happy baby
Evan is starting to change already. He is discovering his world – looking around more, making eye contact with us and with strangers at the mall, smiling more often, starting to coo, and occasionally giggling (OK, he did that twice). Yesterday morning I put Evan on the bed so Jerry could watch him while I took a shower. Jerry opened his eyes and saw Evan staring at him with a huge, gummy smile on his face. What a great way to wake up! Later that day I was changing Evan’s diaper (which he normally hates), and he gave me a long, heavenly smile.

He still fusses, but it’s been awhile since he cried for hours on end. Although it’s mean to say so, he’s really cute when he’s angry. He pumps his legs up and down and then gets his arms into it. I gave him a bath yesterday, and before he decided if he liked it or not, he started in with the legs… he looked like he was riding a tricycle.

Another cute thing he does: he puckers. Right now he is being held by his nana (which is the only reason I have time to write this), and he’s sound asleep with a perfect pucker to his lips. He also does this before he eats and when I’m changing him. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s cute.

I think we’re starting to solve some of the mysteries that make up Mr. Evan. For awhile there, he would only sleep while being held. I would hold him on my tummy while we slept at an incline. And while I could sleep, I couldn’t sleep very deeply. But whenever I put him down in his bassinette, he would cry. Finally I learned that if I wait until he’s in a very deep sleep, I can put him down and he’ll sleep there. (I’m sure this is obvious to every other parent out there, but it took us 5 weeks to figure it out.) He slept in his bassinette the last two nights in a row and only cried when he was hungry. It was blissful!

I’ve started going to this new mom’s support group at Kaiser on Mondays. Many of the “new” moms have babies that are almost a year old, which speaks to the success of the group. There are about 10-15 moms on any given week, and they bring their babies and go around the room and ask about things like the mysterious rash on their baby’s neck, how to get baby to sleep through the night, or how to solve this or that breastfeeding problem. One mom asked a series of questions about her 6-week old, and I felt like she was talking about Evan. Every question she had, from the baby not wanting to sleep without being held, to eating very very frequently and crying for hours on end, sounded like Evan. By the time they got to me, I didn’t have any questions to ask because they’d all been answered. It made me realize we’re not alone.

Oh, one more cute Evan story: I was holding him over my shoulder on the couch, and I pulled him away from me to look at his face. His eyes were very wide, filled with wonder, transfixed on something very interesting, which seemed to be moving in circles. I looked behind me and there was a black fly. So his eyesight is pretty good, and flies are apparently very fascinating!