Tommy's Latest

Tommy's "greaser" look

Tommy has had some very minor physical ailments over the past couple of weeks. He has the very common cradle cap and he continues to loose his hair. Every time I comb it or scratch/rub a bit of the cradle cap off, quite of bit of his fine brown hair falls out. It's hard to tell but if you notice in the first photo that it looks like the front left side of his head is overexposed or in a different light than the rest of the photo, but in actuality it looks different because on the left side of his head the hair is a different length and color. It looks blond...just like his sister's hair.

The resulting hair pattern is something like a mohawk, but I've decided to call it a swirl-hawk because it's not a straight line of hair right now...although it does stick straight up in the air at times!

He has had a week and a half of infrequent bowel movements...he went from having many poopy diapers each day to one every three days...twice! He was still in generally good spirits, but did seem a bit uncomfortable if any pressure was placed upon his belly. It was so funny yet pitiful to hear him grunt with every step down the stairs as his tummy was compressed. In the last two days he's gotten back to multiple dirty diapers a day, and I swear he seems lighter!

Tommy has gotten out of the no-sleeping-during-the-day pattern (thankfully) but I've needed to have him sleep in the nursery rather than downstairs in his rocker. Aside from the noise, which he might be able to sleep through, Karina adores him so greatly that she just cannot ignore him if he's approachable. She still cannot understand that she should want him to be asleep so she and I can play. We made it to the park one day only to have Karina excitedly introduce her baby brother to another little girl which woke him up to cry until we jostled him back to sleep on the ride home.

Karina loves her brother sooo much!

Worst of all, Tommy sustained a sibling induced injury when Karina thought it would be fun for her to play "I'm going to eat you up!" with him. (Apparently she plays this with Daddy...however Daddy just pretends to gobble her up.) Unfortunately she didn't pretend (or 'tend as Karina always says..."No, Mommy I'm 'tending!") with poor Tommy, who had his little fleshy forearm bitten as a result! Karina got a time out and she cried as hard as (or maybe even harder than) he did because she didn't mean to hurt him and was so surprised when he cried and we were upset with her.

Ouch!

On the positive side there are so many good things it's hard to know which elements to highlight! Tommy continues to be a sweet, sociable boy who readily smiles and "talks" to everyone. He is well known to coo and interact with me whenever I switch sides during nursing. He comes up from the breast almost asleep and disoriented, but after a few seconds he recognizes me and gives me one of his winning grins. Usually he talks to me for a few minutes at that point. He also loves to lay on his changing table making animated conversation with his friends hanging on the chandelier above. He skwaks and gasps excitedly for easily five to ten minutes at a time.

He also has been working on his hand eye coordination, often holding his right fist in front of his eyes while lying on the changing table. He'll keep it up in this "power to the people" position and slowly rotate his wrist and forearm while he watches it move. He works on it with Daddy, too, during their bonding time while I put Karina to bed and he sits with Daddy waiting for his bedtime feeding. Daddy holds his index finger in front of Tommy and Tommy eventually gets his hand (seems to always be his right hand) up to grab it.