Two months

Once again, hard to believe it's only been two months, but also hard to believe it's been that long in other ways. Jolyon continues to be an incredibly awesome addition to our lives.

We had our 2 months well-baby visit today and we had to check which adjectives in the list described Jolyon, and as Stephanie said, "all the delightful baby adjectives". I think we picked "happy", "active/busy", "interested" (or was it "interactive?") and "easily consoled".

He also continues to be a sleepy baby, though we didn't go so far as to pick "lethargic" (he's not - he really just sleeps soundly and often): he's started routinely sleeping 5-6 hours during his first nighttime stretch, which is technically qualifying as "sleeping through the night", or so the books tell us. Stephanie still has to change his diaper during that first waking to get him to stay awake for eating from the second side, so that she's not uncomfortably full, but then he'll be down for another 2-3 hours pretty instantely, and voila, it's the 7-8 hours of sleep we need! He also naps really well during the day for 2 hour stretches, often longer, and goes down easily for a nap when he starts to fuss.

When he's not asleep, though, he definitely lives up to the "busy, active" adjective, which is why "lethargic" would be just about the furthest thing from accurate. Our doctor today watched him kicking and throwing his arms around and asked, "So he does this often?" and we said, "Yeah, pretty much most of the time that he's awake!" and she was amazed, so perhaps this really is unusual. She added, "Well, no wonder he sleeps and naps well; I'd be exhausted!" And these were small, low-level kicks, not even his big kung-fu master, large full-body thrashing kind of kicks that he's recently been debuting, to best effect in the tub. (We have to bathe him with his feet pointing away from us now.) Jolyon also demonstrated that he does a great job in supporting his head and shoulders on his stomach, even though he doesn't especially LIKE doing it. So, all in all, strong like Conan, just like we predicted. :)

The super-accurate scale at the doctor's office said that he's 11 lbs and 0.5 oz today, or exactly 5 kg! So, for the purposes of the baby book, we can confidently declare that he hit 11 lbs just as he reached 2 months. (He may still be a few ounces behind Priscilla, but his days as the penultimate member of the household in mass- rankings are numbered.) He's also 24.75 inches long, and has a 39 cm head circumference, although the nurse didn't do a great job with the accuracy of the tape measure around his head. He is continuing to track the same weight growth curve of 30% and head circumference of 25%ile that he established at his last visit at 1 week, but he's gone up to 95%ile in height. I'm pretty astonished - we did not particularly expect this one to be such a tall baby!

I do wonder where he falls on the breastfed baby weight charts, and I might look those up at the World Health Organization sometime, because breastfed babies usually gain wait faster during the first half year, and then taper off more quickly during the second half-year, but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. I have avoided looking because I suspect that he will not be tracking the growth curve at all on those charts, since all the other breastfed babies we know have been overtaking him a lot, but I'm not actually all that worried since he seems to eat happily when he's hungry and we feed him on demand, and he's definitely shooting up in height in a way that suggests he's getting all the nutrition he needs. I think he just inherited Stephanie's build.

We did all the usual 2 month vaccinations, exactly as one would expect for the child of a biology teacher. The experience was fine, except that we ended up having to wait forever for the one person administering all the shots that anyone needed (in addition to kids, there's grownups getting boosters and also people getting shots for travelling to exotic places). The doctor's appointment itself was very quick, especially because the doctor was running late, but we waited for nearly an hour before we finally had our turn with the vaccinations. Jolyon was starting to show signs of being hungry a bit before his name was finally called ("Jo-lynn?"), but we stalled and held off feeding him until after he got his shots, so that when he was done, he was very easily calmed down by a chance to eat. That worked great! We did give him a dose of Tylenol an hour ahead of time, so that might have contributed to his being not-so-terribly-fazed as well.

He slept on the way home, including running some errands (dropping Stephanie off at work and picking up bread at the bakery), and even long enough for me to get a bottle prepped once we got home, but then got really fussy just in time for our friend Lisa and her foster daughter to come over to bake some brownies. I had Jolly in the Moby Wrap, and he alternated between sleeping and not-so-Jolly howls of rage, some in his sleep. I thought it was the immunizations, so I gave him another dose of Tylenol, but it wasn't until I un-mobied him that he promptly became a much happier baby. So, perhaps this bout of really unprecedented crankiness was mostly due to Jolyon's lack of interest in the attachment parenting movement. He really does not enjoy the Moby wrap that much when he's awake, I think. Lesson learned. But the brownies turned out awesome - I am really impressed by D.'s baking skills!

I think we'll be switching Jolyon's physician as well as our own, though, so this is probably the last time we'll see this doctor. She's been great, but I think we'll get one on the same landmass as us when we move in a few weeks, since I think there's a lot to be said for not having to wait in line for the ferry with a sick child should the situation arise. Fortunately, we have a bunch of different options in the local on-island clinic that are accepted by our insurance, and they all sound very sympathetic from their descriptions and most of them are accepting new patients right now. So far we have really liked having one family doctor for everyone, so we'll be continuing with that even though the family doctor in question will change.

(Aside to worried grandparents: yes, there's not a hospital on the island, but in those cases, ambulances have priority for getting on the ferry, which we've seen leave ahead of schedule for precisely that reason. And, if it really can't wait that long, there's helicoptering in to the Seattle hospitals... but hopefully we won't ever need to deal with that scenario!)

Anyway, that concludes the salient doctor's visit points. The official verdict is that Jolyon seems to be a very healthy, happy baby who is growing and thriving, which is exactly what we think, too. I think we're really and truly spoiled by having such a mellow baby who brings us such great joy. We saw a 12-month-old and a 6-month-old while we were waiting for our shots, and I'm so excited to see what the future with our little guy will hold! Over the last month he's made such huge strides in becoming more interactive and responsive to things we do, in addition to getting much better control over his own body, and I'm sure the next month will be filled with even more of the same!