I am TWO!!

Months, that is. But still. TWO! Months! We've kept a child alive for TWO MONTHS! Who'd have thought?

Some random notes from the Norman camp:

Dexter was 12 lbs, 1 oz at his last weigh-in at lactation class. He goes tomorrow for his two month check-up at the doctor, so he'll get weighed and measured then. Can't wait to see how long the child is. He's already getting close to hanging out of his swing and his bouncy seat. Actually, the feet already hang off the bouncy seat.

Have any wood close by? You're going to need it for this one. Dexter has been pretty reliably sleeping from 9 or 9:30 pm until at least 3am, every night. NOW is when you knock on wood. NOW! HURRY! Most nights he will actually sleep until 4 or 4:30. So we're working toward a good solid 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep from him. He goes to bed at 7:30pm, gets up at 9 or so to eat (not his choice - I make him get up), and sleeps a good solid chunk of time before waking up to eat again. Our next step? When he's ready, we'll drop that 4am feeding. And Mom can SLEEP ALL NIGHT! :-)
The exception to the sleeping through the night rule happened the other night, when Dex woke up crying at 1am. But not his "dude, I am hungry" cry. More like a "HELLO? What's going on here?" kind of cry. Why? Because Mr. Muscles had busted BOTH ARMS free from his Miracle Blanket. Which I just didn't think was possible. Ah, but who swaddled him that night? His DAD! Who is FAR too nice. He said "I didn't want to make stuff too tight around his arms." OK - next time you want to make stuff not so tight, YOU can get up at 1am to re-swaddle the boy and get him back to sleep...

Naps are not, unfortunately, going quite as well. Dex seems to have become a perpetual 45 minute napper. Which means that Mom can get a lot less done during nap time. Ah, who am I kidding? I didn't get anything done, anyway. So what it REALLY means is that I am (kicking and screaming) slowly coming to terms with the fact that MY naps are going to be significantly shorter now...

Dexter is still kicking butt with his bottle feeding. John feeds him a bottle a day. Which allows me to: go to girlie movie night without worrying at all about how the baby is doing, go to Target and Wal-Mart to do some shopping without a kid strapped to my belly, and maybe, sometime, start going to the gym at night. Woo-hoo!
Dexter is smiling all the time now (except, of course, when I have a camera in my hand), sitting up in his Bumbo chair, kicking the snot out of his play gym that makes noise when he kicks it, and grabbing stuff. Also following hands and other objects as they move across the sky in front of him. Cool stuff!

Also, right now. Dexter is hungry. We shall continue this post at a later time...

One bath and one feeding later, and we're back! Also, check it out - Dexter can have normal hair when his mom remembers to comb it after a bath! No worries - give it one nap and it'll be back to being the crazy hair that we all know and love.
Dex is, I am pretty sure, going to win any beer chugging contests in college. Right now he nurses for 10 minutes max, and in that time period eats four to five ounces of milk. Which, apparently, is HUGE. We feel like slackers at lactation group, as we're in and out of there before most moms are even done nursing. No dilly-dallying for this boy! Which is cool - less pain for my nipples, and it leaves us more time to play.

Speaking of nipples, I can't WAIT for them to not be in pain. One of these days (and I am guessing it will be after Dexter is done nursing forever) I will be able to actually hug my husband again. Right now I can't because OWWW. Nipples smooshed against another person = hurt.

And according to some of you savvy moms (and all this baby stuff I keep reading) this is about the time that Dexter should start to poop less. WHEN? WHEN does that happen?? This whole six poopy diapers a day thing is getting old...
So what's on tap for us this week? Doctor tomorrow, and shots and weighing and stuff. Recovery Wednesday. Lactation group Thursday. Maybe some photos on Friday, or a visit to the Easter Bunny (gotta take advantage now, when he doesn't care that he's being held by an enormous scary thing with big ears and googly eyes...). Saturday Dexter gets to hang out all day with Dad while I go help a friend at a competitive trail ride in Fair Hill. And that's about it! We'll be busy this week!

Also, happy birthday today to Grandma Cowan!!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

These are a Few of My Favorite Things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...

Blue hats from Grandma with matching blue mittens...
Black socks that look like they have some shoe strings...
These are a few of my favorite things.

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels...

Big drops of spit-up, oh man I have oodles... (hey, YOU try rhyming with streudel!)
My Miracle Blanket, good sleep it does bring...
These are a few of my favorite things.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes...

Play gyms with fishes that make sounds like splashes...
This cool green ball that I just learned to cling...
These are a few of my favorite things!

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad...
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad.

A songwriter, I am not. Nor a rhymer. I cheated. Go to rhymezone.com, you can cheat, too!

Back in the Saddle

That was me today! Quite literally back in the saddle again. Yay! Man how I have missed the smell of horses. I was so happy to come home today dirty and covered in horse hair. I was riding my friend's horse, Spot. It's not the same as riding my Frazier, who I still miss. But hey - at this point I am happy to be in a barn and have a horse to ride. Cate said "let me know when you feel up to riding ten miles. I'm sure it won't take long." Ummm. Yeah. I haven't ridden since JUNE. I am sure I will be unable to walk tomorrow. So it might take me a little bit of time to work up to ten miles!

I'm not sure I say enough how great a dad John is. I pumped some milk this morning, got some more out of the freezer, and then went breezing out the door. Bye, honey! I'll be back some time! Maybe! Have fun with the little boy! And he did just that. Fed Dexter, played with him, went for a walk, sent me a picture message on my phone so I could see Dex out walking, put him down for a nap, got him up again a little while ago when he was crying and I was chatting on the phone. And now he's off winning Dexter some college money, at a poker tournament. :-) Seriously. He rocks. Dexter and I are lucky.

Dexter appears to be a growing boy today, eating every other second. Growing boys are hungry boys! As he was 12 pounds at lactation group on Thursday, I fully expect, with this growth spurt, for him to hit 13 pounds this week. I swear, by next week at his 2 month check-up he will have to wear 6 - 9 month old clothing! I can't wait to see how long he is these days. My guess? Seventy billion inches. Or maybe 30...

Boooo. VT lost in basketball. And Maryland was well on their way to getting crushed the last time I looked today. Who do I have left to root for? I guess - GO ORANGE!! Stupid Syracuse. Who, really, has a mascot that is a big orange ball? I mean, even a castrated turkey is way cooler than that...

Oh, how I've missed this view. Frazier's cute ears look at the ocean (HORSE EATING WAVES!!!) last February. Back when having a child was one of those "hey, want to do this?" kind of ideas... Must get Dexter a pony. Soon.

Faces

Audience participation. Make your own captions - I'm plumb out of ideas!

Straightjacket

So (cross your fingers) I think we have found the solution to the non-napping baby who just played in his crib looking at the world all morning long:

Look, Ma! No hands!

Swaddling!! DUH! I am a moron for not doing it sooner. I mean, we swaddled. Half-heartedly. And since Dexter was VERY good at busting his arms out of our swaddles, we thought "well, he just LIKES having his hands up by his face. And he's still sleeping ok. So what's the harm?" It just took me a couple weeks when he started NOT sleeping ok to realize that perhaps those flailing arms hitting him in the face every three seconds was contributing to the not sleeping problem. Hey - nobody ever said I was smart!

So now we are swaddling much more aggressively. Like lean on those arms, strap them down by his sides, and wrap the swaddle so tight you wonder if the boy can breathe... And we have, for the past three days, a boy who naps MUCH MUCH better. Yesterday he was quietly fussing up in his crib for a bit, and when I went to check on him to see why - well, Mr. Muscles had busted out of his swaddle. So, what did we learn here? Swaddle = sleep. Not swaddle = cranky baby and unhappy Mom. And nobody likes an unhappy Mom!

Glad we found the solution, before they had to take ME away in a straightjacket!

Aunt Maria came to visit last weekend. Thanks for coming to play with me!!

Lest You Think Life is All Sunshine and Roses...

May I present a few photos of Dexter in his "OMGIAmStarvingWhyAren'tYouFeedingMeRIGHTNOWWoman!" state:


Mind you, he's not normally quite so cranky. This is in the evening, after the boy had slept for CRAP all day (even in WAL-MART!! Fussy in Wal-Mart! Definitely not right. Definitely needs more sleep.)

He's still hella cute, though, in his little blue jeans and sweater. Ready to join a fraternity...

And THIS picture just cracks me up:

Earth's Best, But Not Dexter's Best

I love the people who gave us diapers. I truly do. We have not bought ANY diapers since we've had this baby, except for a lone package of Pamper's Newborns when Dex ran out of the ones we stole from the hospital, and he was just too small to effectively fit in to Huggies Newborns (hold on. This baby used to be SMALL??). But otherwise we've been using your generous gifts, which has allowed us to compare some brands a bit.

For the past week I've been cursing at (or using) Earth's Best diapers, with a maybe 75% success rate (although right now it feels like a 2.7% success rate). While I like them in theory (chlorine free, organic), in practice they have made me want to run my ass out to Colorado and gouge out the eyeballs of the guy who designed them (c'mon. You KNOW it's a guy. There's no way a woman would design a diaper that fits so poorly). Because? They leak. Pee, poop, whatever. They leak. And after four clothing changes today, the most recent at 3AM when the diaper was TOTALLY dry but Dexter's fleece PJ's, waterproof mattress pad, and Alissa's PJ's were totally NOT dry... I threw in the towel. Sorry about the wasting of perfectly clean diapers, but I can't hack it any more. Bring on the Huggies.

Maybe Dexter's legs just aren't designed to fit organic, chlorine free diapers that are supposed to be good for him. He apparently has legs shaped to fit Pooh Bear decorated, probably terrible for you, soon they will discover they cause cancer, less expensive (good boy, Dex!) Huggies diapers. And maybe some other brands - we've still got more in the closet so this little experiment isn't over yet!

These legs are made for Huggies...