Babysitting

Drew's schedule has changed quite a bit lately. With Tiffany coming back to work last week, my father has been very generous and said he will babsysit Drew every Tuesday & Thursday for us. Drew arrives at his Gumpa's house around 7:00 am and gets picked up around 4:15 to go home. If it weren't for my father I don't know what we'd do. It'd be really tight if we had to pay for daycare or for Tiff to quit her job completely.

Then starting this Friday Drew gets dropped off with his Uncle Mike in Glenview for a 5 hour babysitting job. Uncle Mike hasn't had much experience babysitting yet so Tiff's Mom is helping out this Friday to get Mike's feet wet.

I also just got word from Tiffany that as of today Drew is 12 pounds 15 ounces and 24.5 inches long. He's in the 90th percentile for height and 75th percentile for weight. He's a tall slender man, just the right size to play guard in the NBA, like his mommy wants. :)

All Better

Just wanted to give everyone an update. Drew is feeling much better!! The vaporizer helped a great deal. I want to send out a huge thank you to my parents for rushing to Tiffany's aid at midnight when she was worried about Drew and I wasn't home. Thank you so much.

First Cold

I guess I should have known not all of my posts would be happy ones. While I was bartending at the Silver Dollar Sunday night I got a phone call from Tiffany. Apparently Drew had developed a very sudden cold and was stuffed up. He stopped breathing for a short while (less than a minute) and turned a terrible shade of red.

He wouldn't cough or inhale, but eventually he did start crying which was a great relief to Tiffany. She called my parents and asked them to come over to help her. Thankfully my parents live less than 3 blocks away and arrived within just a couple minutes. My mom took Drew into the bathroom and turned on the shower at full heat and allowed the room to fill with steam. This loosened his phlegm and he was finally able to breathe with ease.

While my Mom and Dad helped Tiff called the doctor for advice and then called me to let me know what happened. I told my two patrons I was closing immediately and that they had to leave. LOL. I stopped at Walgreen's for a Vaporizer and some Ocean Mist to loosen all of his congestion.

He's doing better now, but it's 3:00 am and he's still not sleeping or comfortable more than about 30 minutes at a time. And now that the blog is fully up to date, all entries should be much more current. Check back for more info daily!

First Smiles

Up until recently Drew is actually quite a boring enterprise. He eats, sleeps, poops, and occasionally cries. He'll study our faces for a long time and the end result is usually a sigh. Not too exciting.

But on Saturday the 12th at around 2:00 am I was feeding Drew a bottle. Afterwards he gave me about 30-45 seconds of amazing smiles. These weren't the smiles we'd seen previously called "gas smiles". These were REAL responses to my smiles and my laughter. It was amazing, and the best thing that we've experienced since his birth.

The next morning when Tiffany fed him he gave her the same session of real smiles with coos and funny little baby noises. And of course Tiffany had her camera ready...

First Bottle

For the first time in his life, Drew got a bottle of breast milk on Wednesday December 10th. It was nice to finally get a chance to feed him myself.

ILL - INI

On Saturday December 6th Drew went to his first ever Fighting Illini sporting event. The Men's basketball team traveled to Chicago to play Georgia at the United Center. It was a cold, windy day but that didn't stop Tiffany's strong desire to get him in his orange & blue Chief gear and down to the city.

We stopped in at Dan B's apartment which I think was near Lakeview. Here Dan B, Jen S, Joe W, Alex & Emily R, and Jen & Eric D got to meet Drew for the very first time. Josh & Linda H were there as well but they had met him after the Northwestern football game in November.

The Illini cruised to a 76-42 victory in front of a rather small contingency of Illini fans (around 11,000). Despite the small crowd it was loud as usual at the UC, but Drew slept right through it. He woke up once or twice for no particular reason.

Here's some pix from the game:

One of many instances where Jen didn't want to let go of Drew

Look who's awake and unknowingly supporting Chief Illiniwek!

Enjoying the game with Daddy

Our first family portrait at an Illini sporting event. One of many to come I'm sure

Great way to kick off December...

I took Monday December 1st off from work to make it an extra long Thanksgiving weekend. On our way to Glenview we stopped in Deerfield to introduce Drew to his Great Grandma (aka: Big Grandma). I found this picture of my Great Grandma, Grandma, Mom, my brothers and me from when we were kids up in Platteville. This picture made me think of that...

Four generations of Butsons meets 4 generations of Solers...