Moving On

We officially moved into our house on Micah's two-month birthday, so he got to take his two-month photo on the rocking chair in his room. The first picture is the official one, the second one was just too funny not to show. He looks very dazed and confused...as if he hasn't ever seen a camera before!



He's been doing really well sleeping at night, except for a few nights here and there. He usually goes down around 8:30pm and will sleep until at least 3:30am, if not 4-4:30am. I keep trying to push his bedtime to 10pm, so it's more in sync with our bedtime, but all (two) efforts have failed. If we wake him up to feed him, he'll still wake up around those times, like his body is just programmed to do so. One night, though, he did sleep from 10:30pm until 5:30am and went back down again for a few more hours, so I know it can be done! Day time naps are a different story. After sleeping all night, I guess he's not really that tired, so during the morning and early afternoon, we are glued together. Late afternoon and early evening start the sleepfest which continues on through the night. This makes it hard to go out and get things done (although he sleeps really well when we're out!), but that's the trade off for a good night's sleep.

He's awake for longer periods of time and more cheerful during that time. He still LOVES his diaper being changed, which he hated the first week of his life. He'll talk and coo and socialize during this time, much to everyone's amusement. I took pictures of him in his crib (the only time he looks so small!) and of his room, so I'll post those when the boxes clear and everything gets more settled here.

Thanks to Auntie Sara and Cousin Ari, Micah now has a farm-themed bouncy seat that we've been using at least once each day. I use it usually in the morning right after he's all fed and changed and in a great mood. He'll wave his arms around and smack the pig in the nose and the sleep on the head, which will make them each rattle. The cow in the middle has a cord to pull and it makes a shortened version of "Old MacDonald," which Micah stares at wide-eyed.

I'm soo grateful for this bouncy seat because he is awake a lot more and wanting to be entertained. I want him to be able to entertain himself for as much as he can handle (usually 5-10 minutes, which is good for his age) and not always need to be entertained by someone else. This will make my life a lot easier since he isn't the best daytime napper in the world, although he does make up for it at night so I can't complain too much. We've also used the seat at dinnertime when we're all eating and he's awake (lately the little stinker has taken to waking up for a feeding right when we're sitting down to eat!). We put it on the table so he can see everyone and talk and play. It buys us a good 10 minutes to finish up dinner :).

Of course, the minute I whip out the camera, he tones down all this talking and coos and rattling, but just seconds earlier he was interacting quite aggressively with the sheep. I'll try to get more video of him in the bouncy seat, but this is the best I've got for now!

Micah has always been able to hold his head up really well, even since birth (one of the reasons why people joke that I gave birth to a toddler), so I've been doing tummy time with him quite frequently. He grunts and groans sometimes, but I think it's more from effort than from dislike because he'll certainly tell you when he's done. He keeps his head up for basically the entire time, even though he looks like a Bobblehead doll. His hat makes him look funny in this video (especially from which the angle the video is taken), but it matched his outfit, I promise!

Mom got Micah some slipper moccasins like his daddy's. See?

After his bath one day, Micah decided he needed to go to the bathroom again (great timing, huh? At least it wasn't in the bath...). Mom hurriedly put the diaper on him and when she lifted him up, this is the view we got:

That's my age now. Doesn't seem possible. When I think of a 27-year-old, I certainly don't think of myself, but I guess that doesn't really matter because I am now officially in my late twenties! I've accomplished all that I wanted to do by this age, so while I really enjoyed my twenties, I can't really say that I'm sad to see them passing by.

This year, my birthday really snuck up on me for obvious reasons, but it was a fun day none the less. It was Election Day, so guess it really shouldn't have snuck up on me since everyone was counting down to the 4th, but it still did. My family still made it special for me and Micah slept almost the entire night into my birthday morning. I told him that's what I wanted for my bday and being the thoughtful, considerate little man that he is, he obliged :). Dave bought me beautiful roses from Trader Joe's (he was nearby getting his free coffee from Starbucks for voting). And we had a little dinner party: G&G, Rita, Ryan and Yana all came. That was also the night that Yana and Ryan fed Micah a bottle, which ended up being two bottles equaling seven ounces. He slept from 8pm until 2:30am (after eating at 5:15pm), so we are now experimenting with bedtimes and waking him up to feed him six ounces because we now know he's capable of sleeping through the night...we just have to make it the same night as ours!

This is basically the scene that surrounds Micah at some point each day. His aunties and uncles take turns visiting him and sometimes we're all together at once...together around the baby, that is. He responds so well to these familiar faces, it's so cute to see. Each of them have put him to sleep at some point, which is a cute and cuddly experience. He has taken to turning his head sideways and laying it on a nearby shoulder or chest, which makes you want to just eat him up...figuratively speaking, of course.

This. This is exactly why I wanted to move back home.

We discovered by accident that Micah l.o.v.e.s. the outdoors. It's magic, really: If he's crying or whining or fussing, all you have to do is literally step outside and his noise ceases to exist any longer. It's actually quite funny. And if you didn't stay outside long enough, the minute you step back inside, he'll pick up right where he left off. Mom was waiting for me to get home from an errand the first week I could drive all by myself and he was crying because he decided he wanted to eat RIGHT NOW. So she stepped outside to wait for me and she said the change was so instantaneous, so complete, that she looked down to see him sleeping and thought, "Oh my goodness, I killed Jess' baby!" Nope, she didn't, but she did discover a very useful tool in calming Micah down and putting him to sleep. I told him that he was born in the wrong season because winter will be upon us soon and I won't want to be stepping outside very frequently. I'm sure he'll be in another stage of maturity by then, but even on a few of the recently chilly days, we've taken him outside and he's still loved it.

So, in keeping with the spirit of outside, Auntie Kristina and I brought my outdoors man out to the leaf pile to see his reaction. You can gauge it for yourself:

I snapped this picture on our way out of the voting place today...do you see his "I Voted Today!" sticker?



Mom came with me since she already voted and held the little man. He was fascinated with all that was going on, so I'm glad he was able to go. After I filled out my voting paper and slipped it into the voting machine, the volunteer working the polls gave me two stickers: one for me and one for Micah. Now I'll be able to tell him that he started "voting" at seven weeks old!

D's parents bought Micah this outfit way before he was born. I'm glad I refound it because we just barely managed to jam my 12+ pound boy into it. It has a place on the pocket for all of his newborn stats, which I had to fill in with the special pen it came with.

We brought him over to D's parent's house like this and they enjoyed seeing him all dressed up. I guess this could have been a Halloween outfit for him, too, come to think of it.

In Dave and Jess news, life is starting to get back to its new normal. When we're not tag-teaming or co-teaming Micah, we do the things we used to do. Mom had our hairdresser over a few weeks ago and invited some friends and family over, so we all got our hair done and hung out while the men did their thing. There have been a few Ladies Nights (Micah is the only boy allowed) and a few Manly Nights. Mom and Dad are so awesome about watching the baby here and there if we want to go on a quick errand and he's sleeping. D took me out to Red Robin's for dinner on Friday night for my bday and we even stopped at Trader Joe's afterwards to get some goodies. The other week we had stopped by Best Buy to pick up our new 42" flatscreen TV that will fit nicely on our new TV stand at our house. Although I would have been just as happy with our old TVs, it is a very nice piece of equipment. So we get "us" time a lot more than I thought we would. However, our little man fits perfectly into our (and a lot of others') lives and one of our new favorite pasttimes is looking at his many faces. He is quite the entertainer. We're talking about visiting our friends in PA soon, we miss them a lot and would love to see them again soon. Lots going on, but for now I hear my little man squeaking and grunting, which are precursors to crying! Also known as, "I'm hungry!"

I won't tell you that I dressed Micah all up in his Halloween outfit yesterday fully believing that yesterday was Friday, therefore Halloween. My Grammy and I went out shopping with the little man and I even showed the cashier his Halloween outfit. Oh well. And if that wasn't bad enough, he had an overflowing diaper which created quite a mess on the outfit-that-had-been-worn-a-day-early. Fortunately I had enough laundry to make a full load and Micah is now (re)dressed in his Halloween outfit on Halloween. It's a candy corn shouting, "I want candy!"