One month, already?

This past week marked one month for Lucas. Technically, since he was born on a Wednesday, Wednesday was the one month mark. But Joe is trying to say that since he was born on the 27th, yesterday, May 27th, is the one month mark. Whatever day we use, he's a month old now.

His eyes are still blue but I googled it and apparently if they change, it's usually around month 6-9 so I guess that doesn't mean anything. His hair hasn't gotten any darker (yet?) either. After a bath, it sticks up a little on his head like peach fuzz.

He's sleeping pretty good, albeit, on my chest. We are up at either 10 or 11, 12 or 1, 3 or 4, and 5 or 6. Every once in awhile he'll sleep from 12 to 4:45, (or tonight we took a 'nap' at 10 and made it till 1) which almost feels like a full night of sleep when it happens. It took a week or two to get used to this, but now I'm pretty much programmed into the schedule anyway so I don't really care if he sleeps through the night anytime soon as long as I get some sleep in between feedings.

 I'm really not in a hurry to move him off my chest to sleep but I suppose it's not really a great idea to get him programmed into sleeping on his stomach, (probably too late) so we'll probably start working on making the move back to the bassinet this week. (The thing is, I'm as paranoid as ever, so I like him being asleep on my chest because I can feel him breathing without even opening my eyes. The move to the bassinet, even with him right beside me, is going to require a breathing monitor for sure or I'll never sleep.) When I was pregnant, I thought I wouldn't worry that much about SIDS because statistically a baby is 7x more likely to be stillborn than die of SIDS. It turns out, having a baby die makes you paranoid about everything, period. And I probably would have been paranoid anyway, but not as paranoid, considering I worked in daycare for years and it never even occurred to me that I might lay a baby down and go back later to find them not breathing (and it never happened), but now, I know it actually is a possibility. That being said, it's a lot easier to hold his warm healthy body close and relax, than listening to his heartbeat on the doppler when he was still inside me. Still, I find myself praying at least once a day please let him stay.

Feeding is going a lot better. There are times when he eats for 15-20-30 minutes and then is good for a couple hours, then there are times when he wants to eat for 2 hours straight it seems like. Luckily, the middle of the night feedings have went from taking an hour to about 10-15 minutes, so that makes the long feedings (usually during the middle of the day and early evening) easier. He's growing well and I'm not especially worried about it, it just makes it tough to get anything done, but I'm pretty content hanging out on the couch with the baby all day (though quick outings mixed in are nice too, I have been getting a little stir crazy this week). We're estimating his weight at around 9.5 lbs and he's getting too long for a lot of his newborn sleepers and footed outfits, they still fit around his waist but he can't stretch his legs out in them-see pics below, we love the giraffe outfit but he can't stretch his legs out all the way anymore in it. And he doesn't quite fit in most of the 0-3 month sleepers yet and extra fabric around his face= way too paranoid mommy. Luckily, we have some gown sleepers that work pretty well, except Joe keeps saying, "let's pull up your dress" when changing his diaper, etc. , poor kid. (And Joe changes way more diapers than I ever anticipated that he'd change, basically, if he's home, he'll do it without really complaining, which is really nice.) I suddenly like Joe being off more than I ever have before because he really does help a lot, too bad those days are too few.

 We've moved on the size 1 diapers, some brands(Target) are still too big even though they say 8-14 lbs, but other brands with the same weight (Pampers) fit perfectly. We ran out of newborn diapers and I didn't want to buy more at that size not knowing how much longer he'll be fitting in them, since the size sort of overlaps with size 1. I'm not ready to start transitioning to cloth diapers anytime soon, we're still easily changing him 15ish times a day and he's eating too often and for too long for me to be willing to take it on just yet, but I'm hoping maybe by the end of the two month mark I'll figure out what kind of cloth diapers I want to use and start getting and using them at least some of the time.

His head control is definitely get stronger still, he's awake (luckily mostly during the day) for longer, still not smiling or laughing all that much but he definitely spends more time looking around. He still screams his face off for diaper changes and i'm considering buying a wipes warmer, which I always thought was a waste of money and unnecessary (and a fire hazard) before but the way he hates diaper changes I'm thinking it might make it better. So I'm keeping an eye on craigslist. The dogs still mostly avoid him though occassionally one of them will come up and smell his feet or blanket or whatever, and every once in awhile they'll lay near where he is crying.

We did one month pictures at Babies R us yesterday (mainly because I had a coupon), he was ridiculously cooperative considering he was due to eat and how much we messed with him while he was sleeping, changing his outfit and putting him in a bunch of different poses. The pictures turned out pretty good, so I'll leave on that note with them below, and I have a special Olivia blog post coming soon, hopefully tomorrow.