Finally, I’m catching up on the Jack updates!

Here is Jack at 17 weeks old, where we didn’t get the fancy photo done…
(May 24th, 2012)

As you can see, Jack is enjoying tummy time slightly more these days, especially when leaning on my stomach.

We’re really enjoying having Jack’s company when we do fun things around town. Here we are enjoying lunch on the patio of a Mexican restaurant on the weekend…

Jack continues to be a challenge in the sleep department. We make some progress and then we regress. Look how cute this picture of my two guys napping…

Jack usually still needs to be swaddled in order to help him fall asleep, even at Starbucks…

Marceau the cat still tolerates Jack, runs for the hills when he cries and sometimes…

They have a face-off for who is cuter.
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Here is Jack at 16 weeks…
(May 17, 2012)

I enjoyed my first Mother’s Day by getting to sleep in! R kept telling me to go back to sleep every time I would wake to care for Jack and I didn’t know why until I finally got out of bed at, like, 9:30am and found these beautiful flowers and cards waiting for me…

And my two favorite guys were smiling at me…

Our bedtime routine is quickly becoming one my favorite things. First, I get Jack in a bath (which is one of his favorite things). Then Daddy arrives home and we all sit together on the bed and Jack drinks a bottle while we read a story. This week we started to read a lot of Curious George, which was fun. It is a joy to watch Jack listen more and more intently and look at the pictures. Finally, Jack gets swaddled, I often sing a short song, kiss him, say, “Good night, sweet dreams” and then I leave the room. R then does a little soothing before placing him in his bed with his Sleep Sheep playing. And we cross our fingers. We’re still working on sleeping through the night (or longer than 4 hours).

We’re tired, but with these cute chubby cheeks waking you in the middle of the night, it’s hard to complain too much…

Can you believe our boy is already 16 weeks? We can’t.
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Here is Jack at 15 weeks old…

This was quite a week! Several new things happened:
-Jack wore baby sunglasses for the first time.
-Jack outgrew his cradle.
-I went back to work.

It’s been hot and sunny in LA so we pulled out the baby sunglasses Amanda F. gave us and, boy, do we love them! I remember thinking baby sunglasses were slightly strange, but now I get it. He looks simultaneously cute and bad-ass. He wore them like a champ and charmed the socks off of the family…

3 generations of dudes in their sunglasses. That’s a framer!

As I already mentioned here, on Tuesday Jack woke up cooing happily and had managed to get himself unswaddled and down toward the bottom of his cradle with his feet through the slats. He now sleeps in his pack and play. He is still swaddled at bedtime, but almost always wakes up with at least one arm out.

That same morning I went back to work. Here I am getting dropped off and saying I’ll-see-you-later to my sweet boy. As you can see, he ignored me…

My return to work went well and Jack-boy did just fine with his familial babysitters, who were kind enough to send me pictures, videos and texts of what he was up to. The first thing I did when I got into the office was to change my computer’s desktop background to a picture of my baby boy. The 3-day work week is just right. By the time the third day rolled around I was ready to be back spending more time with Jack. I am happy with my schedule!

Jack is still only sleeping one long 4-hour stretch at night, but continues to do well getting to sleep on his own most of the time as long as he is swaddled, soothed and drowsy. I won’t lie – it is hard to go to work all day after fitful sleep.

Here are some other favorite poses from this week’s photo shoot…

How much do we love our boy? Sooooooooo much!
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Here is Jack at 14 weeks old…
(May 3, 2012)

I decided to copy my friend Emily’s method for photographing her baby boy (also named Jack) each week. She was originally inspired by my new favorite bloggers, Sherry & John of Young House Love. I was getting less and less happy with the weekly bouncer photos, so I’m totally stealing their entire idea. Now our Jack-boy will have cuter weekly photos and I have a fun creative project. Thank you, Emily and Young House Love!

This week has been all about SLEEP, or, no sleep. Because I am heading back to work soon, we started the process of getting Jack on more of a daily routine. And by routine I simply mean as close to regular nap-eat-play times as we can manage. It has only had a modicum of success, but we’re still trying. We started a routine with the goal of passing the 4-hour mark with Jack’s night time sleep. Some nights are a total sleep disaster, with frequent wakings. Other nights are pretty good. So far, the best night we’ve had is one stretch of 4.5 hours followed by a stretch of 3 hours. This sounds great except that he goes to bed at about 8:00pm, so he woke up at 12:30am and again at 3:30am and then about every 1-2 hours after that. Most often Jack sleeps 8pm-12am, then wakes again somewhere between the hours of 2-2:30, 4-5 & 6-6:30am. Luckily the wakings are getting easier. I nurse him for about 15-30 minutes and then he usually goes right back to sleep without a lot of trouble.

What’s funny about the fact that we feel challenged in the sleep department is that when I looked back over my photos from this week, most of them were of Jack sleeping.

In the carseat, in his cradle, in my arms and on my lap…

I guess I regularly photograph him sleeping because it’s so exciting when he goes down for a long-ish nap (and by long-ish I mean over 30 minutes). Also because I think he looks like a little cherub when he sleeps.

The best sleep progress we made this week was getting him to sleep in his cradle instead of the swing. Hooray! In fact, we got so confident that he’ll sleep in his cradle that we moved the swing out of our room. Double hooray! Remember, we live in a one bedroom, so he sleeps in our room. He still likes a tight swaddle over just a diaper so he doesn’t overheat. He is also a more successful sleeper when some light white noise is playing. This helps to drown out the random and unpredictable condo building noises that often startle him awake. BUT, he’s learning to fall asleep on his own instead of being nursed, rocked or bounced to sleep. Triple hooray!

I am pleased to say that Jack is not always being soothed to sleep. We also have fun playing with him and watching him develop new skills, like grasping. Here he his grasping and playing with a little maraca…

He also likes to reach for, bat at and grab his activity mat hang toys! It’s fun to watch his determination for achieving a grip on his animals and his delight when he succeeds.

I am starting back at work on Tuesday and Jack will enjoy the company of his Grandma Jodie on Mondays and Wednesdays and his Grandpa Larry on Tuesdays. Thank goodness for family support – we are so blessed.

And finally, Jack’s cheeks…

They’re just so pinch-able and kissable, aren’t they?
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