All About Waylon

Because you can never have enough baby pictures, right?

[FYI, I started this post in draft form on 9/20 and it's been sitting there unpublished since then. The content was updated and is current as of sometime in October, but many of the pics are from when Waylon was only 7 days old.  Oh well.  Such is life right now.  ]

I realized that a lot of my recent posts have been more about life with Waylon rather than about Waylon himself. The little dude. The pone-pone. A-weem-a-way.  Waylony-way.  Way-way.  Waylonia.  (We're throwing nicknames at him left and right and just waiting to see what sticks.)

And I'm sorry if the written part of this post totally bores you, but I figure Waylon deserves to have his babyhood documented, too, just like his sisters.  (Well, maybe to a lesser degree.  I'm pretty sure back in 2007 I posted about Georgia scooching down in her crib - no joke.)  

So, what can I tell you about him?  Life with a newborn, a two year old, and a four year old is hard, but he is an easy baby.  Dare I say, docile.  We kind of knew that, but it took taking him to Austin for the weekend and leaving the girls back home with their grandparents to have it really hit home.  Funny how traveling with a two month old would've terrified me when Georgia was a baby, but with Waylon it truly felt like vacation to temporarily have only one child to look after.  I think he liked it, too - finally getting all of his parents' attention, and not being bombarded all day by his sisters.  We definitely got in some quality baby bonding on that trip.

He's very "readable", in that he really only fusses if tired or hungry, and it's fairly simple to tell which is the problem just by knowing when he last ate.  Maybe 10% of his readability comes from the fact that this is our third time doing this baby thing, so we've gained some insight from experience.  We really can't take credit for about 90% of it, though - it's all Waylon.  He doesn't cry unless we can't get to him in time, say, when he's in the crib but I'm tied up helping June on or off the toilet, or when he's trapped in his carseat while I'm sitting in the preschool pick-up line .  (Oh man, that's when he really tests those lungs!)  His "I'm tired" signal is mild fussing, his "I'm hungry" signal rapidly escalates to an all out yell in a matter of minutes until you can silence him with a boob.  Oh, that.  Yeah, he's doing okay with the bottles, not all out refusing them like June did, but he's got a strong preference for the real deal as he sees it.

I didn't dare blog about any of this until I was sure that the colic window had closed, but I think it's safe to say we've escaped that now.  Which is such a good thing, because let's face it, I couldn't handle colic because I'm a total baby wimp.  I've got the easiest one on the planet to deal with, yet I still have a list of complaints.  What are they?  Oh, I thought you'd never ask.

For starters, he loves falling asleep in baby carriers, but he's in the "I will only sleep while on you" phase of life.  Which is sweet, don't get me wrong.  Even in my most tired moments I still find myself leaning down to kiss the top of his head, or rub our cheeks together, because his cheek is quite possibly the softest thing in the universe, and well, Georgia and June aren't so into that anymore, so I know these moments won't last.  But still... a mama's back starts to hurt.  I get greedy and crave peeing by myself.  I guess I don't know how to explain it, but I assume it's a universal sentiment to sometimes want to put your baby down, right?

Our only other complaint is that he still goes to bed way too late, sometimes requiring 2-3 hours of bouncing just to soothe him off to slumberland, thus leaving us with no evening to ourselves to speak of.  (No, his bedtime is not just mistimed.  Trust me, I've re-skimmed the Weissbluth.)  So, I hit the sack exhausted each night, worrying about my to-do list that seems to never get touched and feeling frustrated that this whole childcare gig is truly an around the clock job.  Rationally I know that Joe and I are just being impatient, though, because the girls were like this, too, requiring several weeks (or was it months?) worth of this bouncing and shushing stuff until they got past it.  I'm sure his natural bedtime will shift somewhere closer to 7:00 soon, but right now we're often not off duty until 10:30 or 11.  While that may not sound like any big thing to adults without children, (or adults with grown children who have long since forgotten the baby years), trust me when I say that performing the delicate dance of setting the baby down in slow motion and holding your breath while hoping that he doesn't awaken again the second his head makes contact with a mattress, can become maddening by the time you're on round four of it for the evening after a tiring day.  Is "enragening" a word?  Well, it should be.  I'd like to believe it wouldn't bother me if it weren't for the whole "I have two other children to watch after all day" aspect of things.  Poor guy; it's not really Waylon's fault.  He's just being a baby.   

Sidebar:  I have to ask, what do people mean when they talk about "rocking" the baby to sleep?  Sitting in a rocker in the nursery, rocking back and forth for hours?  That sounds pretty nice to me, because none of our three children have had any interest in falling asleep that way.  Sitting would be awesome, but Waylon insists on more constant motion, being walked all over the house, preferably next to the loudest white noise we've got, which happens to be the microwave exhaust fan.  So we take shifts bouncing him around the kitchen in the dark, pondering the depth of the meaning of the fact that the button is labeled "Exhaust."  And how does co-sleeping even work?  It's not that I'm opposed to the idea of it, it's just that there is nothing about me lying down next to my babies that has ever seemed to make them want to sleep.  Am I doing it all wrong?   

...Aaaaand we're back.

Then he falls asleep and often does not get up again until morning.  <-- See, with that one sentence, I know I just lost all of your sympathy.  I can tell you without a doubt, though, that I would gladly trade a quick nighttime feeding for his looooong bedtime routine.  

Well, enough of my griping, because the one thing that's for certain is that everything's going to change.  Just as soon as you think you've got a baby's so-called schedule figured out, they switch it up on you.  I am longing for the day that he takes naps at predictable times for predictable durations, but I'm also relishing the fact that right now, with no set schedule, he's 100% portable and flexible.  So, I feel no guilt strapping him into a carseat to go pick Georgia up from school, which is nice.  I know that won't last.

Waylon's growing and healthy, and we love this happy little dude to pieces.  Before we get on with the pictures, here are his stats and other details, which no one cares about with the possible exception of Future Kate, who may one day wonder about these things and want a record of them:

Birth:
8 lbs., 15 oz.
21 inches

Four Day Doctor's Appointment:
8 lbs., 9.5 oz.

Two Week Doctor's Appointment:
9 lbs., 14 oz.
22.5 inches
15 1/2 inch head circumference

One-Month Doctor's Appointment:
11 lbs., 13 oz. (90-95%)
23 3/4 inches (>95%)
16 1/4 inch head circumference (95%)

Two-Month Doctor's Appointment:
13 lbs., 4 oz. (75-90%)
24 3/4 inches (>95%)
16 1/2 inch head circumference (90%)

• His hair may be thinning on the sides, but so far he has not lost that full head of hair he was born with.  Also, it's curly when wet.  (The hair plus his size tends to make strangers guess that he's far older than his actual age.)
• He's kind of bad at tummy time and nearly failed the test at his two month appointment.  Oops.  More workouts for him, I guess. 
• His biggest project right now is finding his fingers.  Go, Waylon, go!  (Since he never took an interest in the pacifiers we offered, I'm all for him figuring out the self soothing.)
• He's cooing and laughing now.  Isn't it so nice when a baby develops the ability to make happy sounds? 
• He's puking up a storm and giving Baby June, former spit up champion of the world, a run for her money at this point.  Three kids and three spitters I've had now.  Ugh.  Not the biggest problem in the grand scheme of things, but man, it wears on you.  

(First 8 fancy photos are courtesy of Elaine Melko.)

































Little babies like black and white. But do they notice subliminal messages?


This is what happens when you wake up and panic that your baby's babyhood is flying by without enough mother-son photos so you take matters into your own hands.








Do not try this at home. I'm sure it violates every safety rule, but Waylon has spent quite a bit of time parked right there on the counter, comfortably close to his favorite exhaust fan.


See, it's rather curly when wet:



Him falling asleep while eating and then staying asleep is a rarity, but I love the aerial view of this scene and how it captures my baby blanket, a breast pump, and the Weissbluth book on the nightstand. That's a fairly representative snapshot of my life right now.


Miracle Blanket = miracle worker



Waylon's 1st wedding

(With Kelly and Baby Miles)


Thank you, Aunt Margaret & Uncle Fred, for babysitting while we were in Austin!


First "swim".

Apparently that tired him out.