Two
things, before I begin. First, how stinkin’ cute is this little dude’s one
month picture?! I can’t even handle it! Second, this is my 3rd post
in a week! That’s pretty darn impressive for someone who couldn’t find the time
to post for 7 weeks! I’m thinking we’re starting to get the hang of this family
of four stuff, thankfully! If you want to catch up on what’s going on in our
neck of the woods, click here to
read this cuties birth story and to see his absolutely adorable newborn
pictures taken with Gracie, click here.
Our
sweet little man is closer to being two months old than he is from turning a
month old now, but I’ve been jotting things down during our time at home as a
family specifically for this post, because I don’t want to forget a thing! You
know that saying, the days are long but the years are short? Well, change years
to weeks and that perfectly describes what it’s felt like since our maternity
leave began. While we try and get out of the house as often as possible and go
on at least one family adventure each week, most days we’re snuggled in bed
with coffee and kids until 11am… running around the house cleaning up after two
little stinkers… G’s pumping (always pumping)… feeding hungry babies… wiping
little booties and then looking at one another shocked when we see that it’s 8pm.
Seriously, it feels like we live in a time warp! A beautiful, full of so much
love, exhausting time warp!
If
I were to describe Will in one word, that word would be – perfect! Now before
you roll your eyes and stop reading, allow me to explain. This little guy of
ours is super chill. He doesn’t fuss, like ever. He hardly ever cries, but when
he does, he sounds like the sweetest little baby bird wanting food. He sleeps
like a champ. He’s a great eater, consuming around 2-2.5 ounces every 2-3 hours
his first month and is always the happiest boy after eating. He hasn’t had any
of the constipation or gas issues that Gracie had as a newborn and the kid can
sleep in any environment. We’ve done the same thing with Will that we did with
Gracie when she was a newborn and that’s to avoid modifying his environment or
creating a silent house aside from when we put him in our room around 11pm
every night to go to bed. He sleeps through his sister singing on her Karaoke
machine, the dog barking, doorbells ringing and us talking over the voices on
the TV and could this baby be any cuter?! See – perfection!
Our
boy has battled baby acne in his first month but it looks to be clearing up and
his head is finally getting over the 24/7 dry scalp phase! The stinker LOVES to
be held (all the time) and so we hold him (all the time). I’m sure there are
parenting experts out there who would say that’s wrong of us to do, but how can
something that feels so right, be wrong?! I say that as one of two moms who still
takes turns lying with our 5 year old every single night, until she goes to bed
and have done so since she was born… Turns out we’re attachment parents. Who
knew, ha!
I
have to brag about Mommy for a quick bit because I have been just so amazed
with Georgia’s pumping efforts. She’s a damn rock star and exclusively pumping
hasn’t been easy. It is so.damn.hard actually and my hat goes off to anyone who
has to exclusively pump! I should start by saying that G doesn’t mind me
sharing the following information – she has inverted nipples. This means that
instead of her nipples pointing outward, they point in like a belly button.
This combined with Gracie’s cleft lip + her tongue-tie that we didn’t find out
about until she was several weeks old is what resulted in her being a formula fed
baby (and there’s nothing wrong with that, btw). This time around, we knew to
have our lactation consultant and Dr. check Will at the hospital for a tongue-tie,
which he did have and was corrected the day following his birth. We also went
into his birth with determination to breastfeed, equipped with 3 Medela breast
pumps, one with a car adapter to pump on the go + one for our bedroom + one for
the living room! G’s milk was slow to come in but it completely arrived around
the morning of day 3 and has continued to gradually increase since. She has had
to pump every 2-3 hours since April 11th which includes the middle
of the night pumps, pumping on the go, leaving family gatherings to pump,
pumping half asleep, pumping while cooking dinner, pumping with chapped and
bloody nipples… basically my amazing wife has put her boobs through hell for
our Sonnie Bear. I did the math and she pumped around 270 times in William’s
first month alone and currently has 41oz of breast milk stored away for when
she returns to work with about a week and a half left to further grow our
stash! When I see how much bigger our little man has grown or marvel at the
fact that he doesn’t have the gas or reflux issues that his big sister had with
formula, I’m in total awe of her.
On
to big sis! She’s doing good and adjusting pretty darn well to her new role as
sister, first born and the sharer of her moms’ attention. There has been some
acting-out that surfaced around 2 weeks after Will was born (after the shinny
new baby-ness began to wear off). Some things we’ve noticed is that she is much
more emotional and is feeling all the feels these days. For example: the other night
we drove by a very big dog who was in the street a couple of cars ahead of us
and stopped traffic as people tried getting the dog to safety. She watched the
dog’s eyes glow in the reflection of headlights and that was it. She was
freaked out! She didn’t want to get out of the Jeep when we got home. She was
so upset and scared that the dog would find our home and get in the house and
bite her that we had to call her Gaga and Papa to help calm down. We watched
some puppy videos instead of reading before bedtime, which helped her to sleep,
but still – it was behavior so not like her. She cries about one thing or
another more than before and has started asking for sippy cups of milk again,
hehe. I’ve also noticed that her demeanor has changed since brother’s arrival.
She’s louder, more hyper, way more active and just basically has zero chill.
I’m certain she feels she needs to do more to make her presence known and just really
wants the attention, so we’re working on it. There’s been lot’s of talking,
cuddling, special time for just her and reassurance that she will always be our
first. We continue to tell her that only she gets to be our #1 and then we
listen to her feelings and shower her with complements anytime she does any
nice big sister stuff. At the end of the day, she adores her little bro. She
asks to hold him all the time, everyday and is our amazing little helper. It’s
the sweetest!
{Here’s
a bit more on what our sweet boy was up to during his first month with us and a
tons of month ONE pictures because, Mama takes a lot-o-pictures. But you
already know that!}
Growing
| Little guy’s already grown out of his size xs cloth diapers! He’s still in
newborn outfits but can also wear some 3-month onesies. He has yet to wear
shoes because they fall off moments after we put them on, but he does rock some
very cute socks! We are so excited for him to wear his adorable ball caps once
that beautiful head of his gets bigger. At little man’s one month check-up he
weighed in at 8.7 pounds and was 21 ¼ inches tall!
He
LOVES | Kisses! One of the cutest things that Will does is fall asleep the
minute you start kissing his face. If he’s restless or getting impatient while
waiting for G to finish pumping milk for him, all I need to do is start kissing
his cheeks, forehead or lips and he falls fast asleep and head rubs have the
same effect! He loves to watch Gracie and Mavie run around like a bunch of
maniacs and is a huge fan of taking warm showers just like Gracie was as a
babe.
He
doesn’t like | Being cold. This means that Will is always wearing socks, long
sleeves and pants even though it’s summer because our air conditioner makes my
poor little one so cold! The wipe warmer is his best friend and swaddling him
up is all that’s needed to relax our little bean and fight off the cold. As
previously mentioned, he also does not like to be put down. He’s just such a
cuddle muffin!
He
can | Sleep through the night! Georgia makes excellent sleepers. Grace was and
still is a kid who sleeps 10+ hours a night and could sleep through a hurricane
and it looks like Will’s going to be the same way! He started sleeping through
the night at around 3 weeks old, first sleeping from 11pm to 6am and he’s
started sleeping even longer since! The 3am feeding is now gone too. Little
dude is just such a great sleeper! Buying the Owlet was the best investment
ever for this reason. We don’t wake up in a panic when he sleeps for long
stretches nor are we obsessively checking on him like we did with Gracie
because the Owlet monitor keeps track of it for us!
Other
than that, he mostly just ate, slept and pooped during month one, lol. He did
also find his voice and makes the cutest little cooing sounds more often now
that his alert/awake time has increased. Little guy’s eye contact and ability
to follow with his eyes has been great since day one and neck control is
getting better everyday.
Current
Nicknames | Brother Bear, Brother, Dinky Do, Booboo Bear and Sonnie.
Our
friends and family have been the most amazing support for us since Will came
into this world. They set up a Meal Train for us which provided 100% of our
groceries and every single dinner we had the first 3 weeks we were home – which
was just amazing! We’ve had so many visitors and special gifts delivered to the
house celebrating our baby boy and we just could not ask for more. It’s all
meant so much to us. :)
And
that pretty much sums up our first month with this sweet boy of ours! We still
can’t believe that we get to keep him and we’re just so in love.
Our
new view. :)
Until
next time!
