Starting to find a rhythm

Things are chugging along in “new parent land.”

Carter’s starting to get some patterns on when he eats and when he sleeps and for how long. Unfortunately, he seems to be favoring the English part of his heritage — if I look at his sleep/wake patterns he seems to be most wakeful starting at 8AM in London. (Which, sadly, means after midnight here.) I know how to reset the clock on my computer, but we’re hoping that some of the tricks from “Baby Wise” will help us reset his clock.

He’s also been getting more ‘clingy’ as time goes on — if you’re holding him, even not moving, he loves it. Set him down by himself for a bit and within 30 seconds (unless he is really cashed out) he’ll start to fuss a bit.

His cord stub came off, which was exciting — the process of it coming off was messy, little blood spots everywhere for a day or so. He actually ripped it out himself with a nice little flail the other morning. The inside looked a little creepy-ooey-gooey but it’s starting to look more like a human bellybutton now, and looks like it’s healed nicely. Too soon to call on the critical “innie or outie” question.

One of the nurses won the understatement of the year award when she said that they can ‘like to stool while being changed’ — his highly pressurized little guts let rip a jet of the (increasingly stinky) stuff while I was changing him the other day, which I conservatively estimate ended up over 14″ long. Thank goodness for washable changing pads.

I’m also hoping we are out of the woods soon on the jaundice issue, we’ll probably get another test tomorrow at his 2 week old appointment. He looks better to me, but shades of yellow is a tough way to judge these things. I think for sure he’s not getting worse. Having him not need to be in indirect sun so much will be very nice — he’s a calm and mellow boy when he can be swaddled, but without it, he seems to wake himself up an awful lot more. (Which, with the jaundice, is ok, as we want him to eat a lot too!)

Got our first package today addressed to Carter Barratt, that was cool. You’re in the postal system now, buddy. I wish I knew who it was from! It was some swaddles (the good kind, yay) gift wrapped with a nice card — and I can’t find a name anywhere on it! If it was you (a) let me know and (b) thanks! He’s sleeping happily in one now.

I’m charging up the batteries for the flashes today, we’re going to see if we can shoot some portraits. I’ve been studying the ways of the legendary David Hobby, of the Strobist — Amber and I bought and watched the lighting seminar DVD’s and I haven’t unleashed any of those techniques on Carter yet. Here’s hoping you see some well-lit portraits hitting the Flickr feed soon.

That’s all for now. I’ll update if we get some portraits shot that we’re happy with.