This ain't no Hawaiian Vacation!

I am five weeks old now and a lot of wild stuff has happened in my life since the day I was born. I have met so many good people and the best part is that they are all either in my family or friends of mine. I feel pretty lucky to have landed on earth among such big, loving hearts! My mommies are pretty sweet too! But, most of this particular story is about the hard stuff. I just want to get it out of the way so you are updated and then we can move on to some really fun tales!

My mommy is always making sure I'm not hungry. She lets me nurse whenever I want to: in the tub, in the middle of the dark night (even if it is like 3:00 in the morning), in the cool woods of the dog park while we walk my dog Gracie, in the backyard in the middle of a dinner time picnic... seriously, whenever I want! My mommy's milk is extra good. Her lactation consultant told her that it is like a milk shake. I say it is more like a double thick milk shake! Tasty for sure! That's why when I took a 5 day break from eating and my mommies started to freak out, I knew the whole time it was no big deal because I was getting the double thick milk shakes the whole time! My moms though, man are they worry warts. They were flipping their lids and getting all upset, meanwhile I was gaining 6 ounces the whole time. It is too bad we don't speak the same language yet. I could have told them to chill out. Oh, well!

My momma, on the other hand, has no milk, but she does lots of other stuff for me that I love. She's always making sure that I have a dry diaper on and she gets really excited when my diaper has poop in it! Mostly that's because I decided I didn't really like to poop because it kind of hurts, you know? So, I just stopped. That's right, I just decided, "Forget that. I'm not pooping anymore," and I didn't for over a week. My moms got very worried (what stress balls) and were telling me all the time that pooping was important and that my tummy would stop hurting if I would just go. Do I look like a fool? I don't think so either. I said I was not gonna go and I meant it. Well, after the 7th day, my moms took me to the doctor and learned a couple of tricks. After a nice visit to the baby chiropractor and several gentle massages by moms, I am pooping like a champ. It doesn't hurt has bad as I thought. Plus, it is funny when my momma cheers and sings me little songs about how happy she is to see my poops!

Okay, so other than the no eating and no pooping, there is only one other not so great thing that has happened in my life that I'll tell you about. I've had my blood drawn 11 or 12 times (I can't even keep track anymore) and oh, man did that hurt! Plus, I heard my moms say that some of the nurses that came to draw my blood were "cracked out," whatever that means. I can tell you that they grabbed my arm really hard and strapped this horrible squeezy thing to the top of my arm and they would not take it off even when I was screaming as loud as I could! Then to make the whole experience worse the nurses would stab my arm with a sharp needle and they never got my vein the first time so they'd have to do it all over again. I really, really, really hope I don't have to go to the lab again. It is no fun at all. It is just super scarry. I cry, my moms cry, it is no good. The whole thing started because I was jaundice when I was born and it has just taken some time for my skin to turn from yellow to pink and my eyes to turn from yellow to white. I heard my momma say once that "patience is a virtue," and geez people, it made me think that maybe if patience had been practiced I would not have been stabbed in the arms or feet so many times! Dang. The good news is that my bilirubin levels keep dropping so hopefully nobody will be roughly grabbing my arms ever again!