6 weeks and counting

This post brought to you by the Fisher Price infant swing and "Word World" on PBS which have allowed me to find 20 minutes of pseudo-adult time...

Time flies when you are not sleeping and too lazy to blog...no excuses, but here's a post and photos (as requested by Grandma) to try and make up for lost time.

It's been 6 weeks since Deven entered our world, and it is almost hard to remember what it was like before him.  Like all parents of more than one child, in hindsight all I can think is that it must have been much easier, but not as rewarding.  :-)  On the not-fun front, we continue to have all of the same eating issues Sonia had, including everyone's favorite of insane amounts of spit-up.  I should really get a video of the projectile nature of it so people don't think we're just whiners.  Suffice it to say, after a prescription for baby Zantac and an ultrasound to rule out more serious reasons, there's been no real improvement and we are still doing laundry every day and just learning to deal with it as our new reality.  We have another appointment with the pediatrician in 2 days where we will likely switch to a new prescription antacid...stay tuned.  Deven continues to get bigger, and the episodes seem to bother us more than him.  It does make for some unpleasant moments where you think "what is that smell??" and then you realize that it is you because you are covered in dried spit-up.  Nice.  Be glad the photos below do not have smell-o-vision.

On the more-fun front, Deven is starting to "wake up" and become a little man, and that has been lots of fun to witness.  In the last few days, he has decided he is interested in his mobile and the animals on his playmat.  He also attempts real smiles, which aren't fully formed yet, but still fun to see.  He is also mostly recovered from his bout with "baby acne", so our photo taking is back on the upswing.  Best of all, he finally has enough neck control to use the swing (or at least we tell ourselves that he does), and seems to enjoy it as much as his sister did, which makes for great mini-breaks when you need to do things like eat your own dinner.

For posterity, here were his stats at his 1-month check-up (better late than never recording these!):

Head circumference:  38.25 cm (48th percentile)
Height: 21.75 inches (55th percentile)
Weight: 8 lbs, 15.25 oz (25th percentile)

Those are virtually identical stats as Sonia at her 1-month mark, so Deven continues to follow in her footsteps.  Speaking of his big sister, Sonia continues to be completely enamored with Deven, and says "I want to see him!" anytime she is in the room with him and you are holding him too high for her to see his face.  She tends to love him a bit too much, and we have to constantly remind her "gentle, gentle" as she goes in for big hugs and kisses.  She has also done a little regressing herself, including now insisting that she needs help to use the bathroom, but I must admit it is a very effective way of ensuring she gets 1-on-1 time at her demand (you ignore a 3-year-old who says they have to go to the bathroom at your own peril).  Still, for the most part, she has handled the transition better than I would have imagined.

Not to be outdone by her brother, Sonia is also busy being cute (or at least amusing).  When she is not staring at Deven, she has been trying out her new scooter (see the photos linked below), insisting she can speak Spanish (followed by gibberish), and attempting knock-knock jokes.  Unfortunately she really doesn't get the format of knock-knock jokes, so it mostly just involves her saying "knock knock", you saying "who's there?", her saying some random name and then cracking up. We'll have to work on her delivery before she hits the comedy club circuit.  Oh, and for reasons I don't want to imagine, she has become obsessed with the word "poopy," using it to describe everything.  It became such a problem that we had to institute a new rule that she can only use that word in that bathroom.  The result was that the other day we were having a conversation in our bedroom, she hit the part of her story where she wanted to describe something as "poopy" (in this case, inexplicably Hello Kitty), so she stopped speaking abruptly, ran into our adjoining bathroom 10 feet away, and then continued her story uncensored.  To her credit, this was clearly in compliance with the rules.  :-)  Finally, she is really into telling you "a secret," which involves her whispering into your ear, "Mommy (or Daddy), I love you."  This is of course too cute, so you respond by saying, "I love you too," at which point she says, "No!  That's my secret."

Below are a lot of photos dating back to January up through today (you may have to be related to us to really want to see this many, but I am trying to catch up).  As I have been reminded (with tons of sarcasm) by both my brother and mother, I am a lifelong complainer about a lack of photos of second children, so hopefully this onslaught of pictures will help make up for lost time.