Wow, that first month went fast!

Seriously, I remember Sophie's first month of life being just interminable!  I think that is because I was awake for a lot of it, though.  I cannot overemphasize how fortunate we've been to have a good sleeper this time around.  A couple of nights ago, he slept for 7 hours straight!  It really makes it hard to complain about anything!

What I want to do now is get him on a more predictable schedule during the day.  I've let things get a little lax, so he nurses and sleeps at irregular intervals until somewhere between 5pm and 7pm.  Then he clusterfeeds until 11pm or midnight.  I think we can fix this!  :)

I'd like to find out how big Ben is at this point, because he already seems to be snug in his 0-3 month clothes.  I think we have a couple more weeks with them at most.  I am already putting 3-6 month outfits on him when we run out of the smaller ones, and they fit fine!

As you can hopefully see in this week's picture, he really smiles at us a lot during his alert periods.  Here is a video from this morning:

Three weeks old

So, we're pretty sure Ben has smiled at us already! REAL smiles, not just gassy ones (although he has plenty of those, too). He's still sleeping all night after several "hours of power" in the evening, until about 11pm or midnight. And he tends to nap while Sophie does. I'm so lucky.

I still have not mastered the pee fountain. Ben is quite stealthy... he waits until I'm not looking for a second, so I don't even see it. Then I get his diaper all closed up and his clothes snapped up, and then I discover a huge wet spot on them that wasn't there before! John and I are starting to feel like we spend A LOT of time doing diaper-related things: at any given time, either of our kids could probably use a change, and then all the extra work that comes with using cloth. Can't wait 'til they're potty-trained! (Although I'm not looking forward to that messy process, either...)

It's been hard to find things that comfort Ben, other than nursing. John seems to be better at calming him down when it's not time to nurse. He doesn't seem to like music as much as Sophie did. The thing he likes most is being rocked in the rocking chair.

We went on our first outings this week, to the grocery store and to one of Sophie's friends' houses for sidewalk chalk drawing. Ben slept through both!

Two weeks old

After his first couple of weeks, Ben is adjusting pretty well to life on the outside. He still sleeps ver well, although we're still working out nighttime arrangements for him and me. He goes down in his own bed pretty well sometime between 12am and 1am and wakes up between 3am and 5am to nurse. I just need to figure out the best way to get my own sleep, but also hear him in time to get to him before he wakes up Sophie and John. Last night, my strategy was to just sleep on the adult bed in his room, but I spent lots of time awake because of all the bizarre sounds Ben was making in his sleep! Lots of heavy breathing, grunting, and other crazy sounds I don't even know how to describe. It probably wasn't actually that bad, but I was really tired! Anyway, I think tonight it's time to give our video monitor another try.

We seem to be already establishing the beginnings of a schedule. The long sleeps at night and regular nursing during the day help a lot with that. The biggest variations are in daytime naps, and honestly I still go to bed every night wondering if the honeymoon of decent sleeping patterns is about to come to an abrupt end. We'll see.

Here are some recent pics:

Trying out my sling for the first time -- love it! (Please excuse all my laundry on the floor.)

My dad and his descendants.

This is one of the valuable services my dad provided several times during his visit last week!

Ben in his default position, swaddled in his bouncer. :)

Pictures!

Ben had his second doctor appointment this morning. Everything is great! He now weighs 9 lbs 2 oz. He's obviously eating very well, and only cries when he is hungry. However, last night at his 1:30am feeding, he spit up pretty much everything I had just fed him, so we were up for about 3 hours trying to fill him up again.

Here are some pictures from his first weekend!

Welcome to the world, baby Benjamin!

Benjamin Steven Lightle was born at his house on September 29th, 2009 at 10:06pm after a roughly 8-hour labor. He weighed 8 lbs and 15 oz at birth and was 21.5 inches long. He scored a 10 on his 5-minute Apgar evaluation!

He's a very easy-going baby so far! He sleeps for most of the day and night, only waking up every couple of hours to eat. He has two longer waking periods in the morning and evening, when he likes to just look around at the world. He mostly only cries when he's hungry or when he's having his diaper changed. The cynic in me is waiting for the other shoe to drop, but at least for this transitional time, we're very thankful that he's so low-maintenance!