First Ever Bryce Update

Bryce in now 7 1/2 weeks old. I know it's cliche to say, but the time really does go by so fast! He's growing at an incredible pace (I wonder how long it will be before he passes his sister...). At birth he weighed 8 lbs. 15 oz. (certainly not small). He got down to 8 lbs. 4 oz. a few days after leaving the hospital. At his one month doctor's appointment he tipped the scales at 11 lbs. 7 oz. (and was 22 1/4 inches long)! I can only imagine how big he'll be next week at his 2 month appointment! By six weeks old he'd outgrown 90% of his 0-3 month clothes. The other day Mark came home from work and I met him at the door holding Bryce in my arms. Mark gave me a strange look and asked, "is that a baby?" Surprised I replied, "Uh, what else would it be?" He answered, "he looks almost like a toddler!" Here are a few pictures, the first is when he was 2 weeks old, the second from when he was 1 month old, and the third from today:

For the most part, Bryce is a great baby. He nurses great (although he has thrush, which is a pain - literally) and really likes to sleep. He figured out night-time sleep almost immediately and now only wakes up once or twice to eat and get a diaper change. During the daytime he often wakes up whenever I put him down, so we need to work on that. He smiles a lot and has even started laughing. Aubree interprets his smiles to mean that he loves his big sister.
When Bryce was one month old, we had our first big "adventure." Aubree had been sick for about a week and though I tried to keep her away from Bryce it was a pretty impossible task. So, Sunday afternoon during church Bryce started coughing. As the day progressed, his coughing got worse and he started grunting while breathing. It's extremely strange and unnerving to hear a deep, hacking cough come from a newborn. I did a quick internet search and everything I saw basically said, "newborns shouldn't cough; if they are coughing it means something's wrong - Call you doctor immediately." So, being an obedient (and nervous) mommy, I called the doctor and explained Bryce's symptoms. He said, "take him to the ER right now. We don't mess around with newborns because they can go downhill very, very quickly." Mark gave Bryce a blessing (which helped allay my fears) and Bryce and I headed to the ER around 8 pm. It took us a little over an hour to be seen by the triage nurse. Then they took us back to a room, and on the way back I saw a nurse who is a friend of mine from storytime at the library (the sad thing is, I didn't even know her first name! I only knew her as "Sophia's mom"). I was SO relieved to see her because from then on she took great care of us. The doctor ran a bunch of tests (i.e. influenza, RSV, pneumonia) and Bryce even had an X-ray. Everything came back normal, which was good news. We were sent home around midnight, but only after a bunch of shooting victims came into the ER! Thankfully, Bryce slept through most of night's events. It took another week or so for Bryce to stop coughing, but he seems to be doing fine now.

On May 4th, Bryce was blessed! Mark's parents and sisters came down for the blessing and we were so glad they could share the occasion with us (I'll write more about their visit in another post). It was a beautiful blessing and Bryce was awake and didn't cry at all. Here are some pictures from the day: