___: A Whirlwind Weekend

So, Courtland and I are back from a whirlwind quick trip to Portland this weekend to surprise my sister, Michelle, for the blessing of her new little baby girl, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Faun Conde, who is only a week old. We had an eventful weekend, actually. Before we left, Dick and Debbie came to town and we spent Thursday and Friday with them, which was a lot of fun. On Friday morning Courtland had his doctor’s appointment where we found that he had gained 10 ounces (Wow!) since Tuesday and now weighs 8 pounds 2 ounces, which is even more than we guessed he could have gained. That is very good news, so we are continuing with the high-calorie formula for now, but trying to gradually increase the breastfeeding again, so that hopefully we won’t have to give up on that entirely (which will all depend on if he continues to gain weight well after we increase the breastfeeding and decrease the bottle feedings, I suppose). I can see that his little cheeks are starting to fill in a bit now, and he is obviously feeling much better – he has been sleeping well most nights (his record so far is 8 ½ hours at a time), but the biggest news is that he doesn’t insist on being held in my arms all night long in order to sleep anymore. He has started to sleep in his baby swing at night, which is nice for me to be able to get some deeper sleep. So, we are pleased with the progress he is making. After the doctor’s appointment, we went down to Lehi and all spent the day together at Mel and Christian’s with Annette and Michael’s parents, and got to get some photos of the cousins together with Courtland. While we were there, I got a ticket to go to Portland (we had to wait until the last minute to make the reservations because we knew we wouldn’t be able to make the trip if Courtland hadn’t gained weight by his appointment Friday morning). Luckily we found an affordable flight and rental car, and I got all packed that night. We headed out the next morning and Michelle was very surprised to see us there when we arrived along with Grandma Faun. We had fun holding each others’ babies and spending time with Michelle’s husband, Jake, Grandma, and my parents. Michelle had a C-section a week ago Saturday, and she is still recovering from that. Mom worked on Lizzie’s amazing blessing dress up until the day before her blessing, and it turned out amazing – you’ll have to look closely at the pictures of her in her dress – the fabric down the whole front of the dress is actually individual strips of lace all sewn together and the stitching really turned out beautiful! On Sunday morning Michelle went to the ER because she was having a lot of pain from her C-section incision, and they think that she must have popped some of the internal stitches. Because of how Michelle was feeling, they decided to have Lizzie’s blessing at their apartment rather than at the church. Jake’s parents, two brothers, one of his sisters-in-law, and one of his nieces all got to attend the blessing along with our family. We took lots of pictures, including several of Lizzie with Courtland, and some of them both with Jake and Michelle’s other little niece, Jennie Conde, who is 2 months old. Later on that day I had to make a little trip back to our hotel room to change and shower because Courtland spit up all down my dress. It was really awful – I guess that’s one downside to the bottle feedings is that they seem to increase the spitting up. Oh well. We spent the rest of the day at their apartment and then after Michelle and Jake went to bed for the night Mom came with me and Grandma to our hotel room and Mom held Courtland all night. I fell asleep on the couch for a few hours, but we had to get up at 4am for our flight anyways, so we stayed up and talked and took pictures of Courtland until it was time to head to the airport. The flight home went well – Courtland, Grandma, and I all slept through the entire flight and got home this morning in time for Michael to go into work. And today has gone pretty well so far, with unpacking, doing laundry, making several phone calls, rescheduling the boys’ photo appointment that we had for this afternoon because the three little boys all have pretty bad colds they are still getting over, picking Kolby up from preschool, feeding the boys lunch, making up a batch of barley soup (haven’t tried this recipe before, so hopefully it will turn out well), getting a bunch of pictures saved on the computer, and feeding the baby, and writing this. Now the boys are getting ready to get up from their naps, so I’d better hurry and try to get this and some photos posted before they are all up.

Grandpa Dick and Grandma Debbie