he is reaching!

Elijah turned four months on April 11, and things started happening fast! It's like he turned a corner or something. All of a sudden he seems more like a person, he studies faces with great attention, he doesn't get upset as much when we put him on his tummy, and he is reaching out and grabbing things! Every day it seems like more and more lights are turning on in his little head. OK, he's been grabbing things before (my hair for example), but it was always things that happened to be under his hand. Now (in the last two days) he purposefully reaches out and grabs little toys that we hang over him. He has a Mr. Giraffe and a Mr. Lion. We have a feeling that neither of them will keep their legs for very long :-).

Sometimes we give him a toy to hold, and he sticks out his arm and stares at it. We think he doesn't realize that the toy is not a part of his arm, but he does know that something is different.

a morning exchange

"Elijah, how did you sleep?"
"Goo!"

discovering arms and hands

For a few days Elijah was quite fascinated with his left arm. He would stick out his straight arm forward, fist clenched and bent forward, and just stare at it for a while. Now he is into holding his hands together, preferably close to his mouth, ideally in his mouth :-) He tries to stick them both in, but a baby's mouth is a little too small to accommodate two fists, although at one point he almost succeeded in getting one fist all the way in.

thumb

Elijah has found his thumb! He used to suck on his fist, or his wrist, or whatever part of his hand happened to be closest to his mouth, but now he sticks his thumb in his mouth. Here's a picture to prove it!

favorite place

Of all places in our apratment Elijah by far prefers the changing table. We are not sure what he likes about it. We can have the crankiest child on our hands, but the moment we put him on the changing table, he starts smiling and laughing! The changing table is our best baby sitter ever!

bed time routine

We have a bed time routine for Elijah. He gets a bath, then he gets dried, then he gets a clean diaper and wrapped in a bear towel for a few moments (this bear towel picture is an old one - from the very first bath, way before it became an evening ritual), then he gets a clean outfit. After that he gets to eat, and then goes off to bed.
Recently Elijah has altered the routine a little bit. It all started with an occasional pee in the bath tub right after we put him in it. I guess the warm water relaxes him and makes him want to do that. Being the good parents that we are, we change the water in the bath tub right away. An occasional pee turned into a consistent one. Then he added a second pee once the water was changed, and did that pretty consistently as well. Yesterday we had another new development. The second pee turned into a pee and a poop! Delightful! Ryan had fun cleaning up the mess while I held the screaming child. Once the tub was cleaned and we put Elijah back in, he blessed us with yet a third pee! That's what happens when you get into clean warm water after being wet, naked and chilly in the air for a while. Today he repeated the same pattern: pee - clean water - pee & poop - clean water - final pee - more clean water.

I told Ryan it is time to think of a new bed time ritual.

hi

A few days ago after a bath Ryan leaned over Elijah on the bed and said "HI!"
"HI", said Elijah in response.
We both startled and looked at each other. Was that a first word? We decided it wasn't, but it was kind of cool anyway :-)
"HI", said Ryan again.
No response, just a baby laying there, looking at us with his big beautiful eyes, like nothing ever happened.

familiy visits

Grandma Shannon came to visit us for a few days last week. It was nice to have an extra pair of willing arms to hold Elijah :-) He got spoiled by being rocked to sleep almost every time he took a nap!

On the last morning of the visit, a few minutes before leaving for the airport, Elijah burped up some of his breakfast. I handed him over to Ryan, and Grandma volunteered to burp her grandson. In the middle of tranfer from Daddy to Grandma, Elijah burped up the rest of his breakfast (which was a whole lot!) right on Grandma. Fortunately, there were extra T-shirts floating around, so Grandma didn't have to wear Elijah's "gift" all the way home.

While Grandma was here, we went to visit Ryan's aunt and cousin who has two small kids: Jessica (3 yo) and Joshua (5mo). Elijah got a chance to try out a swing, which he liked (I think :-))

a smile

Here it is, the first smile we were able to capture on camera. The picture was taken on Feb. 11, the day he turned two months.

new schedule

So far we've been feeding Elijah as soon as he is up from his nap. He has never refused a meal until today. Today, all of a sudden, he wouldn't eat when he woke up. Instead, he wanted to just play, play, play. He finally took his bottle after about a half hour of smiling and laughing.

first cold, shots, etc.

Elijah got his first cold recently. On top of that he got four shots at his two month check up (we made sure there was no mercury in those shots) which gave him a low grade fever. Needless to say, we had an unhappy baby on our hands for the last couple of days. He is getting much better now, although his nose is still a little stuffed.

The visit to the doctor also revealed that our baby weighs over 13 lbs, which puts him in the 90th percentile. That means he gained almost three pounds in the last month. He also grew 2 inches, so he is now 24 inches long, which puts him in the 50th percentile.

more responsive

In the last couple of days Elijah has become noticably more responsive. One of our baby books said that around two months of age he should be able to turn his head in response to a voice, particularly mother's voice. He did that today! He is also smiling when I lean over him in his bouncy chair. He just started doing that yesterday. These are the first smiles that I am sure are intended for me, and are not just because he is full or becuase he is passing gas :-) One of these days we'll capture his smile on camera for all to see! So far they are too fleeting to catch, but they are priceless.

how much do babies eat?

We were told and also read in a couple of places that babies will usually take 2.5 - 3 oz per feeding. Ryan gave Elijah a bottle today (while I was at work) that contained over 5 oz of milk. We assumed he wouldn't finish it and we'd save what was left over. Not so! He ate the whole thing! And he kept it all down.

breakfast

Every once in a while Elijah doesn't keep down his breakfast. He eats so eagerly, even greedily, and then seconds after he comes off the breast the whole thing shoots out of his mouth like a fountain. Sometimes he throws up only half his breakfast, but today it was the whole thing. We are still trying to figure out what causes it and how to prevent it. Does he gulp it down too fast? One thought would then be to force him to take it in slowly by taking him off after a little bit, but that would mean taking him off after one or two mintues, as he finishes the whole meal in about 5 minutes. Perhaps he is just allergic to something I ate the day before. In this case it would be spaghetti or mac & cheese. I sure hope he is not allergic to our homemade mac & cheese, that would be tragic :-)

new crib

Elijah has been sleeping in a bassinet since we brought him home. However, it's been increasingly difficult to get him out of it lately since he's been growing like a weed and putting on a lot of weight. I also felt like the bassinet didn't give him enought space. Every time we'd lay him down in the middle he'd end up by the side of the bassinet banging his head on it. We figured he must arch his back while sleeping and then fall over on his side, which put him next to the side of the bassinet since it was so small.

To address both of these issues we brought up the crib. Ryan assembled it in the kitchen only to find out that it was too big to go through the tight bedroom entrance corner. After moving most of the furniture out of the way, we still had to partially disassemble the crib to get it into the bedroom.

Elijah was fast asleep when we laid him down in his new crib. When he woke up in his new surroundings, I think it really scared him. He looked more pitiful than I have seen yet. But he adjusted pretty quickly. The next time we laid him down in the crib he was just fine.

We laid Elijah down in the middle of the crib for the night, thinking that he would now have plenty of space. When we got up at 5 am to change him and feed him, there he was, at the edge of the crib, banging his head on the side. We have no clue how he got there, but that must be his favorite place to sleep. It's a good thing we have a bumper.

the first bottle

I am going back to work tomorrow. I'll be in the office for only a couple of hours, but it will be long enough for me to miss a feeding. A few days ago we decided it was time to give Elijah a bottle to get him used to it. He'll have to do it a lot when I am back at work full time. I was concerned that he wouldn't take it, as I heard many babies refuse the bottle and prefer the breast. But he took it without any problems. I even felt slightly offended that he didn't care if it was the bottle as long as milk came out of it :) We've been giving him one bottle a day since then.

sleeping through the night

A few days ago Elijah slept through the night for the first time. We put him down at 11 pm and woke him up at 7 am. He would have slept longer if we didn't wake him up. At first Ryan didn't even realize what happened. We've been up every night since we brought Elijah home, so Ryan just assumed we must have been up that night as well. Needless to say, Elijah was our hero that day!

new beginnings

Blogging has been popular for a while, but I never saw a reason to start my own until now. With Elijah's arrival so many new things are happening every day and I thought it would be nice to record certain events so that we can look back on them later. Otherwise we'll forget. I also thought that family and friends scattered across the world may find it entertaining to drop by once in a while and spend a minute or two reading about the small and big events of Elijah's life.

We entered the country of parenthood on December 11th, 2005, and what a ride it has been since then! Elijah weighed 7.5 lb and measured 20 inches. He is now 7 weeks old and close to 12 lb (or so it seems when we pick him up). We spent the first 5-6 weeks learning his "language" and mastering breastfeeding. We are still not experts in either. I am sure we have misinterpreted many of his cues and continue to do so. He was probably fed when he needed a nap and put to bed when he was hungry more than once.

We made it to church for the first time when he was 4 weeks old. We've been back twice since then. But we are still struggling in reclaiming some other spiritual disciplines we used to practice prior to delivery.

The first post of a blog about Elijah should probably have his picture. So here's one of my favorites.