Pete is amazing! We are absolutely loving him. He's already 4 1/2 months old. I can't believe that. I'm already beginning to forget his early baby days. That makes me terribly sad. I don't think that's fair. If all we have at the end of our lives is the memories, shouldn't we be able to remember more things? I guess I'll just curl up in my 90's to my Ipad Generation 64 and read and reread this blog.
Sweet Pete came home on Christmas Eve. The kids were excited, but to be honest, if one thing was outshining the other it was the excitement of Christmas that overshadowed the excitement of the baby. Jane took a bit more notice and declared Pete to be her favorite Christmas present. When Pete was just a couple days old Matt started calling him Petri dish. That nickname has stuck with everyone. We all call him Petri. We also call him Dish, The Dish, Dish Boy, The Dish of the Petri, or my personal favorite, simply Petri with a thick, exaggerated Russian accent. Jack even introduced him as Petri Dish to a new friend.
After the excitement of Christmas passed, Jack started paying more attention and became positively enamored with Pete. He was the one wanting to hold him the most often. He was constantly declaring Pete's level of cuteness. In fact, four months later, he still mentions on a daily basis how cute Pete is. "Pete's the cutest baby ever!" "He's the cutest in the whole family!" "He's cuter than me!" One time he said to his friend Scottie, "Isn't Pete so cute?" Scottie said, "Uhh...maybe when he's older." Jack was completely baffled but I told Jack it was ok to keep thinking Pete was cute.
Hank has not shown even a twinge of jealousy. It's amazing. He just loves him. He brings him his paci, he comes to tell us when Pete is crying, and he always excitedly greets him with, "Hi Pete!" or more like, "Hiyapee".
Jane is a great help with Pete. She holds him when I need her to. She feels very sad when he's crying and likes to try to help. One time he was fussing while she was holding him and she said she remembered how he stops crying when the car is moving so she stood up and started walking around with him. He calmed down and she was so proud. She is very sweet with him day to day.
In fact, Pete has won over all of us. Even Matt admitted to me that he feels more attached to Pete than he ever did to our other babies when they were so young. There is just something so endearing about him. It's like he has all this personality and seems to really know you already. He's magical. As far as fussiness and baby habits go he blows my other babies out of the water. He rarely fusses. He sleeps wonderfully. He takes good naps and he quickly went from getting up about three times a night to just a couple times a night by 6 weeks or so, to just one time a night by about 2-3 months. He sleeps in our bedroom but he's such a sound sleeper that you can sneak in and get things when you need to. He nurses really well and has gone 3 hours between feedings during the day from birth.
He is such a happy baby, too. He smiles easily, with his first smile coming right at one month. His first laugh was on his 3-month birthday. He loves to be with people. He doesn't always require to be held but does prefer to be around people, so he's usually happy just being in the same room. When he wakes up and fusses, as soon as I peer over the side of the crib he just grins.
Even though I would describe him as such a good and happy baby, it all kept getting interrupted with several sicknesses. After my ear surgery when he was 1 month old I was put on an antibiotic that eventually caused both of us to get thrush. Thrush made him very uncomfortable and fussy and to not nurse well. His first round of meds didn't work so we had to try another one that did work. Before he was even two months old he got RSV with bronchiolitis and an ear infection. He was horribly congested and miserable and I spent several days holding him and wearing him in a wrap. That illness lasted about two weeks and then the antibiotics he got for his ear infection caused another case of thrush. He got put back on meds for that. Then, just when he was starting to get back to his happy, cooperative self, he caught a bad cold that the whole family had. After that he all of a sudden, out of the blue, started freaking out when he would nurse. He would start to eat and then get so bothered after a couple minutes that he would stop and not eat. I was so full of milk and he was so hungry and miserable. Eventually I would get him to fall asleep and I could get him to drink some milk without him waking up. After a week of that madness I met with the doctor and we decided to try a medicine for reflux. It worked amazingly! That took us nearly to four months old and things have been smooth sailing for the last few weeks.
I was really bad at remembering to give him tummy time. So at four months when he seemed worse than he did at two months I started to feel really guilty. I spent a week giving him tummy time a few times a day. After about a week of that he was doing much better and even started rolling over from his tummy to his back.
It is both exciting and really sad to know that Pete is our last. I look forward to the next chapter. And babies are HARD. Even easy babies are hard, so it's nice to think this is our last. But with every new thing that he does, or every old thing that he's done with, there is a sense of sadness that he's our last. I won't go on about that, as there are excellent writings about that very thing but when I look at this blog post and it's ten or so paragraphs it feels so unfair! This is all I have of Pete's first four months? I can't play back these days in perfect detail in my mind, I can't take the essence of his sweet babyness and bottle it and keep it on a shelf. There are already things that I miss. The way he would scrunch up his newborn face and do his little shaky fisted stretch like a teeny tiny baby motorcyclist. The way he would be full and happy and asleep after nursing. The way he would like to sleep with his head tilting back off your arm. The way his eyes looked thinner and his nose was pointier and we wondered if we should have called him Wolfie. His sweet baby days cannot be reduced to a listing of dates and accomplishments. Its all the moments that I kiss him and hold him and cuddle him and nurse him and whisper to him that he's the best. It's in the moments that the kids greet him in the morning and cheer for him to laugh, and the way Pete lights up and kicks his feet when he sees them. And in the moments that I would sit and hold him and look at him for as long as I could before the other children needed me.
I am so grateful to be his mother. I love him so incredibly much and look forward to seeing him grow up. He will always be my baby and I hope to remember him as my little Petri forever.
P.S. Matt is busy, busy, busy. I'll have to do photo dumps as I get them. But for now, just words, words, words. :)
1 comment:
Words are good. I'm so glad to read your blog and you will be too many years down the road. All the things I thought I would never forget, well I did. Keep blogging. We love Pete too.
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