baybeasts

Despite our lack of blogging mojo, we are all alive and well, even the chickens who have regularly been laying four eggs a day.

Loey was 2 months old a couple of days ago. We had a little chat about whether we would attempt the beautiful monthly letter that so many other bloggers manage for their children, but of course we will never manage to keep it up and then we will feel guilty and so we agreed to let that idea go.

That said, there are some lovely things about two months. Things seem (touch wood) to be settling down a bit. He has a regular bed time now, and he always sleeps in the same place at night, in the single bed pushed up next to ours (daytime sleeps vary between the bassinet and the sling), and despite some unsettled nights he seems to be sleeping quite well for the first half of the night. The second half is still pretty intense, but it is so lovely to all be sleeping in the same bed and getting a good 5-6 hours broken only by one feed that the rest of the night is manageable.

Typical new parent to put the sleep news first! What is more important and lovely is the way he is slowly coming more and more into the world. He was always a very alert and wakeful baby, but he is beginning to really interact with his world rather than watching it with wide eyes. He loves it when we sing - he smiles and chortles and moves his mouth and tongue as if he is trying to copy us. He often watches our faces intently - when we are speaking, or eating, and his favourite game is the tongue poking game:

He is also beginning to be aware that his hands belong to him - he reaches out to bat at toys, and holds onto toys and waves them about. Sometimes he will simply lie there and watch his hand open and close with a kind of mesmerised expression on his face.

As he gets bigger and more active we are starting to think about a wider range of activities for him than simply lying on the floor with toys - any suggestions are welcome! We’ve started to carry him about awake facing outwards in a sling, so that he can just tag along with whatever we are doing - eating dinner, hanging out the clothes etc. We’d love him to hang out in the bouncinette and watch us while we are doing stuff, but he’s not so keen on that, sadly.

In neck news, we took him to see a paediatrician a week ago (we’ll call him Dr Fantastico). He was the best health professional we have consulted about this yet. We both left his office with huge crushes on him, just because he was so amazing with Loey and lovely with us. An ultrasound has confirmed that the torticollis is definitely muscular only, and the lump is confined within the sterno-mastoid muscle. This is a relief, as torticollis can very rarely be caused by other, more scary things. Dr Fantastico reassured us that it is likely to resolve without active stretching by us, and encouraged us to keep up with the passive approach - encouraging Loey to look in all directions and placing him in lots of different positions throughout the day. He was lukewarm at best about osteopathy, but didn’t think it could hurt, so we are continuing on with that too (because we think it is helping). Best of all, he said ‘I want someone to own this, so I would like to see him again in two months’ - he is the first health professional to have actively taken responsibility for following up and I can’t tell you how grateful we are for that.

In Tootle news, there is very little to report, except that I am expanding rapidly and the due date is zooming down on us (only 5 and half weeks away). Tootle is growing and hiccuping and wriggling and giving me dreadful heartburn. Pregnancy really isn’t my cup of tea! I’ll be glad to have Tootle in the outside world, and as Loey settles a bit we are feeling a tad more optimistic about being able to manage another newborn.