Welcome to Hollewood

This kid has an uncanny ability to look like a different baby every five seconds.  Not just every morning when we peek in his crib and wonder what happened to our baby (who put this little boy in here?) but different angles, different lighting, and his many different expressions really change the way he looks.  Thank you to Eric, who always has the camera ready for an impromptu Saturday morning photo shoot.

January 15th, 2015.  Tyler was 5 months, 1 week, and 1 day.  We found his first tooth.

And today, we found the second one.

This kid just gets more personality every day.

He laughs and smiles.  He rolls over from front to back, and then spazzes out because he can’t roll back.  He’s viewing the world not only from his tummy but also upright in his Exersaucer and his Johnny Jumper (which apparently they’re not called that anymore but it seems that any moms of, well, a certain age, know exactly what I mean when I use that term!)  He LOVES Lilly.  He hasn’t started solid food yet, nor is he sleeping through the night.  He still spits up and he still doesn’t nap.  But the kid is just gosh-darn happy all.day.long.

He also has some new funny faces, including this one.  The lower-lip chew.

At five months Tyler is modeling his hat, a Christmas gift from Daddy, and his Patagonia fleece vest from the Taylors.  Every day Eric and I comment that he looks less and less like a little baby and more and more like a little boy.

There’s probably about 82 things I could write in this post but here are two.  Also, as I write this, Tyler is screaming in his room, not napping, on the floor.  Because all hell breaks loose if he is put in his crib.  The crib that he formerly slept in regularly, calmly, even adoringly.  So, we make sure the door is closed so at least Lilly can’t get too friendly with him while he’s “napping.”

Here, in Exhibit A, we see Tyler with his usual drool-soaked outfit.  Miss Val, the daycare lady, calls him “extra juicy.”  Why no bib?  20% I forget and 80% they aren’t as cute as his cute clothes.  Fail.

Here, in Exhibit B, we see Tyler unsafely fist-pumping while asleep in the Rock N Play. (He will sleep here, because it’s not the crib.)  I would like to note that I do strap him in. It’s just that, while screaming, he can kick and squirm his way out.  But then he’s actually asleep, so I watch him carefully for the duration of his sub-twenty minute naps.  Fail.

 

He’s incredible.  He laughs, and laughs, and laughs some more.  He looks into our eyes and smiles.  He is happy almost all of the time.  And when he’s not, his tiny bottom lip pouts out and makes us laugh.  Tyler, we’re one-third of the way to your first birthday.

Tyler’s spit-up issues have lessened.  It still happens often, but he mostly drools now. See?

 

Our handsome devil is three months old.  I wish you could see more of his adorable fleece vest (thanks, mom!) but instead you can mostly see his Old Navy socks (thanks, hand-me-downs!)

Tyler holds his head up like a champ and likes to grab our clothes, necklaces (me), and beards (Eric).  He doesn’t sleep through the night as he’s quite the nocturnal feeder.  He smiles, laughs, and has rolled over as evidenced by us finding him on his stomach, yet we’ve never caught him in the act.

He loves books and will even turn the pages.

He is a thumb-sucker.

We just think he is so dang cute!

Tyler is amazing.  Every day, he grows and changes.  We see smiles and the beginning of a laugh.  He had his two-month check-up and received his shots like a champ.  At 12 lbs, 2 oz, and 25 inches, Tyler is in the 75th %ile for weight and 97th %ile for length.  When height and weight are compared, he’s not even on the charts.  Such a tall, skinny guy right now! As I’m 5’7″ and Eric is about 5’8″, our pediatrician looked us up and down quizzically as he reviewed the charts on his iPad.  Eric remarked that Tyler seems to have inherited his (long) skinny legs and my lengthy torso…thus having the longer half of each of us!

Here he is at two months.

Thanks Nana for the festive hat!

I’ve been trying to write this for a few days, but Tyler prefers that I attend to him.  He’s been a bit fussy this morning, so I decided, hey if you’re going to cry anyway, I’m going to vacuum.  He fell asleep in his bouncy seat watching me.  Sigh.

The hospital told us not to worry about bathing Tyler too often in the early days.  There was his umbilical stump to contend with, not to mention the circumcision.  We did the sponge bath thing occasionally, as well as baby wipe baths.  Then he got older, his stump fell off, and he was perfectly able to take a bath in his pink bath tub.  Except we were kind of lazy about it.  We’d get home later than we thought, or he’d fall asleep unexpectedly in the evening.  So, he didn’t get a real bath for awhile.  This pattern continued for weeks. Continues, I should say.  How dirty can he really get when he’s always being held, in his car seat, or on the playmat?

Disgusting, is the answer.  Plenty of friends warned us about neck cheese, that nasty buildup that occurs in baby neck folds from dripped milk and errant spit up.  Eric (the bathmaster) scrubs his neck and behind his ears very well.  So it was a mystery when I dried Tyler with his adorable duck towel and rooted around for pajamas that he kind of stunk.  Reeked, actually.  I sniffed his teeny body up and down and finally discovered something so putrid I can hardly admit it.  The folds at the top of his thighs were dirty. Repulsive.  Filled with a whitish goo that was probably days weeks worth of pee, sweat, spit up, and diaper fuzz.  It was nasty.  I felt so bad for the poor kid and we swore not to let it happen again.  Fail #1.

Fail #2 has occurred, horrifically, on three occasions:  We drove around without buckling Tyler’s seatbelt.  Shamefully easy to do.  We’re walking him in the stroller, he’s asleep with a blanket over the car seat, we un-click from the stroller and re-click him into the car seat base…and drive off.  We get to our destination, go to get him out of the car, and our hearts sink.  How could we do that?!  Unlike upper leg cheese, this is actually illegal and we swore not to let it happen again, for reals.

Fail #3 belongs to me alone.  Tyler isn’t in any danger, but it’s an emotional fail that upsets me.  Like many moms, I combat the boredom (admit it, it is after awhile!) of nursing by playing on my phone.  I’m not sure there’s any articles on Huffpost that I haven’t read.  And of course Facebook.  And recently, I’ve looked away from the screen to glance at Tyler…and he’s watching me.  He’s watching me NOT watch him.  It’s heartbreaking, those tiny eyes looking at me while mine are “liking” somebody else’s baby photos.  I know he doesn’t know what I’m up to, but he does know that I’m not paying attention to him.  And that can’t happen again.  I’m sorry, Mr. T!

On a lighter note, here’s Fail #4.

We were enjoying an afternoon in the backyard, and I was brushing Lilly.  There was hardly any breeze, but when I looked over at Tyler, who was happily lounging on his playmat, a clump of Lilly’s fur was stuck to his mouth.  Oops!

 

Nope, not this one.  You’ll have to keep reading.  But these are cute, too.

Tyler’s first month went by, as all new parents say, SO QUICKLY!  Every day he wakes up and we’re like, whose baby is this?  He changes overnight!  He’s just over 10 lbs and has just about grown out of newborn-sized clothes.  I’d like to brag about all of his accomplishments, but so far am limited to 1. the boy can EAT and 2. he sleeps a 4 hour stretch and a 3 hour stretch at night, in his crib.  His eyes are still blue and most people say he looks like his daddy.  He takes a bottle occasionally and has apparently inherited his chugging skills from Eric.  All that eating at an alarming rate has one consequence: spitting up.  All.The.Time.  A dribble here, 2 ounces there; on my shirt, the couch, the floor, the car seat.  See below.

If you’re not laughing, maybe you can’t see the stalactite of regurgitated milk.  Eric managed to catch this during the one-month photo shoot in our living room.  Spit up.

All.The.Time.