HA! Schedule!? Yeah, right! I dont even know where to begin in trying to get this boy on a schedule of any kind, so if you have any tips or advice, I am ALL ears! I am a creature of habit and routine. Whitney follows my lead and likes schedules and predictability, too. I know Grady is only a month old, so I didnt expect to have his schedule figured out by now, and Im all about letting him determine when he eats, sleeps, etc at this stage, so he gets a bottle whenever he's hungry and he sleeps whenever he wants. I do wish we were a little closer to finding a somewhat solid eating schedule. Its hard to know if he's crying because he's hungry or crying because he's tired since he is all over the place with his eating right now. We'll get there.....and then Whitney will start school again in August, and any "schedule" or routine we have figured out will be tossed out the window :)
Activity:
There has been little news in the "activity" department this month :) Mr. Grady is still getting used to life on earth, and is pretty much still in this "lumpy" phase of childhood, where all they do is eat, sleep, and poop. Thankfully he has proven to travel fairly well, and doesnt mind OUR activities despite being 98% inactive himself. :)
Sleeping/Napping:
I have a handy app on my phone that I plug in all of Grady's daily info so I can keep track of the number of ounces he is eating each day, when his poops happen, and when he sleeps. There is a little bar graph in this app, and it is shaded in mostly blue....the color blue represents SLEEP. Again, like the whole routine/schedule thing, and like his eating habits so far, I am ready to see some sort of pattern form in his sleeping/awake hours. I vaguely remember someone (Shannon W?) telling me that babies tend to sleep for twice as long as they were awake...? Or something like that? So if he was up for 45 minutes, I could assume a 90 minute nap would follow. Whatever the advice was (ohh, how I wish I could remember it!), it proved accurate with Whitney and made my life super easy to plan/schedule around her naps and awake times. Right now, Grady can really only be awake for about 45 minutes before he gets over-stimulated and starts fighting his own urge to fall back to sleep. Poor guy already doesnt want to miss any of the action, but his little body just cant hang yet. He loves his room and just stares at the walls and Eric's fabulous paint job :) Whitney doesnt like it when Grady goes to sleep, so she was often found sneaking into Grady's room to check on him this month. :) Grady has a hard time falling asleep when there is a lot of chaos right now, so he will have to figure out how to adapt pretty quickly now that our house is permanently chaotic :) When he starts to ger squirmy, we can bring him to his room, turn on the white noise, and rock him a bit and that helps calm him down and get him some rest. We are still really working to get him to consistently take a binky since it calms him down so nicely and quickly when he finally decides to take it. But he isnt committed to any binks yet, so he often spits them out in his sleep. Right now, we have been putting Grady in his crib around 7pm where he will sleep til his next bottle. Then, we bring him to the pack n play next to our bed for the rest of the night. He is a puker, so I am grateful he can sleep in our room since I have been woken up by his puking more than once :( I am not sure when he will make the big leap to his own crib all night since the puking thing scares me!
Eating:
We are working to figure out Grady's formula situation since the transition from breastmilk to formula was a little rough on his belly. He ended up constipated and turning red and straining to poop, so after a pointless call to the pediatrician and some help from friends and Dr. Google, I made the decision to switch him to the gentle formula samples we had been given by my OB. After just one day we had a successful, non-painful poop and I decided to keep him on the gentlease. Unfortunately, the puking started during the constipation phase, as he would push so hard it would force his stomach to empty upwards instead of downward. Poor guy is a champ through it, never crying from the puke and no longer crying or struggling to poop. If we could get him on a regular "every three hours" or "every two hours" or heck, even "every five hours" eating plan, I think the puking would decrease. But righ tnow he will eat 3 oz, then want another ounce an hour later....then he'll wait four hours before the next bottle and only take 2 ounces. He's all over the place. Sometimes, he eats 3 ounces and then wants more, but then ends up puking half the bottle back up. Its like he doesnt have an "im full" sensation so he just keeps eating....but then other times its as though he is too lazy to take more than an ounce, despite being hungry enough to want 3 more ounces just 45 minutes later. We'll get there. I know a routine is coming, and Im trying to pay close attention to his signs and mood to make sure he's REALLY hungry, and not just bored/understimulated/overstimulated/cold/hot/tired/etc. Im hoping his two month update finds us talking about some sort of schedule forming, but for now, he runs the show :)
Personality:
As I said, this is what Eric affectionately refers to as "The Lump Stage" of childhood. Grady is sloooowly starting to give us more awake time, and in the brief moments we get to see his eyeballs, he is trying to coo and talk to us, but it comes out as more of a shout. He LOVES to look outside and be outside as often as possible. And he gives us some of the best, silliest facial expressions Ive ever seen from an infant! He sleeps through most of our outings, including 95% of his first trip to Disney World! He spent his one month birthday at Epcot, between the stroller, the carseat, and my arms, and he was happy 98% of the time. Whitney was an AMAAAAZING big sister, showing an over-abundance of patience as her mommy and daddy fumbled their way through two strollers, the heat, making bottles, waiting for changing stations to open up, and just the everyday crazies of Disney :) Both Bass kids were super well-behaved and made the trip enjoyable :)
I have been telling my close friends that I just hate to wish away the days, hoping for Grady to be more interactive or be on a schedule or give us a more heartfelt smile since I know I will miss these days when he is running around here like a lunatic....but I am excited to meet more of Grady as his personality grows and changes and let's us know who we are dealing with :)
Pictures:
April 2012: Whitney (3 years) and Grady (newborn)
May 2012: Whitney (3 yrs 1 month) and Grady (1 month)
April 2012: Sibling Chair Pics
May 2012: Sibling Chair Pics
Outtakes and Favorite pics from Grady's First Month:
(I dont normally take/post pics of crying babies, and I will break that rule this time simply because this was such a quick moment and Grady wasnt really losing his mind the way it appears in the pic....and Whitney's reaction to his short cry was priceless.)
Hard to believe this was just a month ago! I officially miss being pregnant :) LOVED it!
Its been a fun month! This pic, taken in the hospital, seems like just yesterday.
LOVE this memory!
He changes everyday, and seems like he has doubled his size since this picture was taken on the day we left the hospital.
Rock on, Brother!
He was just two days old and still sporting the swollen face. He looks totally different now!
He was checking out Whitney's baby picture, just staring at her :)
He tries so hard to keep his head lifted!
He looks giant to me in the picture :)
Go Sox!
He was trying to coo and talk to us but he's still struggling to find his voice. Cant wait to hear the babbles and giggles of a baby again!
The Chairman of the Board. He looks like a good combination of my baby pics and Eric's baby pics. I will have to fish out some of our pics in my spare time next life.
LOVE this pic of our kids :)
She is so in love with him, and just wants to chat with him all day long! Some things we hear repeatedly throughout the day:
"Where's Gwady? Why is he sleeping again? Can I hold him? Why is he sleeping again? Is Gwady sleeping? When is Gwady going to be awake?" She just cant wait for her little brother to play with her!
I took this pic on one of the first days I was home with both kids. He is deceptively cute, as that sweet, adorable face spent most of that day giving me a run for my money!
"OOOhhhhh! You thought two kids was gonna be EASY??!? Mwahahhahahaha! FOOOOLED YOOU!"
Working on his smiling techniques :)
He has spent the last month making some super silly faces!
Doesnt he make the best faces?!?!
Gee, I cant imagine where he gets these faces from!
When Whitney was born, we upgraded our camera within a month of her arrival. (Nothing fancy, but a decent camera that has lasted us three years now, surviving countless Disney trips, several vacations, and MANY drops on the ground...) With Grady, I upgraded to an Iphone less than two weeks before he was born. Therefore, most of his pictures are captured on my phone instead of on a legit camera, but they are so stinkin' cute I had to share :)
Seriously the seersucker is ridiculously cute.
Grady slept like this through our friend Grant's 3rd birthday party this month. Such a party animal!
And sadly, Grady wore this outfit for the last time yesterday. One of my favorites :)
Getting this all loaded and typed up took me WAY longer than I'd hoped, but I am planning to get all of our Mother's Day and Disney pics uploaded and blogged before the weekend since Im sure we will be filling up the camera with more pics when Eric's mom and stepdad get here to meet Grady on Friday!
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