Might As Well Face It; I'm Addicted to Love.

I have a new addiction. I'm addicted to seeing my kid smile. Every day, he gets a little more free with his happy faces, and for every time I see that toothless grin, I need even more. I know it's cheesy, but it's true. It's a weird feeling. Sometimes I'll resort to just about anything to see his lips curl up, even for just a second. High pitched baby talk? Singing silly songs? Making funny faces? Taking a little longer to change his diaper because sometimes all he needs for a grin is to be naked? Yep, I've done them all and more. :)

Conversely, I have an intense allergy to his crying. The big lipped pout prior to the wail is actually pretty stinking cute, but the actual crying, when he gets really riled up, makes me feel ill. It's not the annoyance of general baby crying that I always had pre-child (although I still have that reaction sometimes). It's like an ache in the pit of my stomach... a sad heart. And sadly, sometimes it's unavoidable. My boy, for instance, hates his crib. He has to be on the verge of passing out in order to go to his crib to sleep without a fight. But given its obvious role in his future, I can't have that. He isn't going to magically start liking the crib if I don't teach him to work through his frustration. And so, I've been hearing a lot of crying lately. It sucks, because we finally got him over his massive fussiness, and now we're having to do battle with the crib, invoking crying once again. It's tough being a mommy. :) I guess as long as I get my regular fix of goofy grins, I can handle the other stuff!

Okay, now you can laugh at me. I just attempted to talk tough. Then, I went on a walk with the boy before publishing this post. He fell asleep on the walk with his thumb in his mouth. Instead of pulling him out and putting him in his crib when I got home, I wheeled his stroller right into his room next to his crib and left him in it to sleep. Why? That pesky cry allergy, of course. Here's a couple pictures of him waking up (that's the hungry cry) from his stroller nap:

Wyatt is 8 1/2 weeks old today. I guess we move away from weeks and start talking months now, right? Well, he'll be 2 months old on Sunday. We've all come a long way... :)

Babe Wisdom

I have an endorsement to make. As anyone who's been reading my blog knows, our sweet little darling Wyatt can be a bit of a handful in the fussiness department. My s-i-l babysat him last week and confirmed that he's challenging. :) Which was a relief to Ryan and I, because she's an experienced mother of 2, which means maybe we're not just baby-wimps. Well, we've gone around in circles trying to figure out why our child gets so weepy all the time. And then we started reading a book that our friends recommended. It's called On Becoming Baby Wise. And we realized what the problem was. Wyatt fights sleep. He doesn't generally just fall naturally to sleep when he's tired. And so, by the end of the day, if he's napped at all, they've been cat naps. So he's overly tired and cranky. And those strange intervals of fussiness throughout the day? Yeah...those are the times he needed to be put down for a nap. A real nap. Not just a quick doze in the swing before he eats. We've started following the loose schedule set up in Baby Wise, and have discovered a much happier baby boy.

Here's what's funny: The information in Baby Wise is really the same stuff my friend Talitha, who's a doula, has been telling me all along. I recognize the loose scheduling (which is a welcome and logical balance between the hyper-scheduling camp and the attachment parenting philosophy, both of which are based on flawed logic and extremism... I'm sure I'll piss someone off by saying that...) as the same recommendations she's given me. When she advised me last time though, I was still in the midst of baby blues and general unfamiliarity with my child, so I didn't quite understand how to implement it, and I wasn't really completely capable of understanding it. :)

So, anyway, kudos to Brian and Lesa for recommending the book to us, and to Talitha for giving us the same advice even without a book! We now have a child who naps, who isn't so psycho in the evenings and a hour after every meal (turns out, it had nothing to do with his tummy), and who is already sleeping a little longer each night. I'm starting to feel more confident about the fact that my child may be sleeping all the way through the night in a few weeks. (Knock on wood.)

Our almost 7 week old:

Truly, Madly, Deeply

I am truly, madly, deeply in love with my son. Even as we speak, he's squeaking and talking to the fish on his bouncy seat while he hiccups and gives me the occasional toothless grin. This intense feeling of adoration is amazing. And I'll admit it; it's new. I wish I could tell you I felt this way the day he was born. That I, like so many women on TV and in books, had felt a magical connection to my child the moment I saw him. But like many moms (who've felt ashamed of themselves for feeling the way so many other women feel, but don't admit), I had to get to know my son first. When Wyatt was born, I was still in pain, exhausted, and scared. I could appreciate his cuteness and wowed by his very existence, but he was still a stranger to me. I had to figure him out, discover his goodness and be charmed by his personality the same way I had to get to know my husband before I fell in love with him. In the beginning, I was angry at all the moms who'd gone before me and hadn't warned me... I'm not angry anymore, but I refuse to repeat their mistakes.

But tomorrow, Wyatt William Kuhns will be 6 weeks old. And I can't imagine life without him. Maybe it's because he responds to me now. Maybe it's because he's awake more now, so I'm actually seeing parts of his personality. Maybe it's because I'm getting a little more sleep now that Wyatt has a 4-5 hour stretch at night, and my husband is so active in making sure I get some rest. Maybe it's because my son cries less now, and seems to have more logical reasons when he does. I'm sure it's all of the above. And I'm also sure that needing those things to finally get to a place where I melt in my child's presence doesn't make me an inferior mother. It just makes me an honest one, who's getting better abd better at her new job every day.

Here are some more pics of my strapping 12 pound child:

Fun with Colic

I still don't know if I can officially call this colic, but when your baby cries for at least half of his waking hours (minus while he eats), that's a lot of frickin' crying. And if colic is even worse, I commend all parents of colicky babies who have survived without sending their babies to infant boarding school.

Ryan and I finally finished watching 'The Happiest Baby on the Block'. We'd already learned the 5 S's, but it was nice to get a refresher course. We've found that one of the only ways to soothe our son is to swaddle him as tightly as we can (although our little Houdini can eventually get out of anything...), slip a bink in his mouth, and put him in his swing. Right now, he's staring at me wide-eyed, but he is not wailing. That, my friends, is a miracle these days. A few minutes ago, you would have thought he was being water-boarded. "Fess up, Wyatt. Where did you hide your other sock, and who are you working with to vaporize all the pacifiers?" Fun, fun!

I was planning to take a walk today, but I can't find a happy medium between the straight-jacket in the swing and the screeching howls of my tortured son elsewhere. And so, I'm taking a written walk down Blogger Lane instead. It's just as refreshing, but doesn't do as much for dropping the baby weight...

In another topic entirely, I have to bring up politics. It's only fitting, because I pretty much watch the news 24/7 these days to keep my brain from turning to mush. As usual, I won't be endorsing anyone. But I do find one thing funny about campaigns in general. Themes. Right now, the focus is on the democrats, of course. Clinton vs. Obama. (I'm sure this is news to all of you.) The two themes are "Change" and "Experience". I've been entertained by how passionate the voters interviewed are about these slogans. You'd think it was the first time any candidate had based a campaign on experience or change... And yet, as far as I can remember, those have been the rally cries in just about every election in history. I'm assuming McCain will take up where Clinton leaves off with the "experience" theme. (I'm convinced Obama will be the democratic nominee... but if Hillary pulls off the super delegate coup, I guess McCain will find a way to adopt a theme of "change" instead.) The truth is: they're really just buzz words. Experience can only get a politician so far, and they're only capable of so much change. In the end, no matter who wins, he/she will be considerably more impotent than they let on. But for now, enjoy the cries of "experience" and "change". You won't hear these themes again for a long time (or at least until the next election).

I guess I'm as fussy about the semantics of politics as my son is about life as a 5 week old. :)

Good Bye, April Showers.

It's May now. Bring on those flowers! Here's a weird thought: The only month Wyatt had ever experienced until now was April. And now he's experiencing May. :) He'll be 5 weeks old tomorrow. For you and me, 5 weeks don't necessarily amount to much. But this kid just keeps changing. (I realize this isn't news to anyone, but it's a whole new ball game when suddenly it's your own kid who's changing fast!) Here are a few of the changes:

First, this kid weighs almost 11 pounds now. Just to give you some perspective, that means he's gained like 75% of his original body weight in 5 weeks. (I didn't actually do very specific math, so I could be off by a bit, but you get the idea.) He's gone from wearing newborn size diapers to Size 1. I think he'll be in size 2 before long. Luckily, he's still wearing his 0-3 month size clothes. (Well, except the Gerber onesies, which are made for midgets and fit him for about a day.) This is good because we're getting use out of the smaller sizes, but I'm also looking forward to getting to change his wardrobe. :) I'm living vicariously through him, since I have to drop all my baby weight before I'll have lots of clothing options again... SIGH.

Second, he likes toys. He's fascinated by things that jingle, swing, move, or play music. He looks us in the eye and follows our gaze, and he makes the cutest little noises. This probably doesn't sound like much, but you have to remember just how little newborn babies actually do. When he was born he pretty much just stared into space, slept, ate, pooped and cried. He certainly didn't play and he really didn't acknowledge the existence of other human beings. So suddenly our cute little blob is seeming more like a little person. :)

There is no third. I mean, I'm sure there are tons of things that have changed, but nothing else I feel like blogging about. That's tough on Americans. We like our information in 3's. :)

There's one other thing I totally have to write about. I found out that my husband is a diaper snob. We're a Huggies family. I totally thought Ryan would think that diapers are diapers. That he'd roll his eyes at the idea of paying more for a specific brand name. But having an awesome man who changes his share of the messy little numbers means he has an actual opinion based on actual experience! The cheapies aren't the same. They're more likely to leak and they don't get the mess away from Wyatt's skin as well, so they're more of a pain to change. Heck, even Pampers don't measure up. It's Huggies or the highway. Talk about a conversation I never imagined having... :)

Our chubby tough guy at 4 1/2 weeks old: