six, err.. seven (!) months

six  err.. seven (!) months

I didn’t mean to be absent for so long. It’s just that the autumn yucks set in about a month ago and we’ve all been afflicted. When we first talked about sending Augie to daycare, we worried about his getting sick, but the pediatrician assured us that it was either now or in kindergarten. Somehow it never occurred to us that we’d be sick too. Josh has had a month-long cold and cough that has left him still hacking, even after weeks of extra rest and a z-pack. And every time I recover, I end up with another cold three days later. Strangely enough, Augie seems the least bothered. I guess that tells you something about our “mature” resilience.

At seven months, Augie is just now starting to develop emotions other than extreme and constantly delight. He’s still a remarkably happy baby, but this week, we’ve noticed him emitting little grunts of displeasure every now and again. It’s as though he’s finally cultivating preferences. If anything, this is reassuring. We’ve worried — mostly in jest, but come on — that anyone who is as happy as he is must be a little “off.”

When I was helping a friend at a work party last weekend, I got paired with an old hippie. We got to talking about Augie and his happiness, and she asked if either my husband or I was anxious or a little depressive. I laughed. Yeah, of course. She then launched into a theory about babies knowing what’s needed of them. In her reading, Augie is always happy because he just knows — preternaturally — that that’s what we need. That that’s what we can handle. Maybe.

But on to the stuff I don’t want to forget:

:: after introducing solid food at 5 months, we’re giving it up at 7. Augie just isn’t interested and it’s making us all crazy. We’ll try again in a couple weeks.

:: the little mister sits up well on his own (that was a 6-month milestone) but shows no real signs of scooting or pulling up.

:: he laughs and squeals all of the time, but I can’t discern any word-like utterances. He loves to say “geeeee,” which I think he’s picked up from “Augie.”

:: I’m not sure where we are in terms of sleep. He still wakes up after about 7 or 8 hours and then comes into bed with me to nurse for the rest of the night. I’m guessing that we could break this habit, but frankly, it’s fine with me and I end up falling back asleep. And now it’s so cold at night that I’m struggling to figure out how to keep him warm enough to even sleep that long.

:: he loves to play peek-a-boo and he loves to dig for toys in his basket (i need to get pictures of both this week).

Just dropping in for a second to confirm that we’re still alive. In the last two weeks, we’ve weathered a major flea infestation (thanks Homer), a visit from Nana (who stopped by to purchase a house Yay!), a first real sickness (a 102 degree fever and all), and a semester in full swing (breathe, breathe).

We’re finding a rhythm, but man, it’s an exhausting one.

By Thursday, I’m just completely wreaked and need three days to catch up on sleep, not to mention reading and life. Josh has started cooking for the week on Sundays and this has helped enormously, especially when it’s 5:30 pm and we’re starving and have a ridiculously tired baby just home from daycare. The sleep loss, though, is real, even with a baby who wakes up just once, at 4 am, to nurse and snuggle in bed with us. While I was on leave, I was fine functioning on fewer hours, but when you have an intellectually challenging job, it’s really tough to work on three-quarters of your normal rest. We all need to start going to bed even earlier, like before 9 pm, and accept the temporary mediocrity of our work.

Our baby, fortunately, is anything but mediocre. He cracks us up. He rolls. He almost sits. He squeals. He squeaks. He listens to old time music. He laughs like an old man. He eats with spirit. He rumbles in the bath. He smiles ALL THE TIME.

5 months (and 4 days)

At just over 5 months, Augie is:

:: Eating rice cereal. We were going to skip it, but then he started eying our plates like a starving orphan and we decided to go for it. It seems to be a rousing success. He eats. He smiles. His poop now smells.

:: Rolling over. Finally. In fact, it just happened today. Twice, in fact.

:: Consolidating his napping, but only at home and only on the weekends. Thank god for the 2+ hour afternoon nap when we need to prep for classes.

:: Going to daycare. This has been a tough transition. He still hasn't taken a good nap there, but I'm hoping that changes this week. His teachers seem kind and caring. He doesn't fuss, but he just won't sleep.

:: Playing contentedly by himself on the floor. This seems legacy of the first two weeks of daycare. We'll take it.

:: Sleeping without his beloved swaddle. I was terrified of weaning him from the wrap, but it was time (I found him banging his head against the crib rails with no way to move away from them) and the first two nights have so far been pretty smooth. He's growing up so fast that the next thing I know, he's going to want a waterbed and a disco ball in a den bedroom a la Greg Brady.

:: Slow down my babe. Slow down.

On the cusp

Augie starts "school" on Monday.

I'm not ready. I don't think I'd be ready in another five months and maybe not even in another five years. I accept, of course, that he has to go. I also accept that I have a certain responsibility to myself, to Josh, and even to Augie to go back to work. But there's really not one part of me that's looking forward to dropping him off on Monday morning.

This is even after I read this at 3 am, when I was up for the second time the other night.

No one is more surprised by this hesitation than I am. Before he was born, I told friends that I wasn't looking forward to the baby phase. I thought I'd muscle through until he could talk. I had no idea that I'd lose all my defenses in his infancy. I had no idea that I’d feel so completely fulfilled by caring for his little pre-verbal self. Now I cry when I look at pictures from his first days and weeks. I already miss that little baby. He and I talk a lot about the days "when he was young."

And so as Monday approaches I've been thinking: I find motherhood the most deeply, magically liberating thing I've ever done. So much of the last twenty years has revolved around my managing my anxiety, my ambivalence, and my depression. And while a baby isn't, of course, a remedy, he has been the closest thing I've ever found to a cure.

Everyone always told me that a baby doesn't fix anything. I think everyone might be wrong in my case. 

There were hints of this in my decade with a hound named Arlo, a mutt so attached to me that he went on hunger-strikes when I left him for the weekend. He forced me outside and onto the wooded trails every day. We logged more miles in those years than I’ll accumulate in the rest of my days. Caring for him made me feel alive; it relaxed my nerves.

                                

Caring for Augie feels a little like that, but also so much richer and so much more satisfying. He lends a shape to my days that feels both new and completely familiar. And the care that he requires, so simple and so immediately satisfying, feels the perfect counterweight to work I do and am supposed to be doing more of, namely writing and thinking about American literature.

That work has always come with ambivalence. I enjoy it in moments of clarity, but I dread it for long stretches of fuzzy thinking and scholarly malaise. Working with students feels vital, but the rest remains a painful struggle.

It’s this ambivalence that Augie has begun to wear away. When I’m with him, I’m liberated from the static in my head. Instead, I think about showing him new colors or changing his dipe, or talking to him about the cake that we’re baking. I’m not plagued by the frenzy of feeling like I need to keep up with the critical conversation. I’m happy to have a reason to “opt out,” if only for an afternoon.

I hope this doesn’t mean that I’m using my baby to spell myself from my career struggles. Instead, it feels like what he’s doing is both concentrating my energies (I work much more efficiently when I know that I only have an hour before I need to take back over) and making my downtime really downtime.

I'm not sure how daycare will affect this rhythm we have going. I worry that it will both make our time together feel much more urgent and that it will tarnish my work time with guilt. I hope that I'm wrong about both of these things, but I want to remember this struggle in any case.

for armistead

My friend Armistead is expecting a little boy in December and she’s been asking about the things that she really needs. When I was pregnant a few friends sent lists, all of which totally overwhelmed me, and so this is my attempt to massively streamline the list to the bare essentials, knowing that there are dozens of other things that are nice to have, but they’re also totally unnecessary. Needless to say, these are the things that worked for us, but I'm sure that every baby has his own preferences.

1. Swaddle blankets, or better yet, the miracle blanket. We started with the aden + anais ones and totally love those for other things, but they were a bit unwieldy for nightly swaddling, even after watching this video. So we switched to the miracle blanket and really loved that, at least until Augie got too big. Now we're on to these, but he's already straining at the seams. If only his arms spasms would calm down. I fear we may have to try these next.

2. A bath sponge. We found that it was too difficult to bathe Augie in a baby tub when he was super little. In fact, we just started using one at four months. Until recently, I'd get in the bath first, soak for 10 minutes (a blessed ten minutes alone), and then Josh would bring Augie in and I'd sit cross-legged and hold him on the sponge. We'd then both be able to wash him. Thankfully we have no photo of the sponge set-up, but here's the big boy arrangement (with the bath sponge now as a pillow).

3. A nursing pillow. We were gifted a Brest Friend, which I wanted to hate because of the name, and we borrowed a boppy. There was really no competition. The former is way better. With the boppy, Augie would sort of fall between it and me. But with the brest friend, god is that the worst name, he could lie on the flat surface and feel pretty secure. I never used the waist band. That thing freaked me out.

4. A bouncy seat. Strictly speaking, this isn't a necessity, but if you ever want to be able to take a shower or fix a bowl of oatmeal, you need a place to stash the little guy. We borrowed this from friends and we've loved it, used it every day, and return it when he can sit up on his own. But I'm getting that thing back if we ever have another baby. This is the one we had. It's pricey, but I have no complaints. He now loves this spinning thing. (Oh and the blue soft blanket seen below was his absolute favorite. I'll try to remember who makes it.)

5. Wraps. Back to that bowl of oatmeal. When you're ready to eat it and he's had enough of the bouncer, you need to be able to strap him to your body and chow down. We have the k'tan, which was perfect for the newborn stage and still super easy to use. Here it is in action.

Don't mind the head scarf. We also have and use an Ergo and I sewed a ring sling out of linen yardage. These days, I use the ring sling most often, but I still grab the k'tan for grocery runs. The ergo is good for hiking and more adventurous baby outings. If I had to get just one for the first six months, it would be the k'tan.

6. I've been saving the most essential for last: diapers. For the first two weeks, we used paper diapers. We figured that we'd sort out having a baby at home before we tried to keep up with diaper laundry. I'm not sure this was totally necessary, but it wasn't a big deal to buy one case of newborn dipes.

I spent about six months reading hundreds of reviews of diapers. I also talked to a bunch of friends who had tried all sorts of brands. I ended up buying all of ours on Black Friday, which seems to be the only day of the year when they're seriously discounted. We bought these, these, and these. Altogether, I think we have 32 diapers. That's enough to do laundry every other or every third day. They should last for several more children, mine or someone else's (the resale value is excellent). We end up using the 4.0s double stuffed at night and the flips during the day. I also bought a few dozen prefolds that we use as both spit-cloths, and trifolded, as inserts in the flips. I have absolutely no complaints about them. Oh, and we bought mostly snaps, but a few with velcro and we like them all. We also use cloth wipes because it's just as easy to throw them in the bag with the dipes and they work so much better than disposable ones. We keep them warm in here with water and a drop of tea-tree oil. We also use this miracle stick to prevent any sign of diaper rash. Oh and we wash with Charlie's (Maura's brilliant suggestion), which we use for everything now.

I think that about does it. Everything else is a bonus. I'll try to do another post on newborn and infant toys that Augie has loved. And you know the good books.

4+ months

At four months and a week, Augie is:

:: growing fatter and fatter. He topped the scales at nearly 17lbs on Thursday. But he's still short, of course. 

:: all head. That noggin is so big (this he must get from my side) that is seems to impede his ability to roll over, which he does not do.

:: growing out of his nystagmus! Our second opinion in Michigan suggested that his nystagmus was an anomalous tick of his development and we think he might be right. I haven't seen it in over a week. 

:: laughing like and with his dad. Josh gets him cracking up (video to come) and it's the best thing in the world. 

:: still sleeping through the night, but now in a big playpen next to our bed because he grew out of the cradle and I'm too nervous to have him sleep in a crib in his room. 

:: recovering from his first real cold (that I gave him in the midst of dental hell). He was a total trooper. 

:: getting ready to start daycare on Aug. 12. I'm dreading it. Josh can't wait. And Augie has no idea. I know it will feel good on some level to get back to work, but I'd really rather stay home and hang with the little mister. But alas, it's off to daycare he'll go. 

:: skipping the 4-month rice cereal thing. We'll exclusively breastfeed for 2 more months before we introduce some veggies. 

Trials and Travels

It's been one of those weeks, the kind that you'd rather forget. Just when we were enjoying a lovely visit with Josh's college pal and his parents, I accidentally mowed over a yellow jacket hive in the back yard. At first I didn't know what was happening. My legs started to sting and I looked down to a patch of yellow creatures swarming my shins. I sprinted, leaving the mower to sputter out on its own. Fortunately, I got ice on them right away and the actual stinging lasted just an hour or so. But then the itch-to-end-all-itches set in and I was miserable for the next 72 hours. I was so drugged on Benadryl that I can't really remember what happened. Somehow I kept feeding Augie, and fortunately, he wasn't mowing with me.

But unfortunately this horror overlapped with some shoddy Kentucky dental work and I ended up with a bad crown that has now morphed into head/jaw/neck pain (e.g. the give-me-the-root-canal-now pain). This particular pain recalls another dental misstep in my past: the elective "operative procedure" that I allowed a UNC dental student to perform on the same bad tooth so that she could graduate. That was a pity filling. This is a crap crown. Tooth #29 has always been my Achilles' heal.

With my itching legs and a throbbing face, we drove to Michigan yesterday. Our usual trip took just an extra hour or so. Augie was a great traveler and he slept most of the way. We pulled up at dinner time and immediately breathed deeply and started to relax. I'm hopped up on Advil, and I may need to find an emergency dentist tomorrow or Monday, but at least it's not 90 degrees and humid. Instead, it's 64 and I'm sitting on a porch looking out over the lake. I have a couple dogs asleep at my feet and two yellow finches at the feeder. I'll watch fireworks over the bay tonight and introduce Augie to his youngest aunt.

It's good to be home.

On nursing

Writing about breastfeeding is like writing about Moby Dick. It's well worn stuff and the best insights have been down on paper for generations. So what's here isn't news to anyone, except, perhaps,  me. 

 I read a whole lot about breastfeeding while I was pregnant (Martha Sears, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, kellymom.com, lots and lots of blogs). I was worried, as I'm wont to be, about finding a rhythm with Augie. I was concerned about my breasts and I was nervous about the infamous underproduction problem. I wanted to be well prepared and so I bought everything I thought I might need (a shield, breast pads, "booby tubes," etc.) and assembled myself a little nursing kit. As it turns out, I've hardly needed a thing. 

As prepared as I felt, the first days in the hospital did little to assuage my worries. I had Josh call an independent lactation consultant within hours of giving birth because I was terrified of the hospital giving him a bottle and the recovery nurses were utterly unhelpful. Our birth instructor warned us that all Kentucky hospitals automatically stick bottles in newborn mouths, and so I felt like I needed to be on guard and proving to the nurses that I could do it. I thought nipple confusion was as virulent as malaria--there'd be no recovery. 

This is not a good way to begin nursing. 

I also struggled with a very sleepy baby and a body less ready to start nursing. C-sections before natural labor pose all sorts of challenges to breastfeeding: it takes longer for your milk to come in,  you have to negotiate your incision, you're on industrial-strength narcotics and dull the senses. 

But Josh was patient. The hospital lactation consultant who appeared on day two was an angel sent from the breasts above. A friend showed me how to put Augie in the crook of my arm. And he eventually woke up and figured it out. In all the early struggles, I never once thought about throwing in the towel. If I couldn't have the birth I wanted, I was damn sure I'd have the nursing. 

 For the first five weeks or so, I obsessively tracked Aug's feedings on an iPhone app. In those early weeks I was nursing 14 or 15 times a day and for long stretches. I'd check my app at 9 pm and he would have already spent 7 hours nursing that day. He'd "dine and doze" or "sip and sleep" or "nurse and nap" for hours and hours (alliterations littering my head the whole while). Those days all felt really long. My body was sore from the c-section and the cracked rib. I was exhausted and it took a month before I felt halfway normal again. My body still feels like a foreign territory. 

Now looking back, I think it was the breastfeeding that slowed down the days. Usually I'm thinking about the twenty things that I want to get done. I'm making lists in my mind and reordering them continuously. I multitask and floss while driving (that's gross, right?). But when I'm nursing Aug, the lists dry up and the urgent need to get anything done goes silent. Nothing feels as pressing as it normally does, and I've relished that new calm. 

I like the feeling that when I'm feeding him, I'm the one being nourished. 

Of course he's being nourished--fattened, really--too. We're both being calmed, immediately and profoundly. And that calm feels like the best thing I've ever produced. Which is fortunate because one of the most obvious changes since his birth is my utter lack of normal productivity. 

I haven't been working, of course, but I also haven't been doing anything with my hands. This is probably the longest stretch since my childhood when I've been without creative projects. In fact, when we were flying last week, I realized that in place of knitting in my hands, I had a baby. And I actually didn't feel the urgent need to knit in order to calm my mind, even during the take-off and the turbulence. 

My garden is overrun with weeds and the whole mess desperately needs to be trimmed and tamed. But even that urge has been quieted in these first months of mothering.

 I relish the proficiency I feel in nurturing Augie. It feels like the first thing in a long while that has come naturally and automatically. I know there are challenges ahead, but for now, I'm just deeply grateful that we figured the nursing thing out. 

Eyes, an update

Augie saw the pediatric ophthalmologist from UK today in Richmond. We waited for over two hours: enough time to feed three times, take two catnaps, change three diapers, and if you're my husband, contract pink eye. Argh. When we finally saw the doctor, she examined Augie and found him to have normal visual cues and a healthy looking optic nerve. This is all good news. The less good news is that intermittent nystagmus is extremely rare. It just doesn't usually present that way in infants and so she was basically puzzled by his condition. After speaking with the doctor, we decided to give it another six weeks to see what happens. If it's still happening in August (the month and the baby), we'll go ahead with the MRI, but we're all hoping that it might instead spontaneously disappear. 

By the end of today, each of us saw a doctor in Kentucky. Three appointments in three cities. We're all exhausted and Josh has a contagious, oozing eye. Let's just hope the rest of us don't wake up with it. Someone is sleeping in the guest room tonight.

Napping nightmare

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. That black picture is really my selfie for the day, any day. You see,we  have a little situation on our hands. August is a great nighttime sleeper. He mastered sleeping through the night and hasn't looked back since, though he's outgrown his cradle and needs to move to his crib soon. That could occasion some regression, I'd guess. But no, the problem is napping.

Augie seems willing to take a good nap, just as long as I'm lying right next to him in the bed and he can nurse whenever it pleases him. Right now I'm calling this a "situation" and not a "problem" because it's summer and I just read as he sleeps. We both enjoy the closeness and I get to read for the coming semester's new class (African American lit). But I don't imagine his daycare will be quite so accommodating. Today I was able to stealthily remove myself for the last half hour, but that took a lot of work. So how do we get Augie to nap the way he sleeps at night?

I've thought about trying a modified "cry it out," but then I almost start crying just thinking about it. It seems that I've been totally persuaded by the Dr. Sears' rationale that says that cry it out hurts, confuses, and potentially scars babies for life. Ok, maybe he doesn't go that far, but almost. I hate the idea of little Augie crying because he knows that I comprehend that message and will comfort him and instead finding me nowhere in his tears. I hate the idea of him confused and alone and unable to grasp this turn of events. I really hate the idea of him silencing himself because he's found no response to his pleas. Is "self soothing" just a virtue adults invented so they could keep sipping their martinis in the den?

But if I can't stomach cry-it-out, where do I find myself (besides in bed at noon with a baby hooked up to my breast)? I checked the No-Cry Sleep Solution out of the library, but I read it in a fog of sleeplessness and had to return it. Any wisdom from you parents who either got over the guilt of cry-it-out or found any alternative path to the merry world of zzzzzzs?

3 months along

 

They say that babies have a 4th trimester outside the womb. I was skeptical. But they're right. Augie really came alive this week and today on his 3-month birthday, he's a different creature altogether. He cries much less now and when he does, it's with a real purpose: a wet dipe, a slightly empty tummy, a tired body, a sudden lonesomeness (okay, maybe that last one is pushing it). He's gotten up to a respectable fighting weight, nearly 15 lbs (he jumped from the 17th percentile to the 77th in one month). He loves eating and will happily spend hours on the boob. He babbles with us nonstop, but especially when we talk about animal sounds (and Daddy sounds). He holds a toy and puts his whole fist in his mouth (left preferred). He just seems to have really, truly woken up, which is fitting for the solstice and all. 

less fun

While we had a great, refreshing trip, we returned to an unsettling development for Augie. At first I thought my own eyes were fooling me. I'd seen his eyes flicker and jump a couple times, so fast that I wasn't really sure what I was seeing. I tried to explain it to Josh, but without any ability to get Augie to do it on command, he was left wondering what in the world I was talking about. When I googled "eyes jumping back and forth" (I resisted the urge to search "signs that my child is possessed by an evil spirit"), I ended up reading all about nystagmus, a rather unsettling condition without many treatments and with little real understanding. When Josh finally witnessed an episode on Monday evening, he agreed that we should take Augie into the pediatrician on Tuesday. And the pediatrician—whom we really like—confirmed my internet diagnosis. Unfortunately, he's unable to guess at the cause for Augie's condition. It could be an issue with his optic nerve. It could be a sign of a larger neurological problem. It could connect to a problem with his ears. It could be a benign neurological blip. We just don't know at this point. We're seeing a pediatric ophthalmologist on Monday and we've been told that she'll likely order an MRI to check the optic nerve. Over the last couple days, I've realized that his nystagmus is predictable. It happens just when he starts nursing and especially when he's tired. I'm not sure how to interpret that,  but it's reassuring that there's a discernable pattern. A friend has suggested that maybe he's just really excited to eat (and as the pediatrician said, "doesn't look like that kid's missed many meals"). 

No matter the diagnosis, this episode has been my first real foray into maternal worry. There have been two nearly sleepless nights in which I've tried to think of career options for a wobbly-eye guy who can't read very well. Pretty quickly I decided that Augie would have to be a musician...but then I remembered that he's almost guaranteed to be tone-deaf like his parents. So then I tried to think of careers in which sunglasses are permissible: surfer, movie producer, west coast loafer, turf grass maintance man, beatnik, flaneur. Then I realized that most of those aren't careers and was really worried. I had visions of him wandering the streets. It wasn't pretty. 

So I've tried not to let myself go there. Instead, I'm focused on his smiles and his babbling. We've also perfected the side-lying napping & eating combo (we call it "getting hooked up to the IV"). We'll have answers soon enough and we'll take it from there. I have no idea how I'll survive his teenage years. Valium, maybe. 

A first trip

We survived our inaugural airplane trip. Actually, we more than survived it. We enjoyed it. Augie was great on the plane, eating and sleeping the entire way. In retrospect, I think 3-months is a great age for a first trip. I wouldn't have had the necessary confidence earlier and soon he'll be too big for the soft wraps that made it all so easy. 

We spent one night up at Mt. Riga with my high school friend Sarah and her family. It was cold and raining, the ground completely saturated and muddy. Augie slept in a pack n play for the first time in a cabin with a wood stove. The fire went out some time in the night and when I went to pick him up to nurse in the middle of the night, he was frozen. I felt horribly negligent, but he didn't seem to mind a bit. It was lovely to see old friends and feel that perfect kind of familiarity.

On Friday, we drove up past my high school in Sheffield, MA. We had sandwiches in one of my favorite spots, Great Barrington and then drove on to meet a gaggle of college pals for a wedding in Lenox (at Edith Warton's house "The Mount"). It was totally relaxing. In fact, I kept telling Josh that I was more relaxed than I'd been since Augie's birth. We needed to get out of town, have a change of scenery, and reset our patience. 

Measuring up

We're doing laundry, getting haircuts (not for Aug, of course), and packing our newly enlarged bags. We're headed to my old neck of the woods in the berkshires for the wedding of a good college pal and her Sri Lankan husband. We'll spend tomorrow night up on a mountain top without electricity but with a high school pal whom I haven't seen since 1998 or so.  We just have to survive two flights, a layover in Atlanta, and an hour-long car ride on both sides with the little mister. Pray to the travel gods for us. And let us know if you have any brilliant infant travel tips...

More objects, fewer relations

Today I put a bigger object in Aug's hands to see if he could handle it. It was a rousing success, but I realized that he still doesn't understand that he can control whatever he holds. So he kept this crazy toy in his grasp for ten minutes, but he never seemed particularly aware of it, which is weird because he kept bonking his forehead. Silly man. On the other hand, he has started intentionally putting fingers in his mouth, which I'm hoping is a step forward toward self-soothing. Right now he's a major comfort nurser and while that's okay for the moment, I don't have a wet nurse lined up for when I go back to work. Maybe my dreams will be answered and a live-in nanny with wet nursing capabilities will magically show up between now and August 15th. Anyone interested in the job?

Object relations

In the last week or so Aug has begun to interact more with objects. I'm still not convinced that he understands those fleshy pincher things are his hands, but now if we fill them, he'll hold on and waggle whatever is there. A hand-carved bean-filled rattle is his object of choice, that is until he starts banging his forehead. 

Look who's "talking"

AEB1 from Anne Bruder on Vimeo.

Aug seems to be changing by the minute. He's slept all night three nights in a row. He's been generally happy, smiley, and content to lie in his big boy crib and study his mobile. He's also started babbling or squealing or whatever you want to call it. He seems to love vocalizing this way, pitching his arms and legs in furious circles and cooing at us. Sometimes he seems to be imitating our sounds, but this is probably wishful thinking. While I know we have a long time until it happens, this makes me super excited to hear him talk, even though I mostly want him to stay a little baby forever.

The light

This guy finally graduated to the big leagues: the 8-hour sleep. I guess there really is something to the 12lb. mark. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the engorged boulders on my chest at 3 am. It seems a shame to pump in the middle of what could be uninterrupted sleep. I guess this is a chance to build my freezer stash for daycare. 

10 weeks

At 10 weeks, August is:

:: smiling at J a lot, especially when he makes his "Dad" sign

:: sleeping in 4-hour blocks at night, with an occasional 6-hour miracle

:: still hating tummy time

:: still fixating on lights and high contrast images

:: remembering his first visit with Baba and CeCe who had a great weekend with us. Baba built Augie bookshelves and hung them in his window nook

:: not letting us get much of anything done

:: still not napping in his crib...