Hacking Cough of Death

Collin has his first cold and it's a good one - he's even managed to give to me. I think there is definitely some natural selection going on here because when he is sick he is 10X as cute, sweet and cuddly as normal. This prevents parents with a baby that has the hacking cough of death from leaving them in the woods to fend for themselves. Just today Andrea sat with him in the car, in the garage, for an hour because he had fallen asleep on the way home from somewhere and she didn't want to wake him. This is not normal behavior for adults, but normal for babies that have evolved to the point of being able to melt their parents' hearts while simultaneously hacking up globs of mucus with a constant stream of snot running out their noses and keeping us up all night.

We've so far managed to survive his first cold without taking him to the emergency room. I know that this is a typical response for sleep-deprived first-time parents, so we are doing our best. His evolution is so well tuned that the first night he had it, he slept through the night for the first time ever. We were ecstatic and couldn't believe it - colds are great! But he made up for it the next night when he wouldn't sleep unless one of us were holding him. Once we realized it was going to be a tough night I volunteered to take the brunt of it. Andrea had to go into the office the next day and I just had a few things on my to-do list working from home while the nanny was there. We took turns until about 3AM when Andrea handed him to me and said he wasn't hungry. I took him and started my usual ritual of trying to put him to sleep while Andrea was in the bathroom. I walked up and down the hall, I rocked him, I kept at it until he finally fell asleep while I was rocking him. Andrea had been in the bathroom for a really long time (not at all unusual) and I really needed to pee, so I put him down and used the one down the hall. When I came back Collin was crying, but still no Andrea. That was when I noticed her pillow was gone and knew that we were on our own. She had gone someplace else to sleep for a few hours without telling either of us.

This is obviously some highly evolved mothering instinct to trick the father into thinking she's right there ready to help. It worked and we all managed a little sleep. But next time I think I'll just stay in the car.

"Solid" Foods

Collin is 5 months old now and is well on his way to mastering the art of eating solid food from a spoon. Although I have no idea why they insist on calling it solid food. It is definitely mush and I am not giving him his solid food rating until he can eat Spam.

He started with rice mush a couple weeks ago, but broke out in hives and had little bumps all over his body so we stopped for a while then started back up with oat mush and now he's up to oat mush and banana mush twice a day. He's better with the spoon and will sometimes wait until we get it all the way into his mouth before he grabs it. He definitely likes the food and the percentage of food that makes it from spoon to stomach is going up steadily. He still makes a huge mess, but we no longer feel like we need to feed him in the driveway.




On another front, his nap routine has changed completely. I no longer have to go through the elaborate ritual I described in a previous post to get him to fall asleep. All I have to do now is hold him and walk around or rock him and he'll usually pass right out. He's also decided that there are 3 acceptable places to nap: the car, his stroller and laying on my chest. His crib did not make the list. I'll hold him for 5 or 10 minutes to make sure he is absolutely asleep, then I'll walk over to his crib and try and put him down. I can hold him 2" over the crib and he will be like a wet noodle, but as soon as his butt touches that crib his eyes pop open and a cry is soon to follow. I've tried patting his back, comforting him, everything. Pacifiers are useless - he'll just take it out of his mouth, look at it and then chew on the side. The only thing I can do is pick him back up and comfort him back to sleep. This goes on until he is obviously no longer sleepy or I give up and let him sleep on my chest.