Almost 8 Weeks!

As Noah closes in on the 8 week mark, I realize how negligent I have been about this blog. So much has happened in the past two and a half weeks!

Noah turned six weeks old on the day of my Penn graduation ceremony. He attended the event with his dad and his aunt Katie, and tolerated all but the last 10 minutes of what was a very long event. (He did better than his mom. I was fussy and restless by the third "greeting" speech.) By the time we all arrived home, it had been nearly 4 hours since he had seen me, and the first thing he did was to give me a huge grin--his first ever truly social smile, and the best graduation gift anyone could ask for.

Over the past couple of weeks, he has radically expanded his range of communication. No longer does he just fuss or cry to indicate that he needs something. Now he has a whole conversational register of vowel sounds--"ahhs" especially. When he really gets going, he can approximate the pattern of conversation too, filling in "answers" to questions and taking turns vocalizing when he is spoken to.

His motor skills are growing daily as well. He can push himself up on his forearms now and bat at things with relative accuracy. He's a master at pulling my hair. Sometimes when he is especially hungry, I will pick him up to put him to my breast and he will grab a hank of my hair and yank me towards him, as if to say "don't even think about doing anything other than feeding me Mama!"

We have had some wonderful family adventures these past couple of weeks also. Most notably, we traveled to Kansas City for Tom and Kelly Boling's wedding and Noah got to meet many family members, including his uncles Michael and Ryan, great aunts, cousin Maddie, and great grandfathers on Trey's side--his great-Grandad and his Opa. This past week we also drove down to Delaware to visit his great-Grammy and great-Grandpa Bowman. Noah delighted in meeting so many new people, and proved himself adept at both plane and car travel from the start.

Five Weeks

How have two weeks elapsed since the last post? Noah is five weeks old today. He astonished us last week at his 1 month pediatric visit by being 11 lbs and 22 inches long. I'm pretty sure he's hovering near the 12 lb mark this week. I call him My Little Brick. I also call him a bunch of other things, including: Monkey, Bug, Buggie, Bug-Monkey, Munch, McMunch, Munch-ka-pie, Tiny, Little Man, Muffin and assorted other variations. Our dear friend Rosan commented that our little boy is apt to wonder why, on occasion, people refer to him as Noah.

We took our first road trip this past weekend to visit my mom in Baltimore. Noah spent 210 of the approximately 220 minutes of the trip down and back asleep. Not much phases him, but an empty tummy can take him from sleeping to red-faced and wailing in one second flat. Luckily, we had a bottle of breast milk to get us through his 10 waking, hungry minutes.


With the exception of hunger (see image on left), Noah is both a patient little person and a very sociable one. He got to meet lots of new friends in Baltimore and really seemed to enjoy looking at everyone and being held by new people. He even injected a few conversational "ahs" into the talk around the hors d'oeuvres. His mom and dad were very proud of his social precocity.

And we had another first last night--Noah moved from the Pack n Play bassinet at our bedside into his own crib in his own room. Noah weathered the transition with his characteristic grace and good temper. I, on the other hand, got teary eyed. I must admit, though, the decision to move him seems a good one by this morning's light--Trey finally got a peaceful night's rest, and Noah also seemed to sleep better, leading me to wonder whether we've been rousing him with our cover-rustling as much as he has roused us with his sleepy baby grunts, groans and squeals.

Bug Muffin is growing up.

(sniffle)