Expressions

I have been told, by a few people, that my boy is the king of facial expressions. In the course of 5 minutes, he goes through about 15-20 different expressions attempting to get control of his newly found limbs, focus his gaze on something interesting, or wake up. The other day I was determined to get all of these on tape and Zack was doing so well for the camera. He opened his little eyes, gave a big yawn, and began to look around. He giggled, screeched, and cried. In my opinion, it was one of the funniest videos of a two week old baby. I would love to share this video with you, but in all of my awe and amazement at what Zack was doing, I forgot to start recording. Whoops. I will attempt to get it this weekend and see if he will willingly perform for the camera.

Other milestones that Zack has recently reached is that he is now grabbing at things that are near him and onto fingers, he has an amazing control over his head and he can tell the difference between a finger and a nipple. Yes, that is correct. He will no longer suck on my finger like it will produce food for him. When I attempt to calm him down while Jenn is getting ready to feed him he sucks on the finger for about 2 seconds, spits it out and cries louder than when we was crying to be feed. I guess he does not like to be tricked.

Biggest milestone of the week happened last night. I am not sure if he has done it before for anybody else, but we got to spend some quality time together after dinner. Zack fell asleep and I played video games while Jenn went to bed to get a quick nap in before the “midnight feeding”. All was well and good and Zack started to wake up around 10 pm so I turned the video game off and gently urged him to wake up by talking to him and unwrapping him from his swaddle. Slowly but surely he started to open his eyes and make all sorts of faces so I picked him up and shutdown the downstairs for the night. As we got upstairs, he still needed a little prodding to get his eyes open and fully awake. I sat down on the bed and placed Zack on my lap and began to talk to him and tickle him a bit. Once he got his eyes open and decided that they would stay open he took it all in and then looked directly at me and gave me the biggest smile. At first I couldn’t decide if he was really happy, or if this was just anew face he was trying out while he passed gas. In the end no gas and Jenn said that it was a real smile! My boy likes me! After my 15 seconds of joy and amazement, he became a royal pain. I took him into his room to fetch his pajamas and then back to the changing area in our room. Undressed him and attempted to change his diaper which took me about 15 minutes. He would not stay still and kept kicking his feet all over the place. He kicked his diaper not once, not twice, but thrice! After I finally won that battle, the next battle was to get his pajamas on. Looking back, I should have done all of this while he was still semi-sleeping. Things would have been much easier. I have been stung by that philosophy in the past though as I found out the hard way.

Apparently, when kids wake up, that is when they perform most of the bodily functions. A few days ago, Zack was just waking up from his nap and needed to be changed. I undertook the task and took him to the changing table to try my hand at these cloth diapers. Upon removing the soiled diaper and reaching for a clean one, Zack decided that this was the perfect time for a pee. All over me. Ok, not so bad. I begin to wipe my hands off while Jenn is laughing at me and it was then that we hear only what can be described as a shart (if you have seen Along Came Polly then you know what I am talking about, for those of you who have not, think S**t + Fart). All over the diaper cover beneath him and the changing pad cover. Luckily, Jenn was quick enough to lift him up between sharts and place a clean diaper to catch the rest and believe me, there was a lot of it. So now it is a balancing act between changing him while he is still asleep enough to not wriggle around so much, and awake enough where all of his bodily functions have been completed. Wish us luck!