and we would try to have him sleep in his pack and play. So I kept giving in and had him sleep with us. However, it is kind of hard to sleep with a newborn baby right next to you. For one thing they make a lot of noise. So, when he turned 3 weeks we figured it was time for him to sleep in his pack and play, we needed to get some good sleep. And the first night went great. I think this was helped by us also starting to give him a pacifier to help him go to sleep. He loves to suck! At first he didn't know what to do with the pacifier, but I just kept sticking it his mouth and he finally caught on. And he was able to fall asleep in about 10 minutes and slept the whole night in his pack and play (other than the times I fed him). And now he has been sleeping in it every night since then. Whoo hoo! Now we just need to get him to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. :)

Two Weeks Old

One of our friends from our small group is a photographer and loves taking pictures. She took some of us when we were still pregnant, and now she has taken some of Andrew when he was 2 weeks old. It is fun to look at the pictures of him and see how he is growing little by little.
It is also fun to see him develop new skills. He makes the most hilarious faces. He can already smile, raise one eyebrow, make a Popeye face and many other funny faces. He gets these skills from his daddy. Micah loves making funny faces at him, it is cute to watch them together. Another skill is that he can already lift his head pretty well. When we put him on his tummy on the floor he can raise his head and hold it up. Sometimes he even turns it to the other side. This amazed us. We did not know babies could do that so soon.

A Week of Firsts

Tomorrow Andrew will be three weeks old. Hard to believe. Time is already starting to go by so fast. His first week he had a lot of firsts. We went on our first walk around the neighborhood and used our Moby wrap. He loves it. He falls asleep almost the instant we put him in it, which is great since he does not always like to go to sleep. Another first was giving him a sponge bath. He wasn't too thrilled with getting it. But since then we have given him a couple real baths and he loves it. He likes the feeling of floating we think. We also took him to his first doctor's appointment. He is doing great, and even has gained some weight. We go in again next week for his one month check up, so we will find out if he is still gaining. We think he is. He already looks bigger to us.