the bestest baby of all time

when i was logging into blogger just now and the "most recently updated" blog list was scrolling past, i saw one titled "the bestest blog of all time" - quite a claim, i must say. i didn't go check it out, so who knows whether it's an accurate title or not, but i feel quite comfortable proclaiming milo the bestest baby of all time.

he is sweet and cuddly and curious and funny and ferocious about the boobie. he makes this great face where he looks at me with one eye and curls his lip in an elvis-like sneer, and it's only one of the many faces in his dramatic little repertoire. he is not bothered at all by loud music - perhaps because we had music playing at his delivery and in the room for the first few days, he seems actually more comfortable with us rocking out than not. he's been held by at least 30 people now, before he's even a week old, and not even counting medical staff, and he takes it all in stride. no matter what i eat - and i've eaten all kinds of funky ethnic foods and hot sauce and onions and garlic and more hot stuff - he digs the milk; the only thing he likes even more is his fruit-flavored vitamin drops, which claim to be sugar-free, but i have my doubts, judging from the way he gulps them down with great gusto. he has the fuzziest ears i have ever seen on anyone under the age of 70, and the cutest little upside-down U-shaped dimple in his chin, and already, i cannot imagine a world without him in it.

that said, he is a human being, and a newborn one, and he has the most ridiculous concept of both night and day and of how often he should eat. during the day, he sleeps at least two hours, and usually three, at a time, wakes to eat, and then starts the cycle over. but the second and third nights at home, he was awake almost continuously from 11 pm to 6 am; during that time slot, the cycle becomes wake up howling, eat for 15 minutes, get burped and then diaper changed, snooze for five minutes, wake up howling, and repeat. last night was a little better; we got the cycle stretched out from 30 minutes to an hour by offering extra boobie before we went to bed (a term i use very loosely) and by playing the baby sleep system cd i had forgotten we had until last night. i also gave in on a couple of things, like letting him sleep on my chest after feeding when i was too zonked to get up and put him back in the bassinet, and just sitting up with him while he was alert after feeding and enjoying the interaction when i was awake enough to do so instead of trying to rock him back to sleep. i'm not any less tired today, but at least i got some quality staring-into-each-other's-eyes time. yesterday we were with justin's extended family, and milo's cousin that is 7 weeks older sleeps through the night, and his second cousin who is six months older has slept through the night since she was two weeks old (while being breastfed), so it gives me hope that this whole cycle will eventually morph into something more sane. and even if it takes a while, the sweetness of him in bed with us, curled up in my arm, latched on and looking up at me with his big eyes - it makes the sleep deprivation and the worry and the nasty diapers seem worthwhile.

as the week goes on, i find hans popping up more and more. i see more every day how much my two sons looked alike, even if (i think) their personalities were very different. and while yesterday was a lovely day with family, all of the picture-taking - the three cousins with their babies, the great-grandmother with all her great-grandbabies on her lap - was bittersweet, because hans should have been there, the oldest of the crew, the big kid the other babies would soon be following around. and the little references that people make that exclude hans are like tiny daggers to my heart. friday night, we took justin's dad to his sister's house for the night, and she asked him how it felt to be a grandpa now, and of not one but two babies (meaning milo and our niece); i wanted to say something obnoxious about him having already been a grandparent for a year and a half, and that he had three grandchildren, but how does one inject such a thing into the conversation? especially when the people saying these things are full of good will - it's impossible. i don't have a problem correcting such people, as gently as i can, when they make such comments to me and about me, but i come up short when they're not addressing me directly. i wish i could do more for hans, and for his memory; i'm going to have to figure out how to make it happen, because it's too painful to let him be glossed over.

my mom is here now, and she is snuggling with milo while we rest, which is the best gift. this afternoon, we're taking milo in for a one-week checkup, because we had a little scare with him in the hospital - i still want and need to write about his birth, and will, as soon as i get my wits better about me.

*****

a quick note re: the post-birth pic of me and milo - no, i was not wearing lipstick, not after having sweat my way through the night, and never ever that color. i had been sucking on cherry popcicles all night - that's the only reasonable explanation i can come up with. i had a really easy delivery, but not that easy a delivery.