Teething, Eating, Gaining, and a New Baby _____

So our little guy finally actually has a tooth coming through. He was super fussy all evening on Sunday, and when I looked in his mouth I saw the little bump on his bottom gum! He's been pretty comfortable since then with Tylenol. It's pretty cute though; he keeps running his tongue over the spot like, "Hey, what's this?"

And... Owen is EATING! Not a ton, and nowhere near enough calories to get rid of the G-tube, but he eats! He's been eating the Gerber Graduates puffs, and doing a little bit better with baby food lately. It's also fairly common for him to take about 4 ounces of formula for us at a time. So, frustrating as it is that we still have the tube, I really do think we'll be without it someday.

It's actually a good thing we still have the tube, because Owen has been upped to 36 ounces a day. Which doesn't sound like a lot, until you think about how many calories that is. His formula is mixed at 30 calories per ounce, so that's over 1000 calories per day! Formula mixed the normal way (and breast milk) is about 20 calories per ounce. All this may actually be having an effect, because when I weighed him this morning he was closing in on 15 pounds! It would be great if that's real, but I'm slightly concerned that he may be retaining fluid. After all, last week he only weighed 14 pounds. So I'll be keeping an eye on his weight to see if this is just a random jump (he tends to have those) or if it's something to be concerned about.

So our little guy has definitely been reaching some milestones and doing better all the time. And soon we'll have to be more specific than saying "our little guy." That's right - Owen's having a baby brother! I'm at 22 weeks and feeling good. We're thinking about names but haven't settled on anything for sure yet (and we probably won't until Bean's born.) He's been pretty active lately - it's both exciting and nauseating to feel him moving around in there!

We're getting ready for our first Christmas in our new house. Owen loves the lights, of course, and is enthralled by the train we have around the Christmas tree. A few days ago he "helped" Mark look at the ads in the paper. Okay, so he mainly grabbed the papers and waved them around a lot. So I think he'll have fun with the wrapping paper. Speaking of which, I need to get to it! I wish presents wrapped themselves sometimes. =)