Max: Two Months

Here's what Max is up to at 2 months.

Stats

At his check-up he weighed 16 pounds and 7 ounces (off the charts) and measured 24 inches (90-something percentile).

Eating

He eats roughly every 2-3 hours during the day.  I'm really not sure, but he's probably still eating 7-8 times in a 24-hour period. He does eat more frequently in the evenings, but he's not really cluster feeding anymore. He has also taken 3 or so bottles.  I need to be more intentional to do this at least once a week so that he won't begin rejecting them like Jesse did.

Nighttime Sleep

He is sleeping wonderfully at night. He typically goes to bed around the time that we do (10:00 or 10:30) and usually wakes between 6:00 and 7:00.  Sometimes he wakes between 4:00 and 5:00, but goes right back to sleep for several hours after eating.  More often that not he makes it through the entire night, which we are very thankful for. 

We are trying to put him to bed a tad bit earlier, but have only been successful once. Last Friday night he went to sleep for the night at 9:00 and it was great to have an hour without kids, but other times when we have tried this he won't stay asleep. I know we will get there in time, and this is just a season, so we'll try to enjoy the extra time we get with just Max while we have it :)

He is also still sleeping in his bassinet in our room, but I think we will be transferring him to the pack and play very soon because he is outgrowing the bassinet.

Daytime Sleep

He is definitely out of that sleepy newborn stage where he can sleep through anything. He typically takes one quite long (2-3 hour) nap during the day, which for the past week or so has lined up perfectly with Jesse's afternoon nap and has given me some time to myself. This past week he also took a decent nap (1 hour) in the morning most days about one hour after waking.  He usually takes a few other naps, but they are much shorter and he seems to wake very easily if there is any noise (which you can bet there is with Jesse under the same roof). He mostly takes naps in his swing, but for his long afternoon naps I usually swaddle him and put him in his bassinet because I think the swaddle helps keep him asleep for longer periods and I am wanting a break by this point in the day!

Temperament

He is still much like Jesse in this department.  He is either extremely happy and smiley or quite fussy. He is definitely having longer happy, content periods (probably better ones than Jesse had) where he is great sitting in his bouncy seat or lying on a blanket while we eat or while Jesse plays. He has the sweetest coos and will go back and forth with us cooing. I love it!

Here are some pictures from the last month.  Well, actually, most of them (all but the last five) were taken by James' Mom while they visited over Thanksgiving.

Like Father Like Son

I've started calling Jesse my little Bible scholar because one of his favorite things to do these days is flip through all the pages of his Bibles and "read" them out loud. It has been a daily occurence for him to inform me that he is going to his room and is going to shut his door and study his Bibles (just fyi in case you were wondering, James does not go in our room and shut the door and study the Bible...Jesse came up with that on his own). Sometimes he "sings" them out loud, too.  I think it all started when I began letting him listen to an audio version of the Big Picture Story Bible at naptime and bedtime instead of music.  I didn't know if he would really enjoy listening to it or not, but he has loved it.  Oftentimes I think he is asleep because he is so quiet, but then I go back to his room to find him just lying there and listening.

It is so amazing how much kids this age pick up from what they listen to. When I was reading his Big Picture Bible with him the other day I realized he had memorized quite a bit of it.  Last night James was reading to him out of it and was letting Jesse finish the sentences in the Bible.  When it came time for the list of Jacob's 12 sons, James stopped (thinking maybe he might get the first one) and Jesse quickly rattled off all 12 in the correct order.  We had no clue he was getting so much out of it.

If you haven't heard of the Big Picture Story Bible, I'll just put in a quick plug for it (it was written by our pastor and illustrated by a member of our congregation here).  While some of the bigger ideas are still over Jesse's head, I think it is simple enough for toddlers and preschoolers to understand and it does a great job of making the entire Bible one coherent narrative (instead of a lot of disjointed stories).  We also have children's Bibles that are mostly just individual stories, and those are great, too, for learning some of the basics, but this one really is wonderful about tying them all together.

One drawback to all this is that Jesse has picked up some not-so-nice phrases that I don't want him running around saying to people, so we are going to have to be more careful as we read. Some of the stuff you can't easily avoid unless you want to cut out entire stories from the Bible (like Jesse telling James that he wanted to put him in a pit and make him a slave...he did say it to be funny and was not angry, but still, it's not what we want him saying), but other things we will be trying to paraphrase in the future (like the part in the Jesus Storybook Bible where Goliath tells David that he wants to "rip off his head and have it on toast"...also something that Jesse decided would be funny to say to us but not something we want him to continue!).

Here Jesse is reading from "A Child's First Bible" but the words are from the Big Picture Bible.  Please excuse the nose-picking at the end.  Apparently we need to work on this. Oh, and the crazy voice at the end is the voice he uses when he pretends to be Goliath (he's kinda obsessed with that story right now and giants in general).



Here's Jesse saying the 12 sons.  Sorry his head is cut off in most of it.  I don't think James meant to do that :)



Here is some of Jesse's (monotone) singing of the Jesus Storybook Bible. For some reason everything he was singing began with "the day you...", as in "the day you built the ark" or "the day you find a tower", etc.