Vincent is 8 weeks old!
Vincent turned 8 weeks old today, but he doesn’t turn 2 months till next week on the 26th. Been settling into a good routine with him. We “eat, play, sleep” during the daytime and at night he usually sleeps about 12 hours (though he still gets up every 2-3 hours to eat). He LOVES to hang out in the sunroom on his activity mat and smile and laugh.
He has the cutest grin!
Here is his growth photo next to the shave ice and Mr. Butters!
Trying to get out a little more with him by going on walks around the neighborhood. He has the funniest look on his face when we go out. I think it’s a little bright for him so he turns his eyebrows a certain way that make me laugh when i look at him.
Doesn’t he have the longest eyelashes? Just like his daddy!
When i put him down for a nap this is the position he stayed in! I think he likes to be curled up like someone is holding him instead of flat on his back.
He is liking his pacifier a lot more now. This one had left a mark on his face though! Haha!
Jeff’s 32nd Birthday
Jeff celebrated his 32nd birthday by buying an XBOX 360 + Kinect! His PlayStation 3 conked out on him so i guess it was “perfect timing”. So far we have Halo, Red Dead Redemption, Sims3 and the Kinect Adventures games.
I surprised Jeff with some homemade cupcakes – peanut butter with chocolate frosting. He was amazed i was able to make them while taking care of Vince and cleaning up all the evidence in the kitchen! I also got him a few gifts, one was a photo frame with Vince’s picture in it that he could put on his desk at work.
The other gift I bought him was a couple of new hats because he wears hats everyday and some were getting a bit funky, if you know what i mean.
Vincent, Butters and I made him a card with our hand prints. We use special ink that only appears on special paper. It turned out a lot nicer than this photo, its just that the it started to fade it a bit since i took forever to capture the photo and write this blog post!
New Faces, New Clothes, and New Toys
Vincent is fitting into 0-3 month clothes now. Well he still fits newborn size but we don’t like how hard it is to get on and off him, so we chose to go with the bigger size for ease of dressing and undressing even if it may be a tad big on him.
He does seem to be awake more often during the day now, though some days he will sleep a lot during the day. He does not have a predictable schedule yet but i am trying to keep track of what he does everyday to see if i notice any kind of pattern developing. Sooner or later he will need to be on a schedule (i.e. when he goes to daycare!)
Also the gyms i work at have been asking me when they think i can get back to teaching. OMG, no idea. I can barely leave to go to the store! Gonna have to see how that goes.
I love this picture of him!
We bought an activity mat for him that has a farm animal theme. He is still a little young for it but he seems to like it so far. I’ve been able to make/eat my breakfast while he lays there pretty content.
Smiling and Pooping
Vincent loves to stare at his comforter/wall hanging that is right next to the bed/changing area. I caught him smiling on video! And then… a poop session. Haha! So funny.
Bottle Feedings, Postpartum Check up
Things have been going along pretty well lately. Vincent is a good baby and the only hard part really is how frequent he seems to nurse during the day. Daddy has been helping with diapers when he gets home from work and has been able to give him a bottle a few times this past weekend allowing me to rest here and there. We actually tried him on the bottle a while back when he was only 3 weeks old to see of he would take it and though it took a little work at first, he did take it. Since then I’ve been trying to pump whenever I could, which equaled to almost never because Vincent eats every hour during the day unless he naps then it might be an hour and a half. I finally got to pump when he started sleeping 3-4 hours at night and would only want to eat from one side. I’d then be able to pump the other side. Jeff says he likes feeding him because it allows them to bond together.
On Friday night our friends Carrie and Roger came over and brought us some dinner, which was very nice of them. Their little girl Lilia is 8 months old and is crawling now! Butters did not like that though! He hissed at her and kept poofing up. Hope he gets used to crawling babies soon. Not sure why he reacted that way since he has seen Patti’s boy Evan crawl around our house before.
That night i had body aches and started getting the chills, which i knew meant I had a fever. I just thought I was sick from Angie who had visited the weekend before with a cold. But then a friend of mine asked if i was sure it wasn’t mastitis. I realized my right boob did hurt a little since yesterday and so it prolly meant i had a plugged duct. Since it was Saturday i couldnt see the doctor for antibiotics so i decided to wait and see if i felt better the next day. If i didn’t then i already had an appointment scheduled for Monday. I took some pain meds/fever reducer that i had leftover from my delivery and i seemed to help. By Monday i felt back to normal.
My 6-week postpartum check-up went well, got a pap smear and healed up pretty good despite a third degree tear (ouch!). There is some scar tissue and sensitive traumatized areas (lol), but doctor was pleased. This was my first outing with Vincent by myself. He fell asleep on the car ride to and from.. and at the office he cried a bit because he wanted to be held and was hungry. Since my doctor always runs late, i had to feed him twice while i was waiting but luckily i was called into the room so i had some privacy.
Blue Butt!
Our little hapa boy has a blue butt! We asked the pediatrician about it and she said its a “mongolian spot” that is more common in Asian babies. It will probably fade away over time.
Slept in his Crib
Vincent slept in his crib for the first time last night. Prior to this we had him sleeping in the pack n’ play (portable crib) next to my bed. We decided to make the transition because he gets really noisy at around 6am in the morning – making grunting sounds in his sleep. Our nursery is just next door, so i can still hear him when he cries just fine. Everything went great. Now just hope he starts to sleep longer through the night!
Patti helped add the rooster graphic to the crib back when we were decorating the room after my baby shower. Nice touch!
The PJs he is wearing my friend Jen gave to him. They are size Newborn still. He only has 1 other pair of jammies that fit him. The rest that we have are 3 month size and are SO BIG on him! Since he is so tall, the legs are a bit short, so he can’t really stretch his legs out all the way. I like the jammies that have the hand covers on them so his hands don’t get cold at night, but not very many of them have it.
Jeff was thinking that a lot of the stuff we have for the baby has dots and circles on it (like the crib sheet and blanket here). He wass wondering if we’ll look back at this 10 years from now and think “wow that was so 2010’s” to have that design. We’ll see!
Just Mommy and Vinny
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This was my first week taking care of Vincent by myself during the day. It went pretty smoothly for the most part. Vincent likes to be held a lot which he didn’t as much before. Now it seems when he falls asleep for a nap, i have to hold him for quite a while before i can put him down, otherwise he will start crying within a few minutes of putting him in his crib. I have learned to do a lot of things 1 handed! What i do need to learn is how to use my moby wrap (or get a new different one). I have looked at video tutorials but still can’t seem to figure it out.
Vincent uses his pacifier when he is fussy and wants to suck on something, but it always takes a few minutes of pushing it in his mouth for him to really take it. Here he is in his newborn PJs where were too big for him when he first arrived home, but now it seems a tiny bit too short for him. I cant believe he is already growing out of his clothes! *tear*
A particularly tough day was Wednesday when he was up very early in the morning, making his usual grunting sounds and just being awake. I didn’t get much sleep that night and i knew the house cleaners were coming that morning so i had to be up early to move out of their way. I was annoyed i couldn’t sleep-in but still thankful someone else was cleaning my house. They came at around 9am and were done and out of the house by noon, so afterward i went straight to bed and tried to put Vinny to sleep too so that i could take a nap but i swear he NEVER went to sleep! All day he stayed awake or only took 1/2 hour naps which is not enough time for me to fall asleep! *SIGH* And you would think he would sleep good that night, but no it was just average. So that was a trying day especially since Jeff didn’t come home for lunch (he works in Gilroy on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). But all the other days were pretty normal… in fact one night he slept 5.5 hours straight! And other nights he can sleep about 3.5 hours but only 1 stretch of that – he still can wake every 1.5 hours as well, he doesn’t seem to have a definitive pattern yet. But i think he will soon. At least one can hope…
Here is the lil’ stinker making some cute faces:
Here is a video of him on his boppy – trying to get him to exercise his head muscles! Listen to his sounds, its cute.
1 month old, Filling Out the Baby Book
This month has flown by! We’ve been kept quite busy this past month with my mom and dad visiting, my in-laws visiting, and Jeff being in vacation. After the visitors went back home, Jeff and I had a restful week together while he was still on vacation. Jeff’s been doing all the grocery shopping and most of the cooking while i take care of Vinny. In fact i haven’t driven my car in a month! Really haven’t been outside the house besides to go to doctor appointments and visit day cares, mostly because the still baby nurses very often, about every 1.5 hours on average during the day. Can’t really leave for long without him, and with him, it just would seem like too much work quite frankly! But i am looking forward to when his feedings spread out so i can begin to do more things besides sit around the TV all day.
Jeff’s mom gave us this baby book to fill out for Vincent. It has quite the amount of information in it! It asked all kinds of questions, not only about Vincent, but about being pregnant, baby showers, visitors, and an extensive history of his grandparents.
It was fun to fill out while they were here visiting so we could get the right information.
Here is the unofficial Certificate of Birth from the hospital. It has a Dennis the Menace theme (as did the Labor and Delivery section of the hospital). Cute footprints! Jeff said the first one they did was messed up so they had to do it again.
Here is the birth announcement that i designed (well stole the idea from an example online!) and mailed to friends and family. Everyone loved it! He definitely looks like he is smiling in the photo.
Here is a photo on his 4 week birthday. The mickey mouse mat was handmade by one of my mom’s friends.
Vincent had his 1-month check up on Friday the 26th. While we were there, he was hungry, therefore a little cranky, so when we had to undress him and get him measured and weighed he was crying almost hysterically which made him have a bunch of tears running down his face! It was kinda sad. Next doctor appointment is at 2 months and he will really have something to cry about then because he will get his first vaccinations.
Here is his growth photo next to the shave ice! What a long boy he is.
Family Portrait Time!
A great photo of the whole family – My dad Donald, my mom Jerrie, Jeff, Vincent, Jeff’s mom Lisa, Jeff’s dad Mike, Butters and Me!
Just the McGirr’s – Jeff’s brother Pat.