2 months old!
Clement hit the two month mark on Sunday! Yesterday he saw Dr. Paul (as Apostolis Tsoumpariotis, M.D. is helpfully nicknamed) for his Rotavirus and DTAP vaccinations and officially checked in at 14.5 pounds and 24 inches long (6 pounds heavier and 3 inches longer than when he was born). I can't believe the number of clothes I've already had to retire!
Other physical attributes: the reddish hair is hanging on, despite my scrubbing at cradle cap, though it has thinned to be a bit more friar-style. The eczema is regressing-- on his face it just crops up on his eyebrows some, and there's just a little dryness left on his trunk. He has developed a couple patches on his elbows, so I shall continue to try to avoid dairy. (We just got back from Vermont. They have a LOT of good cheese there. I didn't indulge, but I also I didn't do a good job not eating it, so we'll have to see if his skin gets worse as a result... :-/ )
cutest pumpkin in the patch!
Have I mentioned he has a smiley bellybutton? It's kind of an inny, but enough of an outy to have extra folds, and the way it is prone to squeezing together greets me with a little smile every time I change his diaper. I need to get a photo of this.
The grin of a boy with a secret, smiley bellybutton.
His inaugural playset swing ride. Greenpoint, a couple weekends ago.
At our last check-up, Dr. Paul expressed concern over Clement's sacral dimple. Josephine has one and no one said a thing about it. The first two pediatricians that saw Clement indicated that they weren't concerned about his because they could see the bottom of it (otherwise, I guess, it could potentially be related to some sort of abnormality with the spinal cord). Dr. Paul didn't feel like he could see the bottom of the dimple, though, so he sent us for a sonogram at a children's medical center further out on Long Island (we tacked this on to our road trip to Vermont, since we had a rental car for that). Anyway, the test showed that all is fine with that, thankfully!
snuggled up in Vermont, healthy tailbone and all.
He had one, then two gunky eyes that are starting to clear up now. I don't think the tear ducts were ever fully clogged, but enough to where they weren't draining right, and that was leading to some mild junk. I'd read that the antibodies in breastmilk were great for treating little eye infections, so I've been trying that (much to Clement's confusion and dismay... "No!! In the mouth, Mom. It goes in MY MOUTH!! wwwaaaahhhhh!!"). It's been working, though, and Dr. Paul agreed it was a good solution.
He's 5 weeks here.
And now on to the fun stuff:
This kid.
He is
something. Expressive and vocal are adjectives that, when I think about them in relation to Clement, get my adrenaline flowing as I strain to find more adequate terminology. There must be
some way to convey to you as well as he conveys to me that he is VERY GOOD at conveying whatever it is he wants to convey.
8 weeks old
Sometimes he wants to convey happiness.
Here's a cute video of a happy Clement. He does have stunningly cute grins, and when his eyes lock onto mine (say, as I pull him from his car seat where he's been staring into oblivion) his face erupts into the most overjoyed delight so that I can't help but just giggle. He is SO rewarding in that way. For instance, no matter how poorly we've slept (that's a separate issue!), after that morning breakfast feeding, he is just CHARM CITY. He wants to smile, and talk, and do his little grunting laugh (he hasn't quite tapped the super-cute baby laugh but he gives it everything he's got!), and just wiggle with profuse and lavish JOY. Frankly, it is an onslaught of adorableness that could melt Neptune.
At other times, Clement wishes to express his extreme disapproval of the situation in which he finds himself. There is, of course, the general screaming. The sounds of his cries are definitely distinguishable-- the neh/meh sound being when he's hungry, the sharp cry of gas pain or other discomfort, the general waaahs a baby makes when it wants attention, a [somewhat] weaker cry of general misery if he's tired, etc. If you're ever in doubt-- don't worry-- he is a generous communicator and will provide ample time and increased volume by which you might more clearly be able to understand him. Yawns, the parts of his body that are fidgeting, the buggedness of his eyes-- these are all additional clues, which makes it simple enough to read him.
What's amusing, however, is that he understands the power of speech on a surprisingly deep level, I feel, and he will TALK to you in angry tones if you have been too slow to comfort him. Occasionally, as it happens, timing will get off and I'll have to let him cry while I get Josephine set up for lunch or down for a nap or something. I will then go get Clement, and be treated to a vice-like grip by his arms ("don't even THINK about putting me back down!!"), and he'll hold his little face right in front of mine giving me a good final holler or two. This is distinctly different from a cry. It is a vocal "THAT TOOK A LONG TIME AND I WOULD REALLY RATHER YOU BE QUICKER NEXT TIME OKKAAAAAYYYYY???" Just kind of a general shout. (Which I react to by dying with laughter. He doesn't find that funny.)
And like yesterday, at the dinner table following his post-vaccination nap, he had nursed, yet seemed confused about why he still felt lousy. You could tell that he was just really uncomfortable and miserable. I let him nurse as long as he wanted to, but he finally gave up on that making him feel any better, and let me just hold him some... but not without a final moaning
howl. "Life is ROUGH and I am DISTRESSED, people." Anyone-- ANYONE-- even with zero baby experience, could interpret these vocalizations because they are just
so human. Way more human than baby.
And they positively slay me.
...On the other hand, I'm a little worried that Child Two takes himself even more seriously than Child One does! As the mother of JOSEPHINE I am
concerned that I now have a baby that seems
especially expressive. Considering the baseline, it is a situation that merits a "yikes". (Oh, and speaking of vocal comparisons of the two, I need to amend
a blog post I put up about Josephine when she was a baby. I was certain that after much drilling, I had triumphantly brainwashed her into repeating back "thank you" to me in the form of "ankoo" at a very young age... We'd had a whole conversations of thank yous and then it happened a few times after that, too. Well, I haven't drilled anything with Clement, and as it turns out, he says "ankoo" all the time. So apparently it's just a sound babies make. Like "goo" and "ga". Rather anticlimatic (I find out, 3+ years later).)
In other news, I'm hopeful that some of Clement's feist and fury will be alleviated once he ever manages to wrangle those fingers into his mouth. He's been trying hard lately, and is getting sooo close.
He is also accepting pacifiers more, which definitely helps, but is still more high maintenance than if he'd suck his own fingers. I'm also hopeful that this will increase his likelihood of sleeping through the night.
Ah, sleep. So, in the past few weeks I've attempted various things in hopes of getting him to sleep for longer stretches, and they've met with unpredictable success.
To be fair, I haven't really imposed the schedule that we had with Josephine. I've still done the eat, wake, sleep cycle, but at no point has Clement been quite the natural at the feeding schedule the way Josephine was. With her, things were very consistent and easy to plan around. For a variety of reasons due to him and our situation, it was and is just more challenging with Clement. And with low energy, I haven't found myself to be of firm enough resolve to make happen what isn't happening naturally.
But I'm pretty eager to return to a place of being able to sleep overnight, so I know that I need to get things into a routine with more consistent wake up and bed times, making sure he eats frequently enough during the day, identifying the last cycle of the day for him and keeping him awake for it... etc. I have tried all these things, but I'm missing consistency, which could only help. (It just takes EFFORT!!)
While the ability to snooze predictably is lacking, he has others that he's developing with full and earnest attention. He adores sitting up in his bumbo, 9 times out of 10. I prop the boppy pillow behind him to keep that big noggin from slinging too far back. He think's he's pretty much king of the world sitting there. You should have seen him the first time I sat him in it. He got this very self-satisfied grin and gave me a big "huh!"... again, the plain-as-day vocalization where you know from his tone EXACTLY what he's trying to convey. "Well, would you look at me sitting up like this! Who'd have thought? I like it!" Here's
a video of an early sitting session... attempting to master neck control.
6 weeks old
I typically have the bumbo in the dining room, so he can hang out there while we eat or Josephine and I do table time activities. Sometimes he watches us; other times he gets pretty wrapped up in cooing conversations with his stuffed dog. I tried to catch some video of him talking to his stuffed dog. I didn't get the cute noises, but
here's a clip-- you can at least see his focus and enjoyment.
The residual head wobbliness is the only factor keeping us from fully exploiting the Johnny Jump-Up, too. He LOVES using his legs and takes it very seriously when you hold him and give him opportunities to practice pushing up and squatting down repeatedly. (He also seems to really love little leg massages at the end of one of these physical days, which is cute, too-- he gets all still and focused looking). We've tried the jump-up a couple times, using Josephine's little travel pillow to help his head stay in place, and he does seem to enjoy the autonomy of it. It's still a bit of a tangle to mess with, though, so I don't do it much.
A little video of him trying it out can be found here.
5 weeks old
It's also fun watching how hard he concentrates as he reaches out for things. He strongly favors his right arm right now (I remember Josephine seeming like she'd only found her left arm for ages). He's figured out how to bop me when we're at the changing table, which tickles us both.
Clement doesn't seem to be a naturally passive or patient person, but he does exhibit significant patience with trying to get his arm under control. I guess if you don't really have a lot you need to go and do, you might as well lie around attempting to hit something and not really care if you occasionally flip the wrong switch and punch yourself in the eye instead.
However, he does seem to get frustrated with the arm control when he's in a rush to fall asleep or suck on something. THEN getting his hand to his mouth is NOT a calm, patient practice, but total fury.
2 months old (9 weeks)
To wrap up my scattered cornucopia of Clement descriptors, all I can say is that he's a charmer. What I wrote in his one month post remains true: he's growing at a hectic pace, but he still finds time to workover my heartstrings and eardrums in a daily basis.
We are all totally in love.
