First Month as parents of Diego!

I can't believe it has been 1 month since Gotcha Day! I tried to post this yesterday, but Mark brought work home and I had to give him the computer...

Our lives have totally changed, and sometimes (like today) when Mark and I have dinner, and Diego is in his exerciser looking over at us, I still can not believe we have a little dude as a son! As Carol mentioned in one email "Life as we knew it is gone!". Well, not totally gone, but at least now, the first and last thought of everyday is Diego!

I have to admit, the first weeks (the one in Moscow and the first one in Phoenix) were very tough for us... I envy a bit some the parents that have careers like pre-school teachers, or speech therapist, or something related to kids... Sometimes I felt totally out of shape in regards to what life with a baby would be or what babies want/need - at least I knew how to change a diaper! But things have definitely got better!

Some improvements
Diego is:

• enjoying taking baths
• not scared of our dog Lulu anymore
• drinking more than 10 oz (per day!) of liquid from the bottle
• not screaming during changing diaper or clothes
• loving when we applied lotion after bath
• loving the banana pudding for his afternoon snack (from Beech Nut - 160 calories, 1 gr protein, 4% iron - we really want him to gain weight!)
  

Mark and Sinziana are:

• getting used to the new routine (wake up at 6:30 am and go to be no later than 10 pm)
  
• OK with not turning the TV or watching a movie in a month (just catch glimpses of the Suns)
  
• drinking more beer (not really, but the first days we did!)

Work in progress:

• Spend several hours/day with Diego on the baby carrier, facing me, so we promote eye contact and attachment (forget the list of play ideas of the previous post- it's all about attachment right now)
• Continue trying to find ways to make him eat (I also envy a bit the parents of kids who eat everything) and increase his iron (he was a bit low and does not like the formulas we have tried!)

The second month will be full of cool things like the visits of my mom, sister and brother in law, and Mark's parents, Diego's baptism, our first meeting with an attachment therapist (not to worry - we just want to make sure we are doing things right), and Diego's surgery for the hernia. We also found out today that he still has an ear infection, so hopefully he will get rid of the infection and then we may finally be able to see if his trouble sleeping (he still wakes up at night, not every night, but often) is due to the ear infection or still adjustment issues.

The second month will also be kind of crucial to determine if I will be able to go back to work... Yes, we are already talking about it... Right now Mark doesn't think I will... We'll see...

I hope I don't sound like everything is hard as a parent! We have had a lot of great moments, like introducing him to chocolate cookies (so he can start getting used to little solids in his mouth), or accepting and drinking his bottle after waking up and before bed with us looking at his beautiful eyes (not all the time, but he goes back and forth between Mark's eyes (he is standing) and my eyes (the feeder, sitting), having a bath in his plastic duck (Diego is small so we prefer to use this as a tub for a while), swinging in his new patio swing, shooting hoops with his daddy, and others...

And now, pictures!