Turtle Monkey

Mark brought Elias in this afternoon to visit me at work. While we didn’t get to see everyone I’d wanted to see (stupid meetings), Elias met lots of my coworkers and smiled at every single one of them except for a blonde woman. We noted that it wasn’t the first blonde woman for whom Elias refused to smile; Mark took him to Publix once and he smiled at everyone except one blonde cashier.

I have no idea why he doesn’t find blondes funny. He’s seen very few blonde people in his life and none at all until he was a few months old. Would that even make a difference?

He spent so much energy flirting with anyone who spent more than a few seconds looking at him that he was pooped for the ride home and fell asleep.

We haven’t done many videos since we got the camcorder around Christmas, but yesterday Mark finally picked it up. Most of this video is a little boring, but we think the last 30 seconds or so are hilarious. Elias gets upset, I pick him up and he tries to let out a frustrated cry, but gets cut off by his own fart.

Oh, my poor poofy baby.

Well, without any effort whatsoever, Elias decided to roll over from his tummy to his back last night. Attempts at repeating this feat were met with much frustration at being placed right back onto his belly.

I’m sure he could roll all over the place if he wanted to, he just doesn’t seem very interested in the activity.

We had the best weekend with Elias. He woke up in a great mood both Saturday and Sunday morning and both days we had a fabulous morning of play and relaxation together. My mom and stepfather came over Saturday morning and stayed until about 5pm and Elias seemed to really enjoy their visit. He was in a great mood all day long. Supposedly, he actually grabbed the glasses off my mother’s face, which is quite the accomplishment because he doesn’t seem to understand the concept of lifting his arms to grab things quite yet.

After my parents left on Saturday, some friends stopped by and Elias was nothing but smiles and contentment! Toward his bedtime, he started getting fussy because he was tired, but quickly fell asleep with Mark rocking him.

On Sunday, Elias was a little bit fussier than normal, but that’s because he was extra tired. I’m not sure if it was because of the hectic day before or just because he’s still hanging onto a cold. I tried to get him to sleep as much as possible. He wasn’t really keen on the idea of being put down to sleep, so I held him through all of his naps yesterday. That’s more than okay with me - how much longer am I going to get to hold onto a sleeping baby?

I have to admit, it’d been more than a week since I did “official” tummy time with Elias. Tummy time never concerned me too much - it’s not even really all that big outside the U.S. Elias gets lots of tummy time on our chests and never really cared too much to be placed face down on a blanket (what baby does, though, I guess?) Anyway, I was surprised when I put him face down yesterday morning and he actually lifted his chest up off the ground for the first time. (Normally he wiggles around with his face pressed down into the blanket until he gets upset and I rescue him.) He seemed equally surprised, but he still wasn’t too sure about this tummy time thing.

Elias is definitely getting closer to rolling over. I’m sure the ability is within him, he just doesn’t seem very concerned about doing it. He rolls onto his side quite a bit.

We’ve been trying to get him to practice sitting up. You can definitely see the look in his eyes when he’s sitting up, like the whole world has changed for him. He seems eager to be able to do it on his own. We’ve managed to get him to sit unsupported for several seconds at a time, but I think that’s more of a fluke than anything he’s actually doing. I had a dream the other day that he started scooting around. It freaked me out a bit, but I don’t think it’s going to take him long to start scooting once he figures out how to sit up on his own.

The eczema on his face is looking so much better this week! He still has a small patch on his left cheek, but it’s not all that bad. Unfortunately, his entire left arm and a patch on his left leg has flared up. Hopefully we can get that under control (it seems half my time with him is spent moisturizing him!) without his face flaring up again.

This is the third week in a row our son has allowed us to watch ABC’s Lost uninterrupted and the second consecutive week of being able to watch it the night it aired!

Elias is getting a lot better about going to sleep at night. We always get up around 6am. I was shooting for an 8pm bedtime, but most nights he seems to be sleepy before that. One night he went to sleep at 6:30! It’s a bit disappointing because we don’t get very much time with him after we pick him up from daycare.

For the past two nights, Elias hasn’t gotten up in the middle of night to feed (though he nurses on me throughout the night - there’s no telling how much milk he gets there). So he sleeps from about 8pm - 6am!

Elias has always been a good overnight sleeper and I feel really lucky about that. I’m afraid that he’s going to hit a developmental spurt that disrupts his sleeping patterns.