November 5th, 2009 by Overallgirl

Nolan is barely 2 weeks old and he is already graduating from needing to be swaddled! He has become accustomed to his arms and hands enough that he now prefers them to be free- even though he doesn’t have complete control over where they go yet, he is beginning to enjoy the effort involved in working towards such control- and making great strides if I don’t say so myself! He can now match his hand to his mouth a lot more often than before.

Here he is where his daddy placed in him in a basket of clean laundry- did you ever see anything so cute in a basket of laundry?

November 3rd, 2009 by Overallgirl

Well, yesterday our photographer friend Wendy came over to take Nolan’s newborn photos. Usually these are artistic photos of newborns fast asleep in creative positions. I surmised this was rather unlikely to happen with Nolan as he is a feisty little guy. Nolan has been taking a long 3 hour nap mid-morning for a few days now, so I hoped perhaps yesterday would be the same. Mistake #1- never think babies will do the same thing they’ve done before. Their job is to always do something you’re not expecting. I had a feeling that he would somehow know something different was going on and the performance pressure would prove to be a little too much. Indeed, as soon as Wendy arrived and I gently picked him up out of the bassinet where he had started napping not too long ago, he woke right up…and tears followed not too long after. The highlight of the photo shoot was towards the end when we tried to quickly slip off his diaper for those coveted naked shots. On our white couch Wendy placed her beautiful white fleece blanket, and topped that with a smaller piece that she crocheted herself. We placed him on top of that and Wendy started to take a few photos while he was still not crying. Next thing we know….an all too familiar sound to our ears came…I guess Nolan was so comfy sitting on Wendy’s blanket and crochet he decided to release his bowels. We weren’t sure if we should just leave him for a second and take a few more pictures before he started crying or lift him off right away- while we were debating, more of that all too familiar sound started and that made the decision easy- get a diaper on that little bum and fast!

Poor Nolan was not the happiest camper yesterday, but he made it through the day and today he is feeling much more relaxed.

November 3rd, 2009 by Overallgirl

Ben has recently added another skill to his resume which could really come in handy should his gardening work slow down- he has become the master swaddler. Maybe some babies are content to just lie there in their blanket- but Nolan is a little houdini and seems to be able to get out of anything we wrapped him in- then once he got out of it- his little flailing arms scared the heck out of him which was very disturbing to him to say the least. So armed with blanket and safety pins, Ben can now wrap up his son in a snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug cocoon and Nolan can’t get out of it- or at least 65% of the time he can’t- somehow even after our best efforts with safety pins we’ll still see a little fist start peeping out of the blanket….so cute. But Nolan definitely likes to be all snuggly wrapped up- probably a reminder of the crowded yet comforting conditions inside the uterus of his very short mother. There must be other moms out there who struggle with swaddling. You’ve heard of personal chefs and personal assistants right? Well, should his business ever get too slow, Ben may get a job as a personal swaddler.