Sunday Snap Shots

Smiles

William has been busy giving smiles out lately. They are just so cute. Here Grandma was giving him a side belly massage and he was loving it.


Caught him in a sneeze, goofy I know, but I thought it was funny. Just look at that double chin!


And Murphy taking a puppa snooze. He has to save up his energy to bark at the UPS driver when William is taking a nap (How is it that UPS knows exactly when William is sleeping?).


We are still working on the naps during the day, I have learned that if he wakes up 30 minutes into it, to work on getting him back to sleep. If successful he will sleep for another 1.5 hours.

Night time is about the same, he is going to bed at 8pm, will sleep till 1:30 or so and then is up again at 4am and then again at 5:30 or 6am. My trouble lately has been falling asleep after the 1:30 feeding. I keep tossing and turning till about 3:30am, get 30 minutes of sleep and then William wakes up. Not sure what my deal is, and I hope it changes soon.

Four more week days home with William and then back to work on Friday :(

Day Care Visit

We visited Day care today and talked with the teachers. It is going to be really hard for us to drop him off, but I am sure it will be good for him in the long run (meet other kids, interact with the teachers, etc). I am thankful that he will only be there typically in the afternoons, but I am sure going to miss having all the time with him that I currently do. I wouldn't have given up these 12 weeks for the world.

Grandma and Grandpa S were here for a visit and Grandma stayed and Grandpa is coming back to get her soon. They are having fun with how much William has grown and developed since they saw him last.

The smiles and coos are so fun right now, and I can't wait for the giggles. Neither can Adam as he blows zerbits on Williams belly when changing him to practice for the giggles to come. William just looks at him like, "What was that?"

Tummy Time and Lunch Visits

Tummy time is going better, we can get in at least 10-15 minutes before the screaming starts. But mostly because we are working on finding our hands to suck on.

We had lunch today with friends Kara and Melissa and learned how quickly a living room can go from seeing the floor to covered in toys, thanks to the ~9mo old Tyler, Maya and Max.

Formula Update

Well, formula wasn't the magic sleep cure. We have feed him formula four nights in a row and no noticeable sleep pattern difference. Occasionally he goes 4 or 5 hours, but he did that on breast milk too. I think we will keep up with the last feeding of the evening as formula as it makes it a bit less stressful on me when I am by myself, and I know how much he is getting. Plus it allows me to build up a little extra supply of breast milk.

So I think it just comes down to his maturity and he will decide to lengthen his sleep sessions when he is ready. We upgraded our swaddlers to a larger size as he has out grown the small size ones and it seems they still help him to sleep.

He really likes his swing now and will take naps during the day in it.

In the last week we have noticed that he is able to bear weight on his legs for much longer periods of time. Here Daddy and William are practicing while looking out the window (sorry its a bit dark, should have used the flash).

Smile and Watch Time

First interactive smile caught on camera.
Adam and William catching up on the latest watches.

Formula Experiment 1

Well formula didn't make any difference last night, it was a typical poor sleeping night. William went down well at 8:30pm, but awoke at 12:30, 3:30 and then didn't settle down for more than 15 minutes till 8am. I am not giving up on formula totally and will give it another chance tonight. When we talked our pediatrician that was her suggestion. At our last visit our pediatrician told us she is moving to Texas to get out of the winter. Bummer, we really liked her.

I go back to work on Feb 5th, its a Friday, so it will be nice to have one day in and then two days off. I hope things change with sleeping by then. Thanks every one for the words of encouragement and suggestions.


William fell asleep on the floor this morning for a little cat nap.

Napping

William has been a horrible napper lately and I think it is caring over to his night time sleep as well. Occasionally he has slept 5 hours at night, but it is very rare. And during the day we are lucky to get 30min-45min naps. I think he is about the age where we can start to let him cry a bit and work himself to sleep. My parents just left from being here this weekend and I am bound and determined for William to get a good nap. Problem is, it's not all up to me.

I don't think he is a high maintenance baby (he doesn't cry inconsolably) but neither is he a good baby (content most of the time, goes to sleep easy). I consider him pretty average, but considering this is the only baby that I have spent this much time with, I don't know for sure.

I am starting to get pretty worried about going back to work in 3 weeks. If it was only down to one night feeding I think I could handle it, but being up 2-3 times at night is going to wear me down quickly if I have to work on top of that. My Mom was trying to convince me to give him a little rice cereal, but everything I have read says it won't make a difference unless he has reflux (which I don't think he does). I am leaning toward a formula feeding before bed, to see if that makes any difference.

9 week picture in police onsie, just barely fitting. I think this will be the last one. For a look back on how much William has grown...

Week one and three
Week five
Week seven

I snapped the picture above just before the little guy spit up all over his shirt, so outfit change.

Posing with his Puppa.
Starting to find his hands on his own.

2 Month Pictures

One of our neighbors gave me a very nice scrapbook with a stuffed bear. The scrapbook has pages all ready for a picture with the bear for each month of William's first year. Quite a neat and thoughtful gift, and I am sure it will be fun to look back and see how much he grew each month. Here are some pictures in the running for the 2nd Month picture.

We started with the outfit he had on for the day, but then he spit up, so after an outfit change we resumed.

Then Adam insisted we put he white doggie hat on him because it makes Adam chuckle.One more from the first photo shoot with the doggie hat.We went to the mall in town today to return some Christmas gifts and got stopped in every store by women to ask how old William is. Then they start to tell us how many grandchildren they have, how much they weighed at birth, how old they are now, etc. I guess babies just attract attention.

3 Bandaids - 2 Months - 1 Scream

Today was William's 2 Month check up. He ways a whopping 12lb 9.25 oz, which is in the 75% range, was 23" long (50%) and head circumference was 40.5cm (between 50 and 75%). So he has more than doubled his birth weight in just two months.

He got three shots and one oral vaccine. He did really well, just turned really red and held his breath for about 5 seconds before letting out a very angry scream. He calmed down pretty well afterward, so all in all not as bad as I thought.

The nurse said that recent studies have shown that Tylenol and other pain relievers might lessen the effectiveness of the vaccines so we will hold off unless he starts to get a bit of a fever.

Here is a picture of our big boy headed to the doctor in his cute new hat (we were able to find a larger size in the white puppy size, thanks Chandra) and his car seat carrier.

Will expressed apprehension when we said it was time to go to the doctors, or maybe just a reaction to a face Daddy made before taking William's picture.

Adam has is off days today and tomorrow then my parents are in for a visit this weekend. We will have to see how many smiles Grandpa Mac can get out of William in two days. We still haven't caught them with the camera to prove it, they typically happen at 3, 5 or 6 in the morning for me. I am not in the mood at that time to rush for the camera. It does help soften the fact that I am up at that time with the little guy.

Jinxed

Yeah so I totally jinxed myself with the last post. The last two nights have been back to where we were. Last night he kept waking up over and over from about 4am on. I felt bad for Adam since he has to work, so I ended up pulling a comforter out of the spare bedroom and sleeping on the floor in William's room. It sounds bad, but I actually got more sleep that way as I was able to get him back to sleep quicker. Plus I was less awake and able to settle back myself quicker. This lasted till about 7:30 am when Adam got up.

Thank goodness for our blog and all the pictures. While upgrading our computer we lost all of our pictures when a backup failed. We had loaded William pictures to my work computer on Dec 11th and had some pictures still on the camera, but lost a lot in between. But I was able to pull the best pictures that I had posted to the blog back. We lost a lot of memories from previous years, but hopefully we can get pictures from other people we were with at the time to replace them.

William appears to be taking longer day time naps. Before it was nap 30min, feed, awake 30 min, and repeat. Today and yesterday we are getting longer naps ~2 hours. I hope that translates to longer night time sleep sessions too.

Thursday we go in for William's 2 month appointment. I will be excited to see how much he has grown. But I think they also get some shots this time. Do I give the Tylenol before the shots or after, and if before, how do I know how much to give him since I don't know his weight and the box just says if under 24 lbs ask your pediatrician? Fellow Moms out there, any suggestions?

Pictures from William's long nap in the window today.

Tummy Time and Sleep

I hate to jinx it, but William has been improving his length of sleep the last couple of nights. He has been taking a feeding at 8pm and then making it till at least 12am, and last night it was 2am! I had to get up before that and pump, but 2am, yahoo! We will see if it continues. He seems to have gotten past the insatiable appetite phase and is now sleeping better. We also changed to a larger diaper size again as the leaks had started to happen again. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it continues.

William and Daddy working on tummy time.

Murphy wanted to get in on the pictures too, so here he is posing.

Looking out the window

William loves to sit in his chair and look out the window. I think it is the snow contrasting the dark objects outside or the dark window panel dividers. He is also discovering his tongue lately and is sticking it out frequently.


This morning I am pretty sure he was smiling at me, we will keep working on it and work on getting a smile on camera. Pam was able to see it, so it was just in the nick of time as she leaves this morning to go home.

Jeans

First day wearing jeans. We went to visit Suzy and Julianna today and had a nice lunch with them. I again intended to take pictures of Miss J, but forgot to think of the camera till she was down for her nap. So I had a little photo session with William when we got home.

Development

William is clearly looking at objects now and is tracking them with his eyes. He also is making very cute cooing noises, much preferred to the crying we sometimes hear.

I think we are just on the brink of getting smiles out of him, none spotted so far, but I think we're very close.

Pictures with Grandma S.

7 Weeks and a New Year

William was 7 weeks old yesterday and is healthy. Lately we have been dealing with gas, he seems to do just fine getting out the lower gas, it is the upper gas (burps) that I seem to be struggling with. When I feed him I burp him right away and usually get out a couple good burps, but later on he spits up and has more burps he needs to get out. Last night he woke up screaming at 3am because he had spit up and got curdled milk in his nose. It must have hurt as he was howling, I felt so bad. Adam ended up getting up to help me/relieve me as I was getting pretty stressed out by his cries and the lack of sleep.

I think William is gulping air when I am feeding him, but I am not exactly sure how to get him to stop that. Adam suggested that we feed him bottles only as he seems to be less gassy when we do that, but the thought of waking up to an alarm and pumping and then feeding at night does not sound good to me. We are going to try some gas relief drops, forgo his vitamin and I am going to try to watch his latch closer to see if there is anything there I can do.

The last couple of days and nights have been rough, just when I thought we were doing better and going for 4 hours between feedings during the night, he reverted back to every 2 hours. By the time I get him fed and burped and burped again and then back to bed I am lucky to fall asleep before he wants to wake up again. I hope it is just a short growth spurt and we can get back to lengthening out the night feedings soon.

7 Week picture in the Police onsie, still fitting, but getting tight lengthwise.

Sleeping on Daddy's shoulder.

Adam is back to work now, I was so glad he was able to stay home with me for so long. It was a great help and a great experience. It has brought us closer together and made us an even stronger team.

Pam (Adam's Mom) came out to visit us for New Years and will stay till Adam's birthday and is again a great help. We are lucky to have such great family who visit us often!

We didn't stay up for the New Years, I think we crashed at 9pm, but I was up with William for a feeding at midnight and so we celebrated together. We are looking forward to all the firsts this year, and hope it will be a good and healthy year for all those we know.