6 Weeks WooHoo!!!

He Really is My Son!

Avram has a favorite toy.  It is half a dowel with a black ribbon from a dress I own tied around it.  I hold it up in front of our blinds and make it dance for him.  He is mesmerized.  Except for when this picture was taken.  I was having a jolly good time with the ribbons, doing some amazing moves and really just making those ribbons perform.  Then I realized he has fallen asleep.  Apparently, the show I was putting on wasn't entertaining enough to keep him from falling asleep.  As you can see, he fell asleep on my lap.  I was wearing a skirt which he is using had a hammock as he is cradled in between my knees.  He can and will apparently fall asleep anywhere.  I used to do this quite often myself and not as a baby either.  I used to fall asleep on the floor under the desk at the library where I worked.  I would sleep there for hours.  The old ladies that worked there never reprimanded me.  In fact they used to put blankets on me and check in the books for me.  I was pretty much the worst librarian ever.  I think Avram will be a bad librarian too.

Photo Results

 On Sunday, the lady in our ward that took Avram's picture, gave me a CD with the results of the session.  While I will be the first to say that my son is the best looking baby I ever met, he is not all that photogenic, well at least when professionals are involved.  We had some highs and some lows.  We will start with the lows:

This picture is actually pretty cute and he does have a decent face on.  But there is something about this picture that makes me think of Micheal J. Fox.  Does anyone else see it?

This picture was taken while Avram was being held at gunpoint.  He was very concerned and shocked about the situation.

Oh no, this boy has no neck!

So the in the next few pictures, we were going for something like this:

 Instead, we got multiple shots that look like this:

Between each shot the photographer would reposition him, trying to get him to stay snuggled up in the "snail pose".  He just wouldn't stay.  It was probably because he knew he was supposed to be naked to properly perform this pose, and felt foolish even attempting it when he knew he wasn't in proper costume.  Also, remember the robot diaper I was so excited about getting him photographed in?  Yeah, it doesn't really "read" well on film and just looks like a weird gray diaper.

As a side note, the other day I wanted to look at the first post I ever made, and found to my chagrin that net nanny had blocked it from view due to pornography.  I was alarmed.  Had someone hacked into my blog and placed some lude photos on my post?  I typed in my password and found the post unchanged.  Apparently naked babies count as pornography now a days.  So I fully expect this post to be blocked because of the naked Asian baby above. 

Now for the highlights:

I really like the expression on his face in this picture.  The angle and the lighting kind of remind me of the senior pictures from the seventies where the person is looking off camera and the women are wearing feather boas and the men fake tuxedos. 

This one is my favorite.  It's natural and cute.  Except he looks like he is flipping the bird.  If I put this on the announcements, do you think anyone would notice?

Another good one of him on the blanket that he puked and peed on.

Although he does look a bit like a dear in the headlights, I love that he is sucking his hand.  Probably because I rarely see his hand because I am constantly making him wear those mittens.

New skills and talents

Avram turned six weeks on Sunday!  This week has brought several changes.  Most notably and beloved my me is that he is finally coordinated enough to nurse laying down.  Up until now, when he woke up at night, I had to take him into the other room, turn on the light, and nurse while sitting up in the guest bed.  But now, I don't even have to turn on the light!  Hooray.  I just get him out of the pack and play and lay him next to me and he is magnetically drawn to the nipple.  An added bonus, if I fall asleep while he is feeding, we get to snuggle for a little while until he wakes up again and asks for his diaper to be changed.

Another new skill:  grasping.  Today I put a set of plastic keys in his hand and he closed his little fingers around them.  I don't think he did it on purpose, but he held onto them for about 15 minutes and shook them and attempted to put them in his mouth.  It's funny how something that would seem so boring to one person, can be so amazingly entertaining to me when my baby does it.  I was supposed to make dinner, but I didn't want to leave him until he put down the keys.  Needless to say, we had frozen pizza for dinner.

And we caught a smile on camera, I think.  Mike took the above picture (as evidenced by the fact my nose is in this picture, yeah I made it onto the blog!)  It's still hard to know if he is actually smiling because he always has this delighted look on his face right before he starts screaming.  The screaming thing has been happening a lot lately.  There are distinct phases to his crying.  First stage is when he yells.  A few short loud screams.  I like to call them warning shots.  If his needs are not met within a few minutes of theses warning shots we move into the next phase which is rapid fire yelling.  This is then followed by the horrible heart wrenching  full on sob.  I experienced the full spectrum on Tuesday as we were leaving Target.  He spit out his binky, he was alone in the back and the sun was in his eyes.  Also he was sweating, again.  I drove as fast as I could.  I turned up the classical music channel.  At a stoplight, I unbuckled my seat belt and did some over the seat gymnastics in order to put the binky back in before the light changed.  He spit the binky out promptly and began really crying again.  Usually I can handle his crying.  I feel like if I am able to hold him, at least he knows I am trying, that I care that he is suffering.  But there was nothing I could do for him.  I had to drive, we were only 5 or 6 minutes from home and I had a few groceries in the car.  Also it was a billion degrees outside and no time to be in a car or in a carseat for that matter.  When we got home, he had one little tear in the corner of his eye and he had torn his face apart.  He had even scratched deep enough to draw blood.  It was the one time I didn't put mittens on his hands, and he took full advantage of it. 

Six week sour puss

Dr. Karp says that most babies go through a sort of irritable stage around this time, so I am not too worried and I don't freak out too much usually. But at the same time, when he is screaming and I can't help him because I am in the middle of doing something (usually getting myself something to eat)  I can't help thinking to myself over and over "I am selfish, I am selfish".  I know I need to take care of myself.  I know I can't always fix what ails him, but I can hold him close and tell him I am right here and pat him on the bum.  I wonder if he knows that I am doing my best when I do this.  I wonder if he feels even a little better.  I know I do.