Change baby's diaper and apply socks to feet.
Put baby in sleeper while she's playing pretend flute.
Wrap baby like a burrito in swaddle blanket #1.
Wrap baby in layer #2 even if she looks disinterested.
Place hat on baby's head to give her a hard prison look.
Claire straight chillin right from the womb. "The outside world is a breeze."
Showing the cats who's boss - marking her territory with her gang signs.
Sun bathing to try and get rid of the jaundice.
Lit her up like a lightning bug for her jaundice.
The apple shows how tiny she really is. Don't let her size fool you....she's tough!
Claire using my pinky finger as a pullup bar. Knocked out 3 sets of 20 like it was her job.
Claire's got a good support crew from day one. Thanks everyone!!
She's got some chubby cheeks along with long fingers and toes.
BY THE NUMBERS:
| Day |
Intake |
Feeds |
Weight |
| Mon |
7 ml |
1 |
5-4 |
| Tue |
116 ml |
10 |
- |
| Wed |
178 ml |
9 |
- |
| Thu |
166 ml |
8 |
- |
| Fri |
180 ml |
7 |
- |
| Sat |
241 ml |
9 |
- |
| Sun |
238 ml |
8 |
4-14 1/2 |
RECAP:
Claire came 5 weeks early and with that comes a couple of potential issues: jaundice & body temp regulation. Jaundice occurs because her liver didn't quite get fully developed and the body temperature regulation issues occur because she didn't grow the body fat necessary to insulate heat. That's my understanding of it anyway. During this first week Claire was very sleepy. She was so tired all week which is normal. I don't think that we saw her eyes until late in the week. She would basically just eat, sleep, and soil her shorts. Because she was early we needed to wake her up to eat every 2-3 hours. So the routine went like this: Wake, Eat, Diaper Change, Sleep. Her only activity time was during her feeding and while we were changing her diaper. Speaking of diapers.....during the first week her poop was black and tar like. I got plenty of practice changing black loaded diapers.
We spent Monday through Thursday in the hospital at CMC University and were able to take her home Thursday afternoon. On Friday we went to the doctor and Claire had a low temp of 93-94 degrees. Our doctor didn't feel comfortable with that (and neither did we) because of the chance that she could have an infection so we took her to the ER at around 6:30pm on Friday evening. In the ER they poked and prodded taking blood, urine, and they did two lumbar punctures. This was very scary for her new parents and was quite stressful throughout the night. We spent the rest of the weekend at Levine's Children's Hospital where they took good care of her and we were able to take her home on Monday after all of her blood work came back negative for infection. They deduced that she was just having a hard time keeping her body temperature stabalized.
Claire is as sweet as can be. She's got a very mild temperment. I find everything about her to be so cute. It's even cute when she cries. She starts off with a little wimper that turns into a sheep type "baaaa" and then a full cry. Once she gets what she needs she goes right back to sleeping. I have a feeling it's not going to be this easy in the coming weeks but we'll take it for now.
As new parents, Jen and I think we are doing a good job of taking this all in stride. We've got the routine down: Eat, Diaper, Sleep. By the tail end of the week she was on a 2.5-3 hr cycle with her feed & diaper time being a total of about 45 minutes and her sleep time being around 2 hours. During the first few days I became the master of the swaddle along with top feeder and diaper changer........but who's keeping track. I've still got a lot of catching up to do since Jen carried her around for 9 months and then pushed her out!! We are both really enjoying the process of parenthood and look forward to what's soon to come.
Back in November I decided to hang up my triathlon shoes to focus on building my skills in other areas. I've found that I tend to find enjoyment out of learning and seeing progress. Once that the learning and progress plateaus I don't seem to get as much enjoyment out of that activity anymore. That time has come with triathlon and I have decided that it's time to re-evaluate my goals and try to build some skills in areas that bring me more enjoyment. I've been testing the waters in a bunch of different areas trying to find some activities that really peak my interest. I've also gone back to the drawing board with my goals and in the process have revised my goal setting structure slightly to dig a little deeper. Here's an overview of my new and improved goal setting process:
Overview:
1. Bad Ass To Do List
2. My Values
3. What I Enjoy
4. What I Do Now
5. My Contacts
6. Five Year Goals
7. Where I Am Right Now
8. One Year Goals
9. Where I Am Right Now
10. Brain Storming Questions
11. Weekly Task List
12. Daily Task List
13. Take Action
BAD ASS TO DO LIST:
Think of all of the things you want to see, do, master (learn), etc by the time you are 75 years old. Try to think without barriers such as money, vacation time, children, etc. Think of as many as you can. Then break them up into 5 year segments because there are some things that need to be done before your body gets warn down like "Climb Denali or Sub 9 hr Ironman or Advanced Level Racquetball Player or Ski in Switzerland" and there are other things that you can do at much older ages like "Visit Japan, Octoberfest in Germany, Give a Big Check to Someone in Need, Become a Good Cook, Mentor, Speak Conversational Spanish". Put them in 5 year segments such as 15-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40-44, 45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70-74. Other people might call this their "bucket list" but that's a little too grim for me.
MY VALUES:
Write down your values. You don't have to keep the list to typical values like honesty, integrity, etc. I add things of value to me as well such as specific people, places, things, and mindset. This list will be the cornerstone for developing your 5 year set of goals because everything should be in line with your values.
WHAT I ENJOY:
Write down the things you enjoy doing most. These could be things that you currently do often...........or maybe you don't do them at all. The key is that you have a great time doing them. Your goals should also be very closely tied to things you actually enjoy doing.
WHAT I DO NOW:
Write down what you actually spend most of your time doing right now. This will help to see what kind of gap there is between what you enjoy doing and what you actually do with your time. Include all aspects of your life. I break things down into 4-5 segments of my life: Relationships, Profession, Health & Fitness, Finances & Real Estate, Self Improvements & Hobbies. This is a list that I thought best breaks down my life into segments and might be slightly different for you so go ahead and change them if you'd like.
MY CONTACTS:
Write down a list of all of the people that you have come into contact with over the years and try to figure out if they are a positve or negative influence in your life. This exercise helps to point you in the direction of spending time with people that give you positive energy, make you smile and laugh, and genuinely appreciate your company.
FIVE YEAR GOALS:
Remove any self limitations and think about what your perfect life would be like five years from now if you had the absolute power to become anything that you wanted to be. To make this thought process easier I typically break this down into five different sections: Relationships, Profession, Health & Fitness, Finances & Real Estate, and Self Improvements & Hobbies. These could obviously be different for you but they are the five main topics in my life at this time. For each of these sections I think about who I’m surrounding myself with, what I’m doing, where I am, what skills I’ll need to get there, and I start writing down 3-5 goals for each section. It's important to think without barriers so you don't limit your thought process. Once you have your ideal life in mind you can then start to think about how to get there.
WHERE I AM RIGHT NOW:
Take a look at each of these goals and figure out where you are right now compared to where you will be when you reach that goal. This gives a good idea of how much work and time will need to be put into each goal. It’s also gets the thought process going on how you can get from where you are now to where you want to be.
ONE YEAR GOALS:
Take a look back at your five year goals and try to set goals that are in line with the five year goals and are specific, achievable, and have target dates set. The one year goals should also be a stepping stone to achieving the five year goals. I’ll also break my one year goals out into the same five categories as the five year goals: Relationships, Profession, Health & Fitness, Finances & Real Estate, and Self Improvements & Hobbies. Try to come up with anywhere from 3-10 goals within each category.
WHERE I AM RIGHT NOW:
Take a look at each of these goals and figure out where you are right now compared to where you will be when you reach that goal. This gives a good idea of how much work and time will need to be put into each goal. It’s also gets the thought process going on how you can get from where you are now to where you want to be.
BRAIN STORMING QUESTIONS:
Turn each goal into a question and come up with as many answers to that question as possible. This brainstorming session helps to think of all of the possible things you can do to achieve that goal. An easy way to turn a goal into a question is to place "How Can I" in front of the goal.
WEEKLY TASK LIST:
At the beginning of each week take out your One Year Goals and Brain Storming Notes and create a task list for each day of the week broken down by day (Mon, Tue, Wed, etc). These tasks are the baby steps necessary for eventually completing your One Year Goals.
DAILY TASK LIST:
At the beginning of each day take a look at your weekly task list and prioritize the list for the current day. Try to knock out the most difficult task first.
TAKE ACTION:
Complete the items on your Daily Task List and scratch them off of the list. Each task that gets scratched off of your list is one step towards reaching your goals.
I try to go through this whole process once a year at a minimum or whenever something completely changes the direction I need to take in life. The weekly task list should be done every week and the daily task list should be done every day. This process has helped me to stay focused on doing the things most important to me and hopefully it will do the same for you.
It snowed this week so Otis & I played a friendly game of fetch.
Otis was no match for me on his home turf and at his game. Watty was official thrower and I won 3 out of 4. I admit that I play dirty and tackled Otis once and boxed him out another time. It never said no tackling or boxing out in the rule book.
Last Week's Goals & Actions:
* Improve programming skills and finance/business knowledge for work
* Read 150 more pages of the ASP.Net 3.5 book
* Read two articles daily on various technical topics
* Created 1drc application with ASP.Net 3.5 for next week's demo
* Stay fit and healthy
* 2 days of strength work last week and getting stronger
* Racquetball 3 days last week
* Ran 4 times for 12 miles total for the week
* Be a great husband and (soon to be) father
* Cooked dinner a couple of times (improve cooking skills goal)
* Movie night with Jen
* Finished reading the Baby Care Book
* Started reading the Baby Whisperer book (100 pages down)
* Looked into painting a mural on the baby room walls
* Looked into vacation ideas for early September for our 10 year anniversary
* Improve handyman skills
* Put up the framing for the other side of the deck
* Worked with Watty to clean up his back yard
* Nurture and improve relationships with family, old friends, and new friends
* Worked on the deck with Watty
* Helped Watty clear out his back yard
* Played racquetball with James, lifted with Mike G., and ran with the Tuesday group
Recap:
I'm finding that even though I'm not training 20+ hrs a week anymore I still end up staying quite busy. My time is just spread out amongst a variety of different things vs. concentrated on swimming, biking, and running. I'm still enjoying my new schedule and don't miss the triathlon lifestlye one bit.
A lot of our attention is being put towards trying to get everything set for our baby girl to come in March. One issue that we have is that we don't have a whole lot of space for all of the baby gear in our side of the duplex. It's a 2BR/1BA place with 3 levels including a basement but the basement is used for training Jen's clients and all of our exercise gear and bikes. For the time being, I'm going to look into buying or building some space efficient storage for the baby room and our bedroom and finishing the deck will also give us more space as well. I would like two children some day (Jen wants to see how one goes first) so at that point we'll have a bit of an issue with space. We'll then be faced with two options:
1. Move back into our Highland Creek house (4BR/2.5BA) and sell our half of the duplex and continue to rent the other half.
2. Turn the duplex into a single family home and stay there.
We really like the dilworth area so it would be nice to turn the duplex into a single family home but we would be way better off financially to sell the 1/2 of the duplex and move back into the Highland Creek house. We'd essentially have no mortgage payment. On the flip side I would have to commute from the University Area to Uptown for work and most of Jen's clients and activities are in the dilworth area. I can't stand wasting time by sitting in traffic so that has to be taken into consideration. The good thing is that we have a couple of years to think things through and see how things shake out.
Along those same lines I think we've got the family visitation schedule solidified for when the baby arrives. Due to space we can only have one visitor at a time so Jen's parents are coming in for a couple of weeks in March, my sister Melissa & hub Tony are coming in after them in late March to early April, and my parents are coming in for a couple of weeks after M&T head back home. It will be nice to see everyone and have an extra set or two of hands for the first 6 weeks. Jen and I are starting to feel more confident about our gameplan for when the baby arrives. We're on the same page and I'm sure we'll work well as a team....as usual.
I tried my hand at the challenge court on Saturday morning and got beat 2 games to none (15-9, 15-13) by a racquetball vet named Bo. I was quicker than he was but he just waited for me to make mistakes and took advantage of them. Looks like I need to go back to the drawing board and try to bring a little more strategy and finesse into my game because right now I'm basically just a ground and pound player.
Next Week's Activities:
* Application Demo at work
* Read Baby Whisperer book
* Baby Shower
* Super Bowl
* Braces Off and finalized!!
* Movie night
* Cook some dinners
* Stay active