We've been working hard for the (very limited amounts of) money

Sorry, friends! I know it's been forever since we posted. It's just been a combination, as always, of some sleeplessness, some boringness, lots of hard work around the house and in other areas of our lives. But! The other reason I have been holding off on posting is that Graham rolled over all by himself for the first time this weekend, and I have been trying to get video of it ever since. He is not a command performer, apparently. He did it twice for me when Joe wasn't there, once for Joe when I wasn't there, and has refused to do it at least four times when the video camera was running. Apparently he has not inherited my flair for drama and attention. Perhaps that's not the worst thing in the world...

Anyway, Graham just continues to change and grow every day. He's solidly sucking his thumb now (hooray!) and grabbing and holding onto things and laughing this very bizarre deep-throated "heh huh heh" whenever he grabs my hair. He's sitting up better than ever (propped in my lap, but not all slouchy like he has been until this point), and is even turning his head when he hears my voice. His grandparents (dad's side) are coming this weekend (also hooray!) and I think Grandma Lorraine is going to flip out when she sees how big and smart he is. I was looking at old pictures the other day and I just couldn't believe how much he has grown already. I can't imagine him crawling and walking and running, but I know it's right around the corner.

So, since it's been forever (a whole week!) without new pictures, here you go:

Graham concentrating really hard on his new toy:

Looking very dapper in the new Tybee Island onesie Grandma Big K and Grandpa JSpen sent:

And being a bit of a mess after we tried to do handprints and footprints last night. Maybe we should have done that when he was a little less mobile?

But then...

Guess who slept the whole night through for the first time? Wooo-hoooo! He finally went to sleep at about 8:30 pm. Then we got him up at 11 to feed him, and he went back to sleep pretty quietly. I heard him wake up around 3:30, and he made little noises until 4 am, but he soothed himself back to sleep until about 7:15. What the! So exciting. Now we are currently working on napping, since he was yawning a blue streak, but has been chatting to himself for about 20 minutes and definitely cried when I put him down.

My name is Graham, and I hate to sleep.

Graham is currently on a sleep strike, and it is breaking our hearts and wills. We have been so so lucky up to this point - he has always been so calm and collected, with hardly any crying. And when we put him down to sleep, either he is already zonked out or within a few minutes he has talked himself to sleep. Not so much for the past few days. He is really refusing to nap in the morning (at best, it's 45 minutes) and then it's a major struggle to get him to nap in the afternoon so that by the time he falls asleep, he is sleeping for 3+ hours and it starts getting towards evening. Then it gets later and later until when he will fall asleep for the night. The past few nights, it has just been that he was awake until late. Tonight, he was yawning and yawning and even fell asleep the last time I fed him, but the minute his head hit the mattress, he screamed. With real, big tears and gulping air and honest-to-goodness screaming, which he has never done before. It took about an hour of being up and down, trying to get him to soothe himself but not abandoning him, before he settled to sleep. It was so hard to see him so miserable. So, I don't know if he's still in his little growth spurt and his bones are aching, I don't know if he's transitioning to giving up his morning nap and just having a big long one in the afternoon and is just thrown off by that, I don't know if he's just getting a first little separation anxiety, I don't know if maybe he's even starting to teethe a little bit (he's recently started drooling and bubbling as well). But I do know that no one in our household was happy from 7:30-8:30 pm this evening.

I suppose I shouldn't complain

So this morning I was playing with Graham and I finally cracked. He is a lot less interested in lying on his back anymore - he is much happier when we are holding him to stand or sit on our knees when he can look around at the whole world and practice his grabbing skills. So I called Joe and got financial dispensation to go out and buy the bebepod. Hooray! Except we went out to buy it and this is what happened:So now his little chair is just waiting for him to wake up:He's been asleep in his carseat for three hours. Look at your cool chair, dude! Don't you want to sit in it?? And besides, we were supposed to meet up with Kelly to go to the Lilac Festival! I had me an appointment with some fried dough and a slushie! Instead, I did work. Ugh.

Graham is learning stuff

It's amazing how you can really see babies learning, isn't it? He tries out all sorts of sounds and ways to move his mouth, he flexes his fingers back and forth and tries really hard to figure out how to hold something, he pulls his knees up underneath him and pushes and pushes to try to roll over. None of that has anything to do with him taking a bath, but that picture is just too cute to pass up.

Right now he's lying next to me kicking away and mouthing all over his rattle tube-y thing. See?

A belated happy Mother's Day!

To all the rockingest moms I know....

Grandma Big K
Grandma Lorraine
My grandmas! Janet and Helen
Liz Humph
Candice
Christine
Somerville Christine
Jan
Muffet
Peggy TFR2K
Makaela
Brand brand spankin' new mom Erin (with twins! twin boys!)
Kelly
Emily
Linda
Kris-Ann
Jenny
Gretchen
Gigi
Allison
Carrie S.
And the second Carrie S.!
Claudia
Kris
Deanne
Mags
Amy
Lynn
Ingrid
Jennifer
Joan
Mary
Roberta
Rebecca
Mom-to-be Rachael
Alena! (duh! with a smack to my head)

And I know there are so many more that I overlooked when trying really hard to think of everyone. You all are my role models - each of you have taught me something about being a mom. Thank you thank you thank you!

It's like someone created the perfect drug for me

Tonight I found this site: LibraryThing. Which is amazing because it combines my love of books, and my freakish need for organization. So, I've decided to make an online catalog of Graham's children's lit collection. I've actually had a fair number of people ask me what books we had already, so that if they very very kindly decided to gift Graham with a book, it wouldn't be a duplicate. This is not me begging for more books, I promise. (Not that begging for books is beneath me, this just isn't an example of this.) I also thought that there are at least a few people out there reading this that also love children's literature and/or have children of their own, and maybe we can talk back and forth about great books, new books, books that don't live up to the hype, etc. So down there on the right there's links to the catalog (which is in process) that can be searched. Fun!

What do you do with...

..a boy who just THIS MORNING napped like a champ, happily snuggled and swaddled, and since noon has refused to nap, hates to be swaddled, but hasn't quite figured out how to suck his thumb yet? Hmmm. He also has eaten about 50 times since then. I guess this is what those in the business call a "growth spurt."

As predicted, best baby ever

So, Graham is amazing. As if we didn't know that, but as I said in the previous post, it's always nice to have your parental pride confirmed by outside sources. Our big boy is now 24.5 inches long, and 14 pounds, 3 ounces. That puts him at the 34th and 33rd percentiles for height and weight, respectively, for NORMAL 4 month old boys. What a grower! To put it in perspective, if any 4 month old came in at that height and weight, he would be on the smaller side, but not concerningly small. He would be in the NORMAL range. Normal!

The pediatrician was also way impressed with his head-lifting skillz, his weight-bearing thunder thighs, and all of his smiles and talk talk talk. She said he definitely meets the strict developmental criteria for a 4 month-old. Again, a NORMAL 4 month old!

The only sad part of the visit (for Graham, at least) was the 4 immunizations plus a heel stick to check his hematocrit. He was not happy. And in fact, right now he is in his swing, sleeping, which I never let him do, because his Tylenol wore off and he was screaming a blue streak. Poor guy.

Weekend of busy-osity

Well, the most recent development (which I guess is not technically part of the weekend, but hey, when you can't get to the blogging every day, it all gets a little smushed together) is that Graham blew his first raspberries today. It was awesome - I wasn't even paying attention the first time he did it! He practiced a few times after his bath too. He didn't get the full big pbbbblllhhhht out again, but the little practice tries are over the top adorable as well. I am such a sucker for this kid.

Getting back to the weekend. Friday was actually my first day away from Graham since he came home from the hospital, and it was very very very very hard. I was at a Prader-Willi conference in Albany and so left at about 5 am and got back about 7:30 pm. There was a little girl there with her mom (I mean, there were lots of kids at the conference as this particular one is pretty parent-centered rather than wholly scientific, but this was a baby so she was with her mom in the sessions) and I desperately wanted to hold her and get my baby fix. Joe stayed home with his boy and they reportedly had a lovely day together.

Saturday, Joe had even more time with Graham when I went to a bridal shower (yay Danielle!). And then Sunday, we had babies, babies and more babies. It was a day of social stuff that we had been rescheduling and rescheduling since Graham was born. We got to see Ava, who was born on her due date seven (I think) days after Graham was actually born, and we got to meet Connor, who was born four days after Graham was supposed to be born. It was really nice to meet the babies (both gorgeous), and so so nice to hang out with grown-ups, but it was especially nice to see that our G-man is developing along nicely and is smack dab in the middle between Ava and Connor. Not that we were worried, but hey, every parent likes to be reassured that their baby is doing well.

Speaking of which, we get to do my favorite thing tomorrow and go to the pediatrician. It's Graham's 4 month check-up, and while he may not be excited (lots of shots tomorrow), I am. I get to ask a million questions, find out his height and weight (which I think are both on the normal growth curve for four-month old boys!) and again, get that nice official reassurance that yes, my baby is the best baby ever in the whole wide world. Hooray! So, more details on that tomorrow.

Sorry friends

I know, it's been a long long while since we posted. Honestly, it's been a combination of not much going on, plus routine but multiple days in a row of crankiness and sleeplessness. Graham is sticking to his feeding once a night schedule, which is great, but that is really highlighting how sleep-deprived we actually were. So now Joe and I are back in this pattern of counting the minutes of sleep we get and snipping at each other when either of us feels that the scales are even slightly out of balance. And that general feeling does not lend itself so well to creative blogging. Plus, last night there was poop in our basement. Again. Sigh. Being a grownup is HARD sometimes.

But, as always, our beautiful little boy is beautiful, and his smiles make our lives meaningful and special every every day. I mean, look at this guy:
He does make us feel like we have no right to ever be cranky, ever again.