He slept!!!

Last night was the best we've had in 11 months, no exaggeration. Sam went to bed at 7:30pm, woke up briefly at 9pm, nursed at 11pm, then SLEPT UNTIL 5AM!!! He was restless after nursing, so he slept in our bed until we got up at 7am. I don't expect this to happen again any time soon as Sam has a minor cold and sometimes sleeps better when slightly sick (not sick enough to keep him awake, just sick enough to be really tired) ... but one can always hope, right?

OOPS! I missed a post

I thought I'd already posted this, but apparently not. Saturday night was the beginning of Passover and Papa G (Donald) and Uncle Ben were here to help us celebrate. As you'll notice from the photos, we didn't wait for sun down to begin, as I was afraid of a melt-down on Sam's part. As it was, he was a champ ... made it almost 45 minutes before requesting to get down from his chair and run around the kitchen. And he LOVED the singing (surprise, surprise). Here are a couple cute photos.

My little athlete

Sam got his first real sneakers today, and they are TOO cute! He happened to be wearing a tee shirt and sweat pants today, so he looked quite the little athlete.

A good doctor's appointment

Sam, Donald (Papa G), and I drove up to Waltham for a follow-up appointment with Terri, the nurse practitioner in the Pedriatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition unit at MGH West. I'm really starting to like Terri. Both times that we've seen her (this time, and part of our visit ~5 weeks ago) she's struck me as competent and really down-to-earth. She questions the milk allergy hypothesis and has come up with a plan for us to systematically test IF Sam is milk-sensitive, and if so, HOW sensitive (i.e. Can I drink milk while nursing him and just avoid giving him dairy directly? Or do we really have to be on the complete elimination diet we've been doing recently?). Basically, we're reintroducing dairy gradually to me, then Sam, while testing Sam's poop for traces of blood (a sign of colon inflammation due to allergy) using dip-sticks she sent home with me. She also has a theory to explain a recent flare-up in Sam's reflux that has had Jed and myself banging our heads against the wall ... he's teething (no #%^& Sherlocke) and the drool he's swallowing exacerbates the reflux. So she's up'd his Prilosec dose slightly. Finally, Terri thinks that if we can survive Sam's molars coming in that then we'll be ready to deal with the behavioral aspects of Sam's nightly wake-up routine. She clearly weighed in with her opinion on how much of the problem is behavioral, as opposed to physiological, and how we might consider dealing with it while being very supportive of my feelings about letting Sam cry and respectful of our right to decide how to be parents. It was a really refreshing conversation with a medical professional. Overall, a really worthwhile trip to Waltham.
Then, to top it off, we arrived home with three hours to enjoy the ~70F sunshine before dinner time. We played in the back yard and went for a nice long walk on the cranberry bogs. There are new photos on Picasa of Sam helping his grandfather water some very thirsty plants and seeds in our back yard ... very cute :)

A departure and a haircut

There is now a lock of hair in Sam's baby book. I FINALLY trimmed the back of his hair. I didn't get to do the complete haircut because, pathetically, it appears that we don't own a comb. How can two grown adults not own a single comb? Anyway, the real deal will happen tomorrow or this weekend (once I've bought a comb). But the worst is taken care of. My son no longer has a mullet or a rat-tail.
This mini-event marks a major transition in our household. Grandma and granddad (a.k.a. Heather's parents Judy and Mark) left today to visit other family members before heading back to Australia to continue their world cruising adventures :( We drove up to Boston today to see them off at the airport (and help them with their 200 lbs of luggage). Grandma couldn't stand to see Sam's beautiful strawberry blond curls clipped, even a tiny bit, so we waited until she was gone to start the cutting :) Jokes aside, though, grandma and granddad will be sorely missed by all in our little household. It's back to the realities of cooking and cleaning, and life without babysitters who are also two of Sam's favorite playmates. The past four and a half months have been truly amazing. Bon voyage, Grandma and Grandad!

Nature child

I really wish I had photos to back me up on this, but you're just going to have to take my word for it. Sam is a total nature child ... a flower-picking, dirt-eating, tree-hugging nature child. And I mean all of those things quite literally. In the past two weeks, Sam has decided that being inside is the worst kind of torture. He would prefer to be outside, even when it's 40F and raining. Luckily (for me, mostly), the weather has been getting nicer recently. A few days ago, the temperature approached 70F ... Sam and I spent two full hours (maybe more) exploring our yard. While I dead-headed as-yet unidentified bushes, he picked and systematically destroyed a good number of daffodils and grape hyacinths (really loved those). While I planted bulbs, he gloried in using a big kitchen spoon to dig in pots of dirt ... and then eat spoons full of the stuff. When I took away the spoon, he simply grabbed fists full of dirt and ate that! So I called a quit to gardening and we went for a walk. Sam got distracted by a pine tree. After fingering the bark and pulling on some branches, he laid his cheek against the trunk and gave the tree one of his nicest hugs, back patting included. He then noticed we had a yard full of these wonderful creatures and proceeded to hug two more pine trees. My son, the tree hugger!