Changing Feeding Habits and Grossness

I am please to announce that we've gone from 8-10 feedings each day to 6. This is a major accomplishment in the world of my free time (until I gave the free time to Pratt & Whitney). I had been hurrying to feed Jackson when he started squirming at night, before he was really awake. Then a couple of weeks ago, he squirmed at 5am, but I was too tired to respond. We both went back to sleep for 2 hours until the next "scheduled" feeding. The rest of the morning, he ate every 3-4 hours instead of every 1-2. Since then, we've been doing the same.

I think Jackson was getting a little to eat at 5, and then when he ate at 7, there wasn't much available, so he needed to eat again soon after, and so on all morning. By skipping the 5am feeding, more milk was available at 7, and so one. Too bad I couldn't cut out the 3am feeding, especially since I get up at 5 now anyway.

The full belly means more milk is at the ready for spitting up. This leads us to the gross stuff (stop reading now if you don't want to know). I heard the period between pregnancy and infancy described as "the gross years". It may get worse, but for now, here are some of the latest low-lights.

This week, Jackson learned to perform projectile vomiting. He first did this after eating just a little bit and falling back to sleep. I put him down to try to change him and wake him up to eat a bit more. Just as I finished fastening the last snap, he got me. He also got the bed, further away than his toes. Those photos are "before" shots. The next day, he showed his daddy his new trick. Since then, we've been much more vigilant when it comes to burping.

I'm sure you are aware of the stuff called "Toe Jam". Jackson doesn't have it. He stores lint between his toes and fingers, but the jam is elsewhere. He has armpit jam, and has had it from the start--sloughed skin building up between the folds of his little armpits. More recently, he's developed neck jam. He grew an extra chin or 2, and underneath it I found the stuff. He had a bath this morning, and I had to go back later and clean out his neck. I'm vowing to be consistent in cleaning this out so it doesn't become something worse that I heard about at the Mom's Meeting.

Today, I was clipping his fingernails. Underneath them, he has black grime. I know its not dirt as in grit picked up out in the yard. He hasn't had the opportunity to collect much of that. By process of elimination, I believe that its skin scraped off his face and his family members. It also smells bad, similar to the neck cheese.

-s

ps. We do a lot of laundry now. We used to do laundry once every 2-3 weeks. Now its done 2-3 times per week. It's also much easier to wash clothing than to put it away. The baskets are piling up! I'm signing off to put it away since my sweet Mabel decided it made a great dog bed.