So O’s new hobby is staring at his right hand and trying to get it into his mouth. This activity requires great focus and concentration for the little dude.  He watches his hand very closely as he brings it closer, to the point of being a bit cross-eyed.  It reaches his mouth some of the time, other times the errant hand hits him in the nose or cheek.  When he does get it to his mouth, he licks it and drools on it with great satisfaction.  My little boy is growing up!

Somehow, Travis and I ended up with a baby who is in the 95^th%ile for height.  Owen had his 1 month checkup last week.  He’s 10 pounds 4 oz and some height that makes him officially tall.  I’m not exactly tall (5’3” or maybe 5’4”) and Travis is just under 6 feet. I wonder if this means Owen will be taller than us by the time he’s 7 years old?  We’ll see.  He was pronounced ‘perfectly fine’ at the doctor with a recommendation to try to get him to start looking to the left, as Owen likes to look mainly to the right.  So we’ve been trying to trick him into looking to the left, which is not easy to do with a 1 month old.  He’s been cooing more and also makes sounds like a baby pterodactyl (or what we think a baby dinosaur should sound like).  He also smiles more now, which is really cute, and surprisingly difficult to properly catch with the camera.  We did, however, figure out how to record video with our digital camera and have recorded Owen’s first tub bath for posterity.  He was really cute and seemed a little surprised by the warm water at first.  He mainly cooed and looked at me while I was bathing him.  O also christened his bathtub by peeing on it, as he does with all things he loves (Mom, Dad, panda picture on the nursery wall).  In other O news, he actually woke himself up farting this morning. That’s my little trucker baby. 

So Owen likes music, particularly when people sing to him.  He likes Travis to sing him ‘This Land is Your Land’ and folk songs, preferably in a Bob Dylan/Woodie Guthrie hybrid voice.  O likes me to sing the Oscar Mayer ‘My bologna has a first name’ song’ when he gets his diaper changed.  I’ve modified the lyrics so that he doesn’t develop an unhealthy obsession with bologna.  Travis does have a cousin with a child who eats only hot dogs, so I figure it’s in the genes and I should be careful.

Oh my.  So cute, and yet so angry.  Owen clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.  His day started at 2 am and he ate at 2, 3, and 4 with fussing in between. Then he took a quick nap and then ate again  at 6:00.  Since then he’s been Mr. Furious, unless he’s eating, milk-drunk, or grabbing a brief nap.  Otherwise, I can’t put him down, and he only wants to be held certain ways.  We also have to be moving or he howls.  Hopefully his daily mega-nap is improving his spirits.  I’m ready for my sweet, smiling (occasionally) baby to return.  Hmm,  I can hear young Crankenstein stirring now…

Now that I’m home pretty much all the time, I’ve spent more time walking around the neighborhood. It started before I delivered, as Travis and I would take a walk every evening, trying to encourage Owen to hurry up and arrive.  Now it’s O and I, me pushing the stroller, mainly to get out of the house, but with some thought that some exercise wouldn’t hurt.  He likes to ride and occasionally looks at the sky, the trees, or me, but mainly he sleeps. The coolest thing I’ve seen in the neighborhood is two hawks.  They fly around in the ‘bird sanctuary’, ie floodplain (which is very dry).  I’ve also seen some baby birds, bats, lots of squirrels, some sort of groundhog thing that
Tex was stalking, fireflies, and a few cute puppies.  Oh, and people who live in the neighborhood.  Aside from charismatic megafauna, I’ve also seen some nice flowers, some of them wild, with little purple flowers and some that I’m pretty sure are morning glories, and some very nice landscaping in people’s yards.  Makes me think our yard needs a bit of work, or at least some water, as everything is wilty.  The plants are 4^th class citizens of our home and yard now. 

The feeding priority schedule is:     1. Owen     2. Mommy and Daddy     3.Tex and Furry Lewis      10. Plants

Maybe it can be Owen’s job to water the plants when he’s older. And mow the yard.  I went through a phase growing up (middle school and high school), where I was convinced that the reason my parents had 2 kids was so that there would always be one available to mow the yard.  This might have been cool if we had a riding lawnmower at the time, since the yard was a half-acre, or even a self-propelled mower, but no, why would you want one of those?  I’m pretty sure mowing helped me build character and at least I know how to use a mower.

Wow, this is a rambly one…. Clearly my constant stream of chatter to Owen is jumping to the page now. 

So Owen resembles Dr. Strangelove, from the movie “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”, first released in 1964.  Stanley Kubrick directed and I saw the movie as part of a class in college (not joking, we watched it in ‘Cult Films’ class). 

Owen doesn’t look like Peter Sellers and hasn’t grown a tiny moustache, but he does have Dr. Strangelove’s uncontrollable arm/hand. In the movie, Dr. Strangelove’s hand/arm makes all kinds of inappropriate gestures and is difficult to control.  Owen however, has 2 uncontrollable arms.  They wake him up from sleeping sometimes, windmill when he’s angry, and he makes fantastic claw hands like Wolverine from the Xmen sometimes.  Unfortunately, this means when it’s time to eat, no matter how ravenously hungry he is, whether calm or upset, his little arms and hands get in the way of his destination every.  Even with mouth open and an expression of intense focus on the boob, invariably one of his little limbs comes and knocks him off target, at least temporarily.  He’s getting better at this, but still his hands thwart his mouth some of the time.  Oh well, at least he’s stopped slashing himself with his tiny dagger fingernails and can now go without infant mittens for most of the day. 

Less-little O has graduated to size 1 diapers from newborn diapers.  He’s getting more thing fat, although his butt is still pretty petite.  His
Dunbar shins are even thickening up a ltitle.

I’m getting better at doing things with O when no one is around to help.  He’s a a few sponge baths with just me (he rests on his foam sponge on the bathroom floor, not the counter when it’s just the 2 of us).  We’ve gone on neighborhood strolls and gone in the car together to the pediatrician, for which we were even on time. 

The newest small victory is that I’ve figured out how to shower when it’s just the 2 of us at home.  He certainly wouldn’t enjoy being in the shower with me, but doesn’t mind sitting in his vibrating chair outside the glass door.  I think he likes the noise from the water and the warm air. 

Now if I could just figure out the crying thing….  So far, everything I’ve read puts TinyO well into the normal range of babies as far as crying.  1-3 hours a day is considered normal crying for babies his age.  This seems like a lot of wailing when it actually happens, particularly since his cry really tugs at my heart.  It makes me drop everything and want to pick him up and make it better, which I suppose is the whole reason babies cry.  It can be a little frustrating when we’ve fed, changed the diaper (at least once), cuddled, added or subtracted clothes, and he’s still wailing.  The ‘Happies Baby on the Block’ DVD Jen and
Chad gave us was pretty fantastic and definitely has things that have worked for chilling out AngryO when he gets worked up.  Guess I’ll keep reading the ‘Happiest Baby on the Block’, which seems to have some additional good explanations and suggestions so far. 

Owen has blown through almost 200 diapers since arriving home. Gotta love the Pampers Swaddlers size N.  Here’s a photo of Travis taking out the first 7 days of diapers collected in the DiaperChamp. Impressive.

We were at the pediatrician yesterday for Owen’s goopy eye and found out he weighs 8 pounds, 12 ounces.  He came home on July 7 and weighed about 7 pounds 1 oz, so he’s gained 27  ounces in 19 days.  Clearly, after a bit of a rocky start, he’s eating well. 

Now if we can just get the sleeping thing down….

Other numbers - 2 weeks of paternity leave is a good amount of time to be home. I say, if you can get more, take it!  Newborns are cute, but demanding, and sometimes it seems that 2 parents isn’t actually enough for one 8 pounder who doesn’t want to sit still for a sponge bath or keeps trying to stick his feet in his superfund-site diaper.  With Travis home, we got to take littleO on his 1st stroller walk together, his first babycarrier walk together, and spend some time with each other, which wouldn’t have been possible without Travis home. 

As I sit here typing with one hand (other is occupied by sleepyO), I marvel that one little guy can completely derail two typeA, organized professionals. Everything has changed and things I take for granted, like taking a shower or checking email whenever I want, have gone by the wayside. Travis and I have developed a tag team system for eating, napping, and the feed-change routine we repeat many times a day. Of course, we’ve had huge help from family and friends so far which has been invaluable. We’ll see what happens to the system when T eventually goes back to work…. 

All of this, of course, is totally worth it.  Owen is great and seems to grow and change every day.  He recently has developed a new efficiency for eating (maybe in response to my blog post?).  Mealtime now takes more like 20 minutes instead of 40 minutes and he’s much more relaxed about the whole process (much less Mr. Furious when he’s hungry). 

One bit of advice for others currently growing babies is to get all the stuff done you can before the little dude/dudette arrives.  Don’t wait on nursery furniture assembly, car maintenance, or other projects because they’ll get a lot harder to complete once the newbie arrives. 

So Owen’s umbilical stump fell off yesterday.  I was expecting healed skin and a cute belly button underneath, but apparently not yet, as it’s still a bit scabby.  I looked online to make sure it didn’t match the photos of umbilical granulomas or umbilical sepsis and we seem to be ok.

In other navel news, mine has turned from an ‘outie’ to an ‘innie’ again.  I was wondering how long it was going to take post-pregnancy before it returned to something that didn’t look like a mini-donut taped to my belly.  The answer is about 2 weeks.  It was weird still looking ‘pregnant’ after delivery, but things are slowly returning to my normal shape.  I can get into early preggers clothes and some normal clothes, but it’s gonna be awhile before things are back to normal.