growing baby

First the good stuff. During tummy-time today Mateo did a full 360-degree loop around the blanket on his tummy. It was incredible watching him go. He pushed himself counter-clockwise so he could see each animal on his blanket (there are many embroidered animals all along the blanket). I had no idea he could do that!

Also, I just put Mateo to bed in the crib while he was awake instead of sleeping. I had to rest my hand on his tummy (sometimes I added a little tummy rub) and quietly shhh him for 20 minutes and then he rolled over to his side and fell asleep! It was totally worth the backache. Hopefully over time this will help him fall asleep on his own more easily.

Now the less good stuff. Even though we’d made progress on his naps last week–he twice took 2 hour naps without needing to be put back to sleep in the middle–today was a definite back-track. He kept waking up after 15-20 minutes. I think he only napped about an hour and a half the whole day. (Plus last night was his worst night’s sleep in a while–he kept waking up every 2 hours.) I wonder if he’s having teething pain?

In any case, he’s still my champ. Even though I’m one sleepy mama…

Mateo still has two more days to go before he’s officially four months old, but he’s already had his check-in with his pediatrician. All is good! Hips are good! Weight (15 lbs) and height (25 inches) in the 50th percentile, head size in the 25th percentile, heart sounds good, eyes are good, weewee good. Mateo also had two vaccines–one was oral (I think he liked that one, vaccine in bottle yum yum) and the other was a shot (not so much fun but he recovered from the shock quickly).

Yay for our healthy boy!

All day long, Mateo’s been rehearsing his “me-Tarzan” chest-thumping moves. He balls his right hand into a fist, raises it into the air, and slams it down onto his chest. Again and again and again. When he’s feeling especially inspired, he’ll double-hand punch himself for emphasis. All this with a big smile on his face!

Mateo’s other recent accomplishments include: sitting up propped by his arms, taking off his peepee teepee and putting it in his mouth, finding his feet, and squealing.

I, on the other hand, got my first decent night’s sleep this week last night. Ahhhh….

I think I should qualify for an energy-efficient tax rebate: I’m being powered completely on my 100th wind.

Mateo has rolled over three times now! He rolled over (from tummy to back) for the first time last Friday–twice in a row! Then nothing on Saturday, Sunday or Monday, even though we kept trying to see if he would. Yesterday, he rolled over one more time but nothing today. I guess he’s rolling over by accident, right now…he has the muscle strength to flip but not the know-how to do it consistently. Mateo’s also laughing now and today he definitely blew a raspberry–so cute!

In other news, his pediatrician sent Mateo for an ultrasound to check out his hip joints–they feel tight so the pediatrician just wanted to eliminate the possibility that there’s something wrong with the connection. Mateo was really patient today at his hospital visit–he had to stay an extra hour in the waiting room because of some hospital-wide computer glitch, but he didn’t cry once. He was also good during most of the ultrasound exam–he was ok through the leg-bends and leg-smushing, but cried when we held his leg straight. Afterwards, though, he was back to his happy self.

As for me, I’m enjoying my last few weeks of Mateo-time before I start working in late March. I’ll still be able to spend a lot of time with Mateo–more than a standard job–but I’ll also have much more reading, prepping and grading to do. As it, I should start revising my syllabi, hmm…

For about a week, Ilya and I have instituted a bedtime ritual for Mateo where we read him 1-3 stories, wash his face or bathe him, put him in pajamas, swaddle him, feed him and put him to bed. We might revise the ritual, but that’s what we have for now. Anyway, today Mateo was screaming his head off about an hour before the usual bedtime ritual (7 pm instead of 8 pm), so I decided to experiment and see what happened if I just put him to bed. I did all the bedtime ritual steps except the stories–I didn’t think he’d have the patience for stories given that he was bawling his head off. All was well and he was seemingly contentedly asleep in the crib at 7:30 pm on the dot.

That only lasted 15 minutes. At 7:45 I was holding a crying Mateo in my arms and walking him around his room to calm down. After he was quiet, I decided that it must have been too early to put him to sleep, turned on the light and decided to start the bedtime ritual again since it was heading towards 8 pm anyway. This time I started with the stories since he was quiet and calm. Well, by the third story, Mateo’s eyes were drooping and on the last line of the last story, he smiled sleepily and closed his eyes even more. I swaddled him and he fell directly to sleep–no rocking, no feeding needed. I guess those stories are really important! Of course, it’s only been about 10 minutes…I could be writing an addendum in another 5 about how he woke up again. But hopefully all is well for the next several hours! Maybe he’ll even hit his one-time record of 7 straight hours of sleep again! Though even four straight hours would be just fine. 🙂

Mateo has this sweetest new habit of holding on to my shirt while breastfeeding as if to say: “I’ve got you now–you can’t get away!” And I just want to say back, “I don’t want to get away, now that I have you.”

Our poor little guy caught his first cold on his two month birthday. Mateo and I got sick at the same time and Ilya caught the cold the next day. The first night was the worst: Ilya and I slept about two hours because we kept jumping up to check on Mateo who was having difficulty breathing through his stuffy/runny nose. (Babies don’t learn to breathe through their mouths until they’re about 4 months old.) Thanks to our hard-working humidifier and my mom’s good care (she risked infection by coming over to help take care of us), Mateo and I are feeling better, though still residually sick. Ilya, who’s one day behind, is hitting the peak of the cold now, poor sweetie. And, silly man that he is, he keeps apologizing for being sick–as if it were something blame-worthy!

On the brighter side, Mateo’s now strong enough that he can wiggle to a sideways position in the crib even when swaddled like a burrito. Unfortunately, this means he now sometimes hits his head or feet against the crib rails. We didn’t put any bumpers in his crib because anything soft in the crib is a SIDS risk….but perhaps we need to rethink that now. Thoughts/suggestions?

Little Mateo is already eight weeks old!  He’s discovered his hands recently–he keeps trying to squish his entire fist into his mouth and spends a good part of the day just licking his hands, hee hee.  Once I even saw him suck just his thumb, but I think it was accidental since he doesn’t have the coordination to do that regularly yet.

And of course he’s still cooing and gurgling and smiling and pseudo-giggling.  He especially smiles a lot when I put him in his bouncy chair on the dining room table while I eat breakfast or lunch.  For some reason he thinks I’m a riot while I eat.  Maybe it’s because I keep making delighted yum yum sounds and toss my head from side to side as I model eating delight.  Mateo’s sure going to have funny dining room manners if he mimics me once he gets to solid foods!  Mateo might also like it because I compliment him all through the meal, telling him (in Spanish), that he’s adorable, loving, handsome, intelligent, generous, kind and so forth.  I pretty much exhaust my entire Spanish vocabulary for compliments. 

We also play other games (all in Spanish) like “King of the Mountain” where I sit Mateo on my knees and tell him he’s the king of the mountain and everything he sees (big wobbly circle on knees) is his terrain (yes, how imperialistic, I know) and then I steal the king for tons of kisses.  We also play horsy on my knees where I punctuate the “William Tell Overture” (theme music for the Lone Ranger) with kisses.  Mateo gets kissed a lot because he’s so fabulously kissalicious! 

Mateo’s also starting to learn to play with his toys.  For a couple of weeks Mateo’s tracked his toys with his eyes, last week he started holding his toys (but not looking at them), and yesterday for the first time he held a toy and looked at it at the same time!  He’s got skills!  He only did it once, but I’m sure there’s plenty of toy playing yet to come! 🙂

Also, last night was the first time that Ilya and I slept in our own bedroom instead of Mateo’s room. It actually worked out really well…we didn’t sleep more hours, but I feel like the quality of my sleep was much better since I wasn’t constantly interpreting Mateo’s various rumblings and groans. We were happy, Mateo seemed just as happy and the cats were extra happy. So all was well!

Mateo has been smiling on purpose since he turned a month old (as opposed to the cute but random “sleep grins” before that) and he practices smiling more and more every day.  I just love watching his face crinkle up with his ridiculously adorable toothless smile!  And today some of his smiles are starting to be accompanied by what sounds like laughing!!  What a sweetie!