Let's hear it for the boy!

So the birth story was largely about me and our experience. Let's talk about Lochlan and who he is so far.

He is pretty easy to calm down. He cries, but it doesn't take much at all to soothe him, and he is extremely content to be held on my or Sweetie's chest. He likes to be patted on the back and butt, and he responds calmly to music, either played or sung. So far so good on the car (fingers crossed!): he gets cranky when we buckle him in, but then settles down for the ride.

Physically, he runs a little warm. Today was the first day I actually bothered to put clothes on him, because we seem to wrap and unwrap him a lot to help him not overheat. When he does get hot, he turns beet red!

He was circumcised, and he's healing nicely from that. In fact when we left the hospital, they said we'd have to put Vaseline on it for about a week to keep it from sticking to his diaper, but this morning the doctor said we didn't need to anymore. It does appear to bother him when he urinates. He screams bloody murder as soon as he wets a diaper!

(I know circumcision is a hot-button issue, and I weighed the pros and cons really carefully, aesthetics and tradition being pretty low on the priority list, and ultimately the pros came out about an eyelash ahead. I promise not to judge your choice if you don't judge mine.)

Anyway, back to him! He has a very strong cry, but otherwise doesn't say much. He squeaks a little when he's dreaming. He has very long toes and fingers, and I can tell right away his fingernails are like mine, with long nail beds.

He has the wispiest little eyelashes, and very fine blond eyebrows (so different from his sister!). He has a medium amount of hair that will probably fall out, but at this moment it's sort of a strawberry blond, much to our surprise! Zadie's was dark. Also, that coppery color is a genetic possibility, though a slim one: his paternal grandmother had red hair in her youth.

He sleeps a lot during the day, and we've only had two nights at home to determine this next bit, but he does seem to have a pretty active period from 10-1. He fusses, nurses, dozes, cries, nurses, dozes, fusses... The first night the cries were louder and longer and more disruptive. Last night, we tried to keep him awake a little more in the evening, and then we fed him a little more at the beginning of that period, and it was quite a bit easier. Plus, he slept until 7:40 this morning! I mean, we woke to nurse a couple times, but still, we weren't up for the day until then.

He does have one tiny area of concern -- he laid on his right side for, like, the last two months of my pregnancy, so the neck muscles on his left side are a little less developed. That can turn into something called torticollis, which requires physical therapy, or it can resolve itself on its own.

Anyway, it's been lovely to have him home so far, and he's really a blessedly mellow kid for the most part. Keep your fingers crossed that this continues to be the case!