Two growing boys

So much to update you on, so little time to do it! Mr. Charlie continues to be quite the eater, so finding a chunk of time to write for the blog is not always easy. I am looking at the notes I've jotted down of funny things Zach has said and done, Charlie updates, and all the pictures I've taken - and I don't know where to start! So if this is a little random (and long), pretend not to notice.

Charlie... at six weeks old, all that eating is paying off - can you see the rolls on his arms and legs in these pictures? And the second chin he is growing? Check out the dimple in his elbow! He's well into his newborn size clothes now, and hopefully the 0-3s will fit soon! We're also about to say goodbye to newborn size diapers. All happy signs he's growing and thriving.

Charlie is now officially sleeping in his own room at the other end of the hall. Last week he graduated from Scott's closet to the guest room, which is halfway down the hall. While I am still getting up often in the middle of the night, the extra steps to get to him are worth it since the distance buys me more sleep. Remember when I talked about how cute his night-time noises are? Well, he's just gotten noisier over time, which tended to mean I'd get up and feed him before he was really ready. Now that I can't hear the snuffly, grunty noises, but can still hear the cries, I get up to an hour more sleep between each feeding. He used to be up closer to every 2 hours, and now it's often between 3 and 4. Every little bit helps, I assure you.

Over the last few weeks, I noticed Charlie was making more noise at night, and not the good kind. The poor little guy is not having the easiest time getting rid of all that food; I always thought breastfed babies couldn't be constipated, but apparently that's not true. He poops, but mostly during the day, and not without some significant effort. He rarely poops at night, and the result is an unhappy little guy who wakes up at night for reasons other than hunger. After trying massaging his belly and bicycle kicks (exercise apparently helps everyone poop, even babies), I called the doctor. To my surprise, they recommended adding an ounce of apple or pear juice to a bottle of milk twice per day. So as of Thursday I'm putting our pump to better use, and have been giving him one ounce of juice per day - I decided to start out conservatively. But I haven't seen much of a change, so we're upping it to the 2 ounces now. Hopefully this will make things easier for him... if not we'll head in to the doctor.

We've learned lots of about Charlie in the last few weeks. He'd prefer to eat about every two hours during the day. He LOVES sleeping on his belly, so he often naps that way during the day (with us checking him constantly!). He also loves to have his butt patted - if you want this guy to go to sleep, that's the way to do it. He is giving us some amazing grins now - so very very cute! He and Scott had a hilarious game of peek-a-boo the other day, but I couldn't tear myself away long enough to get the camera and take a picture. He also loves the bath - he gives us his funny startled look when you first put him in (huge eyes!), but then just hangs out happily in the water. Charlie has a love/hate relationship with the carseat; he sleeps like a dream in the car while the car is moving, but once he wakes up, you better get him out fast or you'll hear his rare but very loud cry!

Oh, and Charlie also had a new experience the other day... his first movie in a movie theater! He and I, along with my friend Cindy, went to a morning showing of SATC 2. This was a first for me, I was never brave enough to try it with Zach. But Charlie was great - ate, slept a lot of the time, and other than some straining to poop noises, was very quiet and didn't disturb any of the other moviegoers. The movie, on the other hand, not so great. It was fun to revisit the characters, but the movie itself was all glitz and zero substance.

And then there's Zach... our funny boy who is clearly trying to figure out his place in this new world. He continues to be wonderful with Charlie, when he wants to show some interest. What makes us laugh is that his request is always "can I see his eyes?" He's said that from day one - it's not enough to just look at Charlie, he has to see his eyes. And now the other constant request is "can we tell him a story?" So we've been creating lots of "once upon a time there was a boy named Zach" stories these days.

Zach and I just had our last ECFE class (Early Childhood Family Education). We've been involved with ECFE since Zach was 3 or 4 months old, and have loved all of the classes, teachers, and other families we've met. We still get together with the moms and kids we met in that very first class, as well as friends from subsequent classes too. Other than being sad because of the "it's the end of an era" feeling, since Zach will move on to preschool in the fall, I'm also sad because Zach was just starting to make his own friends. Up until now, his "friends" have been the children of friends of mine, kids he's been interested in but not necessarily at his own instigation. But now I hear stories about Clara, Lily, Connor, and the other kids in his ECFE class. It's a whole new experience to hear Zach talk about what he does when I'm not there (our class "separates" for about an hour - kids off to play, parents off to talk about the challenges of 3 year olds!). For so long, with both ECFE and his "school," when I'd ask what he did, who he played with, etc, I never would get a real answer. But in the last couple months I got to hear about Clara chasing him around telling him she loved him, racing with Angelina in the gym, wrestling with Grace (yes, most of the stories are about girls). So it makes me sad to think he won't see these kids again!

We both have also had the startling experience of being out in public with Zach and having him greet someone we don't know! Woodbury is not a huge community, so occasionally we run into his classmates, at the library, a park, the YMCA, wherever. To have your three-year-old say hi to someone you don't even recognize is very strange!

I mentioned Zach is figuring out his place in the world - which I think is typical of his age, but is also due to the addition of a sibling. So right now we're seeing all sorts of different behavior, some fun, some not so much. Zach has always been very verbal, so I shouldn't be surprised that his "testing" is happening with words, not necessarily actions. He's never been a big tantrum thrower, feet stomper, etc etc. Instead, he flat-out tells us he doesn't want to do what we want him to do. Or that he doesn't like it when we don't let him do what he wants. And not only does he say it, he says it in exactly the same tone that we (ok, mostly me) use when we're (trying to) authoritatively tell him what he needs to do. In other words... our 3-year old is excellent at back-talk, with the sort of tone I didn't think kids achieved until they were teenagers. Sigh.

One day, after we'd had many discussions about his tone, and what sort of tone is appropriate when he's talking to us, I got frustrated when once again I heard the disrespectful tone. We were in the car, and if I remember correctly Zach was upset that I'd told him he wouldn't have time to play cars when we got home because it was nap time. While we haven't taken anything away from Zach for discipline purposes in a very long time (since he went through his toy-throwing stage!), for some reason that day I told him that if he didn't improve his tone when he was talking to me, I was going to take away all his cars. Ridiculous, I know. For one thing, that's much more of a punishment for me, since it's the one thing Zach will play by himself! Anyway, rather than being concerned about this threat, Zach was fascinated. He wanted to know where I would put the cars where he couldn't get them. The closet? He'd be able to get them out. On top of the refrigerator? Not a good idea, he informed me, since cars don't go on the surfaces in the kitchen (true - the rule in our house is no cars on the counters or kitchen table). He told me I should put my finger on my cheek and think about it some more. While I realized he was completely missing the point of my original threat, I had to laugh, since his line of questioning and thought process was so perfectly illustrative of his nature! You can't get much past this kid.

Other than the tone issue, the other unusual behavior we've seen is crying at the drop of a hat. He does it when frustrated - he can't get his shoe on, the dog keeps hitting him with his wagging tail, etc. He especially does it if a game isn't going the way he wants it to (in other words, if he isn't winning), or random things like if we go down the stairs ahead of him. He's very distractable, so this isn't a huge issue, it's just a little wearing. And we aren't really sure the best way to handle it. It seems like there's a fine line here, between letting him know it's ok to cry, but at the same time trying to help him understand that some things in life aren't a big deal! And since he may very well be doing this because he's noticed that Charlie gets attention when he cries... how can you blame him?

Zach has also continued his fascination with numbers. He loves pointing out license plate numbers, since those tend to have at least three digits, and he LOVES talking about numbers in the hundreds these days. The other day he told me his favorite number was 154. His next favorite? Two zero zero (his words). He asked if I knew what that number was, and then informed me it was twenty-hundred. I explained that two zero zero was actually two hundred, and he, of course, wanted to know why there wasn't a twenty hundred. It's a good question, I think.