You can get away with it if you’re cute enough. This is white text that is filler, to keep the video from showing on the front page.
Jan 30
Playtime!
Mom and Grandma make Emrick giggle, Walter Matthau rolls over (but is still grumpy), and Emrick makes good friends with Mr Seahorse.
Jan 21
Emrick’s First Haircut
Now, I realize this may upset/disappoint/devastate/enrage some of you, but we finally had to give Emrick a haircut! I know! Horrible! I’ve actually been thinking about it for a couple of weeks, but this week something happened that was the last straw. Emrick squirms when he sleeps, which always did funny things to his hair. But by this week, his hair had gotten so long that one morning I woke to find that his squirming had caused the hair from the entire back of his head to be matted and knotted (at least a dozen visible, tiny knots). It looked like animal fur. On top of that, the longer his hair got, the quicker it seemed to get greasy and gross after a bath. So tonight we gave him a haircut and a bath. But first, I took some last pics of his long, greasy coiffure — combed into various amusing styles, of course.
I call this The Ralph Wiggum.
The Al Capone Henchman
The Fascist Dictator
We then proceeded to cut his hair. There are no pictures of that process because it proved to be a two man job. We took turns — one of us holding him, the other one cutting his hair. Then we gave him a bath. He didn’t so much as whimper during the bath, but the haircut upset him greatly…
"It was HORRRRIBLE!"
But soon he was dried, dressed, and camera-ready! He took comfort in gnawing on his sleeve.
Yum, Yum. Cotton!
Emrick smiles at Daddy, off camera.
Despite his hair being pretty evenly cut, it still grows in multiple directions which makes it hard to manage! He's got about 80 cowlicks.
"Aww shucks. Am I really THAT cute?"
"Pardon me? Do you have any Grey Poupon?"
Emrick's First Hair Product: Marcus couldn't help himself. After a few shots, he went and got a dab of hair gel and gelled up the baby.
"Moi?"
Emrick and Daddy have a chat about Emrick's new 'do.
Emrick is very serious when offering constructive feedback on our haircutting skills.
Emrick recovers from the hard evening with a pre-dinner snooze. What a sweet pea!
With his hair cut so short and boyishly like this, Emrick looks about five years old!
Jan 17
Four Months!
Emrick turned 4 months old yesterday and this morning he had his check-up with the pediatrician. To get him ready, we gave him a thorough bath last night.
After his bath, his jammies were still in the dryer so he hung out in his diaper and a blanket until they were ready.
Little Buddha!
His appointment went well. He got his second round of vaccinations, and was measured and weighed. He weighed 14 lbs, 6 oz. And his length was 23.5 inches. I was skeptical of the length measurement because the other day Marcus and I measured him and came up with 22.5. That measurement had concerned me because we measured him at very nearly 22.5 a whole month ago. I would like to THINK he really is 23.5 inches just like the nurse measured, but I wasn’t sure that Marcus and I really could have been so far off the other day. So I did what any good mother would do ( 😉 ) — When the nurse left the room, I helped myself to one of the drawers in the exam room and pulled out the tape measure and a pen. I measured him (hastily) a total of four times: twice I got 22.5 and twice I got 23.5. Oy vey.
So later this morning I went to the grocery store, headed straight to the school supply section, and bought a piece of foam poster board that had a grid printed on it. Each square in the board is half an inch. When we got home, I laid him on it and very carefully held his leg straight, and at a straight angle, and marked where his heel was. Then I held the pencil flush with the top of his head, making sure I wasn’t leaning it inward, and I marked that spot, too. I got a measurement of 23 inches exactly. So that’s what I’ve decided his length is. At the doctor’s office his length has been officially recorded as 23.5, though, which I was told put him in the 7th percentile. So I guess he is a little lower than that in reality. As low as 7th is, that’s actually the highest height percentile that he has ever registered. His weight is at the 39th percentile, and his head circumference is at the 70th.
Anyway, I went in with a list of questions. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, one of my concerns was his rolling over and sleeping on his face. The doctor agreed that if Emrick is actually falling asleep with his face in the mattress and staying that way, then intervention of some sort is called for. He said I could try putting a rolled up receiving blanket next to him to keep him from doing that, but he acknowledged that putting blankets in the crib comes with its own risks. Besides that, Emrick is such a darned squirmer, often rotating his body a full 180 degrees in his crib, that no wimpy receiving blanket is going to stop him from burrowing his face in the mattress if he bloody well feels like doing so! And wedges have been declared a SIDS risk, so that is out. So the doc said that having him sleep in the co-sleeper for now is fine, and that when Emrick shows that he can consistently roll over in both directions (front to back as well as the reverse), then I probably won’t have to worry about the face thing anymore. He has rolled over front to back, but he doesn’t always remember that he can do that. Sometimes when he gets tired of tummy time, he just cries and cries until I flip him over to his back, and then he stops. I always wait, though, to see if he will roll over on his own. He just needs more time to perfect his rolling, I guess.
We discussed other things as well, like Emrick’s spitting up, which has gotten worse lately, and whether he is ready to begin “practicing” with solids. The doc suggested that rice cereal would be a good way to give him a modest start on solids, and that it may even help with the spitting up. So we’ll give that a try later this week. It is too soon for any kind of solid food to actually replace a milk feeding. He still needs as much milk as before, and probably will until he is 6 months old… At 6 months, the doc said, Emrick should be ready for his first ribeye… rare.
Jan 15
Guess Who Generates the Most Dirty Laundry Around Here?
We had an important bonding experience as a family the other night. The occasion? It was Emrick’s most, um… un-boring diaper business to date. By the time it was over, two of us needed a bath and one of us escaped only needing a change of shirt. I’ll leave it to you to guess who’s who. But let’s just say that mothering is dirty work.
When it was all over we had a clean, fragrant, fluffy-headed baby:
Hmm. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something devilish about his eyes here 🙂 I think he must be pleased with all the trouble he caused.
After the first pic with the flash resulted in red-eye, and then the second pic, no flash, was too dark, I decided to try putting my camera on its nighttime setting. The results were kinda freaky. Take a look:
Then later, Marcus took these with his phone:
He rules the roost!
Jan 13
Guess Who’s Rolling Over!
Marcus!….’s son. I placed Emrick on this blanket, on his back and a couple of minutes later he was like this:
Maybe we’ll grab the video camera some time this weekend and tape the rollover in action. Still shots don’t show much, I guess!
The rolling over wasn’t really a surprise, though. One night this past weekend, I discovered when I awoke in the middle of the night that Emrick had rolled over onto his belly. I gently rolled him back onto his back and went to sleep. On the one hand, it was exciting to have him reach this milestone. On the other hand, I knew after that night that his swaddling days were over, which meant that for a time, my days of a good night’s sleep were over too. See, I’ve read that once a baby can roll over onto his stomach, you don’t need to worry about him sleeping that way because if he’s strong enough to roll to his tummy, then he is strong enough to adjust his body to a better breathing position, if such becomes necessary. But he cannot do that if he is swaddled. And that’s why I rolled him back to his back the other night. But the next night, we were done with the swaddling.
And that’s a crying shame because for the past two and a half months night time swaddling has saved my life. Last May, my fellow English teachers threw me a small shower at school, and someone gave me the swaddleme. We tried wrapping Emrick in it when he was just a few days old, and he was so small he swam in it. So we abandoned it and went back to swaddling in blankets, but Emrick was able to break that swaddle within an hour most of the time. So the next four weeks were filled with night wakings and feedings, after which Emrick would NOT go back to sleep. During those weeks my “day” typically began at 3 AM. If I was lucky, he would be ready for a nap at 8 AM and then I would nap, too. I was sleep-deprived and blue. But then in the middle of October, when Emrick had filled out a bit, we decided to try the Swaddleme again one night before going to bed. And OH MY LAWDY LAWD LAWD! He slept for over 6 hours the first night, over 7 the second, and had a handful of nights where he slept for nearly 9 hours! I wondered why the Swaddleme didn’t cost like $1,000 instead of $10.
But all (good) things must come to an end. Actually, the Swaddleme started to lose its effectiveness a couple of weeks before Emrick first rolled over. In mid-December he started waking up at 4 AM, squirming like crazy to break his fleece and velcro straight jacket, and needing me to cuddle him back to sleep. I think he was just growing tired of it.
Then the rollover happened. But rather than abandoning the Swaddleme altogether, I decided to close the swaddle under his arms instead. That way, he still has the warmth and comfort of being covered in a blanket, but his arms are free to push himself into a breathing-friendly position. Sounds like a great plan, doesn’t it? And it is. His first open armed night was Sunday or Monday, I think, and he rather delightfully fell asleep quickly when put in his crib. It was no different from when he was fully swaddled. BUT two things have become obvious to me in the past few nights since he has been mostly unswaddled. One is probably not a problem, the other most definitely is. First, the boy is a side sleeper. He looooves himself some left-side slumber. And it’s cute, too. His left arm lies out in front of his body like you would expect, but his right arm rests on his face. Yes, his face. He brings it up, stretches it high, and then brings it down to rest on his right temple, with his chubby little fist floating just above his head.
Second, and this is the one that worries me, he does not keep his head turned to the side when sleeping. He squirms and moves his head all around until it comes to rest, FACE DOWN INTO THE MATTRESS. Call me paranoid, but I think if he slept with his nose against the mattress for more than a few minutes he would not survive the night. Am I wrong about this? On Tuesday night I kept getting out of bed to move his head, but he would promptly move it back. Once I decided to just wait and see if he adjusted his head on his own — I went to use the bathroom and washed my hands, giving him about 2 minutes with his face in the mattress, and when I came back it was STILL that way. So, starting last night, I have him in the co-sleeper. In the co-sleeper, not only does he have less room to twist and contort himself into a face down position, but I also don’t have to get up in order to tend to him in the middle of the night, when all he usually needs is a little pat, a “shhh”, and a binky. That’s how we slept last night, and for the first time since the weekend I managed to get a few hours of continuous sleep.
Emrick’s 4-month check-up is on Monday, and I plan to talk to the doctor about all these sleep issues. I don’t think he should be out of his crib for more than a few nights, if possible. Meanwhile, we’re making sure Emrick gets some extra tummy time so that maybe he can improve his head and neck control — control which he seems to have less of when on his belly or side.
Anyway, more info than anyone needed, I’m sure, but well, there you go…
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