We are so darn lucky. Tyler is just the best little baby. He’s easygoing, calm, easy to put to sleep, slow to fuss, and I’ve figured out all of his little cues for telling us how to stop him crying. It’s either food, diaper, burping (it’s usually this one), or he wants my pinky in his mouth. I’ve never met a fussy Tyler I couldn’t cure. It makes me feel like a freakin’ super-dad.
Recovery continues apace. We’re at home, now, trying to establish some routines. I try things out here and there, like different styles of formula (ready-made, super-easy to use, or the more bulk ‘concentrate’ that, evidently, I was supposed to keep in the fridge. Oops. We learn.) different bottles, different ways to play with Tyler. It’s all a big science experiment.
We went in for the first doctor appointment today, and Tyler is already gaining weight (crap, he is going to be a football player after all.) This also marked our first jaunt out of the house with Tyler, and we were able to be pretty sparse with the diaper bag, at least this time. Tyler is, for the most part, pretty calm in the car, unless the sun gets in his eyes. Clean bill of health for Tyler, also, though oddly enough they measured him at 21 inches, not the previously reported 22. So it looks like the original weight AND height were off. Suspicious...maybe we got someone else's baby! (We did not get someone else's baby.) Tyler also made a habit of protesting loudly whenever we had to undress or unwrap him followed by a nearly immediate calming when given ‘the pinkie’. Tyler doesn’t like pacifiers much, but he LOVES pinkies. Many thanks to dad on that one. I owe you a...power tool of some sort, I guess. That’s the standard currency for Grandpa Preecs, yes?
Oh, by the way, if there are any special requests for titles, get them in now. Bappy, Grams, Ba-ba, uncle, chooma-shoom, whatever you like. I make no promises that Tyler won’t auto-generate a nickname even more cute for you on his own, but we can at least plant a seed if you want.
Mom Jessie is doing pretty well for a woman with a hole in her abdomen. She continues to move better every day, and is taking fewer and fewer painkillers, though I do have to keep on her to not take ‘none’. It’s a good thing we have our little baby timer.
Have I talked about the baby timer already? You know what, I don’t care. I’ll talk about it again anyway. I’m not even going to go bother to check the blog. I’m reckless!
It’s this neat android app called ‘baby esp’. It gives you different timers for how long since baby has either started or stopped feeding, sleeping, playing, diapers, or anything else you want. There’s even a setting for mom and dad that we use to keep track of some prescriptions, pumping times, and sleep times. Not that we really need to keep track of sleep, but there’s just so much data-mining capability in this thing. You can do plots of how much feeding or sleeping, or all sorts of stuff. I’m excited for Tyler to get older just so we can have more entries. It’s neat.
I’ve started reading to Tyler. We’re starting with ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’, which is nice because I haven’t read it either. I’m working on voices. Voices are important. We’re a chapter and a half in already. He seems to really like just listening to my voice, as long as he’s not gassy, which happens unfortunately often.
Tyler has been getting up every 1.5 hours at night to feed. I didn’t realize until today’s doctor’s appointment that this was as dire a problem as it actually seems to be. I get a couple of hours of sleep before evening hits, proper, and I can stay up for hours. Then Jess relieves me after a while and we alternate as the mood strikes us. As long as one of us takes charge, we can get some pretty decent sleep, just not contiguously. Like I said, Tyler is a pretty great baby. We’re supposed to be making him sleep more (read: eat less) at night, though, and be more awake during the day, so we’ve been advised to s---t---r---e---t---c---h out the time between feedings, which probably means listening to Tyler complain for a while. Never all that pleasant to hear, but at least he doesn’t have the lung power to knock out the serious dBs...yet.
So yeah, it’s all going very well, so far. Yay!
-N
2 comments:
Though there may be a more modern equivalent of this (bloggage, etc), I do recall documenting Noel's growth photographically by the hour. and yet progressively simplifying the effort with subsequent offspring (sorry, aunties..). I suspect the App may just fade into the background as you become more intuitive and experienced with tyler and any subsequent siblings.
I have no idea what I want to be called, especially since the usual names seemed to belong to more senior members of family. When I hear "grandpa preecs", I mentally connect with Poppa. If some charming juvenile Texas malapropism connects with me, I'll probably be delighted.
I love that you feel like you are on vacation, Noel. I think it is the phrase "family medical leave" that makes me feel like maternity/paternity leave is meant to feel like you are just fending off disaster one hour at a time. Rather then just hanging out with the coolest kid in your neighborhood. I guess that is another sign that you guys are going to be great parents. Hats off to you.
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