Idiomatic Expression

Aidan had his two week checkup today. He is healthy and growing quickly. His jaundice is completely gone and no other health problems. He has figured out how to use his legs, and is really good at kicking off his blankets twenty seconds after we put them over him. He is also much noisier than I expected a newborn to be and not a minute goes by without a grunt of some sort coming out of him. The super strength continues and he can manage to scoot himself around with his legs when he is on his stomach. He isn’t moving towards any goal, but he can move a bit. He can also support his head while upright (when not drunk with milk) and support his head while on his stomach for 15-20 seconds at a time. However his head still weighs more than the rest of him combined, if someone isn’t holding his feet when he tries to lift his head he rotates onto his face and panics a bit.

Date 7/23/08
Weight 8 lbs 12 oz — 50%
Length: 20.75 inches — 79%
Head Circumference: 14.5 inches — 44%

Katherine and I are hanging in there, he is a bit more active at night now that he has more energy, but we are still managing to get a reasonable amount of sleep. Hopefully that will continue for Katherine next week when I head back to work and will not be around to take the early morning shift and give her three or so hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I repaired the dryer just in time for the water heater to malfunction, however I called in the professionals, and a small adjustment to the exhaust pipe and the basement is no longer flooded with combustion fumes.

Wow, Katherine and I have survived a whole week with Aidan. The biliblanket is finally off! It is amazing to be able to take the baby with us when we need to do something in the kitchen. We had his first week checkup on Monday and I have entered his “percentile scores” below.

Date 7/14/08
Weight 7 lbs 12 ozs — 38%
Length: 20.75 inches — 76%
Head Circumference: 14.25 inches — 49%

Aidan is able to track objects with his eyes, and will turn his neck to keep particularly interesting things in his site. He is also gaining neck strength and can support his head for 30-60 seconds at a time. He is great at moving all of his limbs, and the doctor remarked on how strong his legs were when she attempted to re-diaper him at the checkup. He also is pretty strong in the hand and arm department, and likes to grab the inside of his sleeve and hold on when we attempt to change his clothes.

He is eating pretty well, and does a decent job of comforting himself if he is asleep and a dream or noise startles him awake. I will leave out the gory details, but all of the bodily functions are working quite well.

I upgraded to wp2.6 to fix the comment counter, and it broke support for Chinese characters and lost all of my category names. Hopefully i will figure out how to fix that in my spare time…

UPDATE
Figured out the character set issue, and I was able to rename most of my categories. Anyone know what this category might have been?

UPDATE 2
Gallery is broken, no baby pictures til that gets figured out.

Everyone seems to be interested in Aidan’s full name, so here is a run down.

His first name is Aidan. Aidan is of Gaelic origin and means fire or fiery.

His middle name is Yang(楊) Jian(健). Most Chinese given names consist of two characters, and Aiden’s is no different. The first character, Yang(楊), is Katherine’s last name and is not in common use other than as a surname. The second character, Jian(健), means healthy. An interesting coincidence is that the transliteration of the given name of Emperor Wen of Sui is also Yang Jian. However, the Jian in his name means strong or unyielding.

His last name is Musgrove. Musgrove is of english origin and is derived from the Old English mouse grove.

And for those of you that don’t care about the name… here are some pictures.

His bilirubin level is at 16.2 today. Still higher than we would like, but lower than yesterday. Hopefully tomorrow will establish a downward trend and we can get him off of the bili-blanket. Caring for an infant on a ten foot leash is that much more difficult.

Nope. Bilirubin (pronounced Billy Reuben) is the yellow break down product produced when the body breaks down red blood cells. If this is done too quickly, or the liver is not operating efficiently then a high Bilirubin count will cause jaundice.

On his first night Aiden’s Bilirubin count was 13 on the second night it was 15 which is only moderately high, but high enough for our doctor to prescribe photo-therapy. Currently Aiden is lit up like a glow worm in a Wallaby 3. We went into the doctor’s today and the level is up to 16.5, which is still not too high. There is no reason to worry, and he is otherwise doing well, but traveling to the doctor office and dealing with a tethered baby is making life just a bit more difficult. On the positive side, it is nice to get out of the house, but now you know why you haven’t seen pictures here yet.

In other news the dryer decided it was a good time to die.

In the first of what is sure to be many surprises Aidan Yang Jian Musgrove was delivered at Fair Oaks hospital in Fairfax, VA at 6:19 7/9/2008. Which just happened to alter his mother’s birthday plans. He came in at 8 pounds even, 20 inches long and a head circumference of 14.5 inches.

Pics will be up once we have a chance to catch our breath.