11 weeks! And what is Daddy doing??

Happy 11 weeks to my favorite little guy!!

Ryan, 11 weeks old!

Ryan, 11 weeks old!

One day this past week, when Ryan was getting fussy (not in full-blown meltdown mode yet), Joe decided to take over and try to soothe him and calm him down.  I walked out of the living room to have a break, and I noticed Ryan wasn't crying anymore after a couple of minutes.  I walked back into the living room and saw this:

Joe's method of soothing Ryan

Ryan had been crying and fussing (not really loudly or in full force, but he was well on his way), and I'm not sure what prompted Joe to try this to soothe him, but it worked!  Maybe Ryan needed a change of scenery? My attempts at this throughout the week haven't been as effective as Joe's :)

So, over the past week, we've still been trying to get Ryan on some kind of routine/schedule after our pediatrician suggested it.  The sleep-eat-play routine has kind of turned into a play-eat-sleep routine and sometimes a sleep-eat-play-eat again routine.  We've had a couple of major meltdowns lately because Ryan doesn't like to take naps during the day and he saves all of his fussiness for the evening hours.  We've had a couple of successes with taking some really good naps this past week (more failures than successes, but I'm trying to be positive here!), but I think he just has too much fun learning the world around him to sleep.  Nevertheless, he's taken some naps, and some as long as two hours.  This is progress, my friends.  Fingers crossed that we have more good naps and less major evening meltdowns over the next week! The more I can keep him in a consistent routine, the better.  On the days that Ryan has taken some decent naps, he hasn't been fussy at all in the evenings (go figure), which means Joe can spend time with a happy baby instead of only trying to soothe him after work. 

Ryan, gazing at Mr. Monkey during Tummy Time

Ryan is also beginning to learn his voice.  We have conversations all day long.  He loves making all kinds of gurgling, cooing, ahhing noises, particularly when he sees himself in the mirror or when he gets really excited about something.  He really likes to talk in the mornings (we have our morning conversations and he tells me all about his dreams and what he wants to do during the day) and when he's on his playmat.  Here's a video of him cooing at himself in the mirror while (somewhat) enjoying tummy time:

Ryan has also discovered his hands.  He loves his hands right now.  They are always always always in his mouth.  Any chance he gets, he shoves them in and starts sucking on them.  As soon as I put him down on his belly for tummy time, he immediately begins sucking his hands instead of pulling his head up.  I also wake up in the middle of the night to him sucking on his hands.  He's not hungry, he just loves his hands.  However, this sometimes keeps him up at night because he'd rather suck on his hands than sleep.  He also sucks his thumb.  It's really cute, but I'm trying not to let him get into that habit.  We've been working on his grasping skills a lot this week.  He likes to hold onto his rattle and sometimes he'll even shake it.  A couple of times, he's batted at some of the objects dangling on his playmat, but he's not very consistent with this.  He's also beginning to drool a whole lot and have lots of spit bubbles. 

Ryan missed his first snowfall--this past Sunday night, it snowed about an inch.  Ryan was asleep for it, and by the time we woke up, there was only a little bit of snow left on the ground.  Hopefully we'll get a substantial snowfall at some point this winter so Ryan can go out in it, but with winter beginning to come to a close, I don't think that's going to happen.  Oh well, I'd much rather take Ryan out to the park once it's warmer anyway. :)  And although we had snow on Sunday night, today we had awesome spring-like weather, so Ryan and I took full advantage of that and went for a long walk.  This was probably the first time he's stayed awake for his entire walk, and he cooed and smiled a lot.  He definitely likes the outdoors!

And now that I have figured out how to upload pictures myself, there should be more pictures with each update.  Yay!