!/images/56t.jpg (Balancing act)!:/images/56.jpg
Toby developing his sense of balance
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Author: sean
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POTD: abdullah toby
!/images/55t.jpg (Abdullah Toby)!:/images/55.jpg
Toby Goes Mideastern
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Monthly Updates? No more…
*27 days?!* Sheesh… almost a month between updates! I’ll have to work on that in a big way. I tend to overthink my postings, and sometimes it takes me a couple hours to finalize one. Since it takes me so long, and I often don’t have big blocks of time to write something up (I’ll partially blame the topic of this site!), I end up with things like _27 day_ breaks between posts. Which is definately not what I’m wanting for here.
h3. POTD(picture of the day)
In fact, I think I’ll go a slightly different route with what has become the Toby journal starting sometime in the next week or so. Since a lot of you seem to enjoy the pictures (and with Toby being as cute as he is, I don’t blame you!), I’m going to start doing picture-of-the-day posts with a scattering of my longer thought posts instead of the big-article-many-picture style I started with.
In other words, I’m going to force you to stop by every day to get your Toby fix (or you’ll have to hit the “archives”:/archives/ to catch up)! I’m not going to _guarantee_ a new pic every day; I may miss a day or two here and there, but I’m going to at least try to keep it going, if for no other reason than to keep a historical record for our little guy when he gets older.
h3. Toby Updates
So, what’s Toby been up to in the last month, you may be asking? Well, let’s see how Dad’s memory is and see if I can remember all that’s occurred this month, shall we?
First off, he’s been growing like a weed. The last doctor’s visit almost two weeks ago showed him breaking into the double digits at a whopping 10 1/4 pounds. He’s stretching out quite a bit as well – just a hair over 20″. That’d be like me gaining 120 pounds and 7.5″ in a month. Amazing!
He’s stopped in to see a doctor or three as well this month:
Dr. Arkfeld checked his eyes out once again, and as I assumed, everythings going wonderful on the eye front.
Next up was the pediatric orthopedist (the doctor’s name escapes me) for his previously broken leg. Again, a good report – everythings seems to have healed just fine.
Dr. Green checked him out and was fairly amazed at his growth (or so it seemed to me). Told us Toby was doing wonderfully!
After visiting Dr. Green, he got his first round of vaccinations. *Four*(!) shots into our little guy. Two nurses tag teamed him and gave him two shots at a time. I’m not going to lie and say he took ’em quietly, but a minute or two later and he was fine. No obvious reaction afterwords, but he was maybe a touch crankier for a few days.
Toby’s been on a number of little trips as well lately, mainly to the grandparents so they can get their Toby fix (really, guys, we don’t mind you stopping by!). Just about every weekend we make a trip up to Dodge and -get our free meal- visit the grandfolks and spend a relaxing afternoon away from home. Not that we were out and about all the time before Toby, but it _is_ nice to get out now and then!
And really, that’s about all as far as Toby news goes. Outside of the above, he does his normal baby things – eat, sleep, pee, poop, stare at the ceiling (what’s he looking at?!), stare at Mom & Dad, stare at random items, cry ever so infrequently (did I mention he’s a very mellow baby unless you make him wait more than 10 seconds for food?), attempt to pull out Dad’s arm hair.
You know, just normal baby stuff! 🙂
Stop back soon for the beginning of the POTD(picture of the day)!
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visitors galore & wanderings
16 days?
Sheesh, sorry about that, sixteen days without an update. Horribly inconsiderate of me. In my defense, we’ve had our share of visitors keeping us occupied!
Great Aunt Sharon
First off, my aunt Sharon came up to look in on the little guy (and us too)…
Aunt Lori
Then my sister Lori shows up in town and holds him for, oh, three days straight! (Beware Mitch!) 😉
Roadtrip
Sunday the 9th we loaded him up for his first official non-doctor-related outing, and headed off to Dodge and Grandma & Grandpa Faltin’s place for way too much food. While there, we had some cake & ice cream to celebrate Lynn & Grandpa F’s birthdays.
Again, he was held all day, by a variety of people – Great Aunt Sharon, Grandpa & Grandma Oelkers made an appearance as well, so there was no shortage of Toby-holders.
And finally, the nieces got to see their new nephew up close and personal. Though I’m not too sure if niece Cameron appreciated all the attention he received!
It was good to get everyone out and about finally; we were starting to get a little cabin fever!
Spoiled
Needless to say, all this holding is spoiling our little Toby – he now seems to think he needs to be held constantly (ok, slight exaggeration)! Of course, we’re more than willing to oblige him – for now! 😉
New Look
And in case you didn’t notice (blind, are we?), the new look for marginalideas.com is now live. It was just a little too plain before for my tastes. Let me know if anything goes screwy for you and I’ll see if I can fix it!
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adjusted age: zero
Well, if everything would have went exactly as planned (and what _ever_ does?), today would have been Toby’s birthday. Per the hospital’s parlance, that makes his “adjusted age”:https://www.medem.com/medlb/article_detaillb.cfm?article_ID=ZZZQEMYUQ7C&sub_cat=26 zero today. The free ride’s over kiddo, time to act like a newborn! 😉
Some vital stats for our ‘newborn’:
* Weight: 8lbs and change (almost a pound gained this week!)
* Height: 18+ inches
* Hair color: black
* Eye color: blue (“for now”:https://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/eyecolor.htm)
So, how about a few recent pics to tide you all over?
h3. First Family Picture
(Yeah, I know, I need a haircut – it’s been taken care of!)
!/images/35t.jpg (Mom, Dad & Toby)!:/images/35.jpg
h3. His latest chewtoy – Dad!
For whatever reason, he seems to enjoy chewing on Dad. Which is fine with me, ’cause it’s so damn cute! 🙂
!/images/32t.jpg (Toby uses Dad as a pacifier)!:/images/32.jpg
!/images/33t.jpg (Toby uses Dad as a pacifier)!:/images/33.jpg
h3. Oh, look at all the pretty colors!
He’s also paying more attention to the world around him, seriously checking out anything brightly colored or contrasted around him. Again, damn cute! 🙂
!/images/50t.jpg (Look at all those colors)!:/images/50.jpg
!/images/51t.jpg (Look at all those colors)!:/images/51.jpg
!/images/52t.jpg (I can fit that in my mouth, I know it)!:/images/52.jpg
!/images/40t.jpg (Mom and Toby read some Seuss)!:/images/40.jpg
h3. Just hangin’ out
Of course, he’s still a big fan of his baths…
!/images/53t.jpg (Relaxing in the bathtub)!:/images/53.jpg
and snuggling with Mom…
!/images/42t.jpg (Mom and Toby cuddling)!:/images/42.jpg
or just staring off into space!
!/images/41t.jpg (Mom and Toby spacing out)!:/images/41.jpg
h3. In Retrospect
While the last ten weeks have been at various times stressful as can be, I wouldn’t trade the time together for anything!