Relatedly, I saw another mom at the pediatrician's office with her son, who must have been 16ish years old, six feet tall and with hairy legs. So then I stood there holding my infant son, trying to picture him and his big brother at that size and oh my heart. I just can't even. I debated asking her grocery budget but who am I to be able to handle that kind of truth this early in the morning.
Oliver is advanced in other ways, too, not just his hearty size. He sleeps an average (starting in the last week) of 9-10 hours overnight. Bedtime has been around 8pm, and he makes it to at least 5am, with his record standing at 6:30am. THAT is my boy. He's either a great sleeper, or I am (his bed is right next to mine, so surely I wouldn't snooze through him wanting to be fed?). The big turning point was when we moved him from his Rock n Play, where he slept on his back and at a slight incline, into a travel-size Pack n Play where he sleeps on his belly. That kid LOVES his new bed, and even during the day when he feels sleepy, he tends not to sleep well until we put him in there (as opposed to his swing, car seat, or even being held).
He has half-rolled over a couple of times, from his back up on to his side. Once he made it over onto his belly (that was at least a week ago now, around 7 weeks of age) but more often he makes it up to his side and hangs out there. He's able to push and hold himself up on his arms and holds his head up high as he looks around. We get numerous smiles and coos from our social little guy.
[Edit: He just rolled again, right in front of me, as soon as I turned my camera on! Sometimes the stars just align.]
I might add that all of this is tremendously encouraging because there are times when I seriously question whether Oliver will survive infancy, due to the trauma he regularly experiences at the hands of his big brother. It started early. Most notably, the other day I was making breakfast while Oliver lounged in his swing. He was just across the room, safe and sound. Or so I thought. Suddenly I heard a crash, and then my two boys wailing like someone had died. Never have I made it from kitchen to living room with such speed and agility. The swing was lying on its side, Oliver facedown on the floor screaming, and Isaac weeping dramatically - whether out of fear or pain, I'm still not sure. I felt simultaneous impulses arise in me to snatch my baby from the floor to be sure he was ok, and to snatch my older son and let him know how NOT OK this was. Oliver won the internal coin flip, and turned out to be just fine; Isaac, well, I guess time will tell whether he's learned the lesson I imprinted upon him. Firmly. I will now be watching Oliver for all of the minutes of all the days until he is old enough to learn self-defense.
And I'm sharing this with you all because I'm 99% sure that my Mother of the Year nomination has already been revoked. Something about seven episodes of Daniel Tiger back to back while I fell asleep nursing the baby. I can't help it that Netflix auto-queues one episode into the next.
There are so many moments that I would love to share with you. I mentally bookmark them all the time - oh, that was so funny! So precious! So brilliant! So mind-blowingly chaotic that nobody will believe me unless I detail it on the internets! But then all of my mental bookmarks go the way of my abdominal muscles, never to be seen again. Le sigh. Perhaps during nap time today (which just started rather smoothly, knock on wood and throw salt over your shoulder and don't jinx it by talking about it) I will wrack my brain for all of the blog-worthy things I've been forgetting over the past few months.
Mental bookmark to take a two-month photo of Oliver with The Teddy Bear and post it along with comparison photos of the big kids. Think I'll remember? (Hint: we have no such one-month photos of Oliver. Third child syndrome. Oops. Hopefully he'll understand and be grateful that I was too busy keeping him alive and out of the clutches of his older siblings and making sure everyone was fed edible things at somewhat regular times of the day.)
Also? We bought a house. I know. Would I just drop that on you all right at the end of a blog post and peace out? Yes, yes I would. BOOM. Oh and Joel and I just celebrated our eight year anniversary. No gifts, figuring that between me birthing him a son and him buying me a house all within two months of our anniversary, we were probably good to go. Although, I feel like it is probably all downhill from there in terms of future anniversary gifts.
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