I'm sorry I've been so terrible lately in updating this. Things are going pretty well here at the moment, but it's been busy. Ronan is thankfully still doing well (knock on wood) and it's been nice to have a week or so where I haven't been constantly wiping his nose. On the downside, he's getting over his third ear infection (they've been almost all just back-to-back) and the antibiotics give him terrible diarrhea, which then leads to awful diaper rash. But he just finished it yesterday, so hopefully that'll calm everything down.

I'm also happy to say that he's been gaining weight - he now has a tiny little bit of a gut and his cheeks have filled back out. I'm sure he's still on the low side (I'd be surprised if he was more than 21 lbs), but seeing as how he dipped as low as 17lbs during his illness, that's a pretty impressive gain. He's eating like a champ now. We actually ended up taking him out to dinner with us the other night (only to Olive Garden, nothing fancy) and got him mac and cheese, which he loved. The fun part was that, since I forgot to bring a cup for him, he had to try to drink out of a straw. At first, he didn't get it and just kept chewing on it. But after I showed him a couple times, it suddenly seemed to click and then he drank a ton of milk. I feel really grateful that we can take him out places with us.

In other cute news, two weeks ago when we were at church, we ended up sitting next to a family with a five-year-old boy. He was fascinated with Ronan and ended up giving him a GI Joe valentine. In return, Ronan tried to share his little puff snacks, which the boy politely refused - but he was thrilled and kept whispering to his mom "The baby's trying to share with me!!" Very cute.

Oh, and along with the food news, Ronan weaned a few weeks ago now. It's been kind of bittersweet for me. On the one hand, it's probably for the best - I wasn't producing as much milk even though I was nursing all the time (we started supplementing once he lost weight between his 6 and 9 month appointments). It also went pretty easy. When he got hungry, I'd make him a bottle and he'd happily take that. The only hard part was at night, but he quickly made the switch to a bottle then as well. I'm hoping to end that soon, since i keep worrying about his teeth. We'd been making progress, but once he got sick and was so dehydrated, we were giving him bottles whenever possible. He's back down to maybe one or so a night, so we'll see where it goes from there. I personally have had a harder time with this and my hormones are out of whack, and I've been crying a lot. But one of the benefits of being done nursing means that I can go back on my regular birth control, which I just started, so hopefully that'll help even things out.

But Ronan's telling me it's time to get moving, so I'm off.