Happy Father's Day

Today is extra special as we celebrate our first Father's Day and Lucy is doing great.  Her present was a four hour evening nap, which possibly means a long night.

First time father and he looks like a natural!

And one of Grandpa Joe

We are four weeks home and we are slowing starting to settle in.  The first week back to work went very well.  The grandmas were here the first three days to care for Lucy and they did amazing.  It doesn't hurt that they could talk to Lucy for hours and that's her favorite past time....attention!  She is cooing and smiling all the time.  We are also very lucky to have such an amazing extended family.  My father is still recovering from knee surgery so my aunts volunteered to care for Lucy until he is healthy.  We appreciate it more than you know!

We can hardly believe Lucy is four months old, but as I look back through pictures we can see she has changed a lot.  You can see the pacifier is shrinking.

As of now we are progressing well.  Our biggest changes are we have made the switch to breast milk and we are down to bi-weekly appointments.  The change in food has had a big impact on Lucy's acid reflux, which means more smiling and less crying.  At our last appointment we saw the speech and occupational therapists and they have said Lucy is right where she needs to be at 4 months and we are doing a good job working with her.  Our next big obstacle to tackle is the bottle.  The suck/swallow reflex that develops automatically at birth is hard to teach.  We started out with dips on the pacifier so she can get used to the milk.  Then we graduated to using a syringe to drip milk onto the pacifier while she is sucking.  The last step is the bottle.  We have tried a handful of times and she gags/chokes on the milk.  Today however, we got through four milliliters only choking once!  I think we still have awhile, but we'll take the small steps any day.

Today was the first day we tried naps in her crib.  We have been doing naps in her swing in the family room due to convenience (feeding and oxygen cords make it hard to move around).  I would call it a success.  Lucy is really tired when she rubs her eyes and pulls at her oxygen cannula.  When we saw her doing this we took her to the bedroom and worked to get her to sleep.   It takes us at least two tries to get her into her crib as being held is her comfort, but I'm hoping as we work on this change it will eventually only take us one try.  She took three naps, the first two were about an hour and the last one (still ongoing at 8:44 pm) is at 4 hours. Maybe by the next update we'll be on some sort of schedule...