Catching Up

dear van,

today you are 8 weeks old. you just celebrated your first christmas and met your nana for the first time. you're getting to be such a big boy! you are around 14 pounds and 25 inches. your hair is coming in, and it's the most gorgeous strawberry blonde. it's so soft and fuzzy...i love to rub your little head, and you love to have it rubbed.

you smile a lot now, and you have even giggled a couple times. you sometimes even smile right AT us :-)

you are starting to enjoy your toys a bit...tummy time is more successful than it was with your sissy. you also seem to like your play gym for short periods of time. you still love your bouncy best, though. well, actually, baths trump the bouncy any day of the week. you LOOOOOOOVVVVEEE your bath. even when you are your saddest, you calm down for your bath. you are already enjoying kicking/splashing your bath water all over the place, though i'm sure you don't know you're doing it :-)

lately you have been having a REALLY hard time with your tummy. tomorrow we will go see your doctor to see what we can do for you. you can hardly sleep during the day...you wake about every 15 minutes. you are so sad...you cry and cry and you arch your back. i'm so sad for you. fortunately, you are still sleeping reasonably well at night...you are back to waking more often, and your 5 am feeding seems to cause you a lot of pain, but we can usually bounce you/rock you/walk you back to sleep for a couple more hours. i hope your doctor has some good answers/solutions tomorrow! daddy and i will be springing (with the help of your auntie rayo and your bonus aunties, tika and nano) for a deluxe cradle swing for you. we've noticed that you calm down when we put you on our glider ottoman lengthwise and rock you back and forth. here's hoping the cradle swing will help you get better quality sleep during the day.

love,
mommy