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Archive for May 1st, 2008
Theresa says Benjamin’s face has changed, what do you think?
Published May 1, 2008 Uncategorized 3 CommentsRoger’s school dedicated Red Truck to Benjamin in celebration of his birth. It is a library book with a nice plaque inside with Ben’s name on it. Roger enjoys reading to Ben and does so every night. They enjoyed reading about Red Truck, it’s a working truck you know.
As Roger writes a few posts down, we’ve discovered that a little nudity in the evening goes a long way toward calming our fussy baby. Sometimes a bath helps, but general nakedness is also to his liking. He enjoys having his pants off, diaper and all or having his clothing off and his diaper on. Marcie gives him the baby massage sometimes and that seems to calm him too.
Naked baby with a mohawk.
(These posts are out of order, see next post for details on morning sleeping.)
Here Benjamin demonstrates the sitting up snooze. In the morning after a good nursing or just to see the window, Ben likes to sit up against Marcie to get the burps out and fall back to sleep. Often when Ben gets into a grunting phase, sitting him up like this will quiet him down. After a few minutes, he will comfortably lay back down in his crib. You can see in this picture where Ben usually sleeps, so if he’s fussing it’s easy for Marcie to get to him and hard for her to ignore.
Benjamin likes a little snuggle every once in a while. Here Roger demonstrates the morning snuggle. This is how Marcie gets more rest in the morning. Transferring Ben from his crib to her chest can buy her one or two more hours each morning! Some days Ben goes to bed at 10pm and doesn’t get up for the day until 8 or 9am! It’s done wonders for mommy’s mental state 
Mary Anne got Benjamin to sleep on her shoulder, she’s got the touch! He was trying to be fussy, but just couldn’t sustain the effort when feeling so comforted.
Caroline plays with Benjamin on her lap. She says she wants a baby of her own! Well, Caroline, you can borrow Ben and soak up some baby goodness until you’re ready to have your own little one. Hello to Sophia in the background!
Mara’s got the touch with Benjamin. He’s hung out with her a few times now and he seems to like her company. On this day, Ben took a big pooper in his pants while she was holding him. She seemed almost brave enough to change his diaper, but chickened out at the last moment. Not to worry, there will be plenty of opportunities in the future.
Enjoying a little lap time as GranMary enjoys a sundae.
“Are you sure I can’t have just a little taste?”
The title of my post is an obscure allusion to the fact that I’ve been living “in the weeds” for the last month or so. The confluence of four classes, technology testing, coaching, two graduate school classes, and oh yes, being a father, have really been hammering me lately. But I’ve got my trusty machete and soon I’ll be able to hack my way out of the jungle and get back to posting more regularly on here.
In the mean time, things seem to be going a little better with Ben and his nighttime colic. I found that walking him around in the evening tends to quiet him down. Also, he seems to have moved from “cluster feeding” to “cluster peeing” — just last night, I changed his diaper four times in a half hour! Marcie has been bathing him in the evening; that seems to make him happy too. Maybe it’s the nakedness.
We found that Ben likes to be naked at night. If you take off all his clothes and put him down on a baby blanket, he seems really happy. Of course, soon enough you are rewarded with a golden shower, so that setup is a bit awkward. Last night I left him in his diaper but took off everything else, and that seemed pretty good. Stay tuned for some pictures about this…
