Ethan "No Nap" Weseloh

We are in the midst of trying to teach Ethan how to nap in his crib. Apparently babies have a "peak" in their fussiness around week 6 which is right where Ethan is right now and so this isn't helping the project "nap in crib" either. Ethan's "peak" in fussiness is very mild - he just doesn't want to nap and so he gets overly tired and a bit grumpy. He sleeps for 5-10 minutes and then wakes up - I rock him and he goes back to sleep and the cycle continues. I've also started playing music while he goes down - that seems to maybe help a little bit. Today we may have turned a corner - I put him down at 2:00pm and it is 2:20 right now and he is still fast asleep!

Norman came home from his soon-to-be Uncle Russell's house on Monday night after 6 weeks away during our baby adjustment. We are nearly at the end of our options with his continued staph infection. There was one final oral antibiotic to try - which we did on Saturday resulting in an allergic reaction that lasted 3-4 days. We are scheduled to start the final antibiotic option on Saturday - injectible shots that he will have once per day. If this doesn't work there are no other medications to try. We also switched from allergy shots to an oral allergy pill to see if that will control the allergy (which is what causes the staph infection). We're also not sure how he is going to be with Ethan - Norman has been like an only child for 3 plus years - and so we have him gated off in the front of our house to keep him and Ethan separate for now.

The skin issues/infection plus new baby have caused us to consider if we can even still keep him. I reached out to the St. Louis Bulldog Rescue organization this week to get some perspective on our situation and see if they would consider taking him if we decided we can't do it anymore. I spoke with a lady who was really helpful - she basically said if you don't get the skin stuff cleared up then you will likely have to put him down. But if we do get it under control and decide that having Norman and Ethan is too much then they would consider taking him on. She also suggested trying him on a raw food diet to see if that helps his allergies. So, we are going to try the new antibiotic, then the raw food diet and see what happens from there.

Ethan has awakened (it's 2:30 - he made it 30 minutes!) and so I'm off. Here's a quick pic of our favorite thing he does these days - smile! :)