Week 12 - Routine and Exception

Tomorrow Noah will enter his 13th week. His awake/nap/sleep schedule during both day and night starts to become more predictable.

• Morning starts around 7ish, almost always super happy and talkative
• Stay awake and mostly happy the entire morning with little 10-20min naps here and there. Wants to do lots of activities, playing with mommy or daddy, jumperoo, and going around in the baby carrier. 
• Have a long nap (2-3 hours) in the early afternoon, then woke up, usually happy, stay active until early evening
• Early evening(starts around 5, 6ish)  is the worst part of day for Noah. He tends to be really fussy. This is the time when he demands to be held by mommy, and cry bloody murder otherwise.
• Fell asleep around 8ish. Before midnight he would wake up every 30-45 min for a little cuddle, then go back to sleep. 
• Sometimes request a evening bottle before mid-night, sometimes not.
• usually woke up once during the night around 1 or 2. then sleep till 5ish.

We started to put him to sleep in his crib a couple of days ago. He has been doing pretty well.

Eating is another matter altogether. Sometimes he would take the bottle without any fuss even when he was not drowsy. But sometimes he acts really confused, one minute he is sucking on the bottle vigorously as if he was famished, the next minute he would spit the bottle out and wriggling like crazy and crying too, then a few minutes later, he would drink up the entire bottle peacefully. 

but as long as he is hydrated(producing enough wet diapers) and not losing weight, i guess we need not worry.

Another development is that he started to pay attention to toys and the dog (cats are still not in his radar yet, maybe cuz they are too small and mostly stay on the ground which is not yet in his line of sight.)

Overall, he has become a much happier baby than his newborn stage. I finally feel like I'm getting a full night of sleep and can get through the day without any naps.

Getting Vertical - 站起来了

第十一个星期
Noah 现在喜欢站在大人的腿上当然需要我们用手托在他的腋下, 东张西望. 小腿很有劲,几乎可以承受自己的重量了.出生时的"罗圈儿腿"已经直了. 背靠垫子枕头坐着也将就. 不喜欢躺着.
看东西开始看细节.特别喜欢冰箱门上的定时器.我想是因为上面三个小小的红色按钮很醒目的缘故.

开始津津有味地舔自己的小拳头. 好在只是偶尔为之.

前面说到小家伙不肯吃奶瓶. 网上研究了一下说是两个月大的小孩开始有了自我意识. 在自我意识成型前, 他们靠条件反射来决定行为. 知道了自我,就有了好恶的认识, 能够选择了.所以有的小孩就会选择不要吃奶瓶.  所以原来这是他第一个作为个体的自我意识! 但愿这不是将来他变成青少年时的预演.

The Eleventh Week
Noah now loves standing in our lap and look around. His little legs are very strong, could almost bare his own weight completely. The "bowl legs" during birth have straightened out.  Occasionally leaving him propped sitting up on a sofa/chair/bed will do too. He really enjoys the view of being vertical.

He could also see many finer details on objects. One of his favorite objects in the house is our timer on the frig. He could stare at it for over a minute whenever we walk through the kitchen. I think it is probably the three bright red but tiny buttons on the timer that caught his eyes.

Started licking his own fists (especially the right fist, right handed?). So far he doesn't do it that often, so we let him enjoy it.

Previously i just said Noah refuses bottle feeding. After some research, turned out it is because 2 month usually is the time when baby started to become self-aware. They can now make a conscious decision based on preference.

New Challenge - Refusing Bottle

Around his 3rd week, Noah started crying and refusing food (both bottle and breast). He would even cry in the middle of his sleep. We were perplexed.  Then we were told by nurse and doctor that it might be gas. So we burped him more, and it seemed to have worked.

Slowly, we mastered the art of burping and learned to co-op with his crying in the middle of a feeding or from the middle of his sleep. By 6th week, we were cruising. Things are looking up.

Then Noah thought of something new to keep us on our toes.  He suddenly started to refuse bottle a couple of weeks agp. Not formula itself, just the form of delivery of formula - the bottle.  Because we could sneak the bottle feeding in while he was drowsy or asleep. So we know the formula itself, the taste or whatever, was not the reason for his refusal.

He just decided that he didn't like bottle.  Merely putting the rubber nipple to his lips would cause him to cry bloody murder.  The only time he would drink from a bottle were when he was super super hungry AND when he was drowsy. Missing either element won't do.

Up until now we have always said that Noah is a reasonable baby.  But this time he went too far. we started to let him cry out when he threw another fit at the bottle.  We put him on the swing and turn on the mobile. The funny thing is that in between crying he would angrily "talk" to his own reflection, as if doing a self-therapy and eventually he would calm himself down. Then we would pick him up again and try to rock him to sleep in our arms (maybe sneak in the bottle then).

Feeding suddenly becomes difficult, especially now I'm preparing to go back to work. He would HAVE TO take the bottle even for breast milk during the day when i'm at work.

Hopefully this is just a phase that he would outgrow soon. :(

On the positive side, sometimes he refuses the bottle with a smile.  It was rather cute, and one couldn't get mad at him when he does that.

update 9/22/2010:
Did a little more research on this. Seemed like a common problem, babies would take bottle when they were a few weeks old because they were "feeding reflexively" then. When they reach 2 month, they became self-aware, and starts to make decisions. One of such decision is the preference of breast over bottle.  And looks like we are trying all the tips given here, all we need is patience and time. By the time i'm out of the house and he is hungry, he will accept bottle eventually. Sure hope so. It is really frustrating.
http://www.pamf.org/children/newborns/feeding/refusal.html

小人儿坐大椅子

Noah can sit up a bit with back support now. He could also put some weight on his own feet when we lift him up.  He really enjoys this new point of view.

2 Month Check Up - 两个月例行检查

Weight 体重: 6.379kg(14lb 1oz) 92%
Height 身高:  0.622m (2' 0.5") 92%
Head Circumference 头围: 42cm (16.54") 90%

百分比的意思是在同龄的小孩里, 每一百个里只有八个比我们高比我们胖,只有十个头比我们大!
真真是个大胖小子. 米粥说我们要小心点控制饮食不能再肥下去了...

检查身体时倒是很开心. Happy Baby on doctor's examination table.

Getting shots. 今天还打了三针预防针. Noah虽然打的时候哭得很厉害,打完了就好了.


打完预防针回家后有点发烧,看来接下来两天大家都睡不成觉了...
Noah gets a low fever after the shots, really fussy all afternoon. guess no one gets to sleep the next couple of nights...

温暖的九月－Warm September

九月很温暖，几乎天天一早起来家里就阳光灿烂，一直灿烂到太阳落山．．．
小人儿“词汇量”大增．

Warm September. We have brilliant sunlight almost everyday, from sunrise to sundown, from living room to bedrom...
Noah's babbling now has more sound combination. His emotion/expression also starta to become more subtle, instead of stark black and white, there are now shades of gray...interesting...

劳动节长周末 labor day weekend：

九月十一, today 9/11：

The Eighth Week - Settling Down

Noah will be 8 weeks old on the coming Monday. He has figured out a routine that he likes for the morning and the evening. Afternoon is the period that he couldn't make up his mind about.

In the morning he is awake most of the time, happy, talkative and mostly self-sufficient. rarely fuss. Yesterday we took the advantage of his morning calm and took him with us to City Hall where we picked up his birth certificate.

In the evening starting around 8pm, he sleeps till 11:30 at least. Occasionally wakes up for burp or cuddle.

In the afternoon, he alternates between sleep through most of it and stay awake and then fuss since he wants to sleep but couldn't.

From mid-night to 2am he alternates between sleeping like a log and stay wide awake and happily babbling away by himself.

His usual feeding time at night has settled into 2amish, 4amish, and 6amish.

He is close to 24 inches long, and weight in the upper 13lbs based on our own method of weighting with his cloth and diaper on.  As Claudia has noticed from the pictures, he has grown chubby! His two fat cheeks resembles a chipmonk cartoon! ha. Now i start to worry whether he has gone from underweight 5 weeks ago to overweight!  :-/