Oh! I didn't notice you there, good sir!

How simply wonderful of you to drop by. Did you know that my bike is fast? Smashing!

All the updates

So, this has been an eventful week. Not the least of which, Graham only had to have one night feeding last night, and really really slept the rest of the time. He went down at about 9:30 pm, woke up to eat at 3 am (with a little cajoling at 1:30 am), ate and burped and snuggled til 4, and then back to sleep until 7 am. Hot damn! This is so very very very very exciting for his parents. He also has figured out how to nap for about an hour to an hour and a half at a time by himself in the co-sleeper, which makes my day (and the work, plus housework I have to do) a lot more pleasant. Huzzah! Graham goes back to the pediatrician for his four-month well child visit in two weeks, and I can't wait to brag. He's also found his hands for sucking and slurping on at all hours of the day - I am really hoping he turns into a thumb sucker, because that is just solid gold for self-soothing. Plus, if I can avoid being the mommy who has to pick up the dropped pacifier ten thousand million grillion times, that would be swell.

The house is slowly but surely getting back into shape after the whirlwind that was my mom swept through - we got a lot done, but there is a lot more organizing and cleaning out to do than I had previously anticipated. But we re-painted the porch floor and my mom cleaned all the windows and screens and blinds and now it looks lovely:
We also finally finished painting the stairs and the baseboards leading up the stairs: When we had the floors refinished when we moved in, we just had them do the treads on the stairs, since refinishing the risers would have had to be done by hand (and thus, $$). So the risers always looked terrible and the baseboards had stain all over them, so it looked like someone had smeared poop up the stairs. But considering what we started with:
I think things are definitely improved. And for giggles, here's what the corner of Graham's room (the one with his crib in it now) looked like when we moved in:
Yellow shag! Seriously! So, yes, proof positive that we have done some serious work in the past two years.

Our weekend with Grandma

Some photos from our weekend:

Graham is excited!Tired baby, tired mommy:Wired baby, wired daddy:And a family photo in which Graham already looks like he has had just about enough of our tomfoolery:

Very brief update with better, longer update promised for Tuesday, at the latest

The reason for the long delay and the short update is that Grandma Big K is here and we are using the opportunity to do all sorts of house projects that we were supposed to do before Graham arrived. So we're painting, cleaning, repainting, etc. Crazy!

Graham's new trick

And actually, it's even better than as shown...I stupidly waited to break out the camera until later in the day when he was tired of showing off his tricks!

short update

i am just about to go to sleep (oh, sooo tired), but the news for today is that poor graham is losing his hair. his beautiful red baby hair, and who knows what will come back in its place? something totally pedestrian and predictable, like BLONDE, probably. joe says it looks like he has a comb-over.

Let's try this again

So, faithful readers may remember my attempts at trying to get Graham to go back to sleeping in his co-sleeper at night, PLUS soothe himself down for naps during the day, PLUS do his naps in his crib but sleep in the co-sleeper at night. Some might say that was a little over-ambitious. Yes, well, that wasn't so successful. He did end up being willing to sleep in his co-sleeper at night again, but naps, not so much.

So, try #2. This time I have scaled back considerably. I'm just trying to get us on a reasonable routine, plus naps in the co-sleeper. This morning he stayed down in the co-sleeper by himself for almost 45 minutes! Baby steps, baby steps.

Maybe Joe wins?

We were looking at old photos from our wedding video over the weekend, and this one popped up of Joe:
We all said "Graham!" simultaneously.

Every time we think he is SO big...

...we're reminded how small he still is. Hooray for tiny babies!

Things continue apace here. Graham got changed to a PPI (proton pump inhibitor) for his reflux - so now he's on dissolvable Prevacid. It will be probably take a least a few days before this kicks in, though, so we're only making small strides. Hopefully his nights get better and better, because Joe and I are exhausted.

The hard and also exciting part is that it's clear that his baseline personality is so sweet and happy - if we could just fix the pain he has, life would be fantastic for all of us. When he's in that sweet spot between not right after mealtime (and burping, and having lots of heartburn) but not starving either, he is the smiliest little guy. He has even started doing little squeals of laughter - directed at me, the couch, the air currents, whatever. It makes all the hard nights worthwhile...but still, a little more sleep would be nice.

Besties

Maura and Kirk visited over the weekend and look how in love! It was so nice to have visitors, especially the nicest kind. And it is finally starting to warm up around here - it was in the 50s yesterday and today. Phew! I have a feeling things are going to be about a billion times easier with warm weather to get out and about in.

This makes it all worthwhile

Here's my week so far:

Sunday: No sleep. Graham has an upset stomach and manually needs me to bicycle his legs so he can fart. (Who am I kidding, it was actually kind of fun.)

Monday and Tuesday: Sarah is sick. Graham is cranky about that. I am in charge. I am cranky about that. No sleep.

Wednesday: Lack of sleep is making it hard for me to stay awake at work. Sarah busts me for smoking. Graham avoids all eye contact with me. No sleep.

Thursday: After another day of avoiding eye contact with me, Graham shows me how much he loves his mom by smiling at her like she is a candy mountain made of lottery tickets. Ugh. During the night I pick him up when he's crying and he throws up down my shirt.

Friday: Graham is finally big enough for the skull and crossbones onesie that I've had for three months now. After I put it on, he looks at me and we get this:

After crunching the numbers I think it was a pretty good week.

Update from the pediatrician

Although this is not a picture of Graham with his pediatrician - it's his great-grandpa! Graham was entirely enthralled.

So, the pedi visit. It was mostly just a weight check, since his doctor took him off the extra formula last time she saw him. So the weight is now.....12 pounds, 3 ounces! Which puts him almost at the 50th percentile for 3 months, and he's only supposed to be at the one-month mark! And he's also 23 inches long, which is almost the 25th percentile for 3 months. What a big boy!!! So given the fact that he has almost caught up growth-wise, we have been wondering how to treat him in terms of feeding and sleeping. Would it be the right thing to try to get him to sleep through the night? Should we move him to his crib in his room? Etc. And the pedi said that developmentally, he seems more like 6-8 weeks old (which is awesome - he's catching up there too), which is too early to consider asking him to try sleeping through the night. And that's fine with us - we are beyond thrilled that he is as far along as he is. It's interesting, though - we've read a lot about preemie parent fatigue, both physically and emotionally. Because you've had your baby so much longer than most parents, it's like a very very extended newborn period, where they are really fragile, not very responsive, and eat all the time. So we've been in the newborn to month-old phase for three months, and still have probably another month or so to go before the traditional payoff that happens when the baby is 3 months old (can start really sleeping long periods, is smiling and laughing and really responsive). It can be really exhausting.

But that's not to say he's not responding to us at all - he changes more and more every day. He's smiling a lot more (and today he was even smiling at the baby in the mirror above his chair) and looks like he is so ready to laugh - lots of really open-mouthed smiles! So it's all hard (he's also going through a growth spurt right now and is CRANKY), but all worth it.