Benjamin James (Part 2)

So here's my second part of my reflection on Benjamin from over the last 15 weeks.  As I said previously, he seems to be a pretty chilled-out, happy baby.  He's pretty easy-going and doesn't really cry that much (for now!).  When he was a newborn he very rarely cried, only really grunted and grizzled.  

Benjamin started smiling at about 5-6 weeks and it was absolutely delightful.  He smiles all the time now and makes funny noises when he does "excited smiles".  I really love it when he looks at Jack and smiles.  Over the last couple of weeks he's started to giggle, too.  When I'm undressing him for his bath I tickle him under the chin, which prompts a very cute little giggle.  It's so nice when you start to see signs of their interacting with you.  

I can't remember when exactly, but maybe at about 3 months, he started to make baby noises.  His main noise was the squeal, and it would often get very loud and particularly high-pitched!  I suspected that the more tired he became, the noisier he became.  He's now doing more "talking", noises like, "oo", "a-oo" and "ha-oo".  It's so nice to hear these sounds, especially when he's directing these at me, like he's really talking to me.  He can actually be quite noisy with his chatting.  I don't remember Jack being this chatty, but he could have been.

Benjamin's also started to use his hands.  He's frequently got them in his mouth, sucking on his hands or fingers.  He's also working out how to grab things on his playmat.  Not sure whether this is accidental or not.

A couple of weeks ago he rolled from his front to back.  He was having some good ol' rudey nudey time after his bath where I put him on his tummy in my parents' lounge room and when I came back, he was on his back, looking rather shocked.  Of course, he hasn't done it since and has shown no desire to, either. 

Benjamin James (Part 1)

On 7th March, 2013, Benjamin James was born.  This was a very happy day for us and we are thoroughly enjoying having little Benny-Boy around.  He's a happy, chilled-out, little cutie.

In the first few weeks, we had Benjamin sleeping in his bassinet in our room.  We didn't do this with Jack, but it was something I felt that I wanted to do this time.  Since Dave was working and preparing to go back to uni, he would often sleep upstairs in the spare room during this time.  But, after a while, I was ready to move Benjamin into his own room next door.  He was such a noisy sleeper that I wasn't sleeping that well with him being in the same room.

From pretty early on I tried to establish a routine with Benjamin.  But, it was fairly obvious that he wasn't going to follow any routine I tried to introduce.  I followed the feed-wake-sleep pattern and tried to do a 3-hour routine, but he had his own routine and he was sticking to it.  He pretty much wanted to be fed every 2 hours during the day, which is still the case now.  The only way I can stretch him to go longer is if he's awake for longer or has a longer nap - so different to what Jack was like.

When Jack was a baby he was sleeping through the night at about 11 weeks.  I, of course, expected Benjamin to do the same (maybe a little sooner because I now knew what I was doing - ha, ha), but, of course, he didn't.  At all.  For the first couple of months he was waking up 3-4 times a night.  Now he's doing about 2-3 times a night.  Sometimes, if I feed him around 10-11pm, he'll only wake up the once.  This has been a bit challenging for me as I just assumed that he would just sleep through because Jack did, so Benjamin should.  I had always thought that it was a badge of "good parenting" if your baby was sleeping through the night and I just assumed that it was due to "bad parenting" if any baby wasn't.  So, now it's time for me to eat my words.  I know Benjamin will do it in his own time.  God is teaching me patience.

A few times I've tried to do the "dream feed" (which worked so well with Jack), but it doesn't work at all with Ben.  He'll just wake up at his usual time as if I've never fed him.  Maybe I need to wake him up properly at 10-10.30pm and feed him, but often I'm so tired that I just want to go to bed early.  So, I just leave him to wake up when he wants to.  He does fall back to sleep really well after each feed.  More often than not, he'll fall asleep during the feed and stay asleep as I put him in his bassinet.

It is hard, though, being tired all the time and choosing not to do other things because you need to have a nap or go to bed early.  This does frustrate me a little.  But, if I don't try to catch up on sleep, I fall apart.  I do wonder how people can do this long term.  I guess you just get used to being tired - I think that's probably the badge that all parents wear.

A Long Over-Due Update

Well, it's been a while - I KNOW.  I lost my blogging "mojo" a while back as life just got busy and I forgot how good blogging is.  A couple of weeks ago I was rerading through my old posts.  I was particularly interested in all my reflections about Jack as he was growing up.  Most of the stuff I recorded I had completely forgotten about.  This made me realise how important it is to write things down.  No matter how many times you tell yourself you'll remember certain things about the kids growing up, you just won't.  These reflections are more for myself than anyone else, like a diary, I guess.

So, I shall attempt to start writing my reflections again - for both our boys. What?!  "Both" boys?  Yep, that's right.  We've had another little boy - Benjamin James.  He's 15 weeks and just a cutie.  I shall write more about him soon.

Now that I've finally written something down, hopefully I will continue...we'll just have to see, won't we?