Merrick at Three Weeks

The days keep clicking by, at a pace a little bit too quick for my liking. I am loving this time at home with the family! Merrick was three weeks old yesterday...and it has been a good week. Mark's parents were with us again over the weekend and we were all healthy this time, plus, we had beautiful weather, so we were all enjoying ourselves a lot more than their first time here when Merrick was just born and everyone was sick.

We haven't taken too many pictures this past week-I guess we've just been busy out and about having fun and life has been busy. That, and Merrick spends most of his time sleeping and eating. We still don't have a picture of the five of us together, mostly because none of us are showered and decent looking at any given moment. We really need to get a family picture taken. Soon.

The rest of the post might be more information than most people care to know, but I want to be sure to remember some of these minute details, so please bear with me:

Merrick's personality is starting to shine through in little ways. He continues to be very calm and content (except if mama has a sip of wine with dinner--SO not worth the fussiness that follows! Glad we figured that one out...) Merrick likes to have his hands up by his face when he sleeps, and probably would have sucked his thumb, had we not intervened and introduced the pacifier. He has such big, bright eyes and has really been examining the world around him more this past week. We've been starting to hear some coos and it seems like his first smile might be coming soon...

He had his two week well baby check last Wednesday, and is now weighing in at 8 pounds, 5 ounces (34th percentile). We switched from newborn diapers to size 1-2 this past week. He has been in newborn clothes the longest out of any of our babies. I went to the consignment store and bought him some 0-3 size clothes for our niece's upcoming wedding, and they are too big, I guess I'll have to go back and buy some newborn ones in case the first ones I bought are still too big in a week and a half.

Sleeping is going well, most of the time. On average, he wakes about every three hours and it usually takes about 45 minutes to feed, burp, change, and then get him back to sleep. He slept from 10-3 on Monday night, and it only took half an hour to take care of everything and get him back to sleep, but the night before he was awake for 1.5 hours each time he woke up. I'm grateful that he is a pretty good sleeper, even this early in life. Don't get me wrong, we're still exhausted from some of the longer nights, but it feels like it gets easier. Maybe you just get used to sleep deprivation over time? Or perhaps I have finally gotten good at following the advice of sleeping when the baby sleeps.

He is great at nursing and we will need to introduce him to the bottle sometime in the next week or two, so I'd better start pumping soon. I can't believe I will be going back to work in four weeks. It feels like the time will just fly by. I am glad that there will only be seven weeks until summer break at that point.

I have another post in the works all about the girls and Merrick (with more pictures!), hopefully I will get around to publishing that one in the next day or two.