Grandma's Got Skills.

Yesterday, we dropped Jackson off with Grandma B. so that Betsy and I, along with Jay, Denise, and Stacey, could participated in the sandcastle contest. Here's what we made.


When it was all over and we left the beach dejected from not winning, I gave grandma a call to see how Jackson was doing. The answer was astounding. He slept for two-ish hours and then woke up a little fussy. So Grandma just gave him the bottle of breast milk that we had left with her, and the boy actually took it. Breakthrough! "So what's he doing now?" I ask. "Swingin' away in the swing with a pacifier in his mouth." She responded.

Unbelievable. Every day is is more amazing than the one before. What will today bring?

The Learning Curve.

The extremes are amazing with this kid. I imagine Jackson is not unique in this aspect. I thought we were regressing back to a bad place on Wednesday night. Around 9:30 the screaming began. It was accompanied by intense rooting like the poor child was starving to death. So, naturally, Betsy offered him his favorite meal. He instantly latched on and started sucking furiously. "Ah! That's better" right? Wrong! Within seconds he had pulled away from the breast like it was full of scalding hot coffee and he'd just burned his tongue. Screaming and rooting despite having apparently what he wanted right in front of him. "Oh Crap!" we thought. What do you do with a hungry baby that now seems to hate eating? This went on for a while. Angrily feeding for a second or two and then crazy screaming and rooting. Finally Betsy gave up on trying to feed him and we focused our energy on just trying to sooth and calm the poor guy. We tried all our tricks and nothing worked. Giving him an impromptu bath calmed him down for exactly the duration of the bath. Then it was right back to screaming. By this time Betsy and I are shooting each other looks as if to say, "this kid is broken, what do we do know"? Around ten minutes to midnight I put him up on my shoulder and took him for a few laps up and down the hallway (my most reliable calming trick to date). Just as suddenly as the episode began, it stopped. Jackson became dead weight in my arms. I handed him over to momma and the two of them went to sleep on the couch. We had survived.
The next day followed and was a good one. Jackson had visitors and he even went shopping with Betsy and Grandma M. The perfect angel all day long and well into the evening. Then it happened. At the stroke of 9:30, crazy screaming Jackson was back. Just like the night before it seemed. Same wild eating approach and inconsolability. We figured we were in for another two and a half hours of "what do we do!". This time it only lasted about and hour. maybe even less. Victory! He calmed down and we watched TV

A little later, he and Betsy went right off to sleep on the couch. Survived another one.
Yesterday, was another good one. I put him in the car seat with a goofy hat, he stuck his tongue out at me, and we went out and had lunch.

Again, he was good all day. He even did a little sleeping on the couch by himself. We got some smiles. He went shopping again. He got to see his aunt Stacey.

Good times. Don't get me wrong. There's always crying and fussing and spitting up and whatnot, but that stuff's easy now. Then it happened again. Just like clockwork. Around 9:30 the poor kid started going nuts again. same exact story. Betsy and I hoped it would be more like the previous night's episode rather than the one before that. Turned out it was even shorter than that. Forty-five minutes, tops. He settled down, had a nice calm feed, and the three of us watched a movie. After the movie, we decided to try actually sleeping in bed. All three of us. Guess what? It worked. Unbelievable. Before long we're gonna have this kid sleeping in his own bed.
Of course, now that I've bragged about all of this, the next several nights will be hell on Earth.
Wish us luck.

Another Day, Another T-shirt.

Dang! That's a lot of spit-up.

Well, we're 36 days in and still doin' our thing. Jackson is being pretty good and Betsy and I are learning to laugh at things like massive amounts of baby barf. We've had some more successes with the pacifier, but most of the time he acts like we're trying to get him to suck on a jalepeno. He's still not sleeping by himself, but he is sleeping next to Betsy on the couch. That's a step in the right direction if you ask me. Here's proof that this boy likes sleeping with his momma best.



He was sound asleep (left side) and Betsy was trying to eat some ice cream, so I said "Here, let me take him from you for a minute so you can eat". The result was what you see on the right.

One Month Old!

Jackson turned one month old today. So, what do you get a one month old baby to celebrate such a momentous occasion?


A hepatitis B shot right in the thigh! Bummer.

That's right. Jackson got his first shot today. He took it like a man. He screamed for a minute but Betsy calmed him right down afterwards. As always, he was weigheed and measured. 10 lbs. 5oz. and 22 1/2 inches long. The doctor says that he is very healthy and doing just great. Except for the crankyness. We are doing quite well. We took a picture of the family at one month.

Betsy is still losing weight and looking great. Jackson and I are maintaining our one pound a week weight gain. That's the scoop for today.

Bald headed baby!

"Are you talking about my hair again?"

Poor Jackson has lost some hair. Right outta the middle. He's looking more and more like his grandpa every day.

We've been doin' okay lately. The Birdsong birthday season ended last night at Jeff and Jackie's. It was Jeff's birthday. Jackson had a great time. He didn't really start crying til the party was over. He just hates it when the fun is over. Aunt Colleen got Jackson to take his pacifier for only the second time in his life. I offered a fifty dollar reward for the first person that could do it. The check's in the mail Colleen.

Tonight we took Jackson out to our favorite Mexican restaurant. He went there so many times while in the womb we figured he'd come out with a pencil thin mustache and an accent.

It was a Fluke!

I knew it was too good to be true. We haven't been able to convince Jackson to take the pacifier again. He kept it for about two hours yesterday. He hasn't wanted anything to do with it since.

Good things.

This boy of ours has been a pill today. He was pretty grumpy last night too. I guess that's the cost of two good days. Not a bad trade, I guess.

I did accomplish something remarkable today. I tricked the little man into sucking on a pacifier. He's been sucking away for like thirty minutes. YES! Next week, bottle feeding. Yeah Right.



Our wishlist.

Not a bad day.

After quite a few rough days and nights, we finally had a relatively peaceful 24 hours. We started yesterday at the pediatrician's office. Jackson weighed in at 9lbs. 1.5 oz. Two and a half pounds in three weeks. If he keeps up that pace he'll be over fifty pounds by his first birthday. Then we'll have to take him around the country to various daytime talk shows. He'll be billed as "Hungry Jack! The fifty pound baby"


The doc thinks we may be dealing with colic and precribed some drops that should help. This morning the doctor called with a revelation. She realized that Betsy was given antibiotics before delivering and that may have killed off the "good" bacteria in Jackson's digestive system. So she reccomended we try a natural booster for these bacteria before we go on with the prescription colic medication. Makes pretty good sense to me.

Unfortunately, Jackson still insists on being held 24 hours a day. He's what is called a "high need" child. Once we came to accept this fact, life has gotten a little easier. By not trying to constantly put him down and then being disappointed when he doesn't stay down, our mental health started to get better.

*Update: I started writing this earlier today. While I was at work, Betsy and her mother took Jackson out with them to buy the suggested natural remedies. He screamed the whole time. The car seat, which is usually one of the few place that Jackson sleeps, was apparently a torture device today. He calmed only when carried at the stores and only once he was home and safely in someone's arms.

So that brings me back to 'high needs'. We came by this term online and in books. It seems to describe our situation perfectly. Basically it describes a child that needs to be held all the time.
Here are some traits of a high need baby: They need to be held all the time; they hate sleeping alone in a crib. They need to nurse all the time. If their needs are not met, they cry and cry and cry and cry. (from an article by Jeri Carr at http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/infants/81605)

Most articles say that with time it will all get easier. We're patient folks and Jackson is worth the work.

Gillian Anderson?

There's a website called myheritage.com that will run facial recognition software on your picture and tell you what celebrity you most look like. So I ran The milk drooling picture (the one a couple of posts below) of Jackson and it decided that he looks like Gillian Anderson.


I uploaded pictures of Betsy and I also. Betsy was said to look like Holly Marie Combs (who neither of us had heard of) and I was found to look like several different people. I kept uploading different pictures until I got a result I could live with. The fisrt result was Stan Lee (the comic book creater), the second was some Chinese actor, the third was soccer player Diego Marradona, then finally Michael Landon.

Fountain Face 2.0

Legend has it that Jackson's uncle Greg was quite the spewer. It is even rumored that Greg was able to upchuck an entire bottle of formula after drinking it. Because of all this spitting up, Greg earned the nickname 'Fountain Face'.

It's been over thirty years since the first Fountain Face was released to the public, So I now offer the brand new, 2006 model. Fountain Face 2.0 (Travel system sold separately)

Easy Come, Easy Go.

Of course, as soon as I write about how we are doing much better, the latest problem arises. High volume spit up. We thought he spit up a lot before. Now he's spitting up a ton. Who knows why. Maybe he's eating too much and purging the extra, maybe he's been reading fashion magazines and is concerned about his double chin. He seems to be spitting up enough to make himself hungry again. That means less sleep for the momma. We're still getting a couple of good long (two hours) sleeps a day, but not at night. The pediatrician is going to call us back this morning. Hopefully she'll have some advice. We are still enjoying this whole deal despite the lack of sleep and all the dirty laundry.

In other news. Congratulations are in order for our friends Scott and Jenny. They had a baby boy yesterday. He and Jackson are destined to be life long buddies.

The Power of Milk!

Look at this face. Milk leaking out one corner of his mouth. Obvious sign of a milk junkie.


We are doing much better this week. As you can see there is no question that this boy is getting enough to eat. He was weighed on Friday. Jackson is already weighing in at one pound over his birth weight. It's all in his face in my opinion.
Sleeping has already increased. We are getting those two hour stretches of sleep that we had heard were possible. He even sleeps by himself on occasion. He's still not crazy about the bassinet but we're getting there.

Betsy is doing great and looking great.

We took a trip to Wal-Mart's portrait studio yesterday for some Easter pictures. Unfortunately, they won't be ready before Easter. Oh well.

So that's the report for day 12. Things are lookin' up. We're all getting the hang of this and having a lot of fun doing it. Those first days of panic are quickly becoming distant memories.