7 weeks

I'm 7 weeks old today!

 

Hello everyone! This week has been very eventful for me because Mommy had lots of appointments so I got to spend lots of time with my grandmas! We played together while Mommy was gone and I did a lot of smiling. I've really discovered my tongue and I spend a lot of time showing it off to anyone who will look at it. This week I've also really started to fight sleep and I don't want to sleep in the afternoon. Then Mommy discovered that I like to sleep in the swing with the vacuum going and I'm sleeping a little better during the day . . . so she made a recording of the vacuum with her computer and now she can play it for me on her iPod! That makes me smile. :)

Movin' on up

Johnny has officially transitioned to his crib! For the first five weeks, he was sleeping in our bed in a little cosleeper/nest thing that he really enjoyed, as seen below.

 After he grew out of that, we were planning on keeping him in our room in the Pack 'N Play and then slowly transition him into his own crib in his own room. Well, Mommy decided that she would rather just feed him in his room every night instead of going through the rigmarole of feeding him in her room. So, why have him sleep in the master bedroom and then feed him in the nursery when he could do both in the nursery? Thus, we started having him sleep in his crib a few weeks ago. Well, that first night didn't go so well for Johnny and Mommy. He woke up every hour to hour and a half wanting to be comforted and soothed, which is all well and good for Johnny, but that makes me more sleep-deprived. John then had the idea of putting his cosleeper in the crib for awhile to transition him like so:

 

As you can tell, Johnny liked that idea. He slept for longer stretches, and all was well. However, if you look at the picture above, you can see that his head touches the top and his feet touch the bottom . . . so I had to take the cosleeper out, much to my dismay. I needn't have worried because he slept very well! Well as in two 3.5 hour stretches! Not bad, not bad at all.

Oh, and we finally took a family picture, so I thought I'd post it:

6 weeks old!

Look at me! I'm six weeks old today! This past week, I got to experience being babysat by Grandma Durso while Mommy went out shopping for essentials and then having Grandma and Grandpa Durso come over again last night while Mommy and Daddy had a date night. My neck is continuing to get stronger and I move my head a lot more all by myself. I've also gotten better at making eye contact with people this week and have even started to smile at some of them! Mommy took me to the school she used to work at and introduced me to all of the office ladies; I flirted with every single one of them, showing them my best faces and an occasional smile. At the end of this week Mommy packed up all of my newborn-size clothes since I don't fit into any of them anymore. It made Mommy a little sad, but I'm excited that I'm just that much closer to driving a car to pick up chicks!

Growing, growing, gone

Johnny has officially grown out of his first clothes, which was a pretty big shock to mommy. I took the cute little monkey sleeper off of him, put it in the hamper to wash, washed it a couple of days later, and then tried to put it on him. At first I thought maybe I shrank it in the dryer, but then I tried to put another newborn-size onesie on him and lo and behold! it was also too small. I know my little baby is growing fast (he weighted 11lbs 7oz last Friday), but the physical evidence is much harder to dismiss than some numbers on a scale. So, now that some of these little outfits don't fit, I have to pack them up in a container to sit in the nursery closet for the next baby.

 Goodbye monkeys and dinosaurs!

Luckily, he still fits in his pipe-fitter/lumberjack outfits, though the corduroy overalls are getting pretty snug . . .

Before I know it he'll be bringing home prom dates!

Johnny vs. Bottle

Just like the first bath post, this is a post chronicling something that happened about two weeks ago . . . alas.

Even though I know how important breastfeeding is and how good it is for the baby and mother and all of that, it comes with a burden: you can never leave your child. Not that I want to, per se, but there are things that I need to do, preferably without a baby in tow. Going to the dentist, for example. In order to do these things, I need to leave Johnny with someone else (most likely an ecstatic grandparent). However, since Johnny needs to eat every couple of hours, he needed to learn how to take a bottle; containing breastmilk, of course.

Before the actual event of giving Johnny his first bottle, I did some major research on mommy blogs and various mommy forums to find out which bottle their breastfed babies preferred. Since the Internet is so amazing, I came back with lots of information including how picky breastfed babies tend to be about the kind of nipple they're given; how different nipples can cause babies to become lazy at the breast and thus, prefer the bottle; and how you have introduce the bottle at the perfect time. If you introduce it too early, the baby might not take the breast anymore, but if you introduce it too late, they won't take the bottle at all. Yeah, way too much information for a new parent. So, I decided to introduce the bottle at 3.5 weeks of age and I headed to Babies 'R Us, faced the wall of nipples and came back with four different kinds . . . just in case.

The first bottle we tried was from The First Years called "BreastFlow." Promising, no? We thawed 2 ounces of breastmilk, stuck it in the bottle, and then John enticed our son by dripping some milk on his hungry lips. Did he take it? Yes, like a champ! He took it so well that he cleared those first two ounces in less than five minutes. And then he cried. So I defrosted two more. Downed them like a frat boy takes his Jager. So we tried two more, and finally he was satiated. John did very well feeding and then burping his son for the first time. Good job, hubby! After the first bottle, we tried the first pacifier, which Johnny also took to and currently enjoys from time to time.

After all of that Internet research, I've discovered that my child is pretty easy going and not particularly picky. He still breastfeeds easily and can take a bottle with the best of them. I sure hope all new experiences go this smoothly . . .