Yay! Nathan is finally smiling. He smiles at me when he first wakes up and realizes that I'm in front of him. He smiles when I make funny noises, and he smiles when I contort my face to express what I would look like if my nose just suddenly fell off.
Sleeping is still going well. In fact, for the first time, he actually slept 4 hours and 52 minutes last night. He sleeps one long stretch and then sleeps for 2 hours, and wakes up hungry. I expected a 3 hour stretch, but now that I know to expect this short stretch after the long one, I will be a bit more content.
According to the Wii, Nathan is finally a little over 10 pounds. He has about a month and a half to gain 2 more pounds (to double his weight by 4 months). I really hope I am producing enough milk for him. Sometimes after a long feed, he gets frustrated as he sucks. I find that when I relax and take a few deep breaths, a let down occurs. So, I guess I will just try that more often.
Yesterday, we attended the Baby love massage class again and I'm proud to say that Nathan made it through the whole class tears free. We even had a cute photography session where we took pictures with some Christmas props.
As you can see, he can hold his head up, but not his body. There were so many cute babies in Santa and elf outfits. I kind of wish we took a picture with all the babies together. Those seem to turn out really well. Oh well.
I've also started to read chinese children's books to Nathan. I borrowed 2 from the library and we are just reading and re-reading those before his afternoon naps. I can tell that he really enjoys our reading time because he focuses on the pictures and he coos occasionally in response to what I read. I enjoy our reading sessions too.
In my spare time, I'm currently reading 2 books, which I recommend to anyone who has a young child. Here's my brief review of each.
The first one is Welcome to Your Child's Brain. By Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang.
It's very scientific in nature in that portions of it reminded me of my college human physiology book, but I like it because it helps me understand the physiology behind my baby's behaviors. Each chapter (out of 30) covers a different of development such as play, reading, and socialization. In addition, in each chapter is a short snippet of an article that give you practical applications of the information. Occasionally, the authors explain the studies that have been conducted to learn about the child brain. It's not necessarily a "how to" book, but a "why" book. I kind of like this book better than other "how to" books because there are so many philosophies of thought out there and I like to know the facts and make my own choices on how to raise my son.
The next book is How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm by Mei-Ling Hopgood. The chapter titled "How the Chinese Potty Train Early" got me to check out this book. The author herself is an adopted child and examines how different cultures tackle different issues on raising children. The chapter titles such as "How Asians Learn to Excel in School" and "How the Japanese Let Their Children Fight" have some sort of a shock factor and are intriguing. I have one more chapter left and I've found a lot of the methods interesting. I agree with a lot of the reasoning behind why certain civilizations choose to their children the way they do, I would even prefer to follow their ways myself, but, I'm not sure if some of those methods would be feasible in the American society that I live in.
Compared to many of the babies in our centering group, I think Nathan is a pretty mellow guy and fairly easy to take care of. I've heard of what other parents are going through and I'm thankful that this baby is a good one. A super cute one too!
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