Robin Artemis photo gallery

Sleeping, sleeping in the second month, 11 May - 11 June, 2011

Robin spent a lot of this month sleeping. At the beginning of his second month he was starting to be awake enough to want entertainment other than nappy changes and feeds, but not by much. By the end of the month he was starting to take distinct naps rather than have distinct awake times, spending almost as much time awake as asleep. Sometimes even awake for as much as two hours at a time. I got a lot of photos of him sleeping though. Here he's sleeping by the window, picking up a little bit of sunshine. I kept trying to make sure Robin got plenty of natural light, just in case that nice golden tone was still a jaundice hangover. He didn't seem to mind. Sparrow liked watching him sleep, I had to work to keep her from constantly poking him (as she is now). I must have repeated "Let sleeping babies lie" or something similar at least twice an hour for the whole month, somewhat futilely. Just couldn't get through to her that if she wanted me to give her attention instead of him she had to *not* wake him up. She kept thinking it was an effective way to be naughty (which it is), and naughty gets her extra attention (sometimes), and not putting that together with the extra piece that says "after Mummy grumbles at me for waking Robin she goes off with him for a feed and change and I don't get to play with her for another half hour".

Startle-hands, while sleeping. That could have been due to Sparrow, but it was probably a reaction to the sound of the camera shutter.

The room in which we spend much of our time. At the beginning of the month Robin and I were still sleeping in here at night. But we moved back into the main bedroom during this month. Robin was tending to sleep a lot longer than Sparrow ever did and not wake up more than once or twice for most of the night, and I'd recovered from the C-section quite well, so getting up out of bed to feed and change him wasn't very difficult anymore. Then he started not weeing much during the night, so I didn't have to change him as often. That plus his increasing eptitude at feeding meant the feeds became much shorter - instead of an hour to feed, change and then feed again, I started spending as little as fifteen minutes before he was back asleep again. At the beginning of the month he still needed help to feed, which meant I had to get up and feed him somewhere with enough light so I could see, but by the end of the month I wasn't even having to get out of bed to feed him. This bed went back into couch form sometime in the month and that worked quite well.

I took advantage of James working from home to get him to hold Robin for a few minutes every so often when I needed my hands free for a few minutes. They looked cute together. Robin has fallen asleep mid-hula.

Waking up. He enjoys his sleep. He had a few daytime sleeps in the cot which Sparrow didn't at this age - we didn't have the cot til she was five months old or so. But we have the cot for Robin, and even though he's sleeping in his box rather than the cot directly, the cot still makes a good place to put the box that's out of the way and lets me play with Sparrow without trying to keep her from excitedly bouncing on his head every five or ten minutes. Sparrow had much more practice at sleeping anywhere and everywhere. Robin gets fewer options.

Learning to sleep through anything. Sparrow loves her little music player, and has no sense of when it might be too loud or not what someone else wants to listen to. Still, it means Robin gets to hear some music. I used to play music when I did the nighttime feed-and-changes with Sparrow in the very early months. I don't do that with Robin because I don't want Sparrow to hear it and wake up to join in. I also wasn't doing it because we didn't have a working CD player for a little while, but we did get one during this month. I found I couldn't put on the same range of music though because Sparrow is now able to express her preferences and *my* choices of music just don't cut it most of the time. If I want Robin to listen to a range of music and voice the way I did with Sparrow I have to really work to make it happen.

My view of a sleeping Robin in the wrap.

Sleeping in monk pose.

Sleeping through a playground visit.

Not even going down the slide disturbed him.

Sleeping...

...and awake again. Notice how much of the newborn hair has rubbed off, leaving just a very fine down across most of his skull.

Lying in the hallway, possibly between sleeps. I've probably just brought him in from hanging out nappies and the effort of watching that has exhausted him.

So cute sleeping. And asleep enough that I can work on sorting that laundry pile behind him without having to hold him at the same time.

Still so cute sleeping.

Sleeping through haloumi pie. He still tended to pass out anytime he was in the carrier or car, so I could almost count on him sleeping through a walk. It let me focus a bit on Sparrow though and give her more "her" time. It will be more of a challenge when they both want to direct the outcomes of a walk.