Matt & Andrea Thieman

The further we get into spring the colder it seems to be getting.  The 60 and 70 degree days of last week have given way to 39 degrees with wind today. At least we aren’t in western or northern Nebraska where they had blizzard warnings last night.

While Andrea normally writes the long blog entries I decided to try to write my longest blog post to date.  Usually all you’ll get from me is a post with a few photos, but with Carter resting peacefully on my chest I have nothing better to do than to write a long post.  I am stealing her title from last week and tweaking it to fit my needs.

We did get a chance to enjoy some of the nicer weather we had by spending some time with Andrea’s family over the weekend.  Natalie, Jake and Mercedes made it down to meet Carter and spend the day with us and Andrea’s parents Friday.  Saturday morning was spent in Omaha at Grandma Andrews where all of Andrea’s aunts got the chance to meet Carter.  It was good to get to see everyone and spend some time with them.  On Saturday afternoon we headed across the river into Iowa to see Andrea’s uncle Randy and aunt Janice.  Aunt Rhenda and Grandpa and Grandma Souder came out to spend some time with us as well.  We ended up staying a little longer than expected, but we did get to see Eric and Amy and let them get plenty of practice holding the baby.  We also ended up crashing Randy’s birthday party!

Also since the last blog entry my mom came down for a few days and spent some time with us.  Tod, Andrea, Brett & Tyler and Jamee & Codi all came over one evening for supper while Mom was here.  Mom was able to come down on a Saturday afternoon and stay until Tuesday afternoon.

On Sunday I had the opportunity to go pheasant hunting near Newman Grove.  A guy I ref basketball with raises pheasants and invited a few officials up for his last hunt of the year.  Between six of us we ended up with 11 pheasants.  Poor shooting prevented us from coming home with more.  Ace had a blast!  I think it was the most birds he’s ever seen in one day and as a bonus he had the chance to hunt with another lab.  From the time we got home Sunday evening until Tuesday morning he stayed on his bed in the house unless he really had to go outside.  Very unlike Ace to not want to go outside at least once an hour to see what’s going on.

Carter continues to eat like a pig and grow like a weed.  He still thinks he needs to eat every two hours and gets pretty upset if he has to wait much longer!  According to my scale he is weighing in at about 9 1/2 lbs!  He’s gotten quite a bit bigger since we brought him home almost a month ago weighing 6 lbs 3 oz.  He is still wearing 0 to 3 month onsies and newborn pants but I don’t think that will last much longer at this pace.  Everyday I get home from work his cheeks seem to get bigger.  He recently decided he needs to be carried around so he can look at all the new things in his world.  He is also starting to take a little interest in his toys.  I wish he would start to be more like me and enjoy sleeping at night, but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case.

With the last paragraph I have officially met my goal of creating my longest post to date.  I don’t want to go on for too long for two reasons.  One, I don’t want to bore you any more than I need to to let you know what is going on in our lives.  And two, I don’t want to set the bar too high for myself next time!

Okay, so nobody told me I’d come to a point where I’d wonder why in the world people actually have a second child, but I’m to the point where I’m wondering it.  It’s funny that women always talk about the labor and delivery pain being the thing that a woman needs to forget in order to get pregnant again.  In my case, I won’t be able to have another child until I forget about how crappy it is to only get 1 hour of sleep at a time at night and get peed on at least twice a day.  Labor and delivery was a piece of cake compared to three weeks of this nonsense!  And to think, some woman in California was dumb enough to have eight babies at once?!?!  I don’t care what anyone says…a woman has to be menally ill to do something like that.  I’m not sure I could even handle twins…

Ignoring the lack of sleep and the urine baths, things have been going fairly well.  Carter had his 2 week “Well Baby Visit” this week with the doctor and we found out that he’s growing well.  On Monday he was 7 pounds and 6 ounces, which is “just gravy” according to his doctor since they just want to make sure babies are back to their birth weight by 2 weeks.  He also gained an inch in length.  So, it’s safe to say that he’s getting enough to eat – yay!  He still doesn’t like getting his diaper changed, clothes changed, or getting a bath – screams his head off throughout each task – but I’m sure in time this will improve.

Carter got to go on his first stroller ride this week since the weather was so beautiful and I was finally feeling up to a little exercise.  We made sure he was sleeping before we ventured out, but with all the bumpy sidewalks in our neighborhood, I don’t think he got too much sleep.  In any case, it was great for the whole family (Matt walked the dogs with us too) to get outside for some fresh air and some light exercise.  Well, Carter didn’t get any exercise, but you know what I mean.

With Spring finally here, Matt has been taking advantage of the great weather (when he’s not busy watching Carter) and has started working on the outdoor improvements we were planning to do this Spring.  He’s removed the small fence that divided our yard into two sections and has started to prep some soil for reseeding our lawn since the dogs have made a total mess of it over the last year.  We’re hoping that by removing the fence we’ll be altering the dog routines and hopefully eliminating the trails that have unfortunately formed in our backyard.  Having the fence out also helps our yard to look bigger, and we’re going to use the “leftover” gate to connect our yard to our neighbors’ yard which will make it so much easier to travel to their house for patio fires this summer.  The bad news is that by removing the fence, we’re creating more landscaping work for ourselves, but hopefully they’ll be very minor which is what we’re planning on.  Matt also tilled up the garden area and cleaned up a few plants that didn’t get cleaned up last fall, so we’re prepped for things to start growing in the flower beds and are ready for whenever it warms up enough to plant some seeds for fresh veggies.  Now all we need is some constant warm weather!