Entertaining Baby

Sunday, 11 November 2007

Went to 7 am yoga this morning, since I didn't make it yesterday. It was a great workout. If I can go at least on the weekend, I feel so much better. But, hopefully, I'll be able to go a couple times during the week too as my mother-in-law has offered to babysit while I workout. Besides not being as flexible as I used to be when I was a regular a year ago, I now get completely engorged about halfway through practice. Alexis (the owner of the yoga studio), who recently became a new mommy too, and I laugh about it. I was laying on my side, rather than on my back like everyone else, in between poses, and the teacher asked me what was wrong. I told her, "I'm engorged!" But not having children, she didn't know what that meant. So, I told her (and the entire class of 40 people) that I'm breastfeeding, and she said, "Oh, I see, a little tender." It was kind of funny because she got all confused after that and started talking about breasts.

Chris and I did laundry the rest of the day, while I entertained and changed the spit-up and poopy baby all day. Then Chris started cooking his chicken (with his special recipe of salad dressing in the "wonder grill", as we'd like to call it) for his coworker get-together. We got ourselves and Chase ready and headed off to his friend's house. His unit at work decided to have a potluck with an Italian theme. So, we enjoyed baked spaghetti, spaghetti squash salad, Italian chicken (Chris' contribution), other pastas, and cupcakes and jello for dessert (go figure, but there were a lot of kids there, so the confetti cupcakes and finger jello were a hit!). Chris' boss Sandy loved holding Chase (and held him and put him to sleep most of the night), and other coworkers held him too while we played Scene It after dinner. Surprisingly, Chris knew a lot of movie trivia and we won the game. Chase was passed out from all the excitement I think. We called it a night close to 11 pm and headed home.

Chase is sleeping better through the night these days. He tends to get real fussy between 7 - 8 pm, unless there are lots of people entertaining him, then sometimes he'll just play and wear himself out. He eats again at about 11:30 pm, and then he'll go to sleep in his crib (which he's still sleeping in the pack-n-play) until about 3:30 am, eat again, and then sleep until 7:30 or 8 am. What's even better is that when he wakes up in the morning, he doesn't cry anymore. He's so interested in his mobiles and bright colors, that he'll play in his crib for a long time until I hear him and come inside to change him and feed him. We'll play in the morning for a couple hours before he takes a nap, then he'll usually be up for most of the day, taking a couple of afternoon naps as well.

He is growing new hair, a dark patch on the front center part of his head. I was commenting on how it's growing forward, and Chris said, "Oh, just like my hair!" "Great," I said. "He's going to look like you even more with your hair style too?!"

He loves his toy from my coworker Lori. He holds it with his hands and sucks on the colorful tubes. He always goes to town with the sucking! And, he loves sitting and playing in the rocker that Marissa and Nate gave us. He wasn't too into it when he was younger, but now, he loves playing with the hanging toys and grabbing on to them. In fact, he must have wore himself out, because for the first time, he actually fell asleep in it just now (though he keeps startling himself when his body twitches and he accidentally hits the rattles.)

This past week, I had fun making him laugh and giggle. He's so alert and curious about everything around him. He wants to check everything out when we're in a new surrounding (which makes it hard when I'm nursing him because he often gets distracted and wants to look at everything. (And if I use my nursing cover, he loves the design and pattern so much that he just stares; and if I look at him, he just smiles and laughs.) It's so fun to watch him grow!