Today Jonny is 8 weeks! old…which also means Mama has only 4 weeks left until we have to get back to the ‘real world.’

Working on the paper last month really gave me an indication of how difficult things will be when both of us are working. My productivity was really effected because I just wanted to go see what the little guy was up to every other minute. Auntie helped out because she still had the time since school hadn’t started yet. She even stayed over for a whole day (24 hours) while I finished up the paper to help Mama so she could stalk up on sleep here and there. You really don’t know the value of sleep until you can’t get any when you need to.

For my birthday, my parents (AND Auntie) came over and watched the little guy for 4 hours while Mama and I went on a much needed date. We went and saw “Tropic Thunder” starring a whole slough of stars and it was just the thing we needed. A mindless grown-up comedy that made us laugh at the guilty pleasure of potty humor and required zero brain power to follow. After that we went out to dinner at The Outback Steakhouse and it was delicious. It was the longest time we had been away from Jonny since he was born and it was very weird to not have him with us. Even though we were trying to get some time for ourselves, I found most our conversation eventually reverted to him and our plans for him.

Like how we will need to set up some child care for him once Mama goes back to work. There will be some days where I HAVE to get ‘X amount’ of stuff done and will need to have someone watch him. Yesterday we met with a gal who is willing watch him from time to time when needed so it is nice to know that we have some sort of plan. She already has a 2 year old and has another one on the way in January. I suppose we will have to find another means of child care during the week when Grammy and Papa are unavailable. I guess every parent has to do this though so I am confident we will work something out.

Today Jonny also went in for his Audiology appointment and the results were about how we projected. He has a moderate hearing loss in his left ear due to fluid build up (both ears have a fluid build up but the left one is the only one affected). The right ear is fine. What will end up happening, is at around 1 year, when he has his surgery on his cleft palate, they will also put tubes in his ears to equalize the pressure in his eardrums. It is not the fluid itself that is inhibiting his hearing, but the amount of pressure the fluid causes. The tubes will equalize this pressure thus restoring his hearing. The fluid will drain eventually as he grows.

However, he DID manage to pull out the cord from his ears on multiple occasions and threw a mini-tantrum to boot. Man. They should really tell you that they want the baby to be asleep when they give him hearing tests. We wouldn’t have let him sleep the whole way there…and half the day before that… We had to feed him half a bottle and rock him for half an hour because he simply was NOT ready to nap yet.

Guess what? Jonny has no appointments next week! Woohoo. We are still waiting on the FINAL results of the blood test for the VCFS but we are pretty confident they will come back normal.

In the meantime, Jonny has taken to sucking on OUR thumbs when we go to pick him up. We will have our hands under his armpits as we pick him up and he just drops his head and looks for thumbs. He just picked it up 2 days ago, but now can’t stop looking for them when we are holding him up. It is very endearing but we have to remember to cut our nails short and have our hands washed when we pick him up. He has also begun to drool …A LOT …drool on his shirt, drool on OUR shirts, drool on his hands, drool on our hands… drool drool drool drool…