Henry at one month

See, we do take pictures of Henry!  There are even more below.  Being one month old is kind of a big deal, after all.  Although I don't know how it happened so quickly.

After Henry's entirely too exciting entry into the world we had some additional drama around weight gain.  Rough nights of cluster feeding, but insufficient weight gain.  I was beyond exhausted, and Steve and I were both pretty concerned.  After some focused effort and supplementing with bottles for a while, he seems to be on track.  Nevertheless, I'm eager for his one month appointment next week to see about his progress and hopefully confirm that he's still gaining appropriately.  It's so interesting to me how he is so different from Grace in terms of nursing.  I wrongly assumed that part wouldn't be too different, but as Aunt Joan pointed out, even things like eating are related to temperament.  I am looking forward to getting into a little bit of a clearer feeding pattern as he gets bigger.

Overall his temperament is pretty easygoing, although he's been a little fussier lately.  He is content to snuggle or just hang out observing the activity around him (not that he can see very well yet, but there's plenty of noise to capture his attention).  He really likes to snuggle.

I know it's early but he does smile from time to time.  It's definitely social smiling, not just gas bubbles.  And it is such a wonderful reminder of what's to come beyond the constant eating/pooping/spitting up cycle.

He's also pretty chatty!  He coos and has the cutest, sweetest little baby voice.  Can't wait to hear more from him.  Ashley was visiting last weekend and explained that some babies are just more talkative at this stage.

He rolled from his stomach to his back on Grace's birthday.  It didn't seem like an angry accident during tummy time because he got on his side and paused for a while, as if gathering energy, and then rolled the rest of the way.  But he hasn't done it again and mostly just gets mad if left on his stomach for more than a few minutes.  His neck is definitely getting stronger, and now that he has more and more alert time he eagerly holds his head up and looks around until his head crashes onto your shoulder.

Sleep, oh sleep.  Given that he's one month old, he's doing well.  A long stretch from mid-evening to wee hours of the morning and then he's generally up again 1-2 hours later.  However, this means he is often waking between 4 and 5:30am... the later he wakes, the harder it is for me to get back to sleep and the more likely Steve and Grace will awaken and have a hard time getting back to sleep as well.  He isn't in a clear pattern, though, so I don't think he's waking out of habit, but from actual hunger.  It will all sort out in time, and life is chaos until the move anyway.  Compared with the early cluster feeding, I can cope.  In fact, it's just getting out of bed that's hard - once I'm up, caffeine works wonders.  It has magical properties!

Ah, newborns are just so precious.  Just as everyone said, it really is easier to deal with the challenges when you have the perspective that you can't have as a first time parent.

Henry is an angel. We are all so happy that he's part of our family, even Grace who generally calls him "Baby" or, if pressed "Hen-e-ry."  Admittedly, I often call him "Cakes", you know, the classic diminutive of Henry-cakes.