Cheeks and Double Chins

So the word on the street is that Alan is getting a little chubby. Recently a family from Brazil moved into our ward and the wife doesn't know very much English. I have been going over there several times a week to practice conversation with her, and it has really been a fun experience. The other day, she pointed to Alan's double chin and asked: "How can I say this in English?" I thought it was pretty funny.

Also, this weekend we had the chance to meet up with a lot of my extended family. For most of them, this was the first time they've seen Alan. Without fail, every person said: "Wow, look at those cheeks!" Now, he's had pretty awesome cheeks from the time he was born. It was all the doctor and nurses could talk about. Apparently they've managed to continue growing with the rest of him.

Good thing that chubby is adorable in babies, and my brother informs me that 'fat' and 'healthy' are the same word in Albanian. We'll just continue to keep this little guy good and healthy! :)


Alan with a few of my cousins. So cute!


Mr. Chubby Cheeks himself. :)

Dutch Oven Fest!

On Friday night we had our annual ward campout. I seriously think it didn't get below 90 degrees here all of July, but on Friday, a "cold front" of sorts happened to pass through and the temperature dropped like 15 degrees. We were camping up Spanish Fork Canyon, and the temperature is usually about 15 degrees colder than it is here in Provo, anyway. Long story short- we were all prepared to camp out, even with Alan, when I checked the weather the day before and saw that it was supposed to get down to 37 degrees that night. (It actually ended up freezing that night.) So, mom decided that the freezing weather was not the place for a 7 week old and we ended up coming home.

But we had an absolutely wonderful time there. The Bishopric was in charge of food, and the Bishop made a delicious dutch oven dinner with multiple kinds of chicken, ribs, potatoes, corn and beans. Seriously some of the best food I've ever had camping. Scott made four different cobblers, and they all were a huge hit (even with our creative fanageling). He's in charge of cobbler-making from now on around here. :) We also had a huge fire, camp songs, and the biggest game of mafia ever. Alan was really good, despite the cold, and we had a wonderful time. Unfortunately we brought our camera but forgot that the memory card was still in the computer. :( If we get some pictures from other people, we'll put them up.

Alan Knows How to Say "A-goo"

So Alan is starting to figure out how to talk a little more. Maybe next he'll say, "Go Cougars!"?

Baby Alan

We have absolutely been loving our time with little baby Alan. It is hard to believe how big he is getting. We wanted to put up a few more pictures to show how much he's grown!!!

Alan is fascinated by the carrier handle on his car seat.

He's pretty good these days at hearing and seeing things and then looking in that direction. Smile for the camera!

Ok. So it's actually kind of hard to catch one of those smiles, but we got one!

Alan loves to eat everything- his hand, his bink, and especially his dinner!

He loves to play with Daddy!

And here's one where he's all wrapped up after bath time.

Isn't he about the cutest thing you've ever seen?

An Exciting Few Weeks

Phew. Well, I guess I'm finally back into the blogging scene. Thank goodness Scott was able to do a few posts in the mean time there so that you could all see our BEAUTIFUL son. These last couple of weeks have been packed, so I thought I'd give the highlights with some pics to go along with it.


Labor/Delivery

First of all, the whole delivery process went pretty well. They were going to induce me on Saturday, so I went into the hospital Friday night around 10:30 so that they could try to soften the cervix to make the delivery go more smoothly. Apparently it worked, because I started into labor on my own about 4 hours later. There were no complications at all, except for my own discomfort when the epidural stopped working. It worked initially, but then wore off pretty quickly. In the mean time they tried about 100 different things to try and help it start working, but this just took forever and did not help at all. In the end, they took it out and gave me another one, because as Scott can attest to, I was not happy. In fact I was very mad and frustrated in addition to the pain. The anesthesiologist must have given me a super dose on the second epidural to make up for the fact that the first one didn't work. As soon as he was done, the nurse decided to check my progress, and during this whole "epidural not working" process I had gone from a 4 to a 10! Pushing went pretty quickly, and the actually delivery was fine. We were just happy to see this baby boy!

Bilirubin

After Alan was born, he had to be put under the bilirubin lights because of his jaundice. They brought this bilibed and biliblanket to our apartment and he had to lay on it 24 hours a day. He could only come off of it when I fed him, and even then he wore his biliblanket. He looked like a glowing little alien with cords coming out of him. :)

It was hard not to hold him for a few days, but I was amazed at how well he did with the bed. He would just lay on the bed and never cried or fussed at all- which was good because I couldn't pick him up. At night, after a feeding even if he wasn't sleepy, he'd just lay on the bed wide awake and not fuss. He didn't do that before, or after, but it was amazing, and let me get some more sleep too! But a few days and heel pricks later, Alan was done with that whole jaundice mess and ready to be up and about.



Visitors

We have been so lucky to have family members galore come to visit! They all helped out so much during these first few weeks, and I think they were pretty excited to see Alan as well. Scott's parents were here when Alan was born and stayed for a few days. My mom came when Scott's parents left and my dad came out a few days later. Then my sisters came out to visit and go to EFY. We are very grateful to have such a wonderful, loving family!!


























Surgery

And in addition to all the fun times, we had some not so fun times too. Alan went into his 2 week check up last Monday and was totally fine. He was up to 9 lbs 8 oz, and was happy as could be. Then that night he started throwing up. He continued throwing up for several days. I'd try to feed him smaller amounts, which I thought was working, but sooner or later he'd throw up again anyway. Needless to say, this all amounted to lots of messes, little sleep, and lots of worries on my part.

On Thursday, we took him in for an ultrasound, and found out that he had pyloric stenosis. I guess it's pretty rare, but four times as common among first born males. His pylorus, which connects his stomach to his small intestine, was basically much bigger than it should have been and was stopping any food from passing through. Food would just sit in his stomach until he threw it up. So we took him up to Primary Children's Hospital so that they could operate on him. They did a laparoscopic surgery and only had to do three little cuts on his stomach. Alan was such a good patient, and all the nurses bragged about him. He is good as new now, and back to eating like a champ.

The whole thing was kind of a scary ordeal, but I was just so relieved to find out what was wrong and know we could fix it. The endless throwing up was more scary than the surgery itself. And despite the fact that we had a perfect view of the big old U on the mountain from our hospital room window (much to Scott's dismay- we shut the blinds), we were very grateful to have such a wonderful facility so close to us. They did a great job and we are sooooo happy that Alan is back to being himself again.

Happy Fourth of July!

We've been blessed with freedom and a beautiful baby!

Alan Robert Robertson

Alan was born June 20, 2009 12:36 pm. He was 8 lbs., 1 oz. and 20 inches long (I think tall is more accurate, but I am told the correct word is long). He must take more after his Mom because he is one of the cutest babies I've ever seen.