One Month Old & Three Years

On Sunday, Eli turned one month old!  We didn't do anything special but on Tuesday he goes to the Dr.  He has also officially moved from newborn diapers to size one diapers.  We were able to keep him in the newborns until we finished the pack we had, which was nice!  I was shocked at the size difference but they fit, so up he went.

The whole family!

We took this picture on our 3rd Anniversary (9/17). It was amusing trying to take a self-portrait with a trash can for a tripod and getting a baby with a floppy head, a dog, and the two of us in the frame! This is the one shot of the many that finally worked! :) 

Eli being cute.

Size one on the left and newborn on the right.

Eli still is not sleeping as much or as long as we would like at night.  It seems like night time is when he becomes the most alert and spits up the most.  It is not necessarily the whole night but usually right before we decide it is time to get ready for bed until about 2 hours past the time we wanted to be in bed!  We don't want him to grow up too fast but I am looking forward to being able to sleep through the night, and I know Andrea is too!!!

Our Baby Beeps

Eli is full of crazy sounds.  The other night some friends were over and as they were leaving Eli made a hysterical sound and Matt said "He beeps!".  It really did sound like he beeped!  So, in honor of that I have a short video of some of the sounds he makes!  Trust me when I say he makes plenty of other sounds but I don't think those are recordable!

The other theme of this post is sleep.   As you will see in most of the pics Eli is asleep and his mouth is wide open.  He usually sleeps like this and it is pretty cute. 

Eli fast asleep and mouth wide open.

On another note, last Thursday when Eli went to the Dr. he was up to 9 lbs 5 ozs!  He is getting some chubby cheeks, but his legs are still little spindles..... I think they will always be that way!

Momma and her tired boy.

Close up of the fly trap.

Super cute sleeper.

I had an odd thought the other day. I was thinking about how much Andrea likes cheese and I got to thinking about where cheese comes from. Of course cheese comes from milk. It mostly comes from cow milk, but there is goat cheese also. This got me thinking about milk.... The milk we drink is really just cow breast milk, intended to nourish baby cows until they can eat solid food. So, crazy thought, can we make breast milk cheese?!?! I bet Whole Foods would sell it!

Andrea and Eli at the Eno.

Fever and a Trip to Duke

Unfortunately we had another adventure with the medical community this week.  Eli had a fever and we ended up at Duke Hospital.  

Eli patiently waiting it out!  The IV is in his right hand and the two other cords are for blood pressure.  You cannot see the monitor wrapped around his foot and they had taken off the 3 lead ECG.

Sunday night Eli did not seem to sleep well, he grunted most of the night, Andrea only got a few hours of sleep and I think I got four hours.  Around 10:00 AM Monday morning Andrea commented that he felt warm.  I took his temperature and it was 100.1.  We called the pediatrician and they told us to come in later that morning.  At 10:50 I took his temp again and it was 100.4.  We remembered the pediatrician saying that if a baby got a temperature in the first month or so of life they were admitted into the hospital and there were a lot of tests done.... well, we got to the pediatricians and that's what happened.  They took his temperature rectally and it was 101.9!  They then told us the procedure and said we needed to go to the Duke ER... :-(  Even knowing it was coming, for me, this was the hardest part.  Being told to take our sweet 18 day old baby to the hospital and then calling our parents to tell them we were going was tough.

Eli had IV fluids and antibiotics.

We got to the ER and since the pediatrician called ahead we did not have to wait long to be seen.  We got into a room in the Peds ER and they took urine, blood, an x-ray and did a spinal tap!  Then we waited a while for a room in the hospital.  It takes 48 hours for official negative results to return so we were admitted for at least that long.

Even in the hospital he was a really good boy.

Eli ended up having a fever of 103.6 on Tuesday morning and the fever broke late that night.  All of the tests came back negative and we were released on Wednesday night.  They said that it was most likely just a virus, but as said before, they had to make sure.  Eli had an IV the whole time and was hooked up to a pulse-ox monitor and ECG most of the time.  It made moving around with him quite interesting!

A happy face cause he knows he is going home.

We had really wonderful doctors and nurses.  We also have some darn cool friends... a lot of them in the medical field!  It was probably as good as a hospital stay can be.  Andrea's mom works @ Duke and came to visit, a Ranger's wife works @ Duke and came to visit, a bible study friend is a Duke med student and came to visit, and another couple in our bible study are both working at Duke and they also came to visit.  

Back home and admiring his Daffy Duck band-aid.

We apologize if you are first finding out about this through the Blog, but we didn't call many people.  We only called family, my work and our couples bible study because we needed their help.  We appreciate all of the prayers people have said for us.  We also thank God for his provision over Eli's health!

Tropical Storm Hanna

As I am sure most of you know Tropical Storm Hanna passed very close to Durham Friday night into Saturday.  The eye was just east of us and it moved through very fast with minimal wind damage in our area.  Had the storm moved slower it would have been pretty bad!  Here are some pics from the park.  I will try to get some reference pics from normal water levels.  I have also put on some stream gauge data that is fun.

This is the Pleasant Green Rd bridge.  We have markers on the bridge to measure river height.  Usually the river is less than one foot on the park's gauge, at its crest it was well above 17 feet (where our markings end), my guess is between 19 and 20 feet.  You can see how close the water is to the bridge.

This is supposed to be the parking lot at the Pleasant Green Access.  We obviously closed this section of the park.

This sign is supposed to be on a hiking trail adjacent to a small stream, Rhodes Creek.

This is the rock crossing on the Eno Quarry Trail across Rhodes Creek.  Rhodes Creek is usuall about 15 feet wide.... In this picture it is water as far as the eye can see!  Notice the sign from the picture above.

If you have been to Eno River State Park you know the swinging bridge.  This picture was taken after the river crested.  The water is just below the bridge, at its height the bridge was underwater!!

This graph shows water flow a few miles upstream of the park.  The river went from about 5 cubic feet per second (CFS) to about 4,500 CFS!!!

At the same gauge as above the river height went from about 1.75 feet to 17 feet!!!

This gauge is just downstream from the park.  The water flow went from about 10.5 CFS to about 9,000 CFS!!

Also just down stream from the park the river lever went from about 1.75 feet to 19 feet!!!

All of this was from about 6 inches of water.  Imagine if the storm had moved through slower and dumped even more rain on the area!  Thankfully all is well at the Gwinn house and there were no major incidents in the park.

Eli Update

Labor Day is over and I return to work on Wednesday....  It seems like the last few days have flown by and lasted forever at the same time.  

He is so precious when he sleeps.

We have been through a few different sleep patterns, none of them very fulfilling.  After the 9:30PM to 8:30 AM pattern we switched to a few days of Eli being awake until 3:00 AM and then sleeping 2.5 to 3 hours at a time until 9:00 AM.  The last two nights he fell asleep around 1:00 AM and got up around 9:00 AM.  Last night he actually slept for 4.5 hours at one stretch but Andrea and I did not benefit because after 2.5 hours we woke up every 30 minutes wondering if he was okay!!

Ready for the car ride in 90 degree weather :-)

We have had a bunch of family in town this weekend too.  My sister had quite the adventure getting here.  She got here late Saturday, spent the night and left Sunday night.  It was a very short visit but it was great to see her, as always.  Of course she got to meet her nephew Eli also!

Aunt Jill

Andrea also has an Aunt, a cousin and his wife and their daughter in town.  This also brought all the Renfrows to town.  It has been hard trying to see everyone this weekend, which was made more difficult because there was no real plan and any plan that was made was thrown off course by accidents or babies!

Post Bath

A few other things that have been hard the past few days are the fact that as soon as Andrea's mom left on Friday our naps disappeared!  Man do we miss those!!!  Eli has also been spitting up a lot the past two days.  It does not seem like he can possibly have any milk inside of him with the volume that has been coming up, but he is still peeing and pooping well.  It is hard to deal with seeing him spit up all the time.  His cries have such a pull at my heart!  We have also been wrestling with  some big decisions.  There is a lot going on but we are enjoying it as much as possible!

Andrea's cousin Jason with his daughter Abby and Wyatt.