Finalization is Near!

GO CATS! The pictures are of Cameron's first tailgate. You can see he really enjoyed it!
Well, we got an e-mail from our attorney today and our finalization date has been set! We will be in court on October 4th at 9:00am and Cameron will be officially named Cameron Nicholas Pfannenstiel and will be ours forever! We were very excited to get the news and to be able to finalize so quickly.
Things continue to go well here at home. I have been on maternity leave last week and this week and have enjoyed spending all of my time with Cameron during the day. I've really gotten to know his behaviors and cries. He's a very sweet little guy and has just started babbling a little bit when we talk to him. He looks like he's continuing to gain weight, which is good. The doctor was a bit concerned about this at his last dr. appointment and made us do some testing for pyloric stynosis. This is a condition where the opening from the intestines to the stomach does not open enough for the food to get through so they end up spitting up a lot. Luckily, Cameron did not have this condition, so no surgery was needed. They switched his formula to Enfamil Gentlese, which is for fussiness and gas. It has helped, but he is still spitting up. Not nearly as bad, but it still happens. He seems to be growing, so we'll find out at his next appointment at the end of the month.
We'll keep you updated on his weight gain and growth!

One Month Old!

Cameron is one month old today! He continues to do well and sleeps better and better each night (well almost each night). Last night was our best night with a stretch of 7 hours! Yes, 7 hours of straight sleep!
We have our one month doctor appointment and can't wait to find out how much he's grown. Things continue to go well although we have had some spitting up problems. We'll talk about that with the doctor tomorrow and see what he thinks. We're thinking acid reflux, but we're not the professionals, so we'll get a professional opinion tomorrow. He always seems to be hungry, but (especially at night or early, early morning) he spits up so much. We're a bit "worried" about it, and look forward to finding out more tomorrow at his doctor appointment. We'll also find out how much weight this little guy has gained. He doesn't seem much bigger to us, but hopefully the scales will disagree with us. The doctor wants him to be around 8 pounds tomorrow and 2 weeks ago we were only 6 pounds 11 ounces.
Cooper continues to adjust well and is a great big brother. He gives Cameron a lot of attention and loves to help in the mornings with feedings and choosing Cameron's outfit for the day.
I (Jill) am ready to enjoy 2 weeks off for maternity leave these next two weeks. Not sure what I'll be doing for 2 weeks, but I'm looking forward to having the time off to spend with Cameron. He will then start going to daycare in 2 weeks. Luckily, he gets to go to the same wonderful in home daycare that Cooper got to go to when he was a baby, so there is no worries about leaving him there each day. I know he'll get the best care available from Carol!
Enjoy the one month pictures and we'll let you know how our doctor appointment goes tomorrow.

Happy Family

Well, things are going well in the Pfannenstiel household. We are settling in with two children and it's becoming more and more routine.

Cooper continues to love his little brother. He is very good about helping out when mommy and daddy need it, except for when he's busy doing something he wants to do. :) He loves to snuggle with Cameron and Cameron seems to not mind (too much).

Cameron is doing very well. We went to the doctor last week and he weighed 6 pounds 11 ounces. The doctor wants him to gain some weight and would like him to be around 8 pounds by our next appointment on August 30. He doesn't look like he's getting much bigger to us, but I guess we'll find out in a week! He's eating and sleeping very well. He goes to bed around 10pm and wakes up around 2:30am and then again around 6:30am. We can't complain about that schedule! Jeff and I take turns getting up for the 2:30 shift, so every other night we're pretty much getting a full nights sleep. This is definitely different than when Cooper was a baby!

We want to thank all of you who have stopped by to visit and for the wonderful gifts you have given Cameron. We truly appreciate all the support and kindness you have shown.

I have included a few pictures for you. The tuxedo pictures are in preparation for the Pfannenstiel/Young wedding coming up on Sept. 26th. We were trying it on for size. HA!

Power Outage with an Infant

Well, the storm that hit Manhattan yesterday knocked our power out within about 5 minutes, and we're still without power almost 16 hours later. When the sirens went off yesterday afternoon, Jeff and Cooper were not home. They had gone to rent a movie because we were going to stay in and have a movie night. I ran upstairs to get Cameron who was sleeping soundly, then ran back downstairs and grabbed the phone on the way. I called Jeff to see where he was, and he was driving up Browning and told me to have the door unlocked. They drove in and Cooper came running into the house wondering what was going on. We stayed in the basement and listened to the radio to see what was happening outside. Right as we were turning on the TV to see about the news, the power went out. Cooper was really bummed at first, but then we made it exciting and got out the flashlights and candles. We played with the light bright and made it as fun as we could.

About an hour later, it wasn't so much fun any more, so we headed over to Jeff's dad's house, since they always have power. We had dinner there and kept checking to see if we had our power back yet. Since we didn't, we ended up spending the night at my parents house. We thought for sure we'd have power this morning, so Jeff went into town to check. NOPE! Nothing yet. We're still waiting for our answering machine to pick up when we call, so that we know we have power.

So...there are about 1,600 people without power in Riley County, and we are one of those people. It always seems that our neighborhood is last to get power. So frustrating!

Cameron has weathered the storm very well, sleeping through most of it. He's doing great and continues to grow and get bigger. He had his check up with the doctor yesterday and he has grow an inch and gained 4 ounces! We go back August 30th and the doctor wants him to be around 8 pounds at that time. The doctor says he's very healthy, he just needs to gain some weight! He's sleeping well at night, so Jeff and I are getting our rest. He's a great baby and we couldn't be happier! Cooper has been a great help and is a wonderful big brother (as you can see in the picture). He's very possessive of his baby brother and let's people know that it's his baby. He likes to hold him, but only when he wants to. You can interrupt his time to help with the baby, but if he wants to do it, he does a great job.

We're Home!

We're happy to say that we arrived home Sunday evening from California. We drove 12 hours on Saturday from LA to Albequerque, NM, then got up early Sunday and drove from Albequerque, NM to Manhattan (another 12 hours). It was a lot of car time, but Cameron did great!

When we got home, our families were at our house to greet us. It was fun to have everyone see Cameron for the first time together. Cooper was super excited to see all of us! He fed Cameron his bottle and has been a great helper...so far.

Cameron is sleeping well and eating well. We're very happy to be home and can't wait for everyone to meet him!

Lots of News

Sorry it's been a while since we've updated, but we haven't had internet service!

Cameron was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday afternoon at 3pm. He ate great for 24 hours, so they released him. It was a great feeling to get to take our baby "home" to our rental house. We rented a house in Hollywood for 5 nights which is where we brought him home to.

On Wednesday, he had his pediatric appointment in North Hollywood just to check everything out before we headed back home. The doctor said he was a very healthy baby, so we're happy about that.

Thursday, we left our Hollywood rental and headed to Pacific Palisades for our next rental. We had to be out of our first rental at 11am, but couldn't check in to our new rental until 2pm. We drove to Pacific Palisades and found a Starbucks to hang out in for a while. When we walked in, we had our first star sighting...Rosann Arquette was there. YES...David Arquette's sister! Jeff made me calm down and not take any pictures. :) Everyone at Starbucks came over and talked to us about our baby, only to find out we adopted. They were all so nice and wanted to hear about our journey. I bet we talked to 5 people and told them our story. One person would ask and then another would overhear and want to hear and so on and so forth. It was nice to have people be so friendly. Not like that in Hollywood!

So, after Starbucks, we still had some free time, so we went down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and found the Will Rogers State Beach. We strolled along the beach and had some lunch at one of the food stands. While we were eating, Jeff's phone rang. It was our attorney from California saying we were just granted permission to leave the state! This happened 20 minutes before we were supposed to check in to our next rental that we have until Aug. 10! We were excited, but upset at the same time since we booked this rental. We called the landlord and asked her if she'd work with us and we told her our news. We got this rental down to 2 nights and will plan to leave first thing Saturday morning to begin our journey home. We checked in to our new apartment and it's beautiful! Jeff walked down the street to the grocery store to get stuff to cook for dinner and had another star sighting...Jay Mohr from Saturday Night Live and Jerry McGuire! He couldn't wait to get home to tell me. He even said "hi" to him as they were waiting in line for pastries! Two star sightings in one day!!! We were pretty excited!

Today (Friday), we are meeting the birthmother and her son at Venice Beach to get some pictures. Her son has not yet seen Cameron and she wants him to see the baby before we leave. We are fine with that, so we agreed to meet her at the beach.

We're very excited to be home and can't wait to share Cameron with all of you. We plan to be home some time Monday afternoon if Cam does well in the car. We won't have much time to update on our way home, but we'll let you all know when we arrive back in Manhattan safely.

Take Care and thanks again for all the support! I've included some pictures of the day we got out of the hospital, including the one with our two favorite nurses! :)

Monday, Aug. 2 - A Whole New Day

Today has been a very successful day...I just hope I'm not speaking too soon.

We came in this morning to Cameron getting his feeding by tube. We have been very frustrated lately that they won't even let Cameron try to feed from the bottle every time before using the feeding tube. We talked to the social worker and nurse this morning and they agreed with us, that he should get a chance. We also made a quick call to my mom at the doctors office in Manhattan to see if what they doctor was wanting him to do was too high of an expectation. After hearing back from my mother, the doctor in Manhattan said that what he was doing was fine and that he didn't need to eat as much as they were expecting him to. We went back to the NICU and told the nurse and doctor this. We were surprised when we came back from lunch to have the doctor come to us and lower his expectations for eating! YEAH! Give the kid a break! Maybe he's just not a huge eater right now.

So anyway, we've had 2 successful bottle feedings in a row and will try for 3 in a row at 5:30pm California time. I am able to get him to take the full bottle and stay awake now for his feedings, so we've made HUGE gains today. The nurses told us that one of these days he was just going to get the hang of it, and today seems to be that day! We're really hoping that they will take the feeding tube out tonight and just let him do bottle feedings through the night and get out of here tomorrow, but we'll see what happens.

We were also happy to hear that the attorney is overnighting the paperwork to LA and Topeka tonight so they have everything they need to let us come home, except for the discharge papers from the hospital. This means that when we are discharged, hopefully it will be a very quick process to get us home, since the state offices will have all the paperwork they need already. At this point, we plan to start home next Monday, if not a bit sooner, but this all depends on discharge from the hospital and the adoption paperwork. You will all know when we are headed home!

Thanks again for all the well wishes for our little Cameron! He's doing great and even gaining weight! And by the way for all of you in Manhattan...the weather here is beautiful! Today is the hottest it's been and it's only 83 degrees! :)

Hope to see you all back in Manhattan soon!