It's good to be dad

Owen was having a hard time getting to sleep tonight. After the changing and the book-reading and the bottle, when alone in the dark, there was lots of crying. When I went in to try to calm him down, some holding and Happiest-Baby-On-The-Block-brand shushing (tm) was enough to get him to stop crying (even though he's supposed to be about six months too old for that to work anymore). Once he wasn't upset about being upset, Owen started squirming, which is his bedtime way of saying, "Geez, I'm trying to go to sleep, here. Why are you holding me? Let me be in my crib, man." OK, good, I laid him down on his back, but instead of of grabbing Sheepy (one of his three, rotating crib companions) to his face, he held on to my forearm and hand. After a couple of minutes, he turned onto his side, away from me, in a typical sleeping position, and shortly thereafter, I extracted my hand. I waited for another minute or two, in case another round of crying started up. And when Owen rolled back on to his back and opened his eyes, I thought, "OK, well what will we try this time?" But he just looked at me for a second or two, then turned back to the wall and fell asleep.

I'm still floating.

Puerto Rico

So it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged (again). But I’ve been thinking about a lot of different blog posts, hence the multiple postings in a 15 minute period. Travis and I had our 1st date last week since December! Mom and Dad came and stayed with Owen for a few days and Travis joined me in Puerto Rico.
I was there for a week for a work conference, which was great. The conference speakers were very interesting, I got to meet with research collaborators, and Puerto Rico is beautifual and have great food. I also got to teach at the hands on course that was part of the conference, which included teaching attendees how to freeze parts of the GI tract with CO2. Nifty.
Travis joined me on Friday and we took advantage of our extended date! Lot of good food, basking in the sun, and hanging out with friends.
I missed Owen a lot since I was gone for a week, but having some time with Travis sans-baby was great.

8 Month Update

Owen is 8 months old. He has more hair and is much more mobile. He now eats Oatios (organic cheerios). His favorite place to play is the kitchen, which has led us to create an Owen cabinet with Tupperware, water bottles, and large plastic utensils to bang. It’s made it much easier to get ready in the morning now that he’s happy emptying his cabinet. He’s 22 pounds and 27 inches long (at least at 8.5 months, when I finally got around to posting this). He babbles, army crawls around the kitchen, and rocks on his hands and knees. He has 2 teeth and now sleeps from 7:30 pm to 6 or 6:30 am (hope I didn’t just jinx us by typing that).

Best Medical/Biology Fact of the Day

There are more bacteria in the human body than human cells. This many bacteria = 100,000,000,000,000. Nice.

Sad News

One of the young internal medicine physicians at my hospital passed away suddenly 2 weeks ago. She had a headache and two days later was dead and no one really knows what caused it. Scary and sad. Prayers and peaceful thoughts for her family, friends, and colleagues.