We are up in Custer, arriving this past Saturday afternoon about 2 or so. We took our time getting here, staying overnight in North Platte Friday night so we wouldn't have to do the entire trip at once and force Zac to stay in the car that long. Thought we'd just let him get used to it before we do a longer time frame in the car for him.
The big thing about being up here is that it's his first chance to meet the rest of my family. On Saturday he got to meet Grandma and Grandpa, plus his Aunt Stacy and Uncle Dan. Then on Sunday he got to meet his Aunt Lisa, Uncle Rudy, and cousins Holly, Sandra and Julie. Everyone has taken turns holding him and, well, pretty much just staring at him. He is awful cute, after all.
So today's pics are of the first times Grandma and Grandpa got to hold him. Grandpa's chance came many hours after Grandma first got a hold of Zac. When we arrived at the house, mom grabbed him and that was it for about four hours. :)
Having fun up here but the dry weather combined with the start of spring is conspiring to wreak havoc with our allergies, and we're suffering a bit for it.
I promised you a size update and have one, but was delayed in getting to this until late tonight as I've been busy trying to semi-finish off the basement room so guests have a place to stay. Specifically, mom and dad will be here in a little over a week and will need a room, so now they have one, since I finished it around 11 tonight. Phew! Hopefully the feeling in my hands returns soon and I can actually close my hands first thing in the morning within a few days. :)
So we had Zac's 3-month checkup today. He's having monthly checkups right now just because he was so early. Now remember, he was 9 weeks early to begin with, and we were told to expect him to be at least 6 weeks behind on behavioral and learning things for the first 9-12 months, or even more. The good news is, he's finally on the charts for size and weight, even for a 3-month-old. Just for kicks, Dr. Ogden compared where he would be on the 2-month-old charts (so that's 4 weeks, not even 6 different) and while he's barely on in the 3-month charts, he'd be in the 50th percentile for height at 2 months and I think 25th percentile for weight if they took it at that level. I say that just to point out he is getting bigger and, as we thought, will likely be a pretty big boy here before his first year is out.
Now for the details. He weighed in today at 10 pounds, 2 ounces and he is now 23 inches long. Not bad for where he started! Well, we're off to Custer tomorrow (Friday) around mid-afternoon. I'll update as I can while there.
Thought I'd upload this pic today from Monday night. Katy had just fed Zac and apparently he was too tired to even wait to reach his bed.
Doctor's appointment tomorrow will give us official numbers to post here on length and weight, so I'll share then. Also, we're headed up to Custer, SD Friday to do some work with the store, so I'll try to make sure we have a pic or two to share on here during our trip.
Just realized I hadn't posted any news since last Wednesday, so thought I better give some type of update lest everyone think we've dropped off the edge. Still trying to get the downstairs room turned into a bedroom so guests have a place to stay when visiting. The first test is mom and dad, who are coming back with us from a trip we have to make up to Custer on the 25th. It's either give them a place to stay or do a bunch of maneuvering to fit them in Zac's room and move him to the living room.
Drywall was delivered yesterday, and I finished about half of the walls. Now I'm taking today off because I can barely use my hands and I'm sore to the point where everything hurts. :) Hopefully tomorrow I'll get most of the rest of the walls up, with Katy's help, and then can find a way to lay down the carpet. I don't have two of the necessary carpet tools, so it may just lay in there temporarily until I can get baseboard down and rent the tools to properly attach the carpet. I still have outlets to tie into the main power, but it will be good enough for mom and dad to stay in when they arrive and I can finish the rest maybe once I find a job or have earned a little more money somewhere else.
Last night, Zac was very fussy and didn't sleep much, which kept Katy up quite a bit, meaning neither of them were able to make it to church today. I was running sound this week, which is why Katy was up last night and why I couldn't be home to assist. He seems to be doing better now, for the most part, though sleeping apparently has left his limited vocabulary. Just the other day we were thrilled he'd begun to sleep in 5-hour spurts at night, which is a huge, huge help for getting some sleep. Then he has a night like last night. Wouldn't you just know it?
On the job front, I was supposed to hear this past week from two places, one up in Norfolk and one in Missouri, but heard from neither one of them, which was surprising. I've broadened our search now to include any number of states and look even beyond that if something interesting shows up on monster.com or one of the other national job boards. For people at my career level, relocation isn't often covered and many businesses don't have an interest in candidates from out of town, which means two things. It means that one, Omaha is still the most likely option for eventually finding a job and, more importantly, none of this matters because God is deciding it anyway. :)
Back to Zac. As soon as we get him to begin laughing, which he's pretty close to doing right now, we'll capture it on video and that'll likely be the next post. It'll either be that or the cats doing something funny. That's it for today's update.
People have been wondering how big Zac is at this point and, well, so were we. So today I did my own little amateur check on his weight and height (so to speak).
So this isn't exact, I'm sure, but I weigh him in at 9 pounds now and I show he is 22 1/2" long. He certainly looks bigger, getting chubbier by the day. :)
Thought today I'd give just a little bit of an update on the job situation and share a new pic of Zac for all to enjoy. Note that in this picture, he is actually smiling! Yes, Zac began smiling in reaction to things Katy and I have been trying just within the past few days. We're happy to finally get some type of recognition out of him beyond just paying attention to things. He's just started staring at objects, too, and getting slightly entranced by them.
On the job front, against our true wishes, we have begun looking into the possibility of relocating so I can find a job. I've put my resume out on some different job boards that are further away for consideration. The areas we are willing to consider are Tulsa, Des Moines, the areas around Kansas City (within about two hours or so) and smaller cities in Nebraska. Essentially, if it's outside of Nebraska, it has to be within three hours of Kansas City, where Claire is, because that's about how far away we are right now. If it's still in Nebraska, which is where we want to stay, then we can consider moving a bit further away and when we pick Claire up, we'll just have to cover the extra distance we moved.
I've received interest so far from a publishing company in Missouri, about two hours east of Kansas City, and hope to hear back from them for a more formal interview by the end of this week. I've also heard from a recruiter for a hospital up in Norfolk, which is about 100 miles or so north-northwest of Omaha. I haven't heard back for a phone interview yet, though they said I should by the end of last week. Additionally, I've now applied for positions in the Tulsa/Bartlesville area of Oklahoma as well as over in Des Moines. We would also consider Topeka, KS, but I haven't searched there just yet. I continue to apply for between 3 and 6 positions weekly. Again, the most frustrating part of the process is not hearing back from 95% of the companies, even when they aren't considering me. After seven months without a job, it does play on your confidence a bit, so I'm just trying to remain positive about any opportunities that come and not get overly worked up worrying about things I cannot control. It is, after all, in God's capable hands.
We have no idea what happened to Spring here in Omaha. Katy and I even live on Spring Street and can't seem to make it warm up. Today we're having constant rain with a little thunder once in awhile and temps are in the low 40s, expected to drop to just above freezing tonight. That will apparently allow us to enjoy rain mixed with snow by morning while we get even more rain. Oh joy. While we are fairly certain warm weather will show itself, we can't guarantee it. This has been the coldest Winter and start of Spring I can remember in many, many years.
Zac is feeling all better. He turned the corner yesterday and has resumed eating at his normal pace. I was hoping to post a picture today, but decided that since so many pictures are similar, I'll await a new look or fun picture before putting another up. Meanwhile, I'll continue to add pics to the slideshow on the right side of this page and to the one at the bottom as well.
Sorry I haven't updated the blog since Thursday. Zac has been under the weather for most of the past week, and I didn't feel I had much new to place on the site. We thought he was getting over everything, as it hadn't been all that bad. He'd had some issues with being fussy and was a little out of sorts, but nothing awful. Then Saturday night he started having trouble keeping food down. We went through two outfits in pretty quick fashion while we were over at Katy's parents' house, so we headed home. Tried feeding him again about 9:00 that night and he couldn't keep any of that down, either.
We then switched to a sort of home-made Pedialyte mixture. Essentially it's water with a little bit of sugar and a tiny amount of salt. It's meant to give him fluids and keep him hydrated, along with a small amount of electrolytes, without the add-ins the actual stuff has, which might be rough on his tummy (I'm unsure on that part, but he has to go in for shots today, so I'll ask if he can take the real stuff). The real Pedialyte has citric acid and other things, not much, but we don't want to push it.
He takes this pretty well, and we fed him only that until late Sunday afternoon, when we decided to start incorporating formula again to the meals. He took two meals well with about half water mix, half formula, and seemed to be doing a little better. Last night at 11:45 or so, I tried giving him just formula. Yeah, that was a mistake. After he gave some of it back, I followed it up with about an ounce of the water mix and that seemed to settle his tummy so he could sleep. He then slept over five hours, which was a shock considering how little he's slept the past few days, but also a nice change for me. At that time, I fed him a little over an ounce of formula and two ounces of the water mix, and he was fine with that. Just a bit ago, we did about the same thing, though closer to half and half. Right now I'm limiting him to closer to three ounces per feeding instead of the 3.5 he'd been taking more often last week, just because he can't seem to literally stomach it right now. Hopefully he turns the corner here today and tomorrow so he can get back to eating regularly again!
Not actual puppy dogs, mind you, but Zac in one of the cuter towels we've been given. We took this pic last night after Katy had given him a bath, and thought it was blog-worthy today. Zac has many cute outfits and accessories, and we have many people to thank for providing so much of what he needs. If I had to guess, I'd say Katy and I have only had to buy 2 or 3 things, clothing-wise, for Zac. We have so many clothes that it's really going to help save us some money even as he gets bigger.
Cold and rainy here in Omaha today. Supposed to be much warmer beginning tomorrow and through the weekend, but right now we're around 40 degrees, which doesn't make for a normal spring day in Nebraska. This is one of the colder winters and starts to spring we can remember, and we're just looking forward to the sunny days ahead. Have a great weekend, everybody!
Today Katy headed back to work for the first time since January 27th, the day before she was admitted to the hospital with the high blood pressure that led to Zac being born 9 weeks early. It's been a long time of not working and she's not terribly thrilled about it, but she is our only financial contributor at the moment so it's kind of necessary. Even if I had landed a job here that didn't require Katy to work, she's stated she would still work because her company has treated her so well. That type of treatment deserves loyalty and we are both very impressed with Grace Mayer Insurance because of how they have handled everything these past 10 weeks.
My job search is fairly stagnant. I put in several job applications a week and rarely hear back from anyone. I've met with countless recruiting/staffing firms and that hasn't helped, either. The only one to even find me a position was Aureus, and that was for a dollar amount too low at this point to make it worth working. Most of them just forget about you after a few weeks or so. It's pretty frustrating that though their entire job is to find me a job, they don't seem all that interested. I've also called on quite a few friends, hoping for an introduction to someone with hiring power to give me a chance in a position of any kind. I have quite a few interests and talents, certainly not restricted to the tech work I've done for so long, but getting your foot in the door is pretty tough. Turns out that if I'd stuck with programming or gone into either accounting or health care, I'd have job offers coming out my ears right now here in Omaha. Guess that's just our market.
In other news, Zac is doing much better today. He seemed to turn the corner sometime late yesterday afternoon and hasn't had any recurrences of his "vountain" experience, so that's good. This the first day, of course, that I'm taking care of him without Katy's assistance overnight or during the day. That getting up after about 2 hours of sleep through the night gets old pretty quick. :) But there is no reason for Katy to have to get up overnight when she has to be to work in the morning. Assuming I begin working at some point, :), then we'll switch off again like we have up until now, but for the time being, it's all me. Woo...hoo. :)
