Because You Can Never Have Too Many Pictures

I know, I know...we take too many pictures of Levi...what can we say? Just a quick update - he did get to come home last Friday (today marks one week of being at home - we're tired). He's still doing great and we're having a great time as a family. Now...here's those pictures.

Levi - Weeks 3 and 4

Today

Today is a big day.

Today we are getting new carpet installed in both the bedrooms. Yesterday morning Tycen and I emptied out our bedroom into the rest of our house … aka our house just seemed to get a lot smaller with our bedroom furniture spread through out it. Then my sister came over and helped me pull the carpet and then while I played with her children she pulled the padding and removed the carpet strips (Thanks Heather!). This afternoon carpet people are coming to install it – yeah!

Today we plan to see the man in brown – (the UPS guy). He is bringing us our car seat and stroller that we ordered on-line! We expect to see him this afternoon or early evening…I’m praying we see him this morning.

Today we also plan to see the Fed-X guy, who will be bring the kangaroo pouch sling thingy that we ordered on-line.

Today we find out if Levi comes home today. Are we ready? No, not really. Besides the house being in disordered I realized last night, as I was holding my adorable sleeping son, that we haven’t gotten him any sheets for his bed. We only have one package of diapers and a very small package of wipes that we got from the hospital. But, are we excited about the possibility of our son being home as early as today? You bet!

We’ve shared with the nurses about our house project and the status of the car seat and they shared our dilemma with the doctor but he said that the car seat better get here otherwise we might be walking our son home. I will go in this morning and see how Levi did last night and see what the doctor says. If he says he can go home tonight then we have to wait for the car seat to arrive. When we get the car seat we will take it to the hospital and the car seat test will begin. They will see if Levi fits in the car seat properly (which we hope he does – we saw many families go through many different car seats before they were able to find one that would fit their tiny child). Then they will have Levi sit in the car seat for 90 minutes and see if he can handle sitting up for that long of time and remember to breathe and keep his heart rate under control. We are very excited!! And even if he doesn’t come home today, we know that the time is almost here where little Levi will soon be home!

Today is a big day.

A Post About Us, Our House and Getting Out of Debt

In the midst of all the Levi updates, I thought a post true to the original purpose of the blog would be in order. I will attempt to not mention Levi (oops! too late).

Us
Um…Sonja’s not pregnant anymore. We’re tired and busy, but we’ve had a lot of wonderful help from our wonderful friends and family (yes, I said wonderful twice). Tycen is still at Jobster and Sonja is still at the City, although she’s currently on maternity leave. She's been very busy!

Our House
It’s coming along. The baby extra room is getting carpet Friday or Saturday – after spending a half day or so with my Dad trying to install it ourselves, I called a company and they’re going to do the baby extra room and our bedroom for $150 – I figure that’s a pretty good deal – especially since I would have needed to buy $25 in materials and rent a tool for another $20-30. After the carpet, all we have left is some basebord/trim/moulding. The bathroom is getting closer – I’ve got a few more layers of mud to do on the sheetrock and then we’ll be ready to install the surround. After that it’s a quick (heh heh) sink change out and it will be done. Oh, after we replace the vanity and do a little tweaking on our little storage shelf/cabinet. So, I guess there’s a bit more left to do. But I think I see the light at the end. Now if we can just get our neighbor to stop digging up our back yard…

Getting Out of Debt
We put this on hold while we built up a bigger emergency fund in case something went wrong with the pregnancy/birth. At this point the insurance will cover everything and once we’re pretty sure we’re in the clear, we’ll resume our attack on Sallie Mae (student loans). So, we’re still on track. I have to say, it has been very nice going through this "emergency" and not having to worry about finances - we haven't had to worry because of the time and energy we've put in working on our budget, it can run on auto-pilot for a bit while we focus on other things - and we also know there's money in our emergency fund if we need it. Besides that, I think the video below says it all (credit for the video goes to my brother).

Disclaimer

I think we should say this now - if your not interested in Levi, then you might want to take a break from our blog for a couple of months...because it might just be the Levi Update Site for a while.

But, for those that are interested - here are some more photos!

Levi - Week 2

More Than a Bag of Sugar

Just heard from Sonja - Levi is now 5 pounds an 1 ounce! Still doing really good - at his feeding today he slurped down his whole feeding plus some in under 15 minutes (the doctor said to give him more if he'll take it at feedings - his current feeding is at 44mL). He is just getting cuter and cuter. We'll need to get some new photos up soon - they took off his velcro patches, so now you can see more face. We're still thinking he might come home this week, but he needs to get a couple of things accomplished first: 1) be doing all of his feedings by bottle and 2) not having any apnea "episodes". Apnea is common for preemies and they usually grow out of it. And, he's having very few episodes (only 1 last night). So, we're hoping he'll stop having them soon. If he doesn't, they hook up some monitoring equipment to determine exactly what is causing it. In most cases, the solution is a daily dose of caffeine for a week or two (and who doesn't need that to function anyway?). But, we got his carseat ordered and are working to get his room finished...so we're ready any time he is.

In other news, we got the word Saturday night that our good friends in Iowa had their second baby boy - I think the name is David, but I heard the final results weren't quite in on the name. Our friends and new neighbors (just moved a block away from us) also had their second baby boy on August 1. So, Levi should have no shortage of buds.

Dimple?

It may be too early to tell, but initial observation seems to indicate that Levi might have a dimple on (in?) his cheek. We'll keep you posted...

Levi Update

More good news...they're bottle-feeding every other feeding and he's doing pretty good with it; his weight is up over birth weight now (they tend to lose weight after being born) at 4 pounds 8 ounces; and I just heard from Sonja that they moved him from his incubator to a crib! (that means he's doing a good job keeping his body temp up)

We've started thinking about how we're going to get him home...the car seat we had bought (before he surprised us with an early arrival) is for a regular newborn...we need one that will accommodate his sub-5 pound body. We think we found the one we want and Sonja is going to do some searching to see where the best deal is.

But, Sonja said just now that the Doctor thinks he'll be coming home in a week! It's going to be a busy house project week...but I think we can do it!

A Well Thought Out Product

You can order one for me here.

Levi - Week 1 Picture Round Up

The little guy is only 1 week and 1 day old and we've already amassed over 3.5GB in pictures and video. So, here is some of it (the first one is the original link we sent out). Some of the pictures are a little dark because we're trying to not use the flash too much...we don't want to have the little guy blinded before he even leaves the hospital.

Introducing Levi

More of Levi

Levi - Week 1

He’s doing really well. Last night they told us that they are only checking vitals every other feeding (so every 6 hours instead of every 3 hours) and that they are no longer weighing diapers. Also, just on a whim they tried bottle feeding last night and he took over half of it! So, we’re still being careful with how excited we get because he could take some steps back, but so far it’s looking pretty good. Also, we secretly think he’s the nurses’ favorite.