A Day at the Beach for Caleb

It's hard to believe, but Caleb turned one week old yesterday. He's had a very eventful first week, but thankfully he was oblivious to most of the drama that his parents had to deal with. This past Tuesday morning, we returned to our Pediatrician for a check-up and he had us get Caleb's jaundice level tested again. Unfortunately the results of the test required us to go back to the hospital for 24-48 hours of phototherapy. As much as we didn't want to take him back to the hospital so soon after we left it, we were glad to just get the jaundice taken care of so we didn't have to worry about it. Although we were a little worried about how Caleb would do under the lights, but he really loved his time there. We were hoping we could photoshop a palm tree and a beach umbrella into the picture and it would look like he was just out working on his tan. Thankfully after just over 24 hours under the lights, he was discharged and allowed to go home with us once again.

When we say home, we don't technically mean home because we are still flooded out of our apartment. We're hoping to be able to move back into our apartment next weekend, but until then we've made ourselves comfortable in a nearby apartment we've subletted from another student who will be returning on Jan. 24. Since having Caleb home, I've begun to experience some of the paranoia and fear of being a parent that I swore I would never let myself succumb to. Yes, I am one of those parents who has to look at my son in the middle of the night to make sure he's breathing and starting to worry about all the possible bad things that could happen. I've also begun to rejoice over three hour sleeping segments for Caleb and am already starting to forget what 8 hours of continuous sleep feels like. I can't even imagine how much more of a difficult transition it must be for Sharon, but I'm so impressed by her stamina and patience as a 24 hour buffet for our child. Her feeding definitely is paying off as he reattained his birth weight twice as fast as is expected. At this rate, it looks like he'll be full grown by the time he's in fifth grade.

It has been an incredible blessing this past week to have Sharon's parents up to help us out, and we're already beginning to dread the moment they leave. Thankfully we'll only have five days on our own before my parents come up and are with us for a few days while we move back into our apartment. The whole fatherhood thing is still a little surreal to me, but I think that it will sink in even more once we get into a regular schedule with Caleb and my schoolwork. We hope you enjoy some of these pictures and thanks for keeping up with our lives.
- Mike


Caleb working on his tan with those sweet shades (preparing for Ocean City)


Caleb sleeping on his mommy


"If I hold onto daddy's thumb, maybe he won't drop me"


I don't know what's going on with this pose - we'll take caption suggestions


This is what our apartment looks like now - notice stylish hole in ceiling