A few days ago Mathias embarked on one heck of a growth spurt. We’ve seen a couple of small spurts before, but nothing like this. He literally grew out of many of his newborn clothes over the course of two to three days. We’ve started rotating in his nicer “guests are here” clothing just to make sure he gets to wear everything at least once or twice. When we got a small gift of clothing over the weekend, we checked the size, saw 6-9 months, and practically broke into song and dance as a result.

Mathias has been up a lot at night the past few days, too, chowing down as much as possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s doubled his food intake over the past week. The rate of transformation has been amazing. As with most things we’ve experienced with him so far, the spurt is exciting, but it’s a bit sad at the same time. He’s not a big baby by any means, but as of this week he’s no longer a small one, either. I’m not complaining, but all the clichés about kids growing up fast… Well, so far they seem to be true.

It’ll be interesting to see what the next few weeks bring.

Well, pretty quiet around here as of late. I’ve been busy, and this coming week looks like it’ll continue the trend.

Aside from me accidentally sabotaging a 150-person game of diversity bingo, orientation at Carlson went well. Due to baby, family and job, I’m starting with only one course my first semester, but hope to ramp things up as my education progresses.

Mathias has embarked upon quite a growth spurt over the past week. It’s amazing the amount of milk and formula he’s consuming. He’s grown quite a bit, too. Sometime over the past 10 days I’ve lost the ability to reach around his body with the ends of my fingers touching. He’s still a little baby, but not nearly as small as he used to be.

As of today, he’s also started grabbing things. That’s progress, of course, but may soon present us with additional challenges as well.

Well, I’m busy this evening, so back to work. I’m expecting to be tied up with work functions until at least 10:00 in the evening Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so I probably won’t be here again until the end of the week.

More later.

Mathias finally got to meet the other set of grandparents this past weekend. My mom and dad were only in town for about 24 hours, but they made the most of it. My dad only dropped his preferred nickname for his grandson once, and considering that nickname is Ralph, I’m glad it didn’t make much of an appearance. Regardless, both grandparents were happy, and lavished an inappropriate amount of praise on Lisa and I for “doing such a good job.”

As expected, there were a lot of photos, and of course presents for the baby. My dad decided Mathias must be a Tony Stewart fan–Tony Stewart drives car #20, and Mathias was born on the 20th–so there were a number of bright orange NASCAR gifts in the mix. We’ll have to make sure we have that #20 onesie along with us next time we travel across Wisconsin. If the car breaks down, we can wave Mathias in the air to get the attention of passing traffic.

As it happens, Stewart won his most recent race on Sunday. I’m not sure if that means anything. I just hope it doesn’t mean we have to start watching auto racing. (The last auto race I saw was, uh, animated.) I mean, seriously. There’s baseball on.

Speaking of baseball, I’m not paying attention to the Brewers. If I do, they’ll start to do poorly, and I don’t want that on my conscience.

We took Mathias for a stroller ride around the neighborhood last night. His reaction could generally be referred to as mixed.

I find myself looking at my son and marveling at how small he is, while at the same time being amazed at how wide a range of expressions and emotions can come from such a tiny body. He’s an incredibly observant little creature, and time and time again I’ve found myself watching him investigate the world around him. His head is heavy, but he’s grown adept at throwing it in whatever direction holds a sight or sound that interests him.

His fingers are tiny. It takes his entire hand to grasp onto my pinky, but when he does, he proves himself to have quite a grip. Meanwhile, his legs are strong enough to be dangerous. He’s only three weeks old, but he’s already learned how to move himself around the cosleeper, and has gotten surprisingly close to turning himself over.

Sometimes when he loses interest in his pacifier he’ll latch onto one of my index fingers. For some reason he seems to prefer my fingers over his mom’s (or his grandmother’s, for that matter). One time this past weekend, he grabbed me shortly after I sat down by him and we stayed like that for almost a half hour until he drifted off to sleep. From watching Lisa, it’s obvious that breastfeeding has been a lot of work for her, and more often than not has been both tiring and painful. I’m glad that I’m a guy and don’t have to deal with that, but from Mathias’ weird little habit of sucking on my fingers, I get what seems like a small hint of the connection he and his mom must have.

It’s been wonderful to watch the changes with Mathias over the past few weeks, but the experience has been a bit sad as well. It’s clear he’s going to grow so quickly, so fast. I’m excited to watch him grow into the great individual I’m sure he’ll be, but I know it won’t be long before I’ll be able to look back at this time and miss it.

Kind of quiet around here lately. Turns out this parenting thing is a lot of work.

Not much to report from the past week, really. Lisa’s mom was up for most of the week, and her dad dropped in a couple of times as well. It was good to get the support, although I can’t say I made much use of it. The house is still a disaster, although a few areas are finally becoming more functional in nature. My folks head up to Minneapolis next weekend. I look forward to introducing them to their grandson.

Mathias had his first big thunderstorm today. He slept through it.

I’m still behind on my email. Phone calls have been a problem since last Tuesday when my Treo developed a weird issue that has the unfortunate effect of rendering it both deaf and mute. Verizon is sending me a replacement, but until then I’m relying on text messages. I’d say I feel like a kid again, except we didn’t really have text messaging when I was a kid.

Crap I’m old.

If I owe you an email or a phone call, I apologize. I’ll try to get back to everyone this week.

I head back to work tomorrow. Lisa will have reinforcements at home this week in the form of her mom–through Friday morning, at least–so that should help the transition a bit. I have a lot to write about our life with the little guy, but my brain is too mushy at this point to be effective at it. In retrospect, I can say that many of the parenting stories I heard before Lisa and I became parents seemed to have been optimized specifically to terrorize us. Being a parent has indeed been a lot of work, but nothing a reasonable, well-read person wouldn’t expect.

There’s still a lot to do around the house. The living room, bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and sunroom are pretty much done and set. The office remains in a transitional stage, and the dining room is still an unmitigated disaster. I hope to have it in a comfortable condition for living with baby by next weekend, but we’ll have to see how the week goes.

What a day. One moment we finally start to think we’re getting a hold of this entire parenting thing, and the next Lisa’s in an ambulance on her way to Abbott Northwestern. Everyone is fine, and we’re all back home now, but the entire ordeal was kind of rattling.

I’m not going to go into the details of what happened. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m a guy and I don’t have to deal with some of the weird and scary things that can happen after a pregnancy.

On the off chance Lisa’s or my mom reads this before we talk: DON’T PANIC. Lisa’s fine. Really!

We’re wrapping up our time here at United Hospital in St. Paul, and will be heading home in just four or five hours. The little one is off getting yet another test done on him, leaving mom and dad with a brief moment of peace and quiet. Actually, that’s kind of misleading, as Mathias has been a very quiet baby so far, maybe too quiet. We’re getting used to waking him up and feeding him, as opposed to just feeding him when he indicates he wants to be fed, which was our plan over the first day. According to the nurses, he isn’t as fussy and hungry as he should be.

We’ve worked with nine nurses over the course of our time here at United, and it’s been interesting to see the differences in approach and thinking. Comments on circumcision, clothing choices and even naming have often had very clear links to the age and experience of the nurse involved. This morning, one of the younger (and seemingly more hip) nurses seemed to get a bit perturbed that some of the other nurses were still assuming that last name of the baby was always the same as the mother. “I keep telling them 25% of the time that’s not true anymore.” I get the feeling that may be an ongoing point of drama among the staff.

To be clear, though, with the exception of one nurse that was a bit of a tool, we’ve been happy with the variety. While there’s something to be said for consistency, there’s definitely something to gain from a variety of opinion as well.

Lisa and I haven’t really formally talked about this, but I think we’d feel comfortable recommending United to expectant parents. A few of the things that seemed like negatives when we were researching hospitals, such as having to make a transfer from the delivery wing to the recovery wing, didn’t prove to be much of an issue. (Many birth centers these days are set up so mom, dad and baby can stay in one room for the duration of their stay.) In a way, it was actually kind of nice to be in a different area after the delivery, even though both the delivery and recovery areas were comfortable and well-staffed.

Well, mom needs to get back to feeding, and dad needs to make sure the car seat is installed properly. Back to being parents!

More later.

Mathias Eugene Danielson was born at 8:34 pm last night following an 18+ hour labor. He arrived at a healthy seven pounds, 14 ounces.

Both baby and mom are doing very well. Expect an inappropriate number of photos to be posted in the next day or so.

No baby yet. We made a regular visit to Lisa’s doctor this morning, and after review the baby may not be on schedule after all.

Mentally, I’ve kind of shut down over the past few days. I got a pretty good night’s sleep last night, but other than that, much of my sleep has been fairly irregular lately. I’m always tired, but I can’t really get myself to sleep soundly. I’m sure that’s partially due to all the work I’ve been doing, but I don’t think that explains all of it.

This is a weird thing for me to say, because I usually don’t believe such things, but maybe Lisa’s body isn’t the only one getting ready for something.