oooh

Guess what I did this morning??
I took a shower when I was home alone with the baby. This is a big accomplishment for the mommy of the baby who will only sleep in the sling or the swing during the day. I absolutely wouldn't leave him in the swing while I went upstairs to shower so I would always wait until Eric was home. But sometimes I'd forget to shower in the evening and not wake up early enough in the morning the next day to shower and then feel gucky all day. So today I bit the bullet and brought the vibraty chair upstairs and stuck him right outside the bathroom door staring in and he sat quiet the whole time. I don't know if it's just that he likes the vibraty chair sometimes, or if it's the sound of the water and the new view that worked - but yay to a clean mommy!! Ah... what interesting things now seem like accomplishments ;)

New friend for Kiernan

My friend Vicky had a baby on Friday and she had a boy - yay! They only live a few blocks away so I'm so excited that our little boys will have each other as playmates as they get older :)

Maman kangaroo

Have I mentioned how much I love my maman kangaroo wrap? I don't know what I would do without it! Kiernan often falls asleep in it - which is a bonus since when he's awake I can't get anything done because he needs constant bouncing and entertaining (or feeding) and he can come along for fun activities too like vaccuming with daddy and raking with mommy! :)

Don't worry about it

So we had Kiernan's 1 month checkup yesterday (a little late :) and I had my list of concerns to bring up to the doctor and pretty much got a "don't worry about it" on every count. hehe
I'm not to worry about the rash on his forehead - it'll go away, or the ingrown toenails - they'll work themselves out, the green and orange poo - meh, no worries either. So all in all - Kiernan is a fabulous and wonderful baby (I'm quoting the doctor here). He weighed in a little less than at the wellbaby clinic at the doctor's at 10 lbs 4 oz which puts him in the 25 percentile for weight, but measures 22.5 inches (2 inches more than at birth) putting him in the 75th percentile for height. Tall and skinny perhaps? Ah, the gangly teenage years should be fun for him :)

bra

I'm really tired of wearing a bra ALL the time. My boobs are so ginormous that the bras I to wear have to be relatively restrictive so wearing them day in and day out gets to be quite uncomfortable. What a pain!

Wellbaby clinic

We went to the wellbaby clinic today and Kiernan ways 10 lbs 6 oz. I knew he was getting really big! :)

5 hours!

Kiernan slept 5 hours in a row last night! FIVE! FIVE!

This was after a 3 hour freak out where I had to nurse him for 2 hours straight otherwise he screamed at the top of his lungs - but still - I don't care - VERY impressive.

Plus, we've managed to get him to sleep in bed with us for an extra hour or two in the morning. I know, I know, seems like we're setting ourselved up for problems later, but until he has a mommy who isn't exhausted ALL the time, I'm willing to do these little things. He's still sleeping in the bassinet the whole night, it's only after it's light outside that we let him into bed with us.

So yay to Kiernan sleeping more :)

Like Mother like son :)

Noisy baby

I'd heard that babies made a lot of noise in their sleep and that's one of the reasons they get moved into their own rooms. The first night Kiernan started groaning in his sleep a couple of weeks ago I learned how true that can really be. The kid makes a TON of noise, and never wakes up. I think he permanently thinks he needs to poop for hours on end and pushes and pushes and pushes and so he has to make the pushing noises and he has to make the "i'm frustrated that I'm not actually pooping" noises. All in all, it makes a lot of noise. I've stopped always waking up to it, but that means he has to actually cry a lot of the time when he actually wakes up to wake me up. Oh well. Only another few more weeks until we consider moving him into his room - I'm still not ready :)

Mommy as fabulous singer!

I'm not a good singer - many people could attest to that. But my son smiles at my songs... or even better... falls asleep to them. Yay to mommy as fabulous singer! :)
I'm digging out all the old songs my dad used to sing me ... Irish rover songs, and Kingston trio songs, and you know, all your classic baby tunes. teehee

Chirp chirp chirp

The last week and a half have been amazing - we've so many changes in Kiernan. He's suddenly talking all the time, or as Eric calls it, chirping, when he's in a good mood (which unfortunately isn't often enough ;), he's holding his head up quite a bit, he's figured out how to get his fist into his mouth when he's upset and he looks not only alert a lot of the time, but really aware. He looks at you and he will track you if you move. You're not just some random blur passing by anymore. My favourite is that he's figured out where the milk comes from and will position himself on anyone in the approximate correct position and open his mouth. He looks like a little bird waiting for the worm. OH! And he's smiling! I'm positive there are times it's not just gas now.
Imagine, I'm excited that he's looking at me and sucking on his fist - how out of this world thrilled am I going to be when he crawls, walks or talks?!?
Look how much bigger and older he looks:

A month old!

As much as I can't imagine life before Kiernan - I still can't believe he's already a month old. And he's changed so much already. Lately he is so alert and follows you around with his eyes. He clearly "gets" things a little bit better already and loves to look around at the world. And despite the lack of sleep and the sometimes rough moments - this is the most amazing experience in the world :) *gush gush, I love my son, gush gush*

Work

I was talking to someone of an older generation this past weekend and encountered my first negative response to me going back to work. When I mentioned I'd be going back to work next summer she just looked at me in this disapproving way. I said "he'll be a year old by then" and she said "but they're still so little then!"
She never outright said "that's horrible" but you could tell that's what she was thinking. And it made me feel a bit guilty! I can't imagine how hard and guilt-ridden it must have been to go back to work years ago when the overall mentality was that it wasn't good. Oh well...

Comfy chair

For the last month I've been feeding Kiernan in our room on a Poang that we bought at a garage sale a couple of years ago. It's a great chair for sitting back in, a great chair for bouncing the baby in too, but a horrible chair for breast feeding. I end up hunched forward and my posture is horrible and I was getting back spasms that killed!
So we decided to get a glider... something that had a nice straight back on it so I wouldn't be hunching. We got it last night and I love it - perhaps a bit too much? Everytime I got up to feed Kiernan in the night I ended up falling to sleep in it for half an hour, or an hour or more! Good thing the chair has such good support that Kiernan seems quite safely supported in my arms as I keep taking these snoozes :)

Glimpse into the future?

Doesn't this feel like it could be Kiernan in 2 or 3 years from now instead of now? :)

he strikes again

The K man loves a clean diaper - that's right, as soon as we change him, he fills the clean one. Or maybe I should say he hates a clean diaper!
This morning's adventure began when I didn't anticipate his aim and he peed all down the wall - then as soon as I changed him he filled the new diaper - and filled it well. I knew babies went through a lot of diapers - but I really didn't get just how many! :)

Faulty seal

My baby seems to have come with a slightly defective seal ;)

Whenever he is tired, or distracted we have the joyful experience that as he eats, he lets the milk trickle out the other side of his mouth. This is FABULOUS for my nursing pillow (which gets soaked) or even better if I nurse in bed (for my sheets). So now I always need to nurse with extra layers of blankets between Kiernan and whatever surface we're using. Fun!

They need to make all nursing pillows with removable covers!

What a big boy

Kiernan and I went to the wellbaby clinic to have him weighed this afternoon. The well baby clinics are for babies 3 months and younger and they are for an hour and a half once a week. Kiernan and I were the 26th to arrive! Lots of new babies :)
Kiernan weighed in at 8 lbs 8.5 oz so he's getting really big really fast. Yay to constant breast feeding :P

The bad days are very tiring

Kiernan had a bad spell this weekend. This may, or may not, have been done to him intentionally by me.
After a couple of really bad nights last weekend and after finding out that there is a family history of having an intolerance to cow milk protein I stopped having dairy for the entire week. Kiernan had pretty good nights all week following that. Then on Saturday night, to test that all of this wasn't just coincidence, I had a bunch of dairy. Mid-way through the night Kiernan suddenly got fussy and it didn't stop until about midnight last night.
The main "symptom" if you will is that he seems to be really gassy and need to poop but not be able to. He forces with all of his might - to no avail. I don't know if he gets too tense or fussy to relax and just do it... but it got progressively worse throughout the day and he didn't have a bowel movement from mid afternoon yesterday until this morning. He seems to have relaxed quite a bit now and is doing better.
So I don't know if the milk was to blame or not (the after effects lasted longer than I would have expected had it been that) or if it was merely a coincidence. If all goes well today, Kiernan and I are going to walk over to a well baby clinic at 1:30 this afternoon to have him weighed and to quiz the public health nurses on all the funny things about babies I don't understand and to make sure Kiernan is doing just fine.
The good news is... he seems to be doing pretty well this morning. It's 9am and he seems to be falling asleep again which means I can go back to bed to sleep - yay! The next challenge once we wake up will be finding and preparing something for myself to eat while he wants to eat and not be left alone ;) At least I got a shower in this morning before Eric left for work. hehe.
It's amazing how different your life and priorities and challenges change - no matter how much you know it's going to happen, until you're actually spending your days trying to figure out how to find the time to bathe and trying to decide what clothing would be most appropriate for your child given the weather, you don't really know ;)