2 Months Old

Somebody is growing like a weed.

Small fry is 2 months old, and judging by the size of those fat rolls, we may have to start calling him Crinkle Fry.  

Apart from the sweet baby fat he’s put on, here’s the low-down on what else he’s been up to.

He smiles more and more every day, and he’s cooing up a storm.  Sometimes he even squeaks.  (When Tater Tot did this, my Daddy used to ask if they made Baby WD-40.  Ha!)

Bless his heart.  Small Fry’s hair is soooo light that his little eyelashes don’t show up at all, but I promise he has them!  And they’re just as long as they can be.  They were pretty short until about a week ago and then they popped out like little blond spiders.

He cannot stand a wet diaper.  Two hours after you put a bottle in his mouth, he’s going to have a holy fit because his diaper is wet.  You can set your clock by it.  I usually change him in between the time he eats and his big fit, but at the two-hour mark, that diaper is WET and he is MAD.  Maybe he’ll be easy to potty train.  One can dream, I suppose.

He has dropped one of his nightly feedings, so he’s sleeping anywhere from seven to eight hours.  I’ve started adding a teaspoon of rice cereal to his bottle, and it has probably helped a little, but he really started the process on his own about two weeks ago.  (Stretching out the sleeping, that is.  He’s not old enough to measure the cereal correctly.)  One night he slept five hours straight and a few nights later he slept six and a half hours straight.  It’s very considerate of him to take it easy on his old mama, don’t you think?  (Especially when his sweet and precious older brother is most decidedly NOT.  I’ll fill you in later.)

Just because Small Fry sleeps 7-8 hours straight doesn’t mean that I am.  I still wake up every four hours or so and put my hand on his chest.

I think he’s trying to find his hand, which as I recall with Tater Tot, was the first step in finding his thumb.  While I realize that sucking his thumb isn’t any better than sucking on a pacifier, at least he’ll be able to find his own thumb in the middle of the night.

Small Fry prefers to turn his head one way and one way only.

Did you know that all babies have a preference due to the way they’re positioned in the womb?  I had no idea.  Well, while Small Fry was in the NICU, the nurses positioned him on the same side all the time, and it just happened to be the side that he naturally favors.  Who knew, right?  

He won’t turn his head to the left very far on his own.  So now, during tummy time, I have to turn his head for him and help him stretch the muscles on that side of his neck.  We don’t want him to have a lopsided head forever, after all.  He hates it.  Absolutely HATES it.  However, after only a few days of pulling on the poor child’s neck, he’s able to turn it much more easily. 

(When his pediatrician, whom we’ve know for a sweet forever and lurve like nobody’s business, was showing me what to do, I asked him to show me again.  I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing and said, “You know, I don’t want to break the poor child’s neck.”  He laughed and said, “Oh, it’s highly technical.  You hold his head and turn it to the left.  And remember, they yank babies out by their heads when they’re born.  You’re not gonna break his neck by doing this move on him.”  They DO pull babies out by the head!  I’ve never thought about it in those terms, but have you ever stopped to think that it’s a wonder any of us ever got out?  I always focus on the fact that babies are crammed into such a small space for nine months. I hardly ever think about the very end until the VERY END when they have to crawl through such a small space.  No wonder so many babies have to be induced.  I’d take one look at that doorway and put the brakes on, too.)

But, I digress.

Speaking of tummy time, Small Fry is still working hard at lifting his head and chest off the floor.  We, and by we I mean I, sit with him and cheer him on.  Push ’em up, push ’em up, way up! until he just rests his little head on the mat.

He weighs 12 pounds and is 22 inches long.  He drinks 5 ounces at every meal except the last nighttime bottle.  He gets an extra ounce in that one, and he smacks it right down.  The boy likes his food, and he does not like to be kept waiting.  Small Fry has a big wail.

His burps will blow you out of the room, especially the ones that accompany the bottle with the rice cereal.  We burp him about halfway through each bottle, and he gives up those burps nicely.  However, he hangs on to the end-of-bottle burps and makes you work for them.  I suppose it’s payback for making him wait for the bottle to begin with.

He recognizes my voice and my face, and he smiles and wiggles when he sees me.  And, no, that doesn’t thrill me one bit.  If you believe that, I have some oceanfront property in Arizona I’d like to sell you.

I’d love to do some more bragging, but he’s only two-months-old.  

He won’t be solving algebraic equations for at least another month or two.