01.31.2011 Evan sleeps through the night (sort of)!

Last night was the first time in 4+ months where we did not get up to comfort or feed Evan between 10:30pm (when he fell asleep) and 5:30 am.  He did wake up around 2:30 am and gave a few soft cries but quickly fell back asleep as he 'knew' he wouldn't be getting a feeding from us.  At 5:30 am, he woke up again and I didn't let him try to go back to sleep again as I knew he must be pretty hungry.  After feeding him about 5 oz of milk and changing his diaper, I put him back in the crib and he continued to sleep for a few more hours.  Wow, he's really growing up and learning to sleep through the night!  It only took 3 days for him to learn to skip the night feeding as well as being comforted to fall back asleep.

Yesterday we gave him some brown rice cereal using a new baby spoon (soft plastic tip).  Here's how he reacted :)

01.30.2011 Activity Jumper

Now that Evan is able to sit on his own, we're starting to help him exercise his legs so he gains strength and coordination.   One of the better toys for this is an activity jumper, where the baby is seated upright with feet touching ground and is surrounded by various toys and sights/sounds.  Here he is trying out the activity jumper for the first time (1/29):

 And here is Evan doing what he does best: looking cute!  (For more photos, see here)

 

 

 

01.30.2011 Skipping the middle-of-night feedings

It's 2:36 am, I'm in the baby room in the glider chair in the dark, waiting for Evan to drift deeper off to sleep.  It's the second night in a row that I'm not feeding him during the middle-of-the-night, in training him to skip it entirely.  He has for quite a while been used to feeding at around 9pm - 11pm and then would wake up around 1 am - 3am.  In the past, we would give him a feeding and he would fall back asleep very quickly.  The pediatrician and many other sources indicate that once the babies are fairly developed (>11/12 pounds), they really don't need this feeding and are doing so more out of habit.  So if we (adults) wanted to get more sleep during the night, we could train him to sleep through without a 2am meal.  It would be better for Evan as sleep for longer continuously.

Yesterday when I first got up to his soft cries at 1:00 am or so, I first changed his diaper which was pretty full. I hoped he would then feel much more comfortable and would drift back to sleep quickly, but that was not to be.  He was used to a feeding at this time and asking him to skip that habit was not going to be easily accepted.  He cried loudly for a minute or two, found his fingers and calmed down.  Then he cried loudly again just when I thought he had managed to fall asleep.  It took considerable effort to not pick him up or even just comfort him by patting him within the crib.  It took a good 45 minutes or so before he finally fell asleep soundly.  He cried maybe 5 total minutes within this period and struggled and protested quite a bit by kicking and knocking the mattress with his arms; not in anger or anything but just an expression of trying to adapt to a new habit being introduced to him.  I ended up sleeping in his room for the next few hours to make sure he did not awake in panic or otherwise.  He woke up later around 6am when I did feed him finally.  He had gone about 7.5 hours without a feeding.

Tonight he has struggled to fall back asleep as well, but nowhere as strongly as yesterday.  He cried 3 to 4 times but fairly quickly calmed himself down by sucking on his fingers each time.  It's still taking him well over 35 minutes to fall back into deeper sleep but his fussiness tonight is perhaps just 30% of last night.  Now I know he can definitely handle going 7-8 hrs without a feeding, the next few nights I'll see if he can fall back asleep without my picking him up for a diaper change at all.  Evan has been really good at accepting new routines we establish, it is probably harder on us than on him, as hearing him cry with tears isn't easy to do.  Luckily, he has rarely cried that hard for any prolonged time, we're so fortunate!

Ok, let's see what time he'll wake up this morning.  Hopefully no earlier than 6am, which would mean he would've gone 8.5 hrs since the last feeding.  We'll see....

(Update 9:54 am.  Evan slept till 7am for a total of 9.5 hrs since the previous meal.  I gave him a bottle at this time and then he slept for a few more  hours soundly.  He's just starting to wake up now...)

01.28.2011 Evan's first taste of solid food

Last night after a regular breast milk feeding, we gave Evan a few tiny spoonfuls of mushy brown rice cereal.  He was definitely startled by the new texture, not knowing quite what to do with it.  But he did move his mouth a little and I think swallowed maybe a gram or so, and spit out the rest :)  It was his first taste of something other than breast milk.  We'll try it again a few more times to see if he likes it.  We also got some "1st stage" vegetable purees for him to try later as well.    He's sleeping pretty well now after a fussy week a few weeks back.  After playing with him till 9 or 9:30pm, we would put him in the crib (with or without a feeding, depending on when he last ate) and in a few minutes, he would fall asleep on his own with little to no fuss at all.  Our next objective is to help him sleep through the night without feeding again at 2-3 am. 

01.27.2011 Evan's 4 months checkup

Evan had his 4 months checkup yesterday; he was in perfect health.  He also got his second round of immunization shots which he handled beautifully again - crying for only a few seconds after the shots.  His weight is now 16 lb 3.5 oz, and height is 25 inches.  Below is a graph (see link to do your own calculations).

 

He had his second swim later last night and although he seemed to still enjoy it, he might've been a little too tired to play (after the doctor's visit early in the day and getting all the shots).  After the swim (8pm), he went to sleep and didn't wake up till almost 1:30 am when he only ate about 3.5 oz.  It was a little strange since he last ate at 6:00pm, so that lasted him more than 7.5 hrs and still he wasn't hungry?  He woke up again at about 6:20 am and this time ate much more - about 5 oz, so looks like he's back to 'normal' now.  Next time no swimming when he has had a tough day!

01.25.2011 Evan's first swim

Video of Evan's first swim two days ago:

01.23.2011 Evan day 126 - graduates to nipple size #3, Santa Cruz, Swimming

Many things about Evan can be described with "3"s right now:  clothing (3-6 months), diaper (Pampers #3), and now (Avent) bottle nipple size #3.  He had been using nipple size #2 for the past two months or so and drinking a 4.5 oz portion would take about 7 minutes.  Now with the #3 nipple, it would take only about 3-4 minutes.  He's still getting used to it so he's taking in a lot of air.  Hopefully he'll adapt to it.

Yesterday I dressed Evan in a 2-piece outfit for the first time; he had been wearing one-piece sleeper/play outfits until this time.  He looked pretty cute in the two-piece, here're a few photos:

And here are some photos of Evan's first times sitting by himself.

We took Evan to Shoreline Park for the first time yesterday afternoon.  June carried him in the Bjorn baby carrier for part of the time, he quite liked it.
Today, we took him to Santa Cruz and the Natural Bridges state park, it was my first time there as well. This is where we would've seen thousands of Monarch butterflies had it been a few weeks earlier.  We only saw a handful today.  Here are a few photos from there:

After the Santa Cruz trip, Evan had his first ever swim.  The swimming pool had enough water so his feet didn't touch the bottom.  He didn't complain one bit when we put him in nor anytime during the 17 minutes or so that he was in the pool, he seemed to like it actually and made a few splashes here and there.

01.20.2011 Evan's 4 months growth

Day to day, it's difficult to see the changes in even a baby, but if you put the photos over the past months side by side, you get a really good idea how fast one grows and changes:

01.19.2011 Evan sitting up by himself!

Evan is 4 months old today, he learned to sit on his behind and supporting himself with his arms about 2 days ago.  He had been able to sit a little but not without a lot of assistance and couldn't really lift his head, but today he distinctly supported himself so we didn't need to assist him at all.  He's definitely getting inquisitive - even while sitting and clearly not very stable, he still waved his arms around in attempts to touch objects around him.  He's able to play the toy guitar quite readily now, especially the red dial that he can turn.

Evan's been laughing a lot lately when I would say random words to him.  It kinda of started when i said "superman" one day; he would just crack up and laugh so innocently that it made me smile and laugh, too.  Now we make it a bit of a routine to laugh each night.  Here's what he sounds like during one of those routines... it lifts my spirit every time i listen to it :)

 

And here's a clip of Evan's first visit to the Mountain View farmer's market:

Monday (1/17) was MLK day, I took Evan to Rancho San Antonio for a short hike up the PG&E trail - only about half a mile up and half mile down.  He was awake for the most part of the hike.  Hopefully he'll be able to crawl or walk there pretty soon.  Here's the hike from (mostly) Evan's perspective, that is - the camcorder was placed inside the stroller at about his eye level:

01.17.2011 Evan day 120

Evan is almost 4 months old and had his first trim (hair cut) last week (1/10/2011).  I didn't really want him trimmed but others felt that it would promote his hair to grow more quickly (asian myth?).  Anyhow, if he is ok with it, that's fine, and he seemed not too mind too much.  Here's what he looked like right after the trim:

After more than 3 months of not knowing what he is like when fussy at night, we finally experienced it this past week.  For some reason (still unknown), he began to scream at night when placed on his back to sleep at night.  He never used to do that, he would fuss and holding him and walking around a bit would usually calm him down enough for him to fall asleep on his own.  But this past week he has protested being on his back by scream fairly high pitch and then crying.  We would have to hold him for a bit to calm him down.  We did that before as well, but the difference this time is that once he calmed down, we would put him down again and he would again start screaming and crying.  He was having trouble going to sleep on his own.  He would swing his arms around and especially the right hand would look like he was grabbing his ear, so we thought maybe he had an infection and that the ear was hurting when placed on his back.  But that didn't seem likely as he didn't complain during the day when my in-laws were taking care of him.

Something had happened last week (starting around the time he had the haircut - but we really don't think it's the haircut itself, though one never knows for sure of course). I think he has gotten used to falling asleep in something that moves, whether that be a swing or stroller.  We need to teach him to sleep on his own w/o movement.  This is going to be heartbreaking if we take the 'let him cry it out' route, where we dont attend to his cries rightaway, so he learns that crying wont bring mommy and daddy.

Here are a few pictures of Evan before we went to the Mt. View farmers market and then Grand Century shopping mall (SJ) yesterday.  He had a terrible time at the shopping mall as he was scared to no end when he was being changed in the restroom.  It was too loud and too much commotion and he cried a lot.  Next time, no busy malls where he might be startled.

01.03.2011 Evan day 106, video monitor

It used to be that baby monitors were only audio, like a walkie-talkie.  Nowadays, that's just plain 'old' technology.  Today's monitors generally include video (wireless of course) and is in fact actually quite good.  With video, you know for sure what the baby is up to (or not); no need to guess if a little bit of crying is accompanied by frantic arm waves.  The only down side of video baby monitors (other than its cost) is that you know too much and it takes a bit of getting used to being able to see everything that your baby is doing and not respond to every little kick or cry-whisper.  In case you're wondering, yes - you can hook up this video feed to the internet, like a webcam; but that's an optional kit that costs extra :)  In another year, there won't be an receiver like this, but instead just a camera, and the receiver will be your smart phone app.   Gosh, if that isn't already a product, someone should make one!  It can use your home's wireless network so it's not broadcast to the internet, but of course that should also be an option (secured of course) if you choose so.

Here are a few pics of baby Evan on his first new year's day:

 

 

 And our new year's day dinner (hotpot):