2-month Checkup

Nicholas had his 2-month visit to the pediatrician today, so I figured I'd share his stats. He weighed in at 13 lbs 4 oz and measued at 24 1/2 inches long. That is around the 90th percentile for each! Given our genes and the fact that I've spent half his life eating saltines, I'm not quite sure how he is so big, but the doctor pronounced him in perfect health, so we're happy. The doctor also gave us a way to get rid of his icky-looking cradle cap, which I'm excited to try.

Nicholas did not like the shots, but loved the baby Tylenol (it is the closest thing to candy he has ever had!) and I'm letting him nap in my arms right now, so life isn't too bad.

Watching You, Watching Us

You may not have noticed it, but about two weeks ago I added a visit counter to the sidebar on the blog (you can see it below, it's the number highlighted in green). I think all bloggers have moments of doubt when they wonder whether anyone is in fact reading their productions, and alas, we are no different. So now we can keep track of how many visitors we've had, beginning in mid-July (313 as of this moment!).

What I had not anticipated was that the website that let us put up a free visit counter would also provide (still for free) a significant mountain of data about all of you, our readers. In other words, we know when you refresh the blog every ten minutes because you don't want to be working. Seriously, though, in the interest of fairness, curiosity, and sheer voyeurism, I thought I'd share some noteworthy statistics that have appeared in the last few weeks about you:

• You know us. The vast majority of "entries" to our blog come with no link, so you know our url, and you use it.
• Eighty of you have visited us for the first time, though this number is by computer. So those of you who check at work and home count twice. But that still means we probably have more than fifty readers, which is pretty sweet. And that doesn't include those of you who read the blog through Google Reader or some other aggregator and don't click through to the actual blog.
  
• For the most part, the location of our visitors makes complete sense to us: an awful lot at our university, and then places where our families live. Maryland, New York, and Indiana top the rankings for most visits by state.
  
• On the other hand, we apparently have made it into Blogger's "random blog" list, because we've also gotten hits from the UK, Germany, Norway, France, Egypt, Spain, Sweden, Peru, and Brazil.
• And, those of you who got here by way of searching (and this is only about 10 out of the 300+) found us mostly by searching "Snugglesaurus." People have also found us by looking for variations of things about peanuts. Go figure.
  
• When you leave, you go look at our photos. Or you go somewhere completely different.
  
• A majority of you use Firefox, and have pretty high-resolution screens. It took me a while to figure out why the counter would even record that information, but then I realized that a business designing a website would need to maximize the site's appearance for how people interfaced with it. But it's useless to us.
• I can't possibly believe that their "visit length" metric works properly. It thinks that 47% of you have spent more than an hour on an individual visit. Which, in all seriousness, I find a bit unbelievable.
• The counter obviously doesn't compute this as a metric, but we're very educationally oriented. A large majority of our hits come from ISPs at colleges and universities. Which means that you're not working on your dissertation right now, are you? (Of course, neither am I!)

So there you have it. In a nutshell, we're on to you. But we hope you keep reading. And please feel free to comment whenever the spirit moves you, because we're also happy to make this a conversation.

Medicine Fail

The doctor has declared my new medicine a failure and so now we are on to tests, starting at the less invasive and working our way up. I am scared. Scared of how I'll feel in the upcoming days without medicine. (I have been taking one or another for 4 weeks now and even though they didn't solve the problem, they have helped some.) Scared of invasive testing. Scared that we won't find an answer to this since the specialist has admitted that he is baffled. Just scared of the unknown. So if you could, say a prayer for me.

Manipulative Marketing

Remember how I posted about the absurd marketing aimed at parents? Well, I have a specific example that I'm going to rant about today. A certain juice company has started making (and vigorously marketing) "Brain Development" and "Immunity" versions of their juice. That's right, one more way to guilt parents into spending money unnecessarily. If you don't give your child this special juice it will be all your fault if they get sick or don't get straight As. How dare you stand in their way of maximizing their potential for a few measly dollars?

The kicker in this is that these days pediatricians don't recommend giving kids juice or, if you do, seriously restricting it and diluting it with equal parts water. Basically it has way too much sugar for the little bits of nutrition. Do you think these new juice lines are the juice companies feeling the effects of this new recommendation and trying to counter pediatricians' advice? Or am I just overly cynical?

Two month update

Nicholas turns two months old today. It seems like he is so much older than that, but then I realize that he is 1/6 of a year (and so once we go through 5 more times equal to that which has passed he will be starting to walk and talk) I am in shock with how quickly it is going. And he has already gotten so big and so grown up (comparatively speaking, of course). A little bit for you, but even more for our sake as a record to look back at, here is a snapshot of Nicholas at 2 months:

• He has smiling and laughing down pat. He smiles in response to smiles or fun "games," when he can make toys move, or when he sees someone he recognizes. He laughs when other people are laughing. Since most of the time we laugh it is at something silly he did, this leads to him laughing at himself, which of course makes us laugh more. He also laughs at all of Daddy's stupid jokes, if only because Daddy laughs at them and he follows suit. He started smiling at Joe first and even once he started smiling at me and other people, saved his biggest grins for Daddy. This is just now starting to even out.


• He is starting to get control of his head. He still needs some backup support because he loses control, but in the past week he has gotten so much stronger. When he is awake and in someone's arms he is moving his head back and forth so rapidly I think he'll get whiplash, but he just wants to use his new skill to see everything.


• He remembers games and will get excited by knowing what is coming. I've mentioned in other posts how he remembers that he can make the toys on his chair move. After I did the "charge" game a few times, he started smiling as soon as I started rather than waiting for the "charge" on his nose. (See the video in the Peanut Gallery.)


• He is freaked out by mirrors. There are mirrors on his playmat and his swing because supposedly babies love them. He didn't take any interest in them until last week, but now he notices them and hates them. But he won't take his eyes off of them. He just stares intently and gets upset. We now have a blanket over the one on the playmat.


• There are still a few 3-month outfits that he can fit into, but for the most part he is wearing all 6-month clothes now. We have been sad to say goodbye to some of his old outfits, which are now overflowing the "Cashew drawer" (so named because it holds the things that are in storage for hypothetical younger sibling, nicknamed Cashew). Since poop now frequently seeps out of his diapers, we think it is time to move him up to size 2 . . . in 3-4 days when we use up the rest of the size 1s.


• He "talks" to us some, but started talking to "his animals" (the animals on his playmat) first and does so more frequently. Probably because unlike us they actually let him get a word in. We're trying to work on this.


• Much to our disappointment, he is not a big fan of being read to. He wants to be moving or doing something all the time, so sitting still (or even rocking) and being read to is not active enough for his taste. We're hoping this will change. Right now the only way I can get him to be happy through a whole board book is if I have Chompy (the beanie baby alligator) read it to him in a funny voice and act it out.


• He does not like to sleep. Or, more accurately, he does not like to fall asleep. He fights sleep with everything he has. We'll watch his eyelids get heavy and close, only to pop back open . . . over and over again. We often have to use some combination of movement, rubbing his back, and a pacifier to overwhelm his defenses and get him to relax enough to let himself fall asleep. I know he comes by it honestly, but we have to find some way to get this kid to relax and take a nap on his own or the toddler years are going to be a nightmare.


• He has recently taken to demanding being walked around, and so we've been doing laps around the living room and apartment complex parking lot. I do not like this development, but when the choices are walk with him or have him screaming, I'll choose the former.


• He is sleeping in his crib in the nursery at night. Some nights he sleeps 9:30-7ish with only waking up once or twice to eat. Other nights he is up every couple hours and needs to be coddled back to sleep. We're trying to only feed him the times when it seems he could reasonably be hungry in hopes that he will stop waking up the other times. I think part of the problem is that his nursery is over the stairwell and some of our neighbors come and go (and close doors loudly) at all hours of the night. He will not sleep in his crib during the day. On good days he sleeps in his chair. Other days he'll only nap in his carseat (i.e. in the stroller in motion) or in our arms. We'd love to enforce naps in his crib, but sometimes you have to live to fight another day.
  
• He in general likes baths, but hasn't yet started to play in them. He likes them enough that he sits patiently through them without crying, but he doesn't smile. A couple times he has kicked around and seemed like he was exploring, but for the most part he just sits there looking stunned. This is great for us, as it makes it much easier to keep ahold of him.

I'm sure there are a ton of other things I can't think of right now, but in summary Nicholas is a happy 2-month old who makes us smile at least as often as he frustrates us. And whether because we have 2 months of experience or because we're getting more sleep, even the frustrating things aren't getting under our skin these days.

Nicholas and Mommy at 2 months old:

Christmas in July

If you look at your calendar, you'll see that it's July 25—Christmas in July, and only five months until the real deal. Below are a few photos of Nicholas celebrating in his special Christmas outfit.

The outfit, actually, was technically a gift to his grandmother, Alice, way back on her birthday in November. It's how she found out about the then-Peanut. She graciously agreed to let us hold onto it so that Nicholas could wear it. And, given how well it fits him now, we may need a new Christmas outfit come December.

From Nicholas - Month 2

From Nicholas - Month 2

Back in Town

I'm back in Baltimore, and Nicholas finally seemed happy about it this morning. For future reference, it's probably better, if I'm hoping for a good reaction to my arrival, to come back in the morning or afternoon and not in the evening. That's his cranky time, and I don't think it would matter who showed up.

The other important note is that Sarah has finally been able to upload photos from the last few weeks. For convenience, since they're all in the "Month 2" album, you can get to the first new photo here.