Age = 4 months 11 days
Late this afternoon (well after I’d posted the earlier blogs) I put Linus on his tummy for some tummy time. I glanced away for a second and bam! over he’d rolled.
It was a total fluke, but I guess their firsts always are until they realise they’re controlling what’s happening to them.
Age = 4 months 11 days
It’s Daddy’s birthday today, and Linus got him a couple of DVDs (Zoolander and Mystery Men, since you asked).
We had three new friends (other new mums R&S, N&S and S&L) over for lunch last week. I got to hold little S, who’s a couple of months younger than Linus. It felt weird holding such a tiny baby again! I even helped N set up a blog, and she’s putting me to shame with how much she’s posting to it!
As a bonus Daddy was home (after working until 4am the previous night!), so he and my new friends got to meet each other, and there was an extra grown-up around to hold babies.
We’ve had a lot of snow and frost up here lately. I’m hoping it’s an early winter, not the start of a long winter. However I should point out that – apart from the difficulty in getting around if you live on one of Dunedin’s many hills – winter in Dunedin is fantastic. There’s virtually no wind and no rain; the short days are cloudless and sunny and crisp (Dunedin-ish for “freezing”) and I love them. (Here’s a cool site that gives live Dunedin weather conditions.)
Linus had his second ever bottle last Saturday night. Nana gave him the bottle (of EBM, i.e. expressed breast milk) while Mummy and Daddy played Settlers of Catan with T. In spite of the lack of distraction, Mummy didn’t manage to win either game.
Sometime in early April Linus had his first bottle. That bottle was just a trial of pumping (for me) and bottle-feeding (for Linus and Nana) rather than for any particular excursion for me. I’m a bit miffed that I didn’t blog the big event, and it is a big event. I’m not allowed in the room while Linus is being bottle-fed, in case it confuses or upsets him, so this is the first time in his life that someone else has been meeting one of his needs in a way I can’t. If I hear him crying or fussing, I can’t go to him.
Linus has taken both bottles very well, although Nana claims that he scowls at her when she feeds him – he knows something’s not quite right about what’s in his mouth and whose face he’s looking at! 
Bob and I have plans for the next couple of Saturday nights, so I’ll leave Nana with a bottle of EBM both nights. We’re not planning to be gone longer than a couple of hours, but if Linus decides he’s hungry earlier than usual, or we get delayed, it’s nice for Nana to have the option.
(A few Saturday nights ago we were out at M&L’s going-away party and were gone longer than we expected. Linus unleashed his displeasure on Nana, and she’d rather not go through that again!)
Age = 4 months 11 days
I said to Nana the other day “I haven’t blogged for ages, but he hasn’t done anything different”.
She said “Oh yes he has! Every time I see him [i.e. every few days] he’s more talkative or stronger or more interactive…”
So the verdict is he’s not doing anything different, but he is doing a lot more and better.
Of course after the above conversation, Linus actually had a couple of “firsts” on the same day.
First of all, with Nana in the afternoon he rolled. He did not “roll over”. But he was lying on his back on the floor and he rolled all by himself onto his side. Nana pointed out that often when he’s lying down he’s either on something soft (like our bed) or on his changing mat with sloped sides, so rolling is a lot trickier on those surfaces.
Secondly he laughed. I know, I know, I said he’d laughed about 2 months ago, but since he hadn’t done it since, I decided it was some sort of fluke. But he was definitely (I’ll probably have to edit this post in another 2 months!) laughing at his Daddy’s antics the other night. He hasn’t done it since *sigh* but I live in hope.
It’s hard enough to tear ourselves away from him when he’s smiling, but if he starts laughing we’re done for!
Age = 3 months 25 days
I don’t know what has happened, but all in all this week has been heavenly in terms of Linus’s mood. Sleep hasn’t been any better or worse, nor has feeding, nor activity level, and I don’t think it’s even my mood. Linus has simply seemed happier and easier to settle for the entire week.
I’m wondering if it’s the two beers I had last weekend?!
Age = 3 months 25 days
Apart from the obligatory “What a beautiful boy/baby!” exclamations, the most common things people say about Linus when they meet him are:
I’m very lucky that Linus hasn’t had skin problems… no nappy rash, no cradle cap, and very few dry patches or pimples. He takes after me in terms of skin colour, i.e. he’s yellow (“olive” is the more polite way of putting it, which I assume refers to the oil and not the green or black or purple of olive flesh?!). His daddy is pink, a colour Linus goes only when he’s crying or straining.
In fact, we suspect that this naturally yellow tint is what made my midwife think he had bad jaundice in his first week. I was in hospital for three days after Linus’s birth, and we were told during that time to give him plenty of sunshine to help fight the suspected jaundice.
On the day we were due to take him home, my midwife said she wasn’t comfortable letting him go because the jaundice still looked quite bad. She said we needed to get him a blood test to confirm the jaundice, and if it was bad enough he’d need to spend another day in hospital under special lights to get rid of the excess bilirubin (which sounds like a nice name for a little boy!). Bob and I spent a stressful day sitting around waiting for the results, not knowing whether or not we’d all be going home together that day.
Thankfully when the results came back they said that his jaundice wasn’t too high, and that we could take him home provided we monitored his colour and gave him plenty of sunshine.
Linus was off the scale – the bottom of the scale – in the length charts when he was born (although if you’ve ever tried to measure a newborn’s length you’ll know that it can pretty hard to get accurately). From memory (I can’t be bothered checking the book) he was 49.5cm.
I guess he’s growing up rather than out, and when I compare his looks to some other babies his age I can see why people make the comment. The down-side is that a lot of the clothes I get given for him are ridiculously wide and short on him (especially since he wears cloth nappies that make the head-to-crotch length even longer!).
If you saw my previous blog on Linus’s histrionics you’ll understand why I hear this so often. People say it with such sympathy in their voices… I’m sure it only encourages him!
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