Happy New Year! Forest is 9 Weeks Old!

Happy New Year everybody! This year’s celebration was a tad different in our household. New Year’s Eve is one of my favorite holidays. I love the anticipation, the resolutions, and that special midnight kiss. However, this year, I loved sleep more. Midnight is a time in which little man is almost surely sleeping which means momma and daddy were too (that is, until the fireworks started). But I hope wherever you were, you had a fantastic time! Next year I’m hopeful I’ll have the energy to stay up til midnight, but who knows. That kinda energy might be a few years off just yet. 

Lots has happened in the past week. Forest was diagnosed with reflux and prescribed daily medicine to ease his suffering. It seems to be making a slight difference, but he’s still his hyper-alert, non-napping self, just with a bit less spit up. Also, he seems to be a bit more cooperative on the napping front in the morning and late afternoon. From noon to 5 though…forget it! 

But the biggest thing I want to brag about is the 8 hours of consecutive sleep he’s been getting at night, which I would trade for daytime naps any day. It’s not fool proof but more often than not, he’s clocking about an 8 hour shift each night. Total, he gets about 10.5/11 hours of sleep between the hours of 8 PM and 8 AM, which is helping to inch his daily sleep totals closer to the recommended amount. 

We still have a terrible night thrown into the mix every once in a while, which is almost harder now that I remember what 7 hours of consecutive sleep feels like. It’s so hard to backslide, but I’ve heard that’s pretty common around this time. We are hopeful that he is on track to consistently sleep through the night. He did so 5 out of 7 nights last week so I'd say that's pretty amazing!

With every week, they are supposedly capable of sleeping one additional hour (6 week olds can sleep 6 hours, 7 week olds- 7 hours, etc) until they reach 12 weeks (3 months) which is when many babies start sleeping straight on through without that pesky middle of the night feeding. That’s why everyone says things improve after 3 months. I believe it. On Saturday night I got 7 hours of sleep followed by an hour long nap and I finally felt like a human again! 

Baby boy got his first round of immunizations yesterday. He had one oral vaccine and two shots and he handled it like a champ. I’m not opposed to Tylenol in such situations and I think it helped to take the edge off. He screamed for about a minute, and then whimpered for about 2 or 3 more before settling down and falling asleep on the car ride home. It wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I feared, though he did have a bit of a meltdown a few hours later. 

He’ll have his next round in a month from now, and then his third and final first year immunizations in February. They don’t do the chicken pox vaccine in Scotland, so we’ll probably be getting that when we return to the states. He aced his 8-week well-check physical exam and got a check mark next to all of his milestones. 

One big milestone that has been developing is his 'talking'. Baby boy babbles all day long. It's kind of nice that he can communicate that he's not happy without screaming at the top of his lungs. Here's a little clip of him chattering away during tummy time. 

He is currently weighing in at 10 lbs, 15 oz and coming in right at the 25% percentile for size of babies his age. That’s up from the 9% percentile from when he was born so he has covered a lot of ground in his first 9 weeks. Here are his 9 week pictures: 

And just some others we’ve taken this week: 

He has a love/hate relationship with that bird. 

Look Who's Talking: 2 Months Old

Today at The Aberdeen Wife, we are welcoming guest blogger Forest Alexander. Forest is a 10 lb, 15 oz, 2 month old resident of Aberdeen, Scotland. His hobbies include eating, pooping, and fighting sleep. Here he is to tell you in his own words a little bit more about himself...

Hiya. It's great to be featured here at The Aberdeen Wife. My mom wants me to tell y'all a bit about my likes and dislikes, and since she's so generous with the milk, I guess I'll oblige her. There isn’t much that I like 100% of the time. I’m sure my momma has already told y’all that  I’m pretty persnickety. But most of the time, these are things that I kinda sorta like: 

-Bathtime. Never met a bath I didn’t like. It’s being taken out of the bath that gets my goat. 

– When my mom makes up silly rhymes. Especially when she says: “Super-Duper-Pooper-Scooper”. Hilarious. 

– Florence and the Machine. True Story. Wanna get me to stop crying? Dog Days are Over. Simple as that.  

– Car rides…sometimes. My mom doesn’t want me to tell you this, but she’s become one of those desperate parents who takes the long way home just so I get a good nap in. The other day I heard her ask my daddy if he’d take me for a car ride so that she could take a nap. I’m soooo gonna tell ‘The Baby Whisperer’ on her. 

- Stroller rides…sometimes. It’s pretty cold in Scotland and sometimes my mom bundles me up too much and sometimes not enough. Sometimes she gets it just right and I sit back and enjoy the bumpy ride. 

Dislikes: 

-Mainly naptime. Whenever my mom or dad dim the lights and I see that that swaddle blanket come out, I start hollering. You can sleep when you’re dead, you know? I’m here to play until I’m so tired that all I want to do is scream and scream and scream. Sometimes naps are ok, as long as they happen in my momma’s lap. But for some reason, she thinks she has better things to do or something, because as soon as I start to fall asleep she puts me in my bed. Not cool, mom. Not cool. I let her know just how ‘not cool’ this is by instantaneously screaming for the next 2 hours or so while she hilariously keeps trying to get me to fall back asleep. No way, woman. You had your chance. 

– The Baby Whisperer. Apparently she put it into my momma’s head that I am supposed to take a nap after every meal. And apparently naps in the car seat or the stroller don’t count so my mom keeps insisting on trying to get me to nap in my bed. You wanna know her success rate? About 1 in 40 naptimes. Hahahaha. 

– Baby Wise. See above. Hahahahaha. (Although, I am sleeping 8 hours at night so I guess the joke is on me.) 

– My puppy sister, Bailey. Sometimes I give in to naptime. I’m like ‘Okay, okay, mom. I’ve lost the will to fight and I guess I am kinda tired now that you mention it.’ And almost as soon as I drift off, that mutt starts making a bunch of ruckus and wakes me right back up. And this makes me ANGRY. It apparently makes my momma real angry as well. She keeps threatening to take Bailey to the pound, which is a bit harsh. I mean, I didn’t even really want to nap that much anyway…

Well that’s about all my likes and dislikes. After all, I’m only 2 months old and my world consists of eating, pooping, and occasionally (like once or twice a week) taking a good nap. I haven’t developed any hard core hobbies or anything yet. I get my first round of shots tomorrow. From what I hear, those will probably be going on my ‘dislike’ list pretty soon... 

Our Christmas Adventure

Back when Jonathan and I visited my parents in Scotland, they took us to this photogenic lookout point on the foothills of the Grampian mountains. It’s got a great scenic backdrop and a rustic painted Scottish flag making it the perfect photo op for tourists passing by. 

We have a picture of ourselves taken there from our 2009 trip, and Jonathan was determined to get a family photo of the 3 of us  in the same location. 

On Christmas morning, the sun was shining so we decided to capitalize on the decent weather and head west into the mountains. It was about an hour drive to get there but in that hour the clouds rolled in, the temperatures dropped and the wind picked up to obnoxious speeds. We bundled Forest up in his North Face fleece onsie and got ready for picture time. 

We really lucked out that another family had pulled over at the same time and was willing to take our picture for us. We dashed out with the baby and got a few shots before bringing him back out of the wind, though I have to admit, he didn’t seem too phased by the miserable weather conditions. A true Scotsman. Here are the photos we took:   

They are among my favorite photos from our time here so far.

I hope that we’re able to take Forest on many more Scottish adventures, though I will say that weather is way more of a factor now that we have a baby in tow. This winter has been pretty mild, but then out of nowhere, all of a sudden this will happen….

....which makes me hesitant to get to far away from home with the little guy and risk the elements. Jon's parents will be visiting in two weeks, and while their trip is mostly about meeting their grandson, I'd still like to show them around Scotland a bit. Hopefully both Forest and the weather will cooperate for some day trips around the area to tour some castles, distilleries, forests and such. Keep your fingers crossed!