Three Months

In the last month, Baby Grady and I have actually started to settle into something that is approaching a schedule of sorts. This makes me pretty happy, as I really like routines, because I am an enormous dork. Would you like to hear about our schedule? Of course you would. That’s why you come here, right? For inane tales of my adventures? Or is it just for the pictures?

Well, here it is anyway. Because it’s all I’ve got:

Typically between 7 and 8, Grady has his last in-bed nursing session, then sometimes we grin and talk to the ceiling and kick our feet a bit. But usually we get actually out of bed between 8 and 8:30. Then I pump my boobs and Grady kicks his feet and talks to the ceiling fan. Then we go into the kitchen. Grady gets in his swing, where he continues to chatter and kick his feet. I scald my milk, make some decaf coffee, and pour myself some dry cereal. It is dry, because if I add milk then I inevitably won’t get to eat it until three hours later. It’s a law of nature, that there cereal phenomenon.

By the time all this is done, Grady is ready to eat again, obviously. For the next few hours, he nurses repeatedly, plays a little, and at some point takes at least a short post-snack nap. Around noon or so we strategize and plan for our big adventure. Meaning, the part of the day when we actually leave the house. Which we do pretty much every day, as though we are akin to productive and impressive people. Leaving the house means everyone has to be awake, full, and wearing pants simultaneously. It takes some work, really! Within 10-20 minutes of leaving the house, Grady will usually be asleep, but if I try to get him out of the house when he’s already asleep, he will wake up and then he is crankypants.

Our big adventures are usually some hiking/walking thing that take about an hour-and-a-half. Sometimes we hike to Lake Chabot; sometimes we walk to the good coffee shop; sometimes we simply walk the streets and run some errands. Once we went to Target and I’ll have you know that Baby Grady was quite fond of the Target. I don’t blame him, but when he’s older I’ll teach him to at least have a little shame about it. Because, come on. Target!

If I’m being honest, I’m usually hungry when we leave the house, because what with all the things that need to happen for us to get out the door (see: pants, and also, pants), feeding myself is low-priority. So if I’m lucky, I packed myself a snack. If not, I usually start craving a Coke. Really, a Coke, can you believe that nonsense? Well, actually a Diet Coke, but I am trying to cut back on creepy neurotoxins while breastfeeding, so Coke it is. Except that I never have one. These are the exercises in self-control that keep me feeling spry.

When we get home, Grady wakes up and acts as though I have been starving him for days. And days! So I nurse him for awhile. Sometimes it’s a really epic thing that pretty much takes the rest of the day. Sometimes not. On days when we have free time, he works out in his baby gyms while I have a late lunch. We check the grounds. We dance and sing.

In the evening, Jasper gets home and Grady gets cranky (though evenings have gotten much better lately) (though Jasper would tell you they have not) (in fact when I said they had, he called me an incorrigible half-fullist) (he might have a point). We baby-juggle through dinner and get in bed around 9. Grady is happy when we get in bed, because then he can resume talking to the ceiling without my constant interruptions. At some point after getting in bed, Grady nurses to sleep and then, well, it’s night. Which probably sounds really luxurious... like, usually going to bed by 10, and sleeping until 7 or 8? But then there’s the fact that I am up every two hours all night long to feed the munchkin. And sometimes, I lie awake while my baby sleeps, because I don’t fall back asleep until the next time he wants to nurse. So, I mean, I’m not that well-rested is what I’m saying.

Also lately, Grady has been practicing his grabbing skills. Here he is grabbing the leg of an elephant in his baby gym. (He works out!) (That link makes noise.) (As you likely could have guessed.):

How much Baby Grady weighs: 16 lbs 7 oz (Still pretty gigantic.)
Size of Baby Grady’s clothes: 3 month pants; 6 month onesies and pajamas... it seems he is a rather long baby, especially in his torso, which he gets from me.
Number of bottles (of breastmilk) Baby Grady has consumed: two (Yes still. He won’t drink from a bottle anymore. Which means... this needs to be fixed before I return to work. Or I can’t go back to work? Has that ever happened?)
Bottle and nipple types Grady now rejects: Avent, Born Free, Adiri, NUK, Tommee Tippie, latex, silicone, slow-flow, medium-flow, and fast-flow (Yes that is ALL THE KINDS.) (Not actually. I currently have the Medela Calma and the Comotomo still to try.) (If these don’t work, the First Years Breastflow is my only hope. Which would of course make it the Obi Wan Kenobi of bottles. I will have to order that one from Amazon, since I can’t find it locally.)

Baby Grady’s eye color: we’re perplexed, so I’m going with “hazel” since I’ve never really known what that means, but I think it’s rather muddled
Baby Grady’s hair color: brown, looking blond in some light, with large, boob-seeking bald patch in the back

Baby Grady’s favorite: Josh Ritter, boobs, ceiling fans, being outside, his star chart, his polyhedron mobile, Pardners, Blueberries for Sal, The House on East 88th St., Bob Marley? maybe?
Baby Grady’s least favorite: nursing in public, Frog and Toad

Happy baby to you too!

This has been on our fridge for a couple months now... and I can't stop loving it so hard. From my cousin's daughter (Little Suz). Best new baby wishes ever, I'd say.

Sometimes my baby looks like a little boy #2

In which I repent with baby photo spam

I know I have been horrible with the blogging lately. You may be asking yourself if it's because Baby Grady got really not-cute or something. And that's not it at all. I assure you. Here, with photo-spam for evidence.

This is Baby Grady practicing talking. He makes lots of vocalizations these days... we're talking about things of the "ah-goo" variety, though he's often fairly shrieky and enthusiastic about it. Less cooing and more I'm-talking-to-you-milk-lady.

And this next one is Grady looking for a boob. His primary understanding of boobs is that they materialize over his shoulder when he is hungry. Accordingly, he will whip his head back and forth, searching for the boob-of-mystery to appear. As a result, he has worn a bald spot on the back of his head, from all the seeking-of-boobs. (And no, I don't hold out on him at all. Remember, he is a ridiculously giant baby.)

Another favorite hobby of late is chewing on his hands. As you can see, I was trying to interest him in Sophie La Girafe. You know, an actual chew toy. He's not quite there with the holding onto things, but we're really proud that he's figured out how to connect his hand with his mouth on purpose. Like he actually understands that he has hands, and a mouth, and the power to connect the two. It's pretty fascinating.

This next one documents the extremely rare occasion of Baby Grady sleeping without touching me. This seriously almost never happens you have no idea.

Puppet likes to check on his baby.

Future rocket scientist, awed by his mobile. I mean, really, how do they get those things up there? And then they move? Blows. his. mind.

Check out that focus!

Big grin on a nakey baby.

Looking hip in the outfit he got from Uncle Gregg and Aunt Carey. And yes, this is my 2.5-month-old completely filling out an ensemble labeled for a six-month-old. I mean, really? How does that happen?

Grumpy Gus

I really never intended to mislead. It's just natural, I guess, to take pictures of your baby when they are happy and cute looking. But in the interest of journalistic integrity, I give you Grumpy Gus. This is the sort of scowly expression Baby Grady is making the vast majority of the time. I choose to believe he is just pondering hard, and not a total grump-bucket. His screaming proves me wrong on the daily.

Oh, are babies supposed to nap?

According to this chart I found, one-month-old babies are supposed to sleep around eight hours a day, in addition to their nighttime sleep (also eight hours). So, basically, they should be asleep like all the time. Three-month-olds should sleep around five hours a day, broken into three naps. So, I figure Grady should be somewhere between the two. And... he so is not. When he takes a decent nap of an hour or more, I am always amazed and mildly concerned and don’t quite know what to do with myself. Usually he will doze for 20 minutes after nursing and then be awake again. In recent weeks, his naps have rarely exceeded a cumulative two hours for the whole day. (There have been exceptions... he was very sleepy around Christmas, for instance. The holidays will do that to a baby.)

So, because I am a parenting genius, it occurred to me that maybe I had a role to play in all this lack-of-napping business. I mean, at first I thought... he is a baby and they don’t have schedules and so he’ll sleep when he sleeps. Which is true, and I know some babies are more assertively sleepy, but it seems that Grady needs a little nudge. The world is just too dang interesting and delicious for him to sleep for long on his own. And by “on his own” I mean, “passed out in a milk coma on my lap.” And that reminds me that in the hospital they told me that the first 20-30 minutes of sleep after a feeding is a different type of sleep than real sleep. It’s a shallower sleep and it’s why so many babies startle back awake if you try to move them too soon. So Grady has, for the most part, only been getting spells of that shallower sleep, but not transitioning into real sleep during the day.

Anyway, I got to thinking about naps when we were over at our friends the Dubranglemyers’ house. Jasper and I had joked about Grady’s lack of napping, without really thinking hard enough about it to be concerned, but then we tried out their baby swing on him and he conked out for at least an hour. I was so amazed and blissed out by the freedom that I sampled some gin. (I really did! Mr. Dubranglemyer is a fellow connoisseur, mostly because I got him really drunk this one time. We seriously throw the classiest dinner parties.)

Since that day with the shocking swing nap, I’ve been trying to offer Grady more opportunities to sleep. I also read that a baby his age shouldn’t be awake for more than a couple hours at a time! Which I guess makes sense if you do the math on all those naps. I mean, it's a lot of napping to fit into a day! So now every couple of hours I try to offer him sleep, just, like, as an option, if he’s into it, no pressure, because I am so not a rigorous parent like that... This mostly means that I wear him and walk him around the neighborhood until he passes out, and then putter around the house for an hour or so while he sleeps. He sleeps! Which, incidentally, is why you’re getting actual writing on the blog. So, you know, you’re welcome.

Two Months

Clothes that were too big are already outgrown.

Just this week, as my baby started to exhibit stretches of wakefulness during which he was not screaming, I realized, my baby sort of used to scream a lot. Jasper had previously pointed out to me that Grady was a bit “high-maintenance,” and I was all “Oh, do you think so?” Because, I mean, getting him to stop screaming was never impossible. It just sometimes required walking him around outside while bouncing, singing, and thumping his back. And yes, he refuses to sleep unless he is being held/snuggled/worn. Is that high-maintenance for a baby? I’m not sure. But now that my baby is sometimes just happy, it occurs to me that dang, this is really nice.

But while Grady is not going to win the title of Easiest Baby Ever, I think we’ve gotten really lucky in lots of ways. Grady never cries in the middle of the night (co-sleeping FTW!) and he eats well and happily. And some of his fussiness was my fault, because I didn’t make him nap. (I promise, another time.) I think most of his fussiness, though, was/is just normal. Babies cry. According to science, that crying typically gets worse until it crescendos at 6-8 weeks, and then as you come down the other side of that curve, you think, “Wow, my baby is starting to seem like a person, and I don’t just love him with all my heart and maternal hormones... I also sort of like him.” Which reminds me of another thing, for another time. (Seriously, blog post ideas all over the place!)

So, Grady apparently knew about the curve (also known as the “Don’t break the parents all at once” curve) and is becoming a really charming guy as he tapers off with the crazypants crying jags. He loves mornings, and usually wakes up chirping and grinning. Which is really sweet. Even when I’m exhausted from being awake once every hour all night, Morning Grady makes me happy.

And I know you’re thinking, “But... I read this blog! Grady is such a smiley baby!” Yeah, don’t believe everything you see on the internet, people. (Sarah Palin did not pose with a gun in an American-flag bikini, either.) Baby Grady has good PR. Also, it is hard to handle a camera when I am doing the please-stop-crying dance.

How much Baby Grady weighs: 14 lbs (Yes, this is rather on the giant side. This should surprise no one.)
Size of Baby Grady’s clothes: 3 month, 3-6 month, 6 month... baby clothes are pretty much like women’s clothes (you really ought not pay too much attention to the number)
Number of bottles (of breastmilk) Baby Grady has consumed: two (We really need to do more of this, but the whole funky milk adventure set us back a bit.)

Baby Grady’s eye color: blue? green? We really aren't sure!
Baby Grady’s hair color: brown, and also looking like old-man hair, with more around the edge and the appearance of a comb-over on top (it’s not, though!)

Baby Grady’s favorite: Josh Ritter, boobs, ceiling fans, being outside, his star chart, and his polyhedron mobile. (According to the WHO, he is in the 99th percentile for nerdiness.) (This also should surprise no one.)
Baby Grady’s least favorite: tummy time, waiting (this could be genetic...), bottles

Number of baby-wearing apparatus we currently have in rotation: 3
Mom’s favorite: the Mobyish
Dad’s favorite: the Baby Bjorn
Grady’s favorite: the Ergo (this is my second-favorite, so it works out okay)

Number of songs Baby Grady has on his iPod: 244 (Jasper received a free one and by the way, Nanos have gotten crazy small!)
Book Baby Grady is currently reading: The Hobbit (he needed something a little lighter after Cryptonomicon)