I'm finally getting around to sifting through our photos from some of our great summer vacations from this past month!

We spent a wonderful week in New Hampshire at the beginning of August to celebrate Natalie and Dan Fitzpatrick's wedding (in Sugar Hill), and to hang out with our friends the Blacks at a wonderful cottage in Mountain Lakes (near Woodsville, NH). We did lots of hiking, spelunking in caves, playing at the lake, cable-car riding up and down mountains, and relaxing. The boys were both troopers and Leo did awesome on his first plane rides ever! I've posted some pics mainly just of our boys since there are a truly overwhelming number of photos, but if you want more of a given party just let me know and I'm sure I have some that fit the bill. Click here to check out our shots from the wedding and click here to check out our pics from Mountain Lakes. I haven't gotten all of them yet so stay tuned for some shots of Drew's first bungee jumping experience shortly...

We also took the boys on their first tent camping excursion with some of our/Drew's friends this past weekend. The kids had a fabulous time rolling in dirt the whole weekend and chasing each other in circles. Traveling with other kids the same age as yours is DEFINITELY the way to go. Camping was a great activity with them but we'll definitely choose somewhere a little less "urban" than Lake Casitas next time- a bit too much generator and not enough photosynthesis for our taste. Nonetheless, a good time was had by all and Drew even told me that I am "the best MomMom in the whole world" for taking him camping! Here are some shots of the kids (and their grownups).

Leo just had his four month checkup and is growing like a weed- or like a succulent, to be more precise. He's ballooned out to an impressive 17 lbs 3 oz which puts him in the 90th percentile for weight, and is 25 inches long (50th percentile). He's doing well- figuring out the sitting up thing, very chatty and smiley, and definitely eyeing any solid foods in sight, so that is apparently going to be our next venture.

Andy finishes up his summer term this week and then starts his penultimate quarter for his MBA in early September. I also start back up at school on September 7th for my fall semester- can't believe my classes are half over! Lastly, Drew himself will begin school in a few weeks at Sierra Madre Community Nursery School, a wonderful co-operative preschool nearby. He's very excited about big boy school and tells me that I don't have to go with him now because he's grown up. So it would appear he's ready. I am also starting another "job" this week- it's a volunteer gig as a Loan Review Team Leader for Kiva, an organization that provides microfunding for small business owners in developing nations around the world. I'm very excited about the opportunity to get involved with their programs and to get back into the swing of volunteering some of my time while simultaneously building up my leadership skills.

So off we go into many more adventures...

Somehow the summer has been managing to slip away from us so quickly I hardly know what's happening. I realized I better get in here and post some of the recent pics of the boys before Leo changes so drastically that he's not recognizable (he gets visibly fatter by the minute these days). Click here to check out some pics of the two of them from this summer.

Leo is changing minute to minute these days and I can't believe he's already passed the three month mark. He's holding his head up really well and loves to be sitting upright so he can look around and be involved in the conversation. He's started using his jumper and thinks that's pretty fun. He is a very happy little guy and very smiley. He is also a big talker and loves to babble on and on to anyone who will listen. Like his brother he seems ambitious and eager to get on with his development and finds it insulting to be treated like a baby, so my hopes for having a more prolonged infancy stage this time around are slowly disappearing. That's okay though because we're all having tons of fun with him and enjoying his constant efforts to get his voice heard over the din.

I had a great trip to Buenos Aires for school at the beginning of the month and the boys both did really well with Andy, Mom, Dad & Nana Linda. (Notice how it took four of them to do my job...) Now I'm on break until after labor day and really enjoying the opportunity to focus on hanging out with the family and working through two-foot tall stacks of papers that have been accumulating since the spring. It's a testament to my free capacity that I'm getting the time to actually sort through all our recent photos to get some up as well! Andy is a few weeks away from closing out his summer term and can't wait- after this he's only got two more quarters until he gets his MBA!

We've been enjoying our less structured time this summer to take frequent excursions to water parks, the beach, the zoo, and the arboretum. We've been making lots of weekend trips to relax with family, troubleshoot minor flooding disasters, etc. This weekend we're off to New Hampshire for Natalie Lenski's wedding and then to spend a week of fun at the lake with the Blacks. Can't wait to have a real family vacation all four of us- and Leo's first plane journey to boot!

I can already tell August is going to fly by with everything that's going on and then Drew is actually starting preschool (!!) in September. It's happening so fast! We're excited for it and it will be fun to get back into a new normal but we're planning on enjoying every minute of the time we have left before he officially becomes a school-going big kid.

Now that everything has finally settled down and we've all recovered from our bout with RSV, hospitals, doctors, antibiotics, etc., I wanted to post some really great pics of the boys from up in Los Alamos over Memorial Day weekend- you'd hardly even know they were both miserably ill at the time from how cute they are! (Who me? Biased?)

There were a number of new activities for both boys. We had a great blueberry picking expedition and Drew loved wandering around the fields with Cousin Jake saying "kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk" (a reference to "Blueberries for Sal", one of our beloved children's books). Drew also did his first hike where he was walking instead of being carried- only about a mile round trip up to a little waterfall, but still impressive for such little legs, particularly given that he was under the weather. Leo took his inaugural dip in the hot tub and enjoyed his first weekend in wine country (other than his cough). Most exciting, however, is that Leo has begun smiling at us a lot and even chuckling and laughing at me! Couldn't resist the opportunity to share.

Click here to check out the new album.

About 9:45 this morning the doctor came in and told us he thought Leo was doing well enough that he was willing to send him home. About an hour later my Dad helped us pack up our stuff and head out to the car to come back to our house. Drew did a "hooray!!!!" dance and was SO excited to see us, and it took me about 15 minutes to calm Manu down. Leo has been doing really well this afternoon- he's mainly sleeping and resting. He wakes up to eat every couple of hours and then drifts off again. He's still got the cough and that will most likely last through this week at least, but he definitely seems to be on the track to recovery and certainly isn't acting like he needs to be in the hospital anymore. Drew also seems to be starting to show signs of improvement- still no throwing up, although he hasn't really started eating again yet. At least since I've been home he's been in very good spirits, so hopefully a combo of the psychological bolus of having MomMom home and the antibiotics will keep him trending positive. Both Andy and I are so relieved to both be in the same room and have our whole family together and out of the worst of it. Thanks to all for your good wishes and positive thoughts. Man it's been a rough week, I think I need a vacation... there aren't words for how excited I am to sleep in a bed, particularly my own bed, tonight!

Well, we've made it through the day today with only one round of deep suctioning this morning. What's most encouraging, though, is that Leo has had a few bouts of true awake time today, where he actually doesn't fall asleep from one feeding to the next, but instead spends the couple of hours hanging out, looking around, and listening to people talk. He hasn't felt well enough to want to be awake unless he's eating or being forced to stay awake coughing all week, so it's a real change to see him wanting to engage like he normally does, and it makes me feel that he's turned a real corner. He's also not coughing nearly as much associated with his eating, so it seems like it's bothering him a whole lot less and he's definitely on the road to recovery.

He's still got congestion and goes through bouts of labored breathing. The doctors are at least talking about possibly letting him go tomorrow if he stays like this- we were really hoping for tonight because of how well he's doing but that's looking like it's off the table given the time, and their desire to be conservative over the weekend when no doctors are in the office should he have difficulties. So we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Sounds like Drew hasn't thrown up today, although he's mainly avoiding foods and only consuming popsicles, juice, etc. but at least that's a small step in the right direction. Hopefully his tummy will be fully mended soon and he'll start to feel like himself when the antibiotics kick in and begin to work.

My mom came up today and spent a few hours with Drew so that Andy and I could actually see each other (until now when he's come to visit he's had Drew which means we don't get to interact at all, because Drew drags me off to the play room for Mommy time). It's been tough all being apart for so long, and especially the two of us getting no opportunities at all to talk or hang out. He even convinced me to leave Leo napping and go have lunch with him outside the hospital for about an hour today- the first time I've actually left this ward since Monday (scary, but true). Hopefully we'll be home soon and we can all be together again!

Leo has been pretty stable most of the day- not showing signs of being significantly better or worse. The doctor is encouraged and thinks that he has needed a little bit less suctioning than he did yesterday, but he is still having a tough time surrounding feedings and is definitely needing intervention, so not enough to warrant any movement on the going home front. Poor little guy is having a really tough time with his cough- still going through the same eat, cough for an hour, sleep for an hour, start over cycle. He's started to wise up and go more like 3 hours between feedings so that he gets more rest before starting up the coughing again. Hopefully that will continue, for his sake, so he can recuperate a bit more with some sleep.

Drew has been throwing up since the wee hours of the morning and hasn't been able to keep food down. He took a trip to the doctor's office today and it looks like his bout with RSV has led to some secondary complications, namely fluid buildup in his lungs and an ear infection. He's been given albuterol to help with the breathing for the former, and antibiotics to help with the latter. Bad news is he can't keep food down and is still suffering from the RSV symptoms on top of that. Good news is that he should start showing signs of improvement once the antibiotics actually kick in, which at least gives him a timeline for recovery (unlike the rest of us).

He was very cute, apparently Andy asked him if it was scary or if he hurt when he threw up for the first time at 5am and he said "No, you're okay. That's disgusting." Then on the phone later with me he told me "Your food come out of your mouth. Daddy clean it up." He seems in amazing spirits about it all, which as wonderful, but a mommy can't help feeling guilty that she can't be there for both of her boys when they're sick and feeling crummy. Andy says his cough is clearing up but I've got some nasty deep lung congestion that I can't imagine I'll conquer any time soon what with sleeping for one hour stints in a plastic covered hospital recliner. We'll deal with that at some later point in time, though once the boys are looking up.

Well, our hopes for a speedy recovery and departure were a little overly optimistic, but the doctors are glad they didn't let us go yesterday morning like they were originally considering. Leo has been basically hovering at the same place for the past day and a half or so. While he doesn't have a fever and the congestion has mostly cleared from his nose, he's got some nasty pervasive pooling in his throat and upper lungs.

Basically, his pattern is that he wakes up to eat, then spends about an hour coughing and wheezing to try to clear the goop in the back of his throat so he can breathe well and rest. Then someone comes in and uses a deep suctioning tool to get enough of the gunk out that his coughing fit passes, then he falls asleep from exhaustion for about an hour. Then he's hungry and wants to eat again, and the cycle starts anew. The unfortunate part about it is that he's getting a lot less rest because the coughing takes up about half of his usual interval between feedings, so at this point he's spending about half of the day worked up and coughing rather than being able to sleep and recuperate.

The respiratory therapist said that this sort of plateauing at a given stage of the recovery process is quite common with RSV- that it will look like things are getting better and then they will stagnate or actually get a bit worse, as in Leo's case, and then the baby will just sort of hang out in a stage and not seem to be showing signs of improvement. He did say, however, that it's not likely that Leo's condition will regress to something substantially more serious- a secondary infection or a need for supplemental fluids or oxygen, for example, so that is somewhat reassuring. In the meantime, they've made it relatively clear that they don't want to send him home while he's still having so much trouble breathing, so it looks like we're sort of in a holding pattern until something shows sustained signs of changing for the better.

So we were hopeful that Leo would be released today because he didn't need any intervention yesterday but now it looks like that is off the table. Poor little guy was pretty congested again all night and having a fair amount of difficulty breathing. They administered a couple of breathing treatments of albuterol, although to be honest those didn't make much of a difference. They are trying to get way back in his throat to suction stuff out to make breathing easier (which he absolutely hates, not surprisingly) but in general they want to keep him close because of the difficulty breathing.

The good news is that the congestion is mainly in his throat at this point so he can breathe through his nose better, and he has still not shown signs of a fever again, which means he's likely through that and done with it. He's also coughing and getting some stuff up occasionally, which is what we want to see- if only you could explain to a one month old that they could go home if they could clear their throat...

So bottom line is that he isn't substantially worse but he's not as better as they'd like to see, ergo we stay. Will update more if anything changes drastically but for now our earliest potential release date would be tomorrow, and that would only be if he shows that he's improving on the congestion/wheezing front.

Last night went well, which is very encouraging. He hasn't run a fever over 100 since yesterday, so the doctor is confident that no secondary infection has developed, which was the primary concern. He was also able to sleep more or less through the night (minus waking up to eat every 2 hours of course!) which means he wasn't in too much discomfort.

It seems like Leo's nasal congestion is getting a bit better, although he's still got a lot of gunk in the back of his throat. He's managed to do fine without supplemental oxygen since we've been here, though, which is a good thing. He's also eating regularly again which means the pain isn't as bad in his throat

So long as he doesn't need treatments he can only get in the hospital (oxygen, iv fluids, deep suctioning in his nose or throat), the doctor seems to think we will be able to take him home sooner rather than later. She wants to watch and see how he does for a while, obviously, and I don't want to be too optimistic, but it sounded like tonight or tomorrow might be a possibility... will keep folks updated if we hear anything more.

Last week Drew came down with a nasty respiratory infection that's been taking its toll on him. He's been pretty miserable and running a fever and totally not his normal self. He does seem to be starting to turn the corner (hopefully!) as his cough is becoming more productive, so we're hoping that he'll be better within the next couple of days.

Unfortunately, he passed along his germs to the rest of us including little Leo, who started coughing on Saturday night. He's been really sad and pitiful, since his tiny little nose and lungs fill up really easily and it makes it hard for him to breathe or eat. Over the weekend he seemed really sad and uncomfortable but we were waiting to see how serious it would get.

Last night when we got home from Los Alamos Leo was having a really difficult time breathing and having to really use his whole abdomen just to get air in and out, so we brought him in to the hospital. Since he's so little and too young for any medication, we figured better safe than sorry.

They gave him some albuterol treatments to help with the breathing and took a chest x-ray, some bloodwork, a throat swab, etc. He came back positive on his throat culture for RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) which is apparently very common in all children but in older kids it manifests the same as any other head cold, whereas it's much more taxing on someone so small.

In general the doctors think he's probably just got the virus, although they are waiting for final results on the x-ray and lab work, but the concern with a newborn is the risk of a secondary infection in the lungs. Particularly given that he's been running a fever since last night, they wanted to admit him so that they could monitor him closely, continue to administer breathing treatments if necessary, and have access to antibiotics should they get results that confirm an infection.

The doctor said that since we caught him relatively early in the course of the virus it's expected that we could be watching him actually get worse over the next couple of days before he turns the corner and starts to show signs of improvement. She said that kids with similar symptoms usually end up staying in the hospital for just under a week until everything subsides enough that they're comfortable sending them home.

So we're here at Huntington Memorial in Pasadena hanging out, most likely for the rest of the week, just to make sure the little guy is safe and gets better asap. We have access to the internet and phone- I'll be here mostly with him but we're going to try to have Andy relieve me a little bit so I can shower and hang out with Drew a bit. Everyone's exhausted already but hanging in there and glad it doesn't look like anything really serious.

The boys went in for their first tandem doctor's visits this week, Leo for his one month visit and Drew for his two year. For those interested in such things, Drew is now 36 inches tall and weighs about 28.5 pounds. He's still over 90th percentile for height but is more like 50th for weight. In his first month of life, Leo managed to go from 7 pounds 1 ounce to a whopping 9 lbs 15 ounces- he gained 2.5 pounds in the last three weeks. He's 21.25 inches long and is about 50th percentile for both weight and height.

Leo has been much more alert, spending a few hours at a time awake and watching everyone and everything. He's also working hard on his neck muscles so we're expecting to see him trying to hold up his head on his own soon.

I also uploaded some cute pics of both boys from the past couple of weeks- I can't stand how cute the two of them are together. Click here to check them out.

Drew turned 2 on Saturday (!) and we had a jam-packed weekend of birthday fun which included four days straight eating cake, his first overnight in a tent, and of course lots and lots of presents (he's still periodically asking me if there are more presents for him to open, just in case I overlooked a couple by accident).

We had about 25 of his friends to his birthday bash at The Little Gym on Sunday morning, where they danced and sang and bounced their hearts out. It was pretty hysterical to watch a huge gymnasium filled with ecstatic 2-year-old's flying all over the place. They had a blast. Special thanks to Auntie Lili (aka Hilary), Grandma Rudi and Cousin Jake for making the world's coolest cupcakes for the affair, decked out like different circus animals.

When we came home after the party and Andy was putting Drew to sleep, he asked him if he had a good time. Drew's response was "no Daddy, had a GREAT time. ALL your friends at the little gym! LOVE birthdays." Then he passed out in exhaustion for a good 4 hour nap. If only we had all gotten the opportunity to sleep for 4 hours.

I uploaded some pics from the affair, click here to check them out.

Okay, so I was guilt-tripped by my mom who told me she doesn't remember what Leo looks like anymore because the only pictures she has are from his first two days. Here are some more photos from the past few weeks- he's already starting to get a bit pudgy around the cheeks and losing that newborn fragility. Crazy how quickly it happens!

Poor little guy has been having some colicky issues the past week or so (not to mention poor Mommy & Daddy!) which have been keeping everyone (except for Drew) up at night. Hopefully it'll pass quickly enough and he'll get into some sort of pm sleeping groove sooner rather than later. In the mean time, thank goodness for coffee!

I uploaded a bunch of pictures of Leo's first few days- click here to check out the whole album!