Two Months!

Dear Ryan,

Congratulations! You are two months old. These two months have been some of the hardest of my life, but by far, the best months ever.



You are still a really calm baby. You love to look around and have recently discovered both your voice and your tongue. You stick your tongue out all the time, and it never fails to crack your dad or me up. You still love to nurse, but you will take a bottle occasionally if I am not around. You are still working on the sleeping at night thing, but we are getting better. Usually you go 5-6 hours, then wake up and eat and have a diaper change and then go back down for another 4. At this stage, we will take it!


You love to lie in your activity gym and bat at your toys. You will sit and read books with me for 15-20 minutes at a time. At night, we read Goodnight Moon and The Going to Bed Book before we swaddle you up and put you in your crib. You like me to sing to you (well, at least you don’t complain yet!) and you smile when we play peek-a-boo. We go on walks almost daily, and you will look around for about half of the 2 mile route, and then pass out the rest of the time. You love the Bjorn, and love to be in it – either front facing or backwards facing! When we go grocery shopping and you are in it, you get lots of compliments and comments and you love to smile at everyone and everything. You are still okay in the car, but definitely prefer long drives to short ones. Unfortunately, we live off a very popular road, so we spend a lot of time in stop and go traffic! However, you calm down pretty quickly for the most part.



At your appointment today you weighed 13 pounds, 2 ounces and were 24 inches long, putting you in the 85% for both. The doctor complimented your strong neck muscles (odd, since I am always forgetting to put you on your stomach to play) and declared you perfect, which we already knew. You are such a delight to us. You have given me more of a purpose than I ever could have expected, and I love being your mom.



Love,
Mama

Gobble! Gobble!

Gobble! Gobble! from Jessica Blanton on Vimeo.

Seven Great Things at Seven Weeks

I was reading a blog recently where the author listed things she could and could not live without in parenthood, and I thought I would talk about some of our favorites at seven weeks of life:

Burp Rags – cheap and great for spitup, diaper leaks and spilled beer. We have some beautiful fancy ones from showers, but the first day home we went through them and my mom ran out and got us a 12 pack and we use them all the time. I take the nice ones out with us, but at home I use the cheap ones and they are great.

Boppy – we were lucky enough to get two of these from showers and since our house is two stories, we decided to keep both. I am so glad we did. We use them for EVERYTHING. We brought one to the hospital, and I used it to learn to nurse and I still use it for nursing. It’s great for us. In the mornings, I prop Ryan up on it after he eats and talk to him and when other people are holding him, they will ask to use it. On Saturday mornings when we sleep in, I will bring him in bed with us and put him between us on the boppy because he can look around, and Jeff and I can snooze a little longer. We love the Boppy. I have two covers for each and wash them fairly often.

Angel Care Monitor – without this, I am certain I would spent 99% of my time making sure Ryan is still breathing. It’s not foolproof, but it allows me a sense of security that I appreciate. We have some static on ours (no clue why), but it is still worth it.

Stroller – I never wanted to be a family with three strollers, and yet… we have three. We have a Snap and Go for our carseat (the Baby Trend carseat, which I give a HUGE thumbs up to), a big awesome jogging stroller (BOB Revolution) and a nice umbrella stroller for later on. So far, I love both the Snap and Go and the BOB so very much (no opinion on the umbrella yet). The Snap and Go stays in my car and I use it for shopping and errands. It’s easy to use and easy to push. The cupholders are nice, but for tall drinks are tippy (like water bottles). But, I usually have the diaper bag attached, so I’ll just keep my drink in there. The BOB is amazing. It pushes like a dream and we have the carseat adapter and the “parent console” and we love both. This stroller has allowed me to take a walk almost daily with Ryan and Lola and, superficially, I love the way it looks. We get a lot of comments on it and I’m happy we went with this and not with the Phil & Ted’s.

Glider Rocker – we have two of these as well; one in Ryan’s bedroom and one in our living room and both are FANTASTIC. Ryan loves being cuddled and rocked, so we use this every day. We nurse in it in the middle of the night, we read books during the day and cuddle all the time. I love having these.

Activity Gym – we put this out when Ryan was first born and he uses it every day. He will sit and stare (baby lazer light show!) at the lights and the mirror and is even starting to try to grab for the toys (or just bat at them). It keeps him entertained, lets him stretch out and I know we will get a lot of use out of this in the future. Since we have hardwoods, I put a throw blanket underneath it to better pad it. This toy is one of his favorite things when he is awake, which is nice because I can put him down and check email, unload the dishwasher or just lay on the couch for a while and know he is entertained and happy (he is starting to “talk” to things on it which is adorable).

This Book – for whatever reason, Ryan loves this book. When he was like 2 weeks old I was at Marshalls and grabbed it because it reminded me of a book from my childhood. The first time I read it to him, he was mesmerized. Figuring it was a fluke, I tried again later and had the same results. It is a go-to book for calming a fussy baby (especially when combined with the glider!) and it’s amazing to watch. It must have some sort of cadence that Ryan likes, and we read it so often, we have already started to memorize it.