A Long Week...

Sorry it's been so long since our last post - it's been a rather long week.

I went back to work this week, and all things considered I think it went pretty well. I didn't have too many emails that actually required reading (about 1000 total, but probably around 900 got deleted immediately), not too many bugs had piled up in my absence, my teammates picked up the slack for me on our online forums (where I normally answer lots of questions), etc. Chris did really well without me - kept Stella really happy, made dinner for me every night (!), and so forth.

The new schedule is a bit brutal, however... I typically get up now around 6:30, take a quick shower, eat some breakfast, pack a lunch, and get out the door by 7:30. Work from 8:00 until 5:00, home around 5:30 for dinner. Stella's pre-bedtime routine starts up around 6:30, and we try to put her in her crib around 8:00. An hour or two of relaxing with Chris, and then off to bed. I get up with Chris for Stella's first feeding, typically around 1:00 AM or so. Chris handles the next one (around 4:30 most of the time) on her own. Often I will change a quick diaper around 6:00 or 6:30 before getting up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In other Stella milestone news, I successfully gave her her first bottle (of mom's milk) last Thursday - she took to it pretty well, and is now a bottle feeding champ (though she certainly still prefers her mommy!). She continues to grow, and now has a great stare and a really strong grip.

This weekend has been an adventure as well - Uncle Tim came to town for a quick visit, which was most excellent. He and Stella got along famously, and he brought her an awesome t-shirt (red, with googly eyes and the message "I understand the muppets on a much deeper level than you"). For those of you not in the know, Tim is working on an MFA at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in Imaging and Digital Arts. He brought along a bunch of cool show and tell items, including the Arduino, a really cool programmable computer chip that can be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes.

In less exciting weekend news, Chris woke up last night around midnight with a 100.7 degree fever. The doc thinks she is having a second bout of Mastitis, which is an infection that you can get while breastfeeding - often referred to as the "boob flu". She's on some antibiotics, and will hopefully be feeling better by tomorrow. :-(

As always, click on the pictures above to see our latest photo album.