developing

Gabriel has done a whole lot of developing since he was five weeks old. He's been talking a bunch since he was under two months old, I don't remember exactly when he started babbling. He just continues to talk to us, and he loves conversing. He's been smiling a bunch since about six weeks. He laughs now, and giggles. He loves when Daddy plays with him, he gets the biggest smiles and laughs when he gets tickled. He also enjoys being sung to, and occasionally seems to want to sing along. He definitely has a good amount of cranky time, in addition to his happy times. Teething is bothering him, in addition to his gassiness and reflux. He's pretty difficult when he's cranky, he's hard to make happy. Handing him off sometimes helps, as does sleep, but not always. Gabriel kind of goes back and forth between being happy and cranky.
As far as physical development goes, Gabriel is sort of going out of order. He does really well at holding his head up when he's on his tummy, but he has yet to roll over. He's rolled over a few times from his back to his tummy, but only when he's on a foam wedge that props him up on his back. So that doesn't really count. But he is sitting up. I'm not kidding. The "normal" age for sitting up unsupported is six and a half months. He just started doing this last week. And it was only a week or so that he spent sitting up in the "tripod" position, where he holds himself up with his arms. He still does that, but he also totally sits up on his own. Its crazy. I took this video when he started doing it the other day. It was so completely unexpected that I think I sound kind of surprised in the video.
So we are all on target for development, and a little bit ahead in some areas. The no rolling over thing is a little off, but often babies are slower on that stuff these days, since they don't sleep on their stomachs.
Also, we went to the doctor last week for Gabriel's four-month check up. He weighs 15 lbs, 11 oz, and is a little over 25 inches long. Both of those values are just above average. His head circumference is quite a bit higher though. So proportionally, his head is a bit bigger than normal for his age. The doctor says he looks great. We talked about starting solid foods, but I've been a little bit resistant. I may start sometime soon anyway. It's supposed to help with reflux, and he's been struggling with that more lately (rather than growing out of it, like he should be). So we may be trying out some rice cereal soon.

Fussy Time!

I have been meaning to post for a week now, and just haven't gotten around to it. I've been a little bit busy! So now Gabriel is almost four weeks old, if you can believe it!
At three weeks babies start getting fussy, and some get colicky, although we haven't had that problem with Gabriel. But we sure have seen the fussiness! And this kid can scream when he gets pissed, that's for sure. We've had a couple of truly sleepless nights, the worst being this last Saturday, when Gabriel decided that he really really wasn't going to sleep, and he was going to cry off and on for no reason that his parents could figure out. He also insisted on eating every hour, which was really making me crazy (and even more exhausted!). At three weeks babies also go through a growth spurt, so I think we were facing a combination of issues. The third part of our combo was the fact that I drink coffee on the weekends. Not all babies are sensitive to caffeine (supposedly), but I've decided that Gabriel is. So now we know.
We have seen some fun milestones in the past couple of weeks. As I mentioned before, his umbilical cord came off. We gave him a bath last week, and took a couple of videos. (I will try to include a little clip montage that I made with our video software.) Gabriel is interacting a little bit more with us and with his surroundings as well. He swipes at objects, usually the toys on his little play mat, although he doesn't always hit them. He also seems to enjoy being sung to, when it involves direct eye contact. He sometimes takes a minute or two to start reacting and interacting, but once he does, it's obvious that he's taking it all in. He can maintain eye contact and focus on a face. He does okay with tummy time - sometimes he just falls asleep, but he has been known to lift his head and turn it to the other side. He's also grown, although by how much it's hard to tell.
We have our first "You and Your New Baby" class on Wednesday. That should be exciting, and will give me practice taking Gabriel out and spending significant amounts of time somewhere other than home. I have taken him out, but only on brief shopping trips or walks to the park, nothing that involves him interacting with anything (he's usually asleep) or staying somewhere long enough to feed him or change his diaper. So we'll see how it goes!

Two weeks old

Gabriel turned two weeks old yesterday - it already seems like he's been with us for longer than that!! It has been a rather momentous two weeks, I suppose.
We're all doing well, just getting used to the sleep schedule. Of which there isn't really one. I was running just fine on five hours a night (divided, depending on his feeding schedule), but now I'm starting to feel the effects more. It will still be a while before he's even sleeping for five hours straight, so I suppose I just need to get used to it. It's not so bad, since I can try and take naps during the day. The worst is when Gabriel won't go to sleep and we can't figure out why. That usually happens when we're trying to go to bed, around midnight or so. Last night he decided he was going to stay up until 3am, for no particular reason. Usually its more like 2, if he does it. Otherwise he just goes down after I feed him, and we're able to get to sleep. I think it's only been once that he's decided to stay awake after a later feeding - although granted I am all muddled when that happens, from lack of sleep, so I could be forgetting instances.
For a week or so Gabriel seemed to be doing this cluster feeding thing that was really tiring. It seemed like he just wanted to eat constantly, which was really draining for me. When you're breastfeeding, the baby can eat as often as he needs to, so if he thinks he's hungry, he should be fed. It just gets tiring after a while. For the past few days its been a little more normal, but supposedly he'll have another growth spurt at three weeks, so we'll be in for more heavy feeding I suppose. My milk has totally come in, so I'm no longer worried about him getting enough food from me.
We took Gabriel to the doctor last week, when he was nine days old. She weighed him again, and he has passed his birth weight, which is good news. He was just under eight pounds. That puts him in the 25th percentile for his weight, but he is in the 50th percentile for both his length and head circumference, so I suppose he just needs to continue to put on weight. Which I am quite sure he has been doing. He got a clean bill of health from the pediatrician, and won't see her again until he is two months old. The next day we took him back to the hospital for a final series of metabolic tests. We haven't seen any results, but the pediatrician is supposed to call us when she gets them. They took a ton of blood for these, poor little guy.
In other big news, Gabriel's umbilical cord just fell off this afternoon!! It was looking very uncomfortable, so I'm glad it's off now.
We've taken Gabriel out on two walks this week in his stroller, when the sun is out. He doesn't really seem to know what to make of these adventures. I'll have to take a picture of his face the next time we go - it really is hilarious, very pensive. And George seems to have totally mellowed out concerning Gabriel. No more barking when he hears him cry. He really enjoys sniffing Gabriel whenever he gets the chance - I think he's still trying to figure things out a little bit.
Those are the updates I can think of right now. I've included more recent pictures, although not in any particular order (this last picture is of Gabriel with his Grandma Mary, who is staying with us this week). I'll experiment with uploading videos as well - not really sure how that works on blogger, we may have to put them on youtube first. I brought home a stack of books from the library today, all on newborn care and development. We'll see if any of those prove useful to our new life with the little guy.