bye bye 2006

We are happy to announce that our internet is working like a champ once again. Thank you to the nice road runner man who spent two hours fixing the "workmanship" of multiple past road runner men and to our personal tech support agent (aka Sol) for speding an hour and a half fixing our router. We can now blog with ease - hooray!

Since we've been out of the technological loop for a little while, here's a brief update on our last couple of weeks, and a plethora of misc recent pictures. Neva's family came to visit before Christmas. We had an early holiday celebration and spent most of their visit airing out Nate's bum. Then Thad's family came for Christmas weekend. We too had a lovely holiday celebration and spent much of our time airing out Nate's bum. Then our friends Anna and Jarrod and their dog Zero came to visit and we (surprise!) aired out Nate's bum.

Our pediatrician dubbed Nate's rash the "most persistant rash [he's] ever seen" and sent us to a dermatologist, who promptly diagnosed it as exactly the same thing as the pediatrician had been treating. She changed our diaper routine by switching us to similar versions of the same medicines we were using already and reassuring us that it would work this time. We are going back to see her Tuesday, when we hope she realizes that, shockingly, not much has changed with her "new" system. However, we do have reasonable hope that she will be able to help us fix up the little guy sometime in 2007. (BTW - Aunt Diane, you were right, the original Desitin is SO much thicker than creamy!)

A couple of nights ago we had one of our worst nights' sleep so far. Our biggest sleeping challenge is Nate. We were sleeping just fine a mere seven weeks ago. Alas, now a good night means six or more hours within a 12 hour period. Seriously, our biggest challenge is that Nate doesn't seem the least bit sleepy from around 9pm through 4am. He's not really that cranky, and we do just fine calming him down, but he just looks around and wants to interact with us. If we put him down, though, he is not such a happy camper. If anyone out there has any suggestions for helping a 7 week old sleep, feel free to share! We are hoping to celebrate the arrival of the new year by sleeping through it. Keep your finger crossed!

Congrats to Thad's cousing Carolyn who had a baby girl earlier this month. She was larger at birth than Nate is now. Also, congrats to our friend Roni on her engagement. Happy 2007 to everyone!

internet woes

Sorry for the sparcity of postings. We are having internet troubles. It makes us all quite annoyed. Whatever did we do before high speed? I have blocked it out, I think. But never fear, the road runner guy is coming to fix things tomorrow, or at least to waste our afternoon pretending to fix things but not really chaning much of anything. Here's to a speedier connection in 2007!

puppy love

Our friends Anna and Jarrod brought this funny looking monkey toy for their dog to play with while they were visiting. It was love at first sight - our dog Saranac spent the whole day wandering around with the monkey and wouldn't let it go. She wasn't even interested in eating, because that required putting down the monkey. The romance ended quickly, however, when late in the evening ("late" in new parent time is around 7pm) Sara disemboweled her new lover. Here's a pic for posterity.

happy holidays!

Merry Christmas, late Happy Hannukah, and early Happy New Year! We had a nice, relaxing Christmas with Gramma and Grampa Carlson and Aunt Holly. Nate enjoyed a delicious meal of milk, while the rest of us filled up on beef, veggies, and lots of cookies.

It may be a little hard to see, but in this picture Nate is sporting his cool Christmas onesie, which he wore for about 45 minutes before pooping all over it. Ah, life with a six week old! :)














And here's another pic of Nate with his new Teddy.

:)

Nate smiled last night! He had smiled in his sleep before, but he smiled for the first (and second) time while awake. It was very exciting and cool. Since this ellusive smile is difficult to capture on film, we have included a reinactment of the events in this picture:

good vs. evil

Thad is a big fan of yeast. It helps in the creation of some of his favorite things: beer, bread... But sometimes good, white-bread yeasts take the wrong path. And that is just what has happened to us - we have spent the last month battling this awful diaper rash, which was caused by some evil yeast floating around in the air that decided to settled down not in a good Belgian ale but in Nate's behind. But that's only where the trouble began, because that bad yeast invited all his other hoodlem yeast friends along for the party. I can tell you, Santa has these yeasts on his "naughty" list because they have wreaked havock on my poor buddy's behind and resulted in what one friend referred to as "the worst diaper rash ever." So poor Nate is understandably fussy and cranky, which in turn has made poor Nate's parents fussy and cranky. We have been awash in a sea of diaper creams, ointments, and anti-fungal medicines. And the one thing that has seemed to make a difference is airing out his bum - a tricky endeavor because little baby boys have a tendency to squirt out of both ends. However, Thad and I are now pros at this, wrapping Nathaniel in a complex series of towels to keep him out in the open while still catching anything that might, um, come flying out. Anyway, we just switched to a new anti-fungal that we really hope makes an impact. In the meantime, we will be hanging out (Nate more literally than his parents) and hoping that we'll soon be able to celebrate the evil yeast's departure with a nice cold beer containing only those well-behaved yeasts.

liar liar

My sweet baby is intent on making a liar of me. After all my complaining about not being able to put him down, my parents came for a visit. The day they arrived, Nathaniel morphed from a baby who wanted to be held 24-7 and wouldn't sleep unless he was being held or sleeping with us to an amazingly calm and contented child willing to sleep virtually anywhere, including in his cradle (hooray!) I'm sure it was all intentional - you know how manipulative and coniving babies are (haha). In all seriousness, perhaps we've turned a corner. Maybe Nate is now a mature baby content to sleep on his own. Or perhaps he was just showing off for his grandparents and he'll revert back to wanting to be held tomorrow morning when Thad leaves for lab and I'm home alone again with only two hands. I've got my fingers crossed (for the time being - I'm assuming I'll need them back to hold Nate soon!)