when I started this blog five years ago, I was a pet sitter and the name animal-crackers made sense. now I'm a stay-at-home-dad and freelance writer, but rather than confuse everyone by getting a different blog, it's just easier to keep posting things here.

Dylan weighed 5 pounds 6 ounces -- nearly triple his birth weight.

I had my first chance to feed him on Tuesday. He really didn't take more than a few gulps -- about 1 ml. Today I tried again and he drank 5 ml. (The nurse fed the remaining 43 ml.)

On Sunday, you may recall, one of the NICU doctors said he was encouraged by Dylan's nursing and thought maybe the tyke would come home next week. Then I ran into Dr. Cho, Dylan's official doctor, who said next week is way too optimistic. It'll probably be much closer to his Dec. 9 due date.

The reason: Dylan needs to learn to eat on his own. They don't want us running a tube down his throat to feed him when he gets tired. As much as we like tube feeding ourselves (mostly donuts and ice cream) it's probably best not to get Dylan hooked.

And Dylan's going to start seeing a speech therapist. Oddly enough, speech development is somehow tied to bottle feeding.