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(That is a little self-inflicted scratch below his eye, btw)

Maddox just turned 4 weeks old on Monday, and today he is officially 1 month old. Its confusing how 4 weeks doesn’t actually equal 1 month. I guess you have to wait until the birthdate on each month to consider it another month of age. I think. 

I had a nice blog entry all written for his 4 week birthday, and somehow I deleted it. I blame the super sensitive track pad on my new MSI Wind Netbook. Anyway… I’ll try to summarize.

Maddox’s 4 week birthday was brought to us by the words Gas and Cranky. Pretty much the entire day was spent working on, and crying over burps and toots. It was a difficult day for all of us. Poor Maddox, all he could do was squirm and cry and try to scratch his face off. And all we could do was burp him, change him, feed him, and generally try to soothe him.

That night and every day and night since, has been trouble free - thank goodness. It really sucks when my baby hurts and there isn’t anything I can do about it. I know this isn’t a new sentiment, but I get it now.

We are still here. Maddox has been going through a growth spurt, which means he’s been feeding constantly. Good for him, no sleep for us.

One more week and I’ll be on my own with the baby. I’m a little nervous, but I know I can do it. My biggest worry is being out in public and him needing to eat. I still haven’t totally worked out nursing in public yet. Though I did it today successfully at the Halloween store. We were picking out a costume for the annual NDN Halloween party, and Maddox decided it was time to eat - so that’s what we did, right there on the isle between the devil costumes and plastic cauldrons. It was nice having Dallas there to help me arrange the blanket just so, and to help with the cart of stuff and car seat. Eventually I’ll get it down. Luckily I’ve already mastered nursing while standing, which is a big help.

Today while the baby was eating, instead of sucking, he decided to take a deep breath in and…BLOW! It sent my boob a vibrating and splatered both our faces and my chest with milk! Pretty funny.

Maddox is a good sport when taking a sponge bath. I guess the key is doing it while he is in a good relaxed mood. He just coos and makes cute little faces while I use a washcloth and get him all clean. Even though his stump fell of quite a while ago, the base of it (way down in his belly button) was still a little moist and not fully healed. So we have been waiting to do the full on tub bath. I’m sure that will be a whole other experience!

Naked babies are just so cute!

I just realized the other day that Maddox now fits into his second tier outfits. Its crazy how fast he is growing. Already he has outgrown the onesies he was wearing the first week. We love the outfits we purchased from ittikid, including this cute monkey onesie! We also have a race car onesie, and Dachshund jammies.

Things we learned at Maddox’s two week check-up…
(October 1)

- Length - 22 in, 95th percentile
   Weight - 9 lbs (4085 gr), 75th percentile

- He needs 10 minutes or so of direct sun exposure daily.

- He is a healthy eater and the Doc agrees he has a vicious suction grip (she remembers this clearly, back from when he was in the hospital and she put her finger in his mouth)

- Even though his umbilical stump fell off it is still wet deep in there which causes it to bleed a little so we need to put a drop of alcohol in it once a day for 3 days.

- We should expect a whole lot of crying for apparantly no reason from 4 wks to 6 wks (like one or more hours a day).

- He is a healthy baby and I’m doing a good job feeding him.

A while back I blogged about a new restaurant that is opening in the Cow Hollow district of San Francisco. We were lucky enough to be invited to attend a tasting dinner and a couple days later, a BBQ that featured most of the menu items in hors d’oeuvres sizes. The menu features things like crab cakes with house made potato chips, cioppino, clam chowder, shoestring potatoes, steamers, grilled mussels on rosemary skewers with chorizo, and bbq oysters.

Unlike most restaurants, and even bars in the city, they are open in that afternoon lull. Perfect for when you want a tasty snack and a beer but are in between meals. Go check it out if you are in the area! I highly recommend it.

Just after a feeding session. He still has a little crusty milk on his face.

Alright, here it is people, the nitty gritty, blow by blow of the hours leading up to the birth of our beautiful baby boy. Proceed with caution - there may be more information than you want. 

Saturday:
40 weeks & 3 days pregnant

I really needed to get out of the house, so when we were invited to hang out at the beach while our friends surfed, I jumped all over it. We packed up a quick lunch, took the dog and spread a blanket on the sand. It was so relaxing and I’m glad we did it. It was there that via my Facebook iPhone app. I found out our friends John & Angel had their baby that morning. I was initially pretty jealous because that was her due date and I had already gone well past mine. It wasn’t fair. I was ready to no longer be pregnant, and most of all I was ready to meet my baby.

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