Monday, February 21, 2011

One month already!

I canNOT believe that a month has already flown by! We are having so much fun with these two and Braxton is growing like a weed. I don't know how coherently I could write a synopsis of this month, so I'll do bullet points instead!

* He is gaining weight wonderfully! He was 7 lbs 8 oz at his 2 week appt (10 days old) and we had him weighed just a few days ago and he was up to 9 lbs 2 oz! That's a full 2 lbs above his birth weight!

* He was in newborn diapers for almost 3 weeks. For those weeks he barely seemed to even grow, but in the last 10 days or so he as seemed to grow by the hour! Now he's actually filling out those size 1s!
*He's wearing 0-3 month clothes now, after about 20 days in newborn clothes. His legs were so skinny that they even looked small in the newborn sized clothes!

* He has gone to church a few times already, and even got to hear Dr Vines on his first visit! :)
* He has begun to be awake more often is starting to look at things. He's still not doing it consistantly, but every once and a while you can put your face in front of him, catch his eye, and he'll follow you when you move!

* We put him on a schedule, and it has been working great! At about 2 weeks, his eating/sleeping schedule was just about to drive me nuts because it was completely inconsistent and irregular. Sometimes he would want to eat every 4 hours, sometimes every hour. Sometimes he would take 4 oz, and sometimes he would take 1. We borrowed the book "Baby Wise" from our friend Summer, because her son had been on a very tight schedule, and it worked great for him. After a day or so of working on the schedule, it was like second nature to him. We're not doing a super strict schedule with him, mainly because I'm still trying to work out a time schedule that works best for him (we're at 3.5 hours right now, but sometimes he wants to go 4, but not consistently).
* He wakes up once a night, usually at 3 am on the dot, to eat. We're doing well with that, because then he sleeps until 8ish. :)
* He likes bouncing and vibration more than swinging. (But every once and a while he will only want the swing).
*He's still sleeping in our room. :( We're just waiting to get another baby monitor. We bought a video monitor for Brookelynne's room a month or so ago, and had been planning on just using her old monitor for Brax until he starts moving, but when I went to plug it in, it won't turn on. Hopefully we'll have him in his bed soon. I'm searching craigslist for another video monitor that we can use.
* He's already in the big bottles! This seems so crazy to me because I know that Brooke used the smaller ones for longer than this, but the liners for the smaller ones are just a little too small to hold what he's drinking.
* He's eating about 850 ml each day. :)
* I'm pumping about 1700 ml each day. :) :)  and we already have 2 diaper boxes full of frozen milk!
* He usually could not care less if you sing. LOL Brookelynne would (and usually still will) quiet immediately if you started to sing to her, especially if it was one of 'her songs', but except for once or twice, you could sing your heart out and it doesn't mean a thing to him!

* He does take a paci. He takes it when he's going to sleep and often when he's fussy, but doesn't always have to have it or anything. I'm hoping that this continues and that he doesn't get attached to it. Believe me, it will be gone by a year old whether he likes it or not!
* He's started smiling at me! :) When he hears my voice as he's waking up and on a few other occasions, he has obviously reacted to a specific thing with a smile. And his little grin is SO precious!
* Mitchell seems to think that he prefers me, but I think it has more to do with the fact that Brookelynne prefers Daddy and therefore, Daddy hasn't had as much practice at calming Braxton down.
* His circumcision has healed easily and Dr Kim said that it was one of the best ones she's ever seen, and that Mike got pretty much every bit of the foreskin off, meaning that there isn't anything that can re-adhere or anything like that. 
* His umbilical stump/scab took almost 22 days to fall off. It seemed like an eternity and was driving me crazy that I couldn't bath him. We finally had to start using cotton balls full of alcohol and saturating it with the alcohol instead of using the wipes, but it is gone and he has a very cute little belly! Button and all!

That is all I can think of right now, but what an adventure this has been. We are so looking forward to the next few months of him being able to have more and more interaction with us!


Friday, February 18, 2011

Braxton's First Photoshoot!













Last week we had Braxton's baby pictures done! Just like with Braxton, our sweet friend Sarah came up to the house to do them for us! She's so sweet and does such a great job, and we are so thankful to call her 'our photographer'! :) She got several pictures of Brax by himself, as well as some of the whole family!