The Big Giant Fuzzy Man

Jason is over 3 weeks old now and I thought I would post just about him. He is mostly a sweet baby but he’s been developing this annoying habit of getting cranky right as I want to go to sleep. He’ll sleep peacefully during the day and evening, but as soon as I am ready to turn off the light, he wakes up and gets snotty. I have been up until 1 or 2 am for the past several nights. The most frustrating part of it is that he doesn’t seem to know what he wants. I will nurse him, burp him, cuddle him, rock him, lay him down, give him my finger or a pacifier to suck on, etc, but each thing will only soothe him for a few minutes, then he fusses again. I usually can tell that he’s tired, but won’t give up and go to sleep. So I end up out in the family room, really to fall asleep on my feet, constantly nursing and patting and changing his position. That’s not exactly my favorite thing.

We find he is less and less like Jilly each day, both looks and some other things. When he was first born, I thought he looked like her as a newborn, but everyday he looks less like her. *gasp!* I might actually have a kid that looks like ME! He is definitely longer and skinnier than she was. He has longer legs and a shorter torso (like me) and the super long monkey arms that Steve and his father both have. I’ve compared a few pictures of newborn Aimee to newborn Jason and there are some similarities, but I still don’t feel like he necessarily looks “just like” anyone. We’ll keep seeing as he gets bigger and bigger.

Another interesting thing is the color of his eyes. Jason was born with those typical dark blue-grey eyes, that most Caucasian babies have. Well, his eyes darkened within days. We have always figured it’s inevitable for our children to end up with dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, but thought it would happen when they were older. Jilly’s eyes stayed blue for a very long time, like 9+ months I think before turning brown. Jason is the opposite! You can already see lots of brown in his eyes, with some grey around the edges. Pretty much both kids have the same eyes at this point. I was not expecting that to happen when he was only a week old!

Jason has the strangest hairline. On his temples, his hair actually covers them and starts to blend in with his eyebrows, but above his eyes it goes way back. It’s hard to describe. But it is changing, I think some of his hair is coming off, so his hairline is evening out a bit. It’s still brown, and yesterday I swear I saw a little red in the sunlight. Just like his daddy.

Our little boy really loves to sleep cuddled up with us. He hates his cradle. At the moment, I’m okay with him being in our bed at night, though I am ready for it to end soon. It’s the same during the day, he wants to sleep on our chests. I let him cuddle with me a lot, and Steve too, but sometimes I have to put him down to get something done! He’ll often take one nap a day either in the bouncer or in Jilly’s crib, but it’s always a toss up for when that will work out. He would probably sleep okay in the cradle if we let him sleep on his tummy, but I’m a little hesitant to do that because of the risk of SIDS. We’ll see.

He definitely has a more pronounced need to burp than Jilly did. I used to spend 15+ minutes trying to get a burp out of her and she never would have one. I finally realized she didn’t need to burp and wasn’t uncomfortable, so I stopped trying. Jason needs to burp much more. But the good thing is, he’s usually fairly easy to burp. He hardly spits up at all, and only if I’ve overfed him, he’ll just let some leak out his mouth.

It’s really interesting to find all these little ways he is so different from Jilly. He is plumping up, but doesn’t have the cheeks his big sister did (and does). I am happy to see he seems to have inherited his daddy’s eyebrows too. I would be so disappointed if he didn’t have them. He also has this quivering lip thing. It looks like he’s cold and shivering, but really, it’s just because he’s thinking about crying. It’s pretty cute! I have been surprised in all the ways the two kids are different. I expected Jason to be more similar to Jilly. But he’s so cute in his own way!! I certainly wouldn’t want to trade him. ;-)

And I’ll leave you with a few pictures from my cell phone (hence the bad lighting and sub-par quality) to tide you over for now. :-)