Hello Julius,
You’re asleep in the baby swing right now wearing the first outfit from the hospital (the blue one with the puppies on it) along with a clean diaper and a full belly. This past week has been a real blessing both for you as well as daddy and I because all three of us are learning a little bit more about how to interpret your cries. When it’s my turn to watch you, I’m usually able to tell within a few seconds what you’re crying about and what I can do to relieve it. I love being able to read your body language!
Things you do to communicate:
* When you’re hungry or thirsty, you’ll put your hand in your mouth while smacking your lips. Almost all the time, you’ll elongate your neck backward and stretch, open your mouth, and lift your hands to your mouth and then away from your mouth and then back to your mouth again. You’ll also move your head from left to right really fast and breathe really heavy and fast in short intervals. If we don’t receive milk quick enough, you’ll begin to make little tiny cute baby cries as if telling us to hurry up. While the bottle is being warmed, you usually end up crying very loudly (and for an extended period of time) and we’ll pick you up and hold you and tell you it’s coming soon.
* When you’re diaper needs to be changed, you’re usually pretty patient. Most of the time you don’t cry when your diaper needs changing, however when we’re actually putting a new diaper on you - sometimes you’ll shriek really loud if you don’t have milk or a pacifier in your mouth. Something tells me you’re not a big fan of cold air cause you kick sometimes when having your diaper changed.
* When you want to be held, you’ll put both of your hands in front of you, kick your legs, and sometimes cry.
* When you need to be burped (which is after every feeding), we’ll start first by sitting you straight up while propped on our lap which almost always makes you burp. If that doesn’t work, we’ll lay you against our shoulder and pat or rub your back until you burp. Lately the burps have been coming out really fast and you RARELY cry with burps anymore because we switched you to Soy Formula. It seems to help a LOT with the air bubbles and gas. You cry 85% less than before!!! HAPPY PARENTS! HAPPY BABY!!
* When you have gas, you’ll kick your legs really hard and cry until it comes out. When this happens, the most I can do is hold you and move you in as many positions as I can until one of them feels more comfortable than another. Sometimes we’ll pat or rub your back to help it come out faster.
* When you are overstimulated and just want silence, you’ll usually cry no matter what we do as far as holding you, rocking you, putting you in swing, etc. So we usually lay you on the bed in our bedroom where there are is no tv playing, no radio playing, no sound at all… and the ceilings are over 25 feet tall so the sounds reverberate in there, which I guess keeps you from wanting to hear your own cries. If we put you in there on the bed, sometimes it’ll get you to stop crying and you’ll fall asleep.
Things you like:
* You like it when people hold you while sitting or rocking
* You like being in the baby swing
* You like being fed without having to cry for it
* You like car rides as long as your head is fully supported
* You enjoy listening to all sort of types of music: soft tempo as well as fast tempo
* You love it when people sing to you
* You love it when people hold you while walking around
* You love peeing and pooping on people (I know this cause you smile when you do it)
* You like seeing your own reflection in the spinning mobile
* You like to be bundled really tightly in a baby blanket
* You like the feeling of being in a hooded towel after being cleaned
* You like warm baby wipes, not the cold ones
Things you don’t like:
* Being in a carseat when the car is either parked or not moving
* Being bathed
* Having to wait for milk to arrive when you want it immediately
* A poopy diaper
Other things:
From time to time, we’ll put baby lotion or baby oil on you which you seem to like. Not only does it moisturize your skin, but it makes you smell soooo good and leaves your skin looking fresh and feeling soft.
There’s a few other things too, but those are the main ones. This is so very exciting!
You’re doing a great job with gripping! You grip on to my hair a lot and sometimes won’t let go, so I wear my hair back most of the time. You’re learning how to grip the bottle. Also you have learned the difference between a pacifier and a baby bottle simply by how it feels when we touch your upper lip with it.
Love
Mom
