It's Only Been 5 Days?

It feels like Nathan has been here forever.  He is such an easy baby, so far - it's so enjoyable!  All he does is eat and sleep, and only allows us to see his eyes for a couple hours a day.  My milk came in Sunday evening/Monday day, and so we've stopped supplementing him with formula.  Breastfeeding is going okay...I never made it to this point with Matthew and Kayla and so it's as much of a learning game for me as it is for him.  I wouldn't say it's necessarily 'my thing', but I really want to make it work because it's more convenient than pumping.  When he's awake and alert, it goes really well.  When I need to wake him up to feed him (during the day) it's more of a struggle.  A good feeding session usually takes us about an hour.  Matthew and Kayla aren't bothered by me breastfeeding, and I even managed to throw put Matthew in time out and keep him there despite him trying to crawl away while feeding Nathan.  The downside of living in Clayton Heights is that we have no privacy because I like to keep the blinds all open, so hopefully no one was walking past as I nearly topless me was chasing Matthew through the house :).  I'm sure they would have had a good chuckle.

Nathan is a really smart baby.  He knows exactly when he is being held.  He'll be lying on the floor, and then when you pick him up he'll stop whining, and then if you put him down again he'll start whining again.  Really cute.  He often tucks in his lower lip when sleeping, right in the middle, and can often be found with his thumb between his pointer and middle fingers when his hands are clenched.  His hair so SO soft.  I could rub my hands on his head all day long.

Matthew and Kayla have learned how to say his name - "Nayfin".  They still mostly refer to him as "Mom's Baby", and like to know where he is at all times.  They typically ignore him, but will sporadically want to sit or lay by him, and give him hugs and kisses.  They like to give him his soother.

Nathan is also a really strong baby.  He has very good neck/head control and can use his legs when he's in the mood.  He learned how to use a soother really quickly, and needs little to no help keeping it in his mouth.

He likes to feed continuously during the night, which I catered to for a couple evenings, but am now working on stopping it as I would be up for hours on end feeding him, putting him back in the cradle, only to be woken up again in ten minutes to feed again.  Last night was the first evening I made him 'cry it out' for 10 minutes, and then he fell asleep.  I didn't necessarily cut out his feedings, but I made him wait at least an hour before the next feeding.  Within a few hours he had already learned that he needed to just lay in his cradle and wait patiently, or fall asleep before I would consider feeding him again.  Jon wasn't necessarily impressed that I was letting him cry as he wanted to sleep himself (Nathan is in our room), so hopefully he's learned from last night and tonight will only be an improvement.

I had to completely skip using all of Matthew's 'newborn' clothes and move Nathan right into three month clothes, which is a little sad.  Matthew was so much older when he was wearing the clothes Nathan is wearing now.  Nathan also skipped wearing 'newborn' diapers.  I am using a few random ones I had left over from Matthew and Kayla, but they definitely don't fit like they should.

I'm a little bit sad that he's already five days old!  I feel like he's already growing up too quickly, even though I know that there are exciting days/weeks/months/years ahead of us.  It will be fun to see his personality come out, and I often wonder what he'll look like as a toddler.  It's a little weird for me to think that this could actually be our last child.  Not that Jon and I have made any decisions in that regard...but not necessarily is that a decision we have control of either.  And you can tell that I've already 'forgotten' about the whole labour/delivery experience (Nathan's birth story to come in the next few days).  I just tell myself that it can't be any worse than what it was (big baby with no epidural).

Anyways, this turned out to be much longer than I intended.  I should probably think about waking Nathan up (he's just sleeping on my lap right now...and has been for the last two hours) so that he can be fed.  Here's hoping he sleeps well tonight!  Jon's taking his second day off tomorrow (administration told him he could take two days off for Nathan's birth...so he took Friday the 18th off while I was in the hospital and now tomorrow) so I guess I could sleep in if I needed to.  We have a fairly busy day tomorrow...a visit with Oma and Opa Bomhof in the morning and a doctor's appointment in the afternoon, along with various errands I would like to run.