7 Weeks Old!

Well the last week has been pretty great, I was able to capture one of Sam's smiles on camera! And just in time for Nana's birthday, he cooperated so well with me when he smiled! His smiles are much more frequent now, though they aren't consistent yet and it takes a ton of work to get him to smile. But I don't care, I'll do as much work as I need to to get that grin on his face!

We went apple picking on Sunday and that was really fun. We went with Sarah and Lance and the girls and it was so cool to be able to start doing those things with Sam. He seemed like he had a lot of fun, even though he obviously isn't big enough to pick the apples yet. Daddy held him while they picked the apples. It is going to become a tradition and something we do every year so next year when we go he will actually be picking them himself, I can't wait for that!

We also found out yesterday that my sister Heather is expecting a boy, I think it's so neat that they will be close in age, and I'm sure they will get into lots of trouble together. Sam and Jake and now Jude too. Michelle doesn't know what she is having just yet, but boy or girl, he or she will get in on the fun too. I just remember having a blast with my cousins when I was a kid, and he already loves Maddy and Ali, and I know they love him too. I am so lucky that I have a wonderful family on both sides and that we are all close. Sam will grow up playing and having fun with all his cousins!

Sam's really focusing on things now and AJ found out that he likes a lot of movement and color yesterday when he sat him in his bouncy seat in front of the tv and Sam sat and watched tv for 15 minutes without making a peep, lol. Then today I put on Sword in the Stone and he watched about 30 minutes of it before he started fussing. Obviously I'm not going to use the TV as a baby sitter, but it is nice to know that I can put him in front of it for a little while, so we eat dinner or something like that.

He is still doing pretty good at nap time and bed time and he consistently goes down for a nap every day now and naps for a good two or three hours. It is nice to be able to get some stuff done during that time. Today we are working on a few things though. I'm trying to work on getting him to finish a bottle in one sitting instead of over the course of a few hours. He's such a grazer and that's frustrating since it feels like I'm feeding him constantly, so I'm trying to break him of that habit. In working on his grazing problem, I am also trying to work on getting him to take a binky. Today he did pretty good and I fed him at 8:30 and in the interest of waiting till he was hungry enough to eat in one sitting I gave him the binky at 11:30 when he started acting hungry. He finally took it, but not for more than a few minutes at a time, he kept spitting it out, but by the time 12:30 came around he had taken it and kept in in his mouth for a good 20 minutes. (Yay!) Then I gave him a 5 oz bottle (usually he takes a 4 oz bottle.) It took him an hour to eat the whole thing, but I'm glad he ate it all. I'm going to work on this for the next few days and hopefully by the time I go back to work he'll be more consistent with all of this. Next thing I'm working on is sleeping through the night. I am trying to get his feedings on a schedule so that he eats a 5 oz bottle by 9:00 pm, since I did that last night, and I realized that he wasn't even hungry when he woke up at 1:00 am, so he ate 1 oz and went right back to sleep. At 5:00 am I was able to get him to finish all 4 oz in 15 minutes, so tonight when he gets up at one or two I'm going to give him the binky instead of his bottle and hope that he goes back to sleep.

In other news I found out my return to work date is actually 9/21 instead of 9/17, so I have a couple of extra days that I thought I didn't have. I have to go to the Dr's office sometime and get a return to work release, then I can bring it to my work and get everything started on going back. I am probably going to handle that tomorrow. Then the countdown starts as I only have a few precious days left at home with my sweet little boy so I'm going to try and make the most out of them!