All I want for Christmas...

is nothing apparently, because he couldn't stay up to ask Santa for anything. Plus Baby Derek's language abilities are limited at this point. So we settled on just on a photo with Santa. What you didn't see was the 30 minutes before this when he was screaming in the mall and I had to disrobe in the food court to feed him. Ah, modesty. What was that? Lots of firsts today - first time out at the Mall (lots of other babies floating around there), first change in a public restroom (ick! but liveable). And of course, first time meeting Santa.

Derek approaches the one month mark with a lot of good progress. He's starting to get that chubby Asian baby look,that I was hoping he'd develop. I can't believe 4 weeks ago today, I somehow pushed this human out of my BODY. Insane. He's gained weight well (I think he's approaching the 10 lbs. mark using my unscientific method of weighing myself holding him and without him - accounting for clothing weight). After some back to back growth spurts in the last few weeks that almost drove me craaaaazy, he started sleeping at least 2 hours again after some feedings which is also nice. Several times in the last month I thought I was starting to hit a good point - as soon as I thought that - everything seemed to fall apart right after. It seemed I kept going back to the same sleep-deprived Square 1 that made me wonder when things would get easier. The funny thing is so many people have told us that this is the "easy part".