Owen is now around 4.5 months old. He is now quite a large kid. At his 4 month doctor’s visit on 6/8/2009, he was 16 lbs 10oz. I would guess that by now he is greater than 17 lbs.
We are getting full nights of rest now. Owen starts his downcycle at around 8pm when takes his evening nap. He then usually wakes up and asks for some food at around 830pm. By 915pm he is well fed and ready for sleepy time. As of late, Sara just holds him after the feed and he is usually in bed by 1000pm. Sometimes he has a harder time getting to sleep at which point I get the little guy and rock him to sleep. All in all, he is in bed no later than 1030 and no earlier than 930 and sleeps the whole night.. He usually wakes up between 645am and 800am. We do get the occasional rarity where he does not want to be fed after his 8pm nap and sleeps the whole night through. He is also sleeping in his crib now instead of the basonet. This only started earlier this week but it has been going very well.
The boy is still growing like a weed. He has outgrown his 3-6 month clothing and is now wearing 9-12 month old clothing. He asks for food at most every 3 hours. We are trying to feed him rice cereal now since it might help enlongate times between feedings. So far he seems to be eating the rice cereal. He ate about half a teaspoon of rice cereal and breast milk the first day. Hopefully we can keep feeding him the rice cereal without him tossing it. He is also taking milk from the bottle now. His gag reflex has diminished some what during bottle feeds. Sara can not bottle feed him but Galit ( our mommie’s helper ) has been able to give him a few ounces here are there. This makes Sara’s work day much easier as Owen is not tied to her all the time.
I am thinking that Owen might skip the crawling phase or at least have a very short crawling phase. Everytime I hold him, I try to put his feet down on either me or the floor. He is usually able to support his weight for at least 45 seconds to 1.5 minutes. He does not have the balance component of standing but he does seem to have some strength in his legs. His head control has also gotten quite good. He still does not pass the standard lift and lag test but he holds his head up high enough now that you can actually see a neck. He also recovers his head after it wobbles either forward or back. When he is standing, his head stays quite still and balanced. Its only a matter of time before he gains the muscle control to keep his head balanced at all times. I believe he already has the strength.
I have not witnessed a front to back rollover yet but Sara and Galit both tell me that he has done it a few times. They say that he is quite happy when he rolls over and enjoys being in that position better when he gets there himself relative to someone putting him in the tummy position. I have seen him roll onto his side and then back onto his back in the crib. I just have not seen the full rollover.
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So last night, Owen gave us a few cluster feeds followed by a nice long 4.5 hour sleep. Sara and I are really glad that the little one is starting to sleep at night and letting both of us get some rest. His umbilical cord has fallen all the way off and the stump is starting to heal quite nicely. We also seem to be gaining weight and increasing in size quite quickly. His head feels larger everytime I pick him up. He also feels heavier but I think that is due to his very full diapers. Sara says he is eating for about the same period of time but is much more efficient at it. I agree. He makes a lot of noise when he eats and he is quite ravenous while he eats. He is starting to stay up more often after he eats which can sometimes be a bit of a pain. We want him to go to sleep at night but sometimes, like tonight, he did not want to go to sleep and just wanted to be held. I did my best and after about 45 minutes he finally fell asleep in my lap. I just wish he was more awake during the day. His jaundice seems to be under control for the most part. He does not seem to be getting any more yellow these past few days. I’ll need to keep an eye out for this. Jaundice can be quite serious. Tommorow should be fun. Sandy and Kathleen and Elenor McArthur should be coming into town from Jax for lunch and to meet little Owen. We should be going out to Las Margaritas for lunch since Kathleen claims there are not any good mexican places in jax. We should be joined by Todd and Bethany which will be nice. I have not seen them since Owen Bris/Baby Shower on Monday but I need to see some other faces. All I’ve had this week is Owen, Sara, and Sara’s Mom which is fine but I need to geek out a little. Well, its off to bed for me. Hopefully Owen will not wake me or Sara up for at least another 3 hours.
So the little tike was looking a little more yellow since he went to his first doctor’s appointment. At that time he did have a little jaundice but I was starting to worry that it was getting worse so we took him to the doctor’s office this morning. The doctor said he was a little yellow but he was okay. They took a little blood just for safety and we should get the results later on today. On the plus side, he has regained plenty of weight. He is now 7lbs 10oz, which is 3oz more than his birth weight. The little guy is a real good eater. When we took him to the doctor’s office on his second day he was 6lbs 14oz. So in the 11 days since, he has gained 12oz at a rate of over 1oz per day. Guess he has daddy’s appetite.
Even more good news. Sara and I can now get some more sleep at night. We have been feeding Owen about every 3 hours if he was sleeping or not. The doctor told us now that he has gained all his weight back that we can stop doing this all day. We are going to feed the little man every 3 hours during the day but let him sleep at night for at most 5 hours before he needs to be fed. This is wonderful news since both Sara and I are starting to get really sleep deprived.
I would like to welcome the wonderful Owen Moshe Ben-Shoshan to everyone. After a successful Bris yesterday at around 4pm, our son was named. Owen was a very good baby for his circumcision that went fairly quickly. On the other hand, his father was feeling a little queezy during the process and needed a little support from his lovely wife. We shot some video and took many pictures, both of which will be online as soon as I get a free minute or two.
At 8:14pm on February, 8, 2009, Sara gave birth to a wonderful new addition to the Ben-Shoshan clan. The delivery was very short, only about 1 hour, since she came to the hospital fully dialated and ready for pushing. When we arrived her water had not broken but she was having very productive contractions every 5 minutes or so. After a quick exam, the doctors determined that she was ready to go and gave us the option to break her water or just wait it out. Sara quickly chose the option to break the water and about 10 to 15 minutes later or new son had arrived.
Our little boy was 7lbs 7oz and 18.5 inches long at birth. He has been fairly quite so far and has mostly been sleeping and eating. So far he has been a decent eater but we he is having a little bit of a hard time getting milk from mommy. We should have all that settled out by the time we leave the hospital tomorrow.
Sara is doing very well for just pushing out a little one. She has been getting some rest here and there whenever possible. She is healing up quite well and we should be released from the hospital sometime tomorrow morning.
Watching a youtube video of the new android 0.9 SDK emulator. Looks great. I am really starting to get excited about getting and Android phone.
I really like the new browser explorer thing. You can open a new browser window and see all the other windows available. Easier to deal with than tabs for such a limited screen device.
See the awesomeness here: http://gizmodo.com/5038586/a-guided-video-tour-of-android-09-an-almost-great-almost-os
So I just watched a few videos at Engadget from Androidcommunity.com showing off the new interface and what seems like a new hardware platform.
I tell you what guys, I am really excited now. Some of the things that this platform is capable of are just amazing. I am really excited to see what people are going to do with this platform.
I am really excited to hear that the whole platform will be open. Open to the point where when commercially available phone are available, anyone with the interest could download the whole stack and try to get it working on any platform they wish. Here’s looking forward to getting Android on my T-Mobile MDA otherwise known as an HTC Wizard.
Every time I see a phone running Android, I want it. Here is a recent video from BBC via Engadget that shows a prototype phone running Android. What is so different is that it is actually using the 3G network to get its data unlike other demos that did not have voice or data capabilities or were just the emulated Android platform. Enjoy. I know I did.