Smile for the Camera...

This week has been marked by an overwhelming increase in Billy's sense of awareness regarding his surroundings. His improvement in general motor function is apparent, as well as his vision. He now clearly locks onto you across the room and will follow you and the sound of your voice anywhere using both his head and his eyes. You'll catch him staring at the dog now, only to momentarily break into a smile when Hunter moves. He's grasping quite well with his hands, too. They're open about 50% of the time, but he still grabs with all four fingers at once, like a mitten. Put something in his hands, like a plastic key ring with teething keys on it and he'll fling that sucker across the room after shaking it around a bit. Still a bit out of control, but definitely clear development in this area. He's also firing those legs constantly. Looks like he's peddling a bike most of the time he's awake after he's eaten. His length has reached 23.5 inches, which keeps him in the 75th percentile. He is now in the 75th percentile for both length and weight.

Billy has also started shoving his entire fist and/or forearm into his mouth. He's still either not figured out how to suck his thumb or has no desire to start. Either way, this fist-in-mouth thing seems to be a way for him to calm himself. He doesn't seem hungry when he does it, but it does seem to relax him. When he's doing this, if he can get near one of your knuckles, he'll use that instead. He's really not that picky. His interaction with us has improved quite a bit, as well. We're actually going to send the video this week of the baby laughing and giggling as he just hangs out. His vocalization has continued to develop quite well.

On the sleeping through the night subject, Billy has broken through another critical milestone. He's now sleeping five to five and a half hours right when you first put him down. Then he'll eat and get changed and go back to sleep, at which point he's out for two to two and a half hours. Which means he can go seven to eight hours with just getting up once now. The issue seemed to be that Antoinette was afraid his crying would wake me at night, so at the first sign of fuss, being the light sleeper that she is, she would immediately get him and take him to eat. Well, a couple nights ago, she was pretty tired and decided to let him fuss a bit until he really started to cry. Well, he fussed for a couple minutes and fell right back to sleep for another two hours. Turns out that this middle of the night mini-fuss session can be a sign of a baby transitioning himself into deep sleep. When we were getting him to eat, we were actually preventing this deep sleep state from occurring. Lesson learned.

Antoinette had her post delivery doctor visit and the doctor said that she was giving Antoinette no restrictions. She said she could hardly tell Antoinette had a baby at all 6 weeks ago and that both her and the baby looked great. Antoinette can start lifting weights and running/walking again. She can also paint, which Antoinette has been dying to do, but did say that we should wait a minimum of 6 months before trying for #2, primarily because the best case scenario is for the uterus to have a chance to shrink all the way back to its original size and basically rest and repair itself. She also said that her guess was that Billy is going to be tall based solely on the length of his hands and the size of his feet. Looks like he got Dad's feet and Mom's hands, but its still early.

We finally finished Billy's room. He's not using it as strictly his bedroom just yet, which we hope we can transition him at three months, but we still wanted to get it done. Antoinette decided to order these giant wall print animals and make the room a jungle/zoo theme. Now we have huge giraffes, elephants, monkeys, palm trees, and stuffed animals all over his room. It actually looks very nice. We'll get a picture of it out soon enough.

For week eight, we should start to hear some vowel sounds in his oohs and aahs that could be repetitive in nature. At first, these are very difficult to distinguish, but they will be his first attempts at assembling anything that remotely sounds like a word. The Baby Wise book suggests this as the earliest time that he could be sleeping through the night. I don't anticipate that happening for at least another month though, but who knows. I am targeting sometime between week 10-12 for that. He will continue to take control over his smile and his motor skills will continue their development. Tummy time can get bumped to 4 minutes a session, but we're already doing 5-10 minutes at a time now. His head control should continue to get steadier and steadier, which again is my biggest hope. While I'm content to see him grow at his own pace, I do wish he had control of his neck. I know we've only got another month or so before he's got it down, so I can wait.