As I've added some pumping to my routine, I've had so much less time to blog Truman. I've been trying to build up a frozen store of breast milk for the time I hand my sweet baby over to someone else for hours at a time.
On Thursday, Truman had his first experience with the bottle when I went out for a meeting. He wasn't too pleased and wouldn't let either Everett or Aunt Erin feed him. When I arrived home, he was sitting on the couch slurping a bottle that was propped in his mouth with an elaborate system of pillows and blankets.
Of course, when I picked him up for his breast milk fix, he was cranky and couldn't latch on right away - these nipples weren't as pliable and milky as the one on the bottle. For the rest of the night, he was stressed and fussy.
He's continued in his on-and-off way, one day fussy, one calm and sleeping for long periods of time. Of course, I'm ineffective at taking advantage of his long sleep periods, and often have errands galore scheduled on those days. So he sleeps quietly in his car seat and in the sling while I run crazed after his brother.
Nursing him is an exercise in quiet frustration intermixed with amused adoration. When he awakes from a long sleep, he snuffles and gulps in the most wonderful way, pausing every four or five drinks for a wheezing desperate breath of air. Once the edge is off his starvation, he calms down, taking quiet contented gulps and squeezing my shirt with one hand, the loose skin on my waist with the other. If he's feeling energetic, he squeezes so hard sometimes I yell.
When he's not OH MY GOD STARVING!, he gulps, and pauses, loosening his hold and causing milk to squirt all over him, my shirt, the chair, the blankie. Then comes the frustrating part, when he gulps, and cries, and searches again for the nipple, sucking and crying until I pull him away and stand up to bounce him for a burp. And when the burps happen, they are so loud I think sometimes he's a sumo wrestler trapped in a two-month-old's body.
Milestones: he is kicking, and doing pushups, and stands on my legs when I hold him up, supporting his weight on his own. Yesterday at the wading pool I held him in the water and he walked along the bottom of the pool, moving his legs with purpose, all on his own (with, you know, my complete and utter support). It was really cool. He's smiling, now, more frequently, and bigger, but it's still this half-winking sideways big-mouthed grin, sweet and ridiculous and so funny, sometimes with a gasping one-syllable guffaw.
I love that he's still panting with excitement when he lies on his back, or now, when I set him tummy-down on my leg and he pushes with his muscular-like-his-brother legs and keeps raising his head to coo and fuss. When I pick him up to kiss his cheeks he raises his eyebrows in sync with the kisses, and sniffs and snuffles, reaching up to chew on the side of his fist.
And I love how he looks at me suspiciously, as if he's wondering if he hasn't been kidnapped by aliens while he slept, glancing around sideways to check out the strange ways of our foreign land. And I love how, when he sneezes, his fists protect his face like a delicate cheeky boxer.
And most of all, I love how he grasps the skin on my waist with one hand, and my hair with the other (always with his right hand, never his left), and hangs on as if my tender body parts are his lifeline. And then he sleeps, and sniffs, and his little shoulders rise and fall, his fingers open and close, he squishes his lips together and lets out a whoosh of fussy air... and smiles in his sleep, and I'm head over heels, I can't wait for him to wake up so I can kiss him until his eyebrows rise all over again.
the winky smile
