Boone at One Month Old

This is Boone at One Month. This is the first installment in the "12-month onesie" series. If you're not familiar with what I did with Fenn, click on the link to Fenn at One Month Old to see his first photo. I saw this idea on Martha Stewart one morning shortly after Fenn was born. You take a picture of the baby in a 12-month onesie each month (in Boone's case, it will be on the 15th of each month) on the same background. At the end of the first year, you'll have 12 photos of the baby in the same 12-month onesie. Then you have the 12 photos matted and framed together. It is a good way to see how much they've grown from month to month. If you want to see Fenn's twelve photos, look over in the right-hand margin of the blog under "More Photos of Fenn". There's a link to his 12-month onesie photos. I'll set up another link for Boone's photos and add them each month.

It has been a busy and exhausting first month. First of all, as you can see from the last blog post, Boone spent his one month birthday in the hospital. I actually took this photo of him on June 15th in his hospital room. If you look closely at his right ankle, you can see his hospital ID bracelet. But luckily they removed the IV earlier that morning, so at least that's not in the picture. We're down to only one middle of the night feeding, but Boone still has not slept through the night. Fenn did it at around 6 or 7 weeks old, so we hope that means it will happen soon. He's a really good baby, but probably not quite as laid back as Fenn. It looks like (unfortunately) he got the Osborne temper. He gets mad when he's hungry or wants to be held... and has to wait for what he wants! I'm sorry to say that after three weeks of nursing exclusively, I gave up and started pumping and supplementing with formula. Like I said in an earlier post, he was a grazer like his big brother, and it was taking way too long to feed him. I needed some time to spend with Fenn and some time to rest or get a shower. A tired mommy doesn't make for a good mommy. Forget the advice about sleeping when they sleep. If you have any other children, that just doesn't apply any longer because they're not necessarily going to cooperate and sleep when the new baby sleeps. I will pump as long as I can, though. Anyway, as soon as I made the decision to stop nursing, I instantly knew it was the right decision for me. I know nursing is a beautiful thing, but it just wasn't working for me. I immediately felt relieved. Since nursing was taking so long, by the time I was done feeding him I was ready to get up and hand him over to someone else. I was never able to just sit and hold Boone and enjoy him. Now I can do that... now I can hold him and talk to him and smile at him. And guess what... he smiles back at me. He started smiling at us (I mean real smiles that weren't related to gas) around 3 weeks of age. That's two or three weeks earlier than Fenn smiled at us. If you'll look at the photo here, you can see a little smile. He has a really sweet, precious smile. As I get more photos of him smiling at us, I'll post those. As for Fenn's reaction to this new little being in our home, he seems to be adapting pretty well. He is really interested in Boone and likes to go in his room and look in his crib. He'll stand there and tell you "up", wanting you to pick him up so he can see in the crib. And I've already caught him trying to figure out how to climb up on the side of the crib to see Boone. He is also showing an interest in helping us with Boone. A couple of times, he has stuck Boone's pacifier back in his mouth.

So that's our first month with Boone. One quarter of it was spent in the hospital, and the rest of it is kind of a blur because we've been so exhausted. But we made it through it and can already see that things are settling down a little. Life is good! And we are truly blessed!