Baby boy turned two months old on Sunday and we’re majorly feeling the time trickery that comes with parenthood – Isaac is growing and changing at warp speed and yet it feels like eons ago that he joined our family, like he’s been with us for years. He’s a totally different kid than he was in September and will surely go flip-mode on us again (and again), so lest I forget these newborn days, a recap! I’ll begin with a handful of photos from waaaay back when, when he was just two weeks old and barely able to keep his eyes open:
And some post-bath looks of skepticism at three weeks old:
It’s already getting hard to remember the chill infant we brought home from the hospital, the one that would fall asleep in our arms at any given moment and let us set him down to doze on the couch or the floor or his bouncy chair for hours on end. I remember Shane telling someone on the phone early on that he’d hardly even heard the baby cry and I thought to myself, “wait for it…”.
My intuition was right and Isaac really “found his voice†at about four weeks. He’s been using it since to request (demand) long stretches of nursing or bouncing or rocking or shushing before drifting off to sleep. If he’s upset but doesn’t need to eat, I’ll wrap him up in the Boba and crank up some music to sing and dance him to sleep. Shallow by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga almost always makes his eyelids heavy and then I go to Renegade by Taylor Swift for the TKO.
Shane doesn’t have the patience to fiddle with 20 feet of stretchy cloth and just goes for the human wrap hold. Looks sweet, but ooofff…my back hurts just looking at this picture.
We’re far from finding a predictable sleeping routine but have managed over the past four weeks to get Isaac out of our room and into his crib for (most of) the night. Much as I love waking up nose-to-nose with him, he’s a pretty restless bed-mate and so it’s best if he has his own space in which to flop around and grunt. He’s also a super-loud eater and squeaks with each suckle, so Shane much appreciates it when I do the 1am (and 3am, and 5am) feedings in Isaac’s room rather than ours. We’re working on a more consistent bedtime and appreciate that he’ll usually log a few solid hours to start the night, but after that 1 or 2am feeding, all bets are off. (That said, at the risk of jinxing any good fortune, baby boy woke up only once at 3:30 last night, and then went back down till 7:15 this morning! I’m a new woman today.)
I know, crib is best, but goodness, those first couple weeks when I would nurse him in bed and then tuck him in next to me were awfully sweet…
If nighttime sleep is unpredictable, daytime sleep is a total crapshoot – there are days when Isaac will fall asleep in his car seat during morning errands and then snooze for four plus hours, and there are days when he does all of his sleeping in hour-long segments in my arms, waking the moment I try to set him down. I obviously prefer the former, but honestly, the latter ain’t so bad…
He’s a mouthy kid and is constantly trying to figure out just how many his fingers he can fit in his mouth at one time – we’ve started calling him Chewbacca because of his incessant desire to chew/gnaw/suck. He has mixed feelings about pacifiers, but will nurse for hours if I let him (I won’t. Usually.). The tip of Shane’s pinky finger is also a fan favorite.
He doesn’t have quite the head of hair his sister did as a baby, and sadly I think his hairline has receded these past few weeks, but there’s still enough for a pretty substantial poof. Extra-poofy post bath.
I am already nostalgic for the teeny-tiny days, but there’s a ton of goodness in seeing Isaac start to interact with us all a little more. He really started locking in eye contact at about five weeks and was offering smiles (if we really work for them) at about seven weeks. He loves having his cheeks lightly tickled and gets a kick out my impersonation of his grunty little pig sounds.
He has become very accustomed to being the Beau of the Ball when I pick up Juliette from school or when we have friends over for dinner. Such a patient, humble little dude…
And sheesh, he L-O-V-E-S his big sis. I will wax poetic in another post about what an incredible sister Juliette has become, but for now, I’ll say that moments like this one come often, followed by Juliette saying things like, “You made such a good baby, Mama!”.
And finally, Isaac’s photo shoot at six weeks:
Seven weeks:
And eight weeks (THOSE. SMILES!!!):
Buddy, the rate at which you’re growing kind of breaks a mama’s heart, but…I most definitely forgive you.
