The skinny on Baby O

Owen is now four months old. He's 17 pounds of chunky, happy, drooly baby. His cradle cap is finally easing up and his hair is coming back in so he looks more like those babies in the Pampers ads and less like a crusty, splotchy newborn or as, Jim once called him, Sloth from the Goonies. He's pretty similar to Danny as a baby but a lot bigger and not as fussy. He's also a lot like Fiona—strong and observant.

I was beginning to worry, though, that our youngest wouldn't start distinguishing himself from the herd. Most of the time, he's just happily along for the ride. Most of the time, too, his mommy is too tired to notice much of anything. But, lo and behold, he has found his niche, that one thing that we will always remember about baby Owen. With Danny, it was the projectile vomiting. With Fiona, it was her freakish strength.

Our little Owen is capable of going from calm and happy to totally pissed off with little to no warning. The first few times it happened we thought that something (or someone, ahem, Fiona) had pinched or poked him. It was that sudden. Sometimes this outburst precedes a rather large, um, diaper download. But we're starting to realize that, most of the time, it's just that he's done. With whatever he's doing. Please come pick him up, like, NOW.

Other things that I've managed to notice? He has better manual dexterity than the other two did at this age. The kid can actually put his own pacifier in and take it out. My other two never did that this early.  Looks like he'll have that fine motor control I never had. Also, sometimes all it takes to calm him down is to stand him on your lap facing you. He just wants to see my face and talk to me, usually while I'm eating (which makes it almost impossible to eat). Somehow I've not lost that much weight. 

He also is not all that interested in food, nor does he seem overly hungry. He's had three "meals" in the past week—bananas twice and some butternut squash today. I'm not in much of a hurry this time around, mostly because I'm just not looking forward to preparing food for yet one more kid who may or may not eat. Frankly, I could feed a small army with the food that ends up on my kitchen floor and my kids' clothes. And, honestly, with this three ring circus I'm running here, he's more likely to be fed routinely if the feeding apparatus is attached to my body. He's also pretty well settled into morning, afternoon and early evening naps. At night, he sleeps a few hours in his crib and usually comes into bed with us later. I'm barely awake when he nurses the rest of the night and thus am actually lying down "asleep" for about seven hours or so. Somehow this does not make me any less exhausted. 


He is less afraid of and more amused by Fiona. She loves to pat his back and kiss his head, though sometimes it's hard to tell if she's about to bite or kiss him. She's kind of sneaky like that. He watches Danny with little brother adoration and Danny's new job is to go chat with Owen while I put Fiona down for a nap.

He is, though, a four month old in the body of a much older baby. In fact, Danny was a year old and 18 pounds when he began walking. Lately, it's been hard to make him bend at the waist. All he wants to do is stand up on our laps.

Um, let's see. What else is he up to? He rolls over, which makes diaper changing a battle. He can almost sit up. He can get up on his hands and lift his chest off the ground. He also gets up on his knees but, thankfully, not at the same time as he's on his hands. I figure we have about six weeks before he takes off crawling. At this point, I'm writing all this down so my poor third child will have some record of his early months.

And this past weekend, he was baptized along with his sister. I never realized before but during the baptism ceremony, the priest says a prayer of exorcism. We now fully expect the sudden screaming fits to subside.