Bracing for Impact

Batten down the hatches it's been quite the action-packed week here and it seems there's more to come as Irene swirls her way up to New England. It's so crazy to think that we're "bracing" ourselves for a hurricane when six months ago I was writing about the potential feet of snow about to pummel the area. Here's the latest forecast as of this post:

www.weather.com 

As I mentioned there was a LOT that happened this week so be warned this is going to be a long entry - maybe grab a full cup of coffee and settle in ;) Let me take you all back to Monday and Easton's 4-month check up. In my previous post I mentioned how Easton didn't look like he had grown too much and as they say "the pictures don't lie".

Here were Little Homie's stats from his 2-month appt:
Ht: 61cm (71st percentile)
Wt: 5.4kg (33%)
Head: 40.5cm (56%)

Now here are his stats from his 4-month appt:
Ht: 64cm (47%)
Wt: 6.1kg (12%)
Head: 42.5cm (45%)

Oh our little peanut!! His low weight combined with a significant change in his #2's drew a bit of concern from our pediatrician so she suggested we add another bottle and two servings of rice cereal to his daily intake and come back for another weight check in two weeks. The second bit of advice she provided was that we should stop swaddling him so he could continue developing his motor skills while moving during sleep. CRAP! Goodbye 7pm-5am mega sleep sessions hello waking up in the middle in the night because he's punched himself in the face. I suppose it does make sense though because he's on the verge of rolling over from his back to front. So needless to say numerous people have asked me "you feeling alright?" this week...I act offended like bloodshot eyes and dark circles are flattering on me.

Tuesday morning finally rolled around and as I was getting E ready for the day I noticed some blood in his diaper so back to the clinic we went. At this point Dr. Eckard made the decision that we should switch his formula from the Gerber Good Start to one of the hypoallergenic formulas on the market (we went with Similac Alimentum). Major bummer because this mess is EXPENSIVE!!! Ugh....but absolutely worth it because it has really helped his reflux and the women at the CDC have commented on how much more content he is after his bottles. Hopefully we'll be able to re-introduce cow's milk in a few months.

Rockin' their Loudmouth gear

Also, on Tuesday the East Coast experienced a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that was felt from Georgia to Canada. I didn't feel it here and neither did Jace because he was on an airplane heading home from his Myrtle Beach golf trip. Though we didn't feel the physical effects of the quake Jace's flight that was scheduled to land in Newark was diverted to Allentown, PA and delayed his homecoming for about 6 hours. I'm glad no one was injured but sad to hear the impact to some of our national monuments in DC...hope those get fixed soon! As for the outcome of the 10th Grudge Cup, well, let's just say neither Jace or Brian had to pay extra bag fees to check the hardware. Better luck next year, fellas!

The middle of our week was rather uneventful except for the kick off of Jace's hyper-obsession with fantasy football drafts. His first one was Thursday evening and I'm pretty sure he has only about 50 more to do before the NFL season starts in two short weeks. I'm seriously considering getting him and his buddy Joey Locallo one of those Nextel DirectConnect walkie-talkie like phones...I'm in awe of how frequently two grown men can talk about the strategy behind choosing player for their fake team!

I was pretty excited once Friday rolled around because I finally convinced Jace to go on a tour of Hanscom's base housing with me. I'm about at my wits-end with the afternoon commute, going up and down our elevator to take Rae out and paying out of pocket to live off base. We've decided to at least put our names on the wait list for field grade housing and see what they offer before taking the next step. We definitely have to consider the financial impact of having to fill a 2,100 sq ft., 3-bedroom house with stuff but the convenience of a two minute drive to work is worth something in my book... More to come on this one but would be really interested to hear about anyone's experience living on base, good or bad!

So that brings us to today to await the arrival of our friend, Irene. We went to the grocery store today so we wouldn't have to deal with the rain tomorrow and it was interesting to see the store clerks replenishing the near-empty shelves of bottled water (of which we purchased a case...just in case). We had planned on going to see Kenny Chesney today at Gillette Stadium but decided against it because a. we're exhausted, and b. the idea of hanging out in the pouring rain just didn't appeal to us. So we're just relaxing at the house today and it's been wonderful. Enjoy your weekend everyone...I'll leave you with some recent photos :)

Grandma came to visit while Jace was golfing and taught
me how to hold my bottle!

So that's what it looks like out there

Again with that camera... 

Happy boy :)

Liked to suck on this but wasn't sure how he felt about
it not being formula