On Saturday, we had our second ever date without the baby! When we found out that Ruth's mother could watch Sebs for us, we didn't know what to do!

We only had about two hours, so we started out by getting malts and shakes at The Malt Shop off 50^th. One malt each was way too much for us, and we will resume sharing them when we go there in the future.

We then headed over to the Peace Garden and Robert's Bird Sanctuary near Lake Harriet. We aren't sure who Robert is, but we need to tell him that his sanctuary not only had hardly any birds, but is full of bugs instead.

This isn't only a headshot for Ruth's resume, but it was also an experiment in focus with the camera. Sean isn't sure if either task was accomplished, though.

It's hard to get a sun shot before the camera tries to be smart and correct itself, so this photo was totally on purpose (and a lot of work to capture).

[You can check out our online photo albums for more photos of the sanctuary.]

The Peace Garden had no bugs, but it was in the hot, hot sun.

Sean likes to take photos with the intention of using the photos as desktop wallpaper on his computer some day. He has over 100 wallpapers he has created and has only used probably 5 of them.

Fake waterfall. But still attractive. You can't see the several kids just out of frame threatening their parents that they are about to jump in, though.

After our little outing, we grabbed some food at a very uncomfortable pasta place and headed home to another long night of feeding and a fussy baby.

Thankfully, Sebi's tummy ache is just about gone, as far as we can tell! Compared to what we were dealing with for the past few weeks, the past day or so has seemed like an easy job!!

Six weeks old as of yesterday! [And same outfit as last week! Oops!]

And here are some expressions of Sebastian:

He is smiling now, but we don't have any photos of that, yet. He also seems to be pretty bored when Sean is at the piano, and he gets really fussy until Sean quits playing. Seriously. Sebs will be totally quiet until Sean starts to play, then he gets pretty upset and is fine again once Sean stops. We think maybe it's because Sean puts Sebby way too close to the piano when he plays it. That makes Sean sad.

And Maxifatcat (aka "Max") finally discovered that ugly fish we have here, but he didn't care too much about it, at the same time.

Here is Sebastian's 5-week photo, albeit a week late:

And here are some more outtakes from the last photo session:

As we noted before, we haven't been blogging much because there isn't too much going on right now as Sean is back at work. Ruth is teaching her online classes, also, and she will be back in the classroom at the end of September. We have been finding time for walks, though, and a few trips to Target, but nothing different from what we have been writing about already.

(We did have our second date-without-baby the other day, but we will write about that in a separate post soon.)

Here is a random photo of Sebs—he is so good at conducting his orchestra that he can do it in his sleep:

And here is the happy mother feeding before taking a nap:

Who knows what these two are saying to each other:

Sebastian is certainly changing every day, as expected. He is only sleeping about half of what he should be at this stage, but that could be due to an upset tummy that he has. We are bringing him to the doctor this week, despite being told last week that it wasn't necessary.

It seems that each day he gets older he demands more attention, even if it is just to have a staring contest. It is really exciting to have him awake most of the day, but Sean has to admit it gets tough when it takes 4 hours to fold one basket of laundry.

He is starting to make sounds that aren't related to crying, and he cooed for the first time the other day. He keeps his eyes open all the way, and often looks like he is panicking. It's the cutest thing in the world, but we haven't been able to get photos or video of it yet!

He has been awake on all our walks and during most of our car rides. He still likes to eat a small amount, often, and screams like we never feed him, rather than eating more at a time, less often.

He still seems scared of the piano. We think it may be because it is loud to him, so Sean needs to play it more often—if time ever allows. (Sean's transition-to-music plan already has some major kinks in it and it's only been a week since the plan was introduced.)

We are still getting used to having a baby around, of course, and we certainly are going through everything that new parents go through. Even if certain things aren't surprises, we still have to experience them and figure things out.

Oh, and we switched to Pampers instead of Target-brand diapers. Mainly, the Target brand didn't go up the back high enough so we were having too many accidents. The Pampers seem to work out much better. They do cost more, but it's worth it!

In non-baby news, we do not have to be a one-computer household after all! Ruth's laptop already/finally broke and we were going to try to survive on only one computer. (Wow, 10 years ago people didn't even have one computer, let alone complaining about having only one!)

Anyway, Sean admits that as a computer enthusiast/hobbyist he is very anal and protective of his computer. Plus, with the baby around, the only time we really get to go on the computer is when the baby is asleep, and that only lasts a few moments, so we end up having our computer time at the same time.

Plus, Ruth needs to be at the computer for work and Sean needs it for his music engraving and other hobbies (uh-hem, 'blogging), so there is some clash there. We tried to share a computer for a week but Sean had to dig up his 7 year old beast from the basement to use, but it was so bad that it was completely pointless.

Then we got good news! The warranty we bought with Ruth's computer paid off! Her little junker would be replaced with a new, current laptop—for FREE! So we picked up a new laptop yesterday and Sean got it all set up.

The new laptop almost makes Sean jealous a little bit. At least he still gets to use it from time to time, so that will fulfill his fantasies. It isn't the most fastestest thing on the planet, but it runs with the big dogs plenty fine and runs new software for Sean to learn, while keeping the creature comforts Ruth is used to, so it will be a seamless transition.

This might be a boring topic for some, but it is so exciting for us that we just had to write about it!

Sebastian Sven is one month old (tomorrow).

Suddenly, we have noticed many changes just this week alone! He has new expressions every day and he is awake most of the day now, but still sleeping in small chunks at night. As we write this, he is fighting himself to stay awake because he wants to see the world. Then he gets cranky and keeps waking himself up because he is so crabby. Eventually he will sleep most of the evening and wake up for a feeding just before bed.

We seem to be getting into routines and processes that make things easier. For example, it only takes 15 minutes to get Sebs ready to go somewhere rather than 45 minutes. We still only take very short trips with him and we aren’t quite ready for longer visits or traveling outside of our home.

We figure his favorite color is orange already since when he has a group of items to choose from he always chooses the orange ones, regardless of how bright or dim the color of the object choices are.

He knows he has a voice and that using it for anything other than being hungry gets our attention, too. This means he will whine and as soon as we pick him up, he is happy and falls asleep. Thankfully he is quite easily distracted and no matter how fussy he is, showing him a toy or the ceiling fan will buy us a few seconds of quiet time.

Sebastian is also constantly in motion if he is awake. And we do mean constantly. There isn’t a nanosecond where something isn’t moving or squirming if those eyes are open.

Unfortunately, he isn’t too into piano lessons yet.

We also bought a freezer to store the breast milk and other foods, so now we can buy more than one frozen pizza at a time!!

We haven’t had too many updates lately because we haven’t been doing much. Now that Sean is back to work this week, Ruth is with the baby all day trying to figure things out, and when Sean gets home he tries to take over so Ruth can nap. We have gone on a few walks, but we are both far too tired to do much. It’s interesting how Sean going back to work has affected both of us so much and even Ruth is more tired than when Sean was home. But, after editing this paragraph, it makes perfect sense.

And Ruth starts teaching again on Monday!

We learned something at Target the other day; it's simple, really. Calculate the per unit prices when comparing choices of quantity. We buy baby wipes in big packs. It is actually 34¢ cheaper per unit to buy the 3-pack vs. the 9-pack! Can you believe it? Same with baby soap: it is much less expensive to buy multiple smaller bottles rather than a single larger bottle. The sad part is that to save money, more packaging material is consumed. So blame the manufacturers, not us.

Okay, so we brought Baby Sebs to the carousel at Como Park with his grandmother over the weekend for his first ride. He slept through it, of course, but he got a ride. The music is very noisy so we tried earplugs.

They didn't stay in, which isn't necessarily a bad thing since 3 week old babies probably shouldn't have things crammed into their ears, anyway.

So, Ruth just covered his ears for him.

Everybody smile!

After the ride, we went to the butterfly exhibit. We were both very impressed with it as we went to a similar and permanent exhibit on Mackinac Island which wasn't nearly as good. Sean was humored by how much work the staff puts into keeping the butterflies into the exhibit since the bugs don't live more than a day or two (ok, some live a week, but still) and they are constantly being replenished, anyway.

It was very busy and we had to park the stroller, but it was worth it.

The event also gave Sean a chance to play with the manual settings on their camera. The results aren't too bad considering the options are severely lacking (but appropriate for the type of camera).

There was a baby swan on-site as well:

We got Sebastian into the Baby Björn again! And we went on a decent walk with him, too. You can't tell from here, but he just loved the walk, was looking around, and even fell asleep!

Tomatoes are almost ready!! We have been eating them a few at a time. We had better start saving them or it will be like we didn't have any for a meal.

More visitors today! From Sean's side this time.

Oh, and Sean goes back to work tomorrow which means Ruth's first time alone with the baby (other than an hour or two here and there). Wish us luck!

Today was Seb’s first trip to Lake Harriet! Of course he slept through all of it, even though he was awake on the way there and woke up on the way home!

We dodged a few rainstorms, but we weren’t afraid had we gotten a little wet.

And we saw a mother duck and her teenage ducklings with her.

Sean registered for the Minneapolis Bike Tour today, too! (37 miles! More on this topic as it approaches.)

Today is Sebastian's third weekiversary! My how much he has grown!

Getting these photos each week isn't as easy as it looks. It usually takes two people and many tries to get the perfect photo.

We have certainly noticed changes over these three weeks. For example, he used to cry only when he was hungry, but now he cries for a variety of reasons, some of which we are yet to discover.

There are still moments where we wish he would stay the peanut that he is, yet we can't wait for him to grow out of other things, like panicking whenever his bottle isn't two inches from his mouth.

He is awake more than he is sleeping now, and he isn't always hungry while he is awake. He can hold his head up on his own indefinitely already, too! He isn't walking yet, but we can tell he is already coming up with a plan to take over the world.

At least he has started practicing conducting an orchestra already!

Also today, we had our first date without the baby! And it was our first bike ride together since last year, too!

We had Ruth's mom watch Sebastian while we rode over to Lake Harriet. Then we had some ice cream halfway around the lake. We rode home just before the rain came in.

We had a blast, and it was very relaxing. We rode 8 miles in all, and Ruth was a bit sore. Sean rides 20 miles at a time, so it was a casual ride for him, but it was a workout for Ruth. It was worth every bit of distance, though!

There are more photos of the ride on our online photo album! (click me)

We changed the baby’s name yesterday. We are quite serious. We had been having doubts the entire time, and since we have to resubmit the paperwork for the birth certificate again because the record-keeper messed up twice, we figured we might as well go with our guts and change the baby’s name, too.

So, Sven Sebastian is now Sebastian Sven. The paperwork is in the mail and it’s official.

Why the change? Well, here is the long story…

When we found out the baby was going to be a boy at the 20-week ultrasound, Sean immediately came up with the name Sebastian. Ruth wasn’t entirely fond of the name, but she didn’t oppose it, either. The naming process was left at that.

At three weeks before the baby’s birth, we revisited our name choices. Sean still really liked Sebastian, but Ruth wanted to look at other names, so we reviewed more names than we could count, focusing on Norwegian names. (Sebastian, while not natively Norwegian, is recognized by the country and is in fact the most popular boy’s name for two years in a row in that country. Albeit well-known, Sebastian is actually quite unpopular for new babies at the moment in the States.)

We prayed and meditated on the topic and when Sean asked the baby in utero what his name was to be, Sean clearly heard “Sebastian” but Sean also thought maybe it was his own mind playing tricks on him, so the naming game continued.

So, a few days before the birth, we realized we hadn’t yet put any serious, deep thought into naming the baby; only entertaining ideas. So, we went at it again. Now we had three names: Sven, Søren, and Sebastian, with a few other random ideas in there. In fact, for several days we were dead-set on Søren until we realized that getting the “ø” on an official document might ruin it for us in the end.

We went into labor, again thinking the baby was going to be Sebastian Sven and that is where we left it. We talked about names a few times in the hospital and actually used Sven and Sebastian back and forth for a few hours at a time. By this time, we told everyone that his name is Sebastian as we thought that was his name.

The day before leaving the hospital, we meditated on the name and asked God what we should do. God chuckled at us and said, “Just pick one; it’s your choice, not mine.”

This is when we decided to go with Sven. Then Sebastian. Then at the very last minute, and we mean very last minute, we changed the name to Sven Sebastian and left the hospital with that name. We don’t know why we did this. It felt forced and incorrect, but we thought we were being intelligent about it.

The baby is going to be three weeks old tomorrow. These past three weeks, we have been forcing ourselves to “get used to” the name Sven. Sean felt a pit in his stomach every time he used the name Sven and even used Sebastian by mistake a few times. “He told me his name is Sebastian and we didn’t listen to him and I feel badly about that,” Sean explained to Ruth one evening.

When we got the birth certificate information in the mail the other day and realized there were still mistakes that needed to be corrected as well as a place to change the baby’s name if we wanted to, we realized this was our last chance to talk about the name yet again, so we did.

We both were on the same page and were thinking the same thing: “We need to name our baby Sebastian Sven.” Neither of us hesitated at this point and it was very clear.

So, that is it: Sebastian Sven. Sean gets warm fuzzies every time he says Sebastian’s name and is very confident in the change. Ruth admits she is indecisive at times and isn’t quite as confident about the change as Sean, but that is because she spent three weeks forcing herself to use the name Sven when she realized it wasn’t right, either, and now we have yet another change.

We don’t think of ourselves as freaks or anything; we certainly can’t be the first new parents to change their baby’s name after the fact. We wish we would have gone with our gut in the hospital, but we can’t go back in time, only forward!

So, here is a recent photo of Sebastian Sven during one of his peaceful moments!

In other news, we are still trying to accept Sebastian’s feeding schedule. He loves to eat a tiny bit every hour, rather than a larger amount every few hours. This is normal and it’s up to us if we want to force the latter on him, but it’s tough. At night, though, we make sure he is fed well, has a dry diaper, and in comfortable clothes and we put him down. If he wakes up and cries, we let him cry for a bit before seeing if he really needs anything. 10 times out of 10 he is just whining for attention. We certainly give him the attention he deserves during the day 110%, but at 3am the rules change a bit. He actually slept for over 6 hours last night already!

Let’s see, oh, yes, Sean finally got Sebastian into the Baby Björn today! This was a very exciting moment!

We tried the co-sleeper for one evening, but it was a terrible experience. If the baby woke up, we all woke up instead of taking turns. We were warned about this, too. So we returned the co-sleeper the very next day.

In non baby news, Sean is going to transition his career back to music: Teaching, composing, performing. The long-long-term goal is to make a career out of music again and quit his current day job. The benefits to this are endless and we won’t waste the space writing about them here, but that is the plan. Only time will tell how long Sean will be working two jobs again before he is well enough re-established in the music field before he can quit his current job. Hopefully not too long—the reason Sean stopped music in the first place was because it was way too much to have two jobs, and now there is a baby on top of it all. Thankfully, the duo-career thing isn’t for monetary reasons—it’s just a transitional period.

There certainly is a career in music for Sean; he was quite successful at one point, but he will still need your wishes of good luck for a while!

And lastly, here is a semi-recent photo of Ruth barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen:

Ta-ta for now!

We have yet another new member to the family. Sean's dad is taking a three-week out-of-state vacation and needed someone to take care of his Beta fish while he is away. We have no problem baby-sitting this thing when he is away, but we have a feeling his intention is to never pick it up. So this addition may be permanent and we don't know it yet. At least it fits well on one of our desks and its tank isn't too difficult to maintain (even though we did have to buy $4 in supplies just to baby-sit the little bugger for a few weeks).

Sean thinks this thing is really quite ugly. Ruth has no opinion, but that is because Sean won't put her through the trials of cleaning its tank. Sean's dad mentioned that it is quite aggressive towards humans, and he isn't kidding. This thing is ready to kill anything. We can't wait for the cats to discover it. (Then again, the cats haven't even discovered Svenward yet, so it might take a while.)

It has no name as far as we know. We do not plan to name it yet. Still no fear, we are going to research caring for a Beta and make sure it gets the best care possible, regardless if we end up with it forever or just a few weeks.

Here is our two-week family photo. It was very hot and the sun was difficult, so we put it together in a hurry. It’s amazing how easy some things are to do when you drop the perfectionist behavior for a few moments!

And here is the happy mom with the happy baby Svenneth while awake! He seems pretty relaxed, too!