Very Interesting

This is burping position number two: Curious Grasshopper. With Curious Grasshopper position one can have their innards jostled for maximum air displacement AND check out the bright lights or vivid colors. Sometimes he sits straight up (without losing eye contact with whatever distant thing he’s focused on) as if to say, “stand back old man, I can handle this on my own.” And he does, for a bit, swaying slightly like a twig balanced on a fingertip before tipping forward or back again.

Yeah, you know that thing I mentioned about the 3.75 hours? Yeah, well I think Zane read it and decided he was being too easy on us. That night he woke Faith up every hour and a half for meals so by the time I got up for the 4am shift she was pretty zonked. Only one thing for that: I took him to work all day.

First there was a chiro appt, which he sat through without a peep, then off to the office with a little feeding, a little sleeping, and a little wiggling around and visiting folks. No long naps though, which meant dad didn’t get to type into his computer as long, at least using two hands, as he might have wanted to. But all in all a pleasant and uneventful morning.

He then woke up from a nap around 1pm and no more Mr. Nice Baby Guy. WAAAA!!!! Not the “hungry, hungry, HUNGRY” waaa either, more like the “you’ll never figure this one out” waaa. He can usually be calmed down, but I’ve never had to do it in an office setting and realized that others might not be appreciating the piercing wail. Closed the door, calmed him down, worked for a little bit and off he went again. After calming him down the second time I packed everything up and we went home where Faith took over and I went to work in my home office.

The weather here has been totally crazy. Some really cool days and nights followed by muggy and warm. It’s been almost a couple weeks since we last hit eighty and I think it has only hit ninety once in the last month. During the day yesterday huge storms moved in to blot out the Sun and torrentially pour for half an hour before moving on. Every couple of hours this repeated until night when the really big storms moved in, with spectacular lightning shows and house shaking thunder.

In between storms we went for a long walk. Part way through a gal waved to us from a driveway and said, “Hi! I was in the birthing class with you.” Her little boy was born a week after his due date and a month after Zane. It was an interesting comparison to see the two babies, Zane hadn’t looked all that much bigger until then.

Yesterday was Zane’s Great Grandma Knapp’s 106 birthday and today Zane is two months old. It’s quite a distance between the two, geographically and in age, considering she was born before the first airplane was flown.

His fussing continued into the night after I told Faith to go to bed early so we could try a new schedule. At one point when Zane wouldn’t take the bottle but also wouldn’t stop crying I offered a knuckle and he nibbled at it. He didn’t suckle it and I found that rubbing his gums would assuage his crying and fussing. Teething? Dunno. He doesn’t use a binky, I’ve tried a couple times, but I got it out and rubbed his gums with it. He’d clamp on the binky for a few seconds and then let it fall out. Not interested. He did calm down eventually.

Then he took to the bottle again and was making great strides with that before I realized some was coming out of his nose. Wiped it off, then some more. Repeat. And then the Fountain of Zane erupted and there was milk everywhere! He’s only done this once before and it was pretty minor in comparison. Dad and baby and part of the couch simply swimming in milk! It almost seemed like he got distracted gumming the bottle nipple and didn’t notice that his stomach, esophagus, lungs, and sinuses had filled with milk!

Zane got an impromptu bath, lots of thick towel snuggling (man, I just love that!), a clean set of duck pajamas, and then we settled back down for happy baby time before he drifted off to sleep for what would turn out to be over four hours.

Another almost four hours on his next sleep period (unfortunately mommy didn’t have the luck of falling asleep for equally as long) and then I came back up to take over until it’s time to head to work.

There’s a lot of things I love about little Zane. One of those at the top of the list is when he’s a wiggly stretchy baby first thing in the morning. He’s so content, smiling and stretching, and there’s the warm feel all of the muscles and bones and skin moving in my hands. This is part of me. This is part of my Grandma. Part of a whole line of people we know: a little mammal stew-pot of love.