2 month checkup: shots

Bibio Björn
Originally uploaded by greychr

Today Little Sir went in for his 2 month checkup and shots. Afterward, he was groggy and grumpy from the shots so his daddy cheered him up with some Bjorn. He really isn't shaking the baby, the computer just has trouble tracking rapid movement, so it blurs easily.

Here are the stats for 2 months:
- weight: 12 lbs. 15 oz. (75 percentile)
- height: 24 inches (90 percentile)
- head measurement, still only 25 percentile

Still has a small head! But he grew 4 inches taller in the last month - amazing!

Everything is looking good, she listened to his congestion and it is just normal postnasal drip.

He was pretty upset by the shots but recovered quickly. He's been grumpy today and is already asleep, I guess that infant Tylenol really knocks him out!

Christmas catch up

Sorry I haven't been able to post recently - we were traveling for Christmas and the days before were pretty full of trying to get things ready to go. Christian enjoys shopping last-minute, so in order to allow him to go on his shopping trips I was home alone with Little Sir a lot, meaning I didn't have time to do much blogging or uploading of pictures because I was caring for him the whole time. I will try to do some bullet points here.

• We went to East Texas from Christmas Eve until yesterday. The 2 hour trip was not as bad as the one to San Antonio. There was more crying on the way back. He slept almost the whole way there! Not so much on the way back. There was protest on the way back. 
• While we were there I stupidly used disposable diapers instead of bringing my cloth ones. I wrote a post about how much I hate disposables after that experience.
• I believe he is outgrowing his newborn pants. He has outgrown quite a few pajamas and onesies already. Which is sad, not because I am sentimental but because they were totally fashionable and he looked so awesome in them!!
• On the plus side, he got some cute new clothes from all kinds of friends for Christmas, including some rockin' unicorn shoes!! (real men wear unicorns without shame. seriously.)
  
• He got quite a few new toys, including some things he can bat with his hands: his new trick!
  
• Little Sir has learned new things lately which I have tried to video: babbling/cooing and now batting at things with his hands!
• Also chewing his hands.
• I have a video of the babbling/cooing but it is on Christian's computer so I can't get to it.

Batting things with his hands:

Upcoming: Tomorrow is his 2 month checkup! This is the one where he gets shots - oh no!

This week: don't forget to enter my giveaway of free chocolate, ending Jan 4!!

Merry Christmas!

What schedule?

When we were first pregnant, you might recall that I read a number of books on baby scheduling. While I would not say that we are 100% on board with BabyWise, we did agree that we need to have our baby on a schedule of some kind. If for nothing else, to aid with my work schedule, to help the baby have some kind of internal structure, and hopefully to make the nanny's job easier.

Some of the more gentle scheduling books say that you shouldn't start schedules until the 6th week, which we tended to agree with at the time. I realized about halfway through Little Sir's 6th week that I hadn't started any kind of schedule. He really already had his own kinda thing going from very early on - he had 2 major "awake" times, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Between then he would nap sporadically.

I started out trying to actively get him to nap on even hours because that was kinda what he was doing already - 8 AM, 10 AM, 12 noon, 2 PM, 4 PM, 6 PM. But then when I went to our playgroup I talked to the other mom whose baby is Little Sir's age, and she said her baby goes 3 hours between feedings! I started to worry that maybe this was why Little Sir is so "plump". Because yes, he is quite the chunk. He weighs as much as some of the babies in the playgroup who are 4-6 weeks older than him!

That kind of blew my scheduling idea, I didn't know where to start to fix that. Around that same time, he got this congestion and started not really sleeping for more than 30 minutes at a time during the day, no matter what I tried. Then there were the random crying fits that turned out to be because he was so stuffed up. I tried all the napping/soothing techniques I know of to get him to go to sleep after being awake 3, 4, 5 hours at a time...no luck. The child will not sleep! He gets waaaay overly tired and absolutely will not go to sleep.

We don't really believe in crying it out, but I did let him kind of fuss in his crib for quite a while one day because he had been up for 5 hours and still refused to sleep. All he did was make himself very warm and unhappy for around 15 minutes, he did not ever go to sleep. I tried the baby whisperer's method of soothing him and then laying him back down...I did this over and over and the child would not sleep. I finally gave up and let him go back to playing in his swing.

So now we are back to square one on the scheduling, and that is NOWHERE. Last week when we went to the doctor she said that I should let him eat smaller meals more often while he was sick so I did that for a few days. Sometimes he ate every 1.5 hours. Now I think he might be getting better, so what do I do? Do I go back to trying to put him on a schedule, but this time at 3 hour intervals instead?

And if I choose to do this, when?! Because next week is Christmas and I think we all know what is going to happen to his schedule when we travel. Right out the window. The week after Christmas, I will be starting back to work. So I am a little at a loss here. I understand he needs to have some structure but I have no idea how to do this!!

Mome Yoga

Little Sir and I have attended 2 classes of free Mome Yoga at the Dallas Public Library's "Bookmarks" shop in Northpark Mall! The classes are Friday mornings, and for someone like me who hasn't done yoga since late in my pregnancy, it is a good gentle workout. I think I was actually a little sore from this week! We put the babies on the mats and sing songs and play with them during the poses. Little Sir isn't to the point where he really can focus on songs or being played with, but he loves to just lay on the mat and watch people. He has never really cried or had any kind of disruption during the class. It was also in this class that I learned that he likes to "eskimo kiss", nose-to-nose, which was one part of one of the exercises.

Here he is on our mat:
And here is kind of an aerial shot of the other mats and the instructor:

The Mome Yoga instructors are all very kind and patient, and the older babies love to play with the animal toys too. I would highly recommend Mome Yoga!

What we have been doing

I know I haven't posted in a while, poor Little Sir has had a cold and there was one day where I wasn't feeling well either. Christian came home from work and took care of us. Some recent things..

• We have a schedule for my work! I will be working nights Mon, Wed, Thurs, and Fridays
• Little Sir has been sleeping 5 HOURS STRAIGHT in his first period of sleep during the night lately. This is usually 9/10 PM - 2/3 AM or so, meaning that I don't have to get up again until 5 AM or 6 AM!! It has been awesome.
  
• Little Sir still has a cold but it seems better today
• The sickness has sometimes messed up his 5-hour sleeping stretch. Doh. But seriously, he did the 5 hours for about 5 days in a row, so I don't think it was a fluke.
  
• He also has a blocked tear duct, which is apparently normal. The doctor gave us some antibiotic cream.

And now, since I know you people just read this blog for the pictures, here are some pictures...

WAIT! Before you quit reading!! I am going to be reviewing and giving away Ritter Sport chocolate bars over at Conscientious Confusion next week! So I know that you are all going to stop reading next week for the holidays, but if you want free chocolate - DON'T!!

Ok, now the pictures:

His Christmas outfit that he got in gift exchange from his friend Will in a gift exchange
With Daddy at Bob's birthday celebration at Fuddrucker's
Hangin with Uncle Garrett last weekend
Tummy time!! (he still hates it but he can tolerate it for longer periods now)

Coming up next...photos from Mome Yoga at Northpark Mall's Bookmarks!

Last week home

Wow, today Little Sir is 8 weeks old! In some ways the time has really flown by, and in others the days are sometimes really long. But either way, I just realized that this is my last full week at home with him before I go back to work. Next week is truly the last week, since I will be working December 29 and 30 for the first time, but since next week is also Christmas, it won't be a full week alone at home with him.

We interviewed a really excellent nanny on Monday night here in our home, and have told her we would like to hire her and she has accepted. However, we still haven't heard from my work what my actual schedule will be, so the matter of payment is still up in the air (being dependent on the number of hours). I would pretty much do anything to be able to afford her, because I feel very comfortable with her and she is very experienced and professional, having nannied for several different families in long-term situations in the past.

For the first 3 weeks back, I'll be working only Tuesday and Wednesday during the day, which will hopefully provide a good transition period for myself and the nanny and Little Sir. Then it will be back to 40-hour weeks. I am thankful that I can work from home most of the time, so I'll only be a room or so away at any time they might need me (although I don't expect that they ever will!). The nature of my work is such that I can't leave my computer for any length of time while I am on the clock, which is why I have to have someone to watch Little Sir while I am working. I would go into why that is, but it gets into what I do at work, and I don't really want to talk about that on this blog.

So, here's to the last week! Hope it is a really fun one!

Square One friends

Little Sir gets together somewhat weekly with his "friends" from our Square One group at Watermark. He is much younger than they are, since I started attending the class while I was still pregnant and the other babies were already 6 weeks old or so. This is the first good picture I have of most of them, all dressed in holiday clothing:
Little Sir has carried on his tradition of hitting on the ladies, here he is with Lily, who is only a few days older than he is (her mother also attended pregnant the first 2 weeks-thank the Lord for Stacey!!). You can see how much Lily is impressed by his skill with the girls:
For better pictures and better descriptions, you can visit Took's Tales and The World of the Wannamachers!

Seeing things

Little Sir was sitting in his swing (thank you, Nathan & Olga, for lending it to us - he spends about 50% of his time in it!) the other day, and I noticed he was actually fixating on the little toys hanging from the mobile! He has never really done that before, so I took a video:

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Well it turns out that I have come carpal tunnel syndrome, from postpartum water retention! Whee!!

I thought it was weird that I had a tingling and numbness in my hands ever since Little Sir was born. This week my left hand had it constantly for 4 days straight, so I called the birth center and they told me that was what it was. Apparently the way you can tell is that your pinkie and half the finger next to it are never affected. Sure enough, when I paid attention, my pinkie was indeed fine!

Once again, I am strange because this usually only happens during pregnancy, not after. But for me, it is after. Good times!

I am going to try to go and get a wrist brace today, apparently that might help somewhat...

Monkey pacifiers

About 3 weeks ago we introduced pacifiers to Little Sir, because he was starting to "snack" between actual feedings - he would ask to be fed but then not really feed at all, just mess around. Really, he just wanted to have something in his mouth to suck on, so we gave him his first pacifier. He wasn't very good at it, at first. He couldn't keep it in his mouth. There was one day where I spent about 2 full hours just sitting beside him, picking it up every time he spit it out and putting it back in. It was mindnumbingly boring!!! But he is getting much better at it now.

When he does lose a paci from his mouth, it is usually intentional - he spit it out for some reason. We started using the Natursutten BPA-Free Natural Rubber Pacifier, which is great for having no chemicals at all, but the downside is that when it falls, it bounces like, well, a rubber thing!

So we had to buy one of those little tether things that clips the paci to clothing. I found one at a Carter's outlet in San Antonio that is a little monkey! Here it is, although in this picture it isn't clipped on to anything:
We also had registered for a special pacifier that attaches to a stuffed animal, and got it at one of our showers, I think from my friends Wendy and Eileen. We hadn't tried using it because we thought he was too young but this week we gave it to him and it works great! It is so cute when he falls asleep with the monkey pacifier:

BumGenius Organic take too long to dry: my solution

People have asked me how cloth diapering is going. My answer is: great! I am using BumGenius One-Size All-In-Ones, a combination of the Organic AIO's and the pocket 3.0's.

To me it's just as easy as disposables, and I feel much better about it. They go on just like a disposable, and then instead of tossing them in the trash, I toss them in lidded trash can with a washable diaper pail liner and when I have gone through about half my stash of diapers, I toss the diapers along with the washable liner. When they come out of the wash, I drape them over a drying rack in the house if it isn't sunny, but if it is, I hang them out on my clothesline. All they need is about 10 minutes of direct sun to bleach out any stains (no stain remover required in the wash cycle).

One difference I have noticed between the Organic AIO and the pocket 3.0's: the BumGenius Organic don't dry very fast. If drying inside, they could take up to 24 full hours to dry. This is because the "liner" is attached to the diaper's body at the top and the bottom, and at the areas where it is attached there is a lot of fabric, which takes a while to dry. However, I have solved this problem!

Here is what the Organic AIO looks like the way it comes originally:
And here is what I did to make it dry faster:

I just took a sewing stitch ripper and removed the seam that attached the thickest part of the liner to the diaper's body. This is no trouble to the functionality of the diaper - it lies so closely to the baby's bum that it isn't going to slide around. And it has really improved the drying time of the organic AIO's!

NOTE: cross-posted to Conscientious Confusion