Jack is Two Months Old!

Depending on how you look at it, Jack is two months or nine weeks old this week :)

Some of the things he's doing lately:

• He smiles all the time - lots in the morning when he first wakes up. He especially likes when you do the motorboat noise or make kissing noises on his belly!


• He loves ceiling fans. In fact, I would dare say he's obsessed. He just stares at them, smiles, coos, and acts like he's flirting with them. Too cute.


• Speaking of which, he's making lots of little noises in response to talking.


• He's discovered the baby in the mirror. I heard him gurgling away one day in the car, and when I pulled into the parking space, found him smiling and "talking" to the mirror!


• He's grabbing small things like his binky. Last night, he wrapped his hand around his bottle. Earlier he had grabbed and pulled the tupperware container I was holding.


• He's finding out that his feet are attached to his body. He kicks the crinkly leaf on his activity mat and gets excited about it!


• His favorite song is Raffi's "Down by the Bay" - we've made up our own lyrics and sing it all the time. He starts moving his arms and legs and smiles really big when I start to sing! (okay, so maybe he's laughing at my singing voice...)
• He had his first formula bottle last night. We had tried to give him one the night before to supplement since I'm going back to work on Monday, and you would have thought we were feeding him rat poison - such dramatic faces and antics! Then we mixed a soy formula with breastmilk last night and he drank it with no problem. And then this morning he threw a fit when I tried to give him another bottle. So who knows where we are with that!

On a related note, Jack had his two-month doctor's visit yesterday and got his shots - yuck! We found out that he's not growing at the pace they would like, so I had to collect his urine overnight for testing, and then he had to have blood drawn from his tiny little vein this morning. Let me tell you, if you've never tried to get urine from a baby using a bag with a horseshoe-shaped sticker on the end, you're not missing anything. And of course, watching him have blood taken was so incredibly sad, disturbing and pathetic.

Anyways, he now weighs 9lbs 15oz, is 22 3/4" long, and his head is 40cm. That puts his percentiles at 15th for weight (he was 50th), 50th for height (he was 85th), and 75th for head size (was 95th - I'm secretly not upset about that one :). What they look for is for them to stay around the same percentages, no matter what the weight/height. For example, him being at the 15th percentile for weight would be okay if he was around the 15th percentile at his two-week checkup. Dropping so much apparently isn't okay :(

So they're testing for metabolic disorders, thyroid function and kidney function. I am hoping that it's just leftover weight loss from when his mouth was sore from the thrush and he wasn't into eating that much. Actually, for as much as he fusses when he's hungry, he really doesn't get that into eating ever. He only eats for about 10 minutes, and that's with me cajoling him and doing everything I can think of to get him to eat more. So, if hopefully the test results are negative for everything, we can figure out a way to encourage his eating. Any suggestions welcome!!!