Carter Smiling at His Dad

Tongue

Carter discovered his tongue today! He's been sticking it out and moving it around more. He also started cooing some the last couple of days. It's a lot of fun to "talk" with him now.

We signed up for Netflix today. My mom got us a Blu-ray player for Christmas. We picked out a Samsung one with the ability to instantly download movies from Netflix. The interface is really good, and we're really impressed with the features. Not everything is available to download, but there are some movies we want to see and a lot of TV shows we haven't watched the first few seasons of. We used to have Blockbuster, but they were starting to take about a week to send us new movies and several of them had been arriving damaged or with the wrong movie in the envelope. Hopefully Netflix is better.

Baby Bjorn

I successfully got Carter to hang out in his Baby Bjorn today for the first time without him screaming. He even fell asleep for awhile. After about an hour he had had enough of it, but it was nice up until then.



Here are a few other cute pictures, including a little bit of a smile that Brian caught and one of Carter toppling over while I was trying to take his picture.

Chameleon

I think Carter is a chameleon. He has been extra fussy the last couple of days and has discovered a new type of crying. He lets out an awful scream and doesn't breathe. He'll take a small reloading breath and scream again. He turns almost purple in seconds. Usually I can calm him from this in a minute or two and a few seconds after this his color is back to normal. It's amazing how quickly he changes color.

Carter is having trouble "just chilling". If he's not sleeping, we're almost always having to hold him and be walking around so he's not crying (too much - he's still crying a lot of the time). He's also getting upset as soon as he's done eating, which is new. Generally he had been content for awhile while being burped and held upright. He's been like this for the last few days. I did reintroduce dairy into my diet almost a week ago with no change initially in his temperament. But maybe the dairy is the problem so I'm going to take it out again and see what happens.

But Carter did take 2 long naps today so I did have some time to get a few things done. My arms and back are getting stronger from holding him so much and bouncing him!

Some Pictures

Here are some pictures of Carter we took the last few days.

Carter chilling in his swing.


Sleeping with his pacifier barely staying in.


I like the one leg over the side of the sling. He always does this.


Carter looking content during bath time.


Carter bonding with his dad.

Go Pack

Carter got all dressed up for the PapaJohns.com Bowl today. All his NCSU clothes are still too big for him so it looks like he's wearing a dress!


Woohoo! State is winning ...


What do you mean our quarterback got hurt? The other two guys always throw lots of interceptions ...


NCSU ended up losing to Rutgers 29-23. At least we got a bowl game this year.

I had my 6 week postpartum appointment today. Everything looked good and I've been cleared to exercise. Now I can start my half-marathon training!

Smiles

Carter is starting to smile more and more. I haven't gotten a picture of him doing it yet because he's usually being held when he smiles and it's hard to take a picture of him while you're holding him. It's very cute though.

Carter's neck is getting stronger and stronger. He can somewhat hold his head up on his own, but you still have to be ready for it to flop back.

Carter's favorite sleeping spot is on someone's chest. Here's a picture of him taking a snooze on his grandma.


Carter isn't consistent with sleeping yet. For the last week and a half he has done one 4 to 6 hour session between feedings at night. (An hour of this is the actual time to feed, the 30 minutes of holding him upright afterwards, a diaper change if necessary, and the time to settle him down once he's mad about being put down in his playard.) Sometimes he'll go back to sleep easily for another 3 to 4 hours between feedings. Other times, he'll be wide awake and not want to sleep. He still doesn't like sleeping on his back in his playard. If we'd let him sleep on our chest at night, he'd probably sleep through the entire night. Carter isn't consistent during the day either. Some days Carter naps a lot during the day and other days not much at all. He's eating about every three hours. Some times he'll doze off right after eating, some times a little later, and some times not at all.

Brian and I are going to try to work on figuring out a schedule this week since he's taking another week off. We may also try to get Carter to sleep in his crib.

Aunts

Here are some pictures of Carter's aunts ...

Aunt Karey with him at Thanksgiving


And Aunt Shannon with him at Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!


Carter celebrated his first Christmas last night with us, my mom, Brian's parents, and his sister, Shannon. We had a nice dinner and opened tons of presents - mostly for Carter! He got a bunch of cool stuff - lots and lots of toys, books, and clothes.





Carter's Aunt Shannon is living in Melbourne so she got him lots of cool Australian stuff, including a book that is the Aussie version of "The Night Before Christmas" (which is really funny) and some Hawthorn Hawks apparel. They are the Australian rules football team that Shannon supports.

I'm Sick

Somehow I caught a cold. I haven't been out much this week so I'm not sure where I picked it up. We took Carter to his one month exam on Tuesday at the pediatrician's office, then Carter and I went to Lowe's, Old Navy, and Walmart on Wednesday, and Brian and I went to dinner and a few places to do some Christmas shopping Thursday night. I started feeling a little bad on Friday afternoon and it got bad last night - I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I wasn't sure what, if anything, I could take and still feed Carter. Brian called one of our friends who is a pharmacist to get some suggestions. What I'm taking is helping some but not as much as what I would normally take. But at least it's something!

Brian's parents and sister are coming in tonight to stay for a few days. Hopefully I don't get them sick!