Just like that, as quickly as he turned into a miserable little demon, he went right back to being his old, cheery self. Behold:
I stand by my original assessment that the lack of sleep had caught up to him. That chamomile water worked WONDERS. Every since those two days where I had given him some, he’s gone from barely ever sleeping to sleeping A LOT. He’s consistently slept 6-7 hour stretches at night, for the past week, and he takes a few long naps during the day. When he’s not sleeping, he’s happy, cheerful & alert (unless he’s hungry/wet/tired).
His routine now is that he falls asleep around 10-11pm (unless there are grandparents around to exhaust him, in which case he falls asleep as early as 9-9:30). He’ll wake up around sometime from 5:30-6:30, fall back asleep until 7-8 during which time I’ll feed him and then take him back to bed just for us to lie together. For about an hour, he’ll lay there and coo and smile (and I’ll either coo & smile back or just try not to fall asleep, depending how tired I am) and then about an hour or two later, he’ll sleep again, until about 10-11am.
Then during the afternoon, he’ll sleep a couple times.
I have to say, we’re damn lucky. I hear horror stories about babies that wake up at 5:30am and stay up. Our kid sleeps from 10-10, for the most part. Weekends are great. I’ve (hopefully) started a nice little weekend routine – some family time of just laying in bed, awake for an hour playing with him. I think that might be my favorite time, ever – the three of us, waking up together.
I’ve also gotten far more adept at recognizing his cries & his mood. I can tell when he’s cranky & tired and usually a few minutes in the swing will be enough to knock him out.
A couple things I keep forgetting to mention – he loves when you rub something soft over his face (especially my hair.) I discovered the hair thing by accident one day – I was leaning over him on the floor and my hair was in his face. I suddenly heard noises of ecstasy like I’ve never heard before! His eyes were closed and he rolled his head back & forth, rubbing his face in my hair. He’ll do something similar if you drape a piece of cloth over his face, but my hair gets the biggest reaction.
If you put cloth over his face – he LOVES to eat soft things, as well. Or just lick & gum them, I suppose. You can set him down & put fabric over his mouth and he’ll lay there for ages just licking & smiling away.
He also started to eat his hand a couple weeks ago – or try to. At times it seems he’s trying to suck his thumb, but but often he’ll just make a fist & slobber all over it, or try to shove his whole fist in his mouth.
Then there’s his eyes. Straight on, they’re bluer than blue. But from the side, they look green. There’s definitely a ring of green around his pupil, some days it’s bigger than others.
We’re starting on the 11th week now – it’s hard to believe he’s about to turn 3 months. Again, I think “that’s it?” and “wow, it’s been a long 3 months” at the same time. There’s certainly been a lot of ups & downs, but I suppose anyone will tell you that that’s all part of having a baby. The ups far outweigh & make up for the downs.
Now that we’re moving into the new house, I’m SO excited to finally make up a room for him. Not that he’ll be using it much (they say co-sleeping should be done for up to a year, and I fully intend to – if not only because I can’t bear to sleep away from him.) Though I will try to use his crib for afternoon naps.
His room, as with all the upstairs rooms, is white. I want to get a brightly colored color block throw rug, and I got these vinyl decals for the walls:
Chris wondered if they might not be too scary, but a 3 month old doesn’t understand “scary” yet. I thought about dinosaurs, but they’re too cliche. Me being me, I wanted something unique. I’d have liked to have gotten vintage robots, but the only ones I could find on short notice were black & white, and I wanted color. By the time he’s old enough to think they’re scary (which I doubt, if he’s been looking at them since he was a baby), he’ll be able to choose his own motif.