The Saddest Baby in the World

Can you believe the lower lip? Heaven help us when he learns how to use that thing with intent!

Carbo the Second

Well it took ten weeks, but Noah has now officially got man boobs. Just like his Uncle Awesome, circa 1983. Glad to know that Uncle A is sporting a six-pack these days.

The bug is still pretty cute, though. Here he is in Month 3.

Little Man

Sixty-three nights have passed since Noah was born, and for the last 62 he has refused to let his arms be pinned against his body by a swaddling blanket or any other contrivance. He sprawls them out like someone miming crucifixion, only without the melodrama, which after all would be hard to pull off for the owner of a boob monopoly.

In the morning, sated, he falls into his mother’s lap, back curved like an archer’s bow, hands over head, bottom lip somehow a semaphore for bliss.

He’s apt to gab after breakfast, but when he’s said his piece he might not say another for half the day.

The only thing he likes more than a diaper change is a bath in the kitchen sink. Just try coaxing an arched back from him now. He slumps down lower and lower in his little bathing chair, wet hair flat on his scalp, looking like Marlon Brando. Young Brando in the face, old Brando around the middle. Judging from the fat he’s packed onto his thighs and midsection, Noah is shooting for the junior sumo circuit. (If he keeps growing at the current rate, he will soon need his skinny dad for physical as well as emotional support.)

Arms raised at bedtime, arched back at dawn, the posture of unalloyed decadence under running water. Two months old, first word nowhere close to his little tongue, and yet here he is broadcasting a personality. What comes next that can possibly be better than this?

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.