4 Weeks

My mother sent my baby book last week. It contained, in addition to remnants of my first haircut and tooth, the age at which I accomplished certain milestones, among them, smiling, sleeping through the night, rolling over, etc. Apparently, either I was a prodigy or my parents didn’t keep the most accurate of records. How else can one explain the fact that at nine days old I not only smiled but also slept through the night (which makes one wonder what exactly happened on that ninth day…). Being the youngest of three children, I suspect my mother was a bit distracted when all these events actually occurred and just wrote in something in retrospect that sounded good. Or else I’m a serious underachiever.

Owen turns four weeks old today, and has apparently not inherited my accelerated learning curve. We think that he’s had some non-gas induced smiles, but have yet to document any on camera, so you’ll just have to trust us. He’s definitely held his head up, has briefly held a toy in his hand, watched us doing things at a distance, and noticed light which seems to indicate his development is right on track. We can say with certainty, though, that he has not slept through the night. In fact, he seems to have regressed a bit since for a week or so there, he was sleeping as much as four hours a stretch and now we’re lucky if we get three. We’ve been told, however, that once babies hit 10 pounds they’re able to physically sleep through the night (which is medically defined as five hours). According to our reckoning, Owen is almost 10 pounds which means that a long stretch of nighttime peace is just around the corner. Unless he takes after his father (whom Mom Mom informed us didn’t sleep through the night until he was 2 years old...).