6 Weeks

Trying to figure out babies is exhausting. Currently our biggest issue is sleep. A typical evening consists of giving Ryan a bottle, getting him ready for bed, putting him down...and then *just* when we think he's asleep for good (after about 30 minutes) he spits out his paci and starts crying. I give him a minute to see if he'll fall back asleep, but he just starts sobbing and i have to run in the bedroom and try to replace the paci as discreetly and quietly as i can. He usually proceeds to fall back asleep...for 10 minutes or so before repeating the process. This usually persists until he's finally awake and ready to eat again.

So last night after he had a 4oz bottle and whined through an hour worth of sleep before downing another 4oz bottle i suddenly realized: "I'm starving my baby!" The next time he woke up we gave him 6 ounces...and he drank it all! And then slept really well. Of course that was the middle of the night and he usually goes right back to sleep after his middle of the night feeding. So the rest of the day i offered him 6 ounces, and most times he drank it. Although he started spitting up again, so i think 6oz is a maybe a little much. Anyway, the point is that tonight after our normal bedtime routine he went to sleep without even a whimper...and he didn't wake himself up even once! So this could be a combination of factors: We have started a new bedtime routine that includes a bath, bottle, bedtime story, and bed (the 4 B's). We put him in his big-boy crib instead of the bassinet and he was also probably exhausted because he only took a catnap prior to this. And last, he had a 6oz bottle again. Whatever it was i'll try it again tomorrow and hopefully have the same results.

The other sleep issues is ours. Every time we try to sleep with Ryan in the same room as us we can't. He makes little noises and grunts while he sleeps and both Jake and I are instantly awake. I had really wanted to keep him in the same room with us until he was 4 months old and the SIDS risk went down (because i'm paranoid) but since Jake is currently staying awake all night long until 9-10am and then sleeping most of the day and i'm about to return to work...something will have to change so that we can both sleep at night. Jake's idea is to crank the fan up to high in our bedroom to drown out noise and then just leave our door open so that when he's screaming loud enough it will wake us up. I think at the very least i'll opt to have the baby monitor on!

Lately Ryan LOVES to play on his activity mat. And by play i mean he lays on his back concentrating really, really hard on the pink piggy dangling above him, swings his tiny little arms and frantically kicks his legs, makes lots of noises...but ultimately nothing happens. This doesn't seem to bother him at all but it is *so* frustrating to watch! It must be awful to see something you want to do and not be able to do anything but lie there. It's really cute though. He's getting more tolerant of tummy-time and is able to hold his head up a lot longer now. We've also started giving him a tub bath every night as part of his bedtime routine and he really seems to enjoy it most of the time. He kicks and kicks his little feet like he's swimming. Here are some pictures of his favorite activities!