Baby Handsome

Just after he hit his three-month milestone, our Little Buddy made a very exciting accomplishment. He rolled over from his back to his stomach! He has always enjoyed lying on his back and kicking at the toys hanging from his activity gym. He showed no interest in rolling over, until one day he randomly started trying. He would hoist himself up on his side and then fall back down. After a day of attempting (he is a very persistent little boy, like his daddy) he finally made it happen.

Mr. Handsome wasn’t home when Little Buddy flipped for the first time, but when he returned home, we put him on the carpet on his back so he could show Daddy his new trick. We were cheering him on like he was an Olympic athlete. (Life sure changes when you’re a parent–who would have thought that rolling over would be so exciting?) It took him another day to figure out how to pull his arms up and prop himself up. At one point, he rolled from his front to back, but he has only done that once.

Now, when we put him down, all he wants to do is flip. A few days ago, he rolled several times in a row, but he usually just flips to his stomach and then gets upset and starts crying.

The downside of having a roller on our hands is that I can no longer place him on the couch or in the middle of our bed while I run and grab something. Our living room is hardwood, so I’ll need to purchase a rug or mat of some kind so he has a safe place to play. And it’s time to buy a baby gate for the top of our stairs!

In January, I posted my birth story in a series of three posts. In case you haven’t had a chance to read it, I’ll include the links at the bottom of this post. At the end of part three, I was in a wheelchair on my way to the room where we would be for the remainder of our hospital stay. By that point, Little Buddy was two hours old, and I had been in the hospital for over 24 hours.

I spent the rest of that day (day two of our hospital stay) taking short naps, while Mr. Handsome slept on the couch and Little Buddy slept in his bassinet. From the get-go, our baby had a difficult time nursing. The hospital had wonderful lactation consultants available around the clock, which was a huge help. When Little Buddy was too fussy to breastfeed, they helped me pump and feed him with a plastic syringe. I was shocked to learn that when babies are born, they can only drink a few milliliters of milk, but their stomach capacity grows each day.

My mother-in-law was around for the five days and four nights that we were in the hospital. She spent the nights on my brother-in-law’s couch and the days with us. I was exhausted, but I didn’t really know it because I was on such an adrenaline high. The maternity ward nurses were all so kind and down-to-Earth, and they all wore hot pink scrubs, which made the whole experience of having a baby feel even more “feminine” than it already was….

Read More

Another blog post from Mr. Handsome…

Little Buddy just crossed the six-week mark, so his immune system is strong enough to where we feel comfortable taking him out in public. What better place to begin than church? You know, train up a child in the way he should go sort of thing? What could go wrong?

Well for starters, Ellie and I suffer from a chronic condition that is scientifically known as Interval Arrival Malposition Syndrome.” Basically the interval of time at which we arrive at church tends to be about 10-15 minutes later than the interval of time everyone else arrives at church and starts the service.

Ellie has been asking some questions to try to understand the reason for this arrival malposition, which I think you will all agree are completely unhelpful. For example, a question she may ask is, “Mr. Handsome, why are you just now starting to cook a 4 course breakfast when we need to be leaving for church in 20 minutes?” Or “Mr. Handsome, why didn’t you move the wash that contains all your church clothes to the dryer last night?” Or “Mr. Handsome was it completely necessary to run the car out of gas last night?” I am sure you all see that these questions are completely unrelated and unhelpful for the diagnosis and treatment of Interval Arrival Malposition Syndrome.

I’m sure it will be a shock to you all, but having a child in no way helps cure Interval Arrival Malposition Syndrome, and in fact it can make it quite a bit worse. We’ll just say there were several dirty diapers, spitup on the new bed, lack of sleep from the night before, and a hungry baby to blame. Of course soiling a perfectly good outfit didn’t help matters either, but I suppose young men are known to make a mess. I mean how, can I be blamed for spilling maple syrup all over my shirt when the pancake was really at fault for not absorbing it well enough?  Well anyway, long story short, our church starts service at 9:30am, and we arrived promptly at 11:15.

Thankfully, Sunday school starts at 11, so we jumped full throttle into the discussion. When I say we, I mean Little Buddy, who added various burps, belches, and crying sounds to help illustrate the depravity of man without Jesus. After a few minutes, Little Buddy was so moved by the lesson and became so overcome with emotion that I had to take him out into the hallway so he wouldn’t distract others with his crying. Crying soon led to screeching, and I discovered that the cause was in fact a dirty diaper. I thought, ‘Okay, no big deal, Daddy can take care of this,’ and I went into the men’s restroom to find a changing table. …

Read More

One of our friends, who also has an infant son, is the oldest of 12 children, and her youngest sibling is still a toddler. This friend was visiting her family over the holidays, and her infant started crying inconsolably in the middle of the night. Not wanting to wake up the entire house, she decided to try giving him a bath to calm him down, but as soon as she turned on the water in the tub, the baby instantly stopped crying. Now, whenever their child cries, this couple pulls up a YouTube soundtrack of “rushing water,” and he calms right down.

Mr. H Jr. was a very easy baby for the first couple weeks of his life, but then he became more fussy, so we decided to try the water method. It worked, and we were overjoyed! Rather than waste all my iPhone’s battery life and data, I found a white noise machine on Amazon that has several different sounds, including rain and waves. The brand is Pictek, and it cost under $30. Mr. H Jr prefers the rain sound.

Now I will say that if he is being fussy because his diaper needs changing or he is hungry, the noise machine only buys us a couple minutes of quiet before he starts wailing again, but if he’s crying because he’s tired, it helps calm him and allows him to drift off to sleep. The machine has a 30 and 60-minute timer, so it turns off automatically after the baby is in a deep sleep.

If you’re a parent who has a fussy baby, or if you’re looking for a baby shower gift for a friend or relative, I highly recommend a noise machine. There are a quite a few on the market, but this one has worked well for us. I like that it has a variety of different sounds, rather than just the traditional “white noise” sound. If you’re desperate, you can also try bringing the baby in the bathroom and turning on the bath, shower, or fan. Those methods seem to work for Mr. H Jr, as well.