Meet Clark: Two Months

Two months. Two freaking months. We have a two month old baby. Clark is two months old. How has it already been two months? Holy poo, this is crazy! Why is time FLYING by? Please slow down!!!

Those are the kinds of things I've been muttering to myself over the past few days as Clark crossed over the two month finish line. He has done a lot of growing in all of the 60 days he has been around, but this last month he has been especially busy getting huge. I think it was the six week point in his life that we retired the little newborn onesies and started dressing him in 3 month old outfits. According to a very non-scientific method of weighing him, he's probably about 12-13 pounds now. This method includes Aaron weighing himself without Clark and then with Clark and subtracting the difference. It's a good thing we went to college because we never would have thought to do that without our trusty Mississippi State degrees. Clark has a doctors appointment this week where we will have a very-scientific method of weighing him, but for now, we're guesstimating that he's gained a whopping three pounds since birth. I realize that doesn't seem like a lot, but somehow the kid just looks plain chunky.

Until now, I don't think Aaron or I had ever been around a two month old, so we had no ideas or expectations. Every now and then we flip through our What To Expect: The First Year book to make sure we're not completely screwing something up, but for the most part, everyday is just as unknown as the last. So far, I think we're doing pretty good. One of Clark's biggest accomplishments to date is his WONDERFUL sleep schedule. He goes to bed every night at 8:00 on the dot. Sometimes its a little earlier based on his sleep cues, but never later than 8:00. He always wakes up at 3:45 and I nurse him for about seven minutes and then he's out cold until 7:30 in the morning. I'm hoping sooner or later he'll drop that feeding, but in the meantime, I don't mind at all and actually love that time with him. We worked really hard to get a sleep schedule like this - luck has nothing to do with it. His days are so well structured that sleeping at night just happened on its own, but that's a whole other post in itself. I'll get to that one day. All I know is that sleep is good for baby and mom. His sleep schedule doesn't affect dad one way or the other because Aaron would sleep through the earth caving in and never know it.

Clark started smiling at five weeks, but I think it was week seven that he started squealing and laughing. It is our mission in life to make this happen as many times throughout the day as possible. This includes us doing incredibly stupid dances in front of his face, making up songs we would never repeat in public, and pretty much just making fools out of ourselves all in the hopes of hearing that little baby cackle. His bouncer seat is usually the source of all entertainment for Clark. The snail and turtle that hang from the bouncer are simply hilarious to him. He feels the need to constantly hit them and punch them and keep them swinging and then he laughs really hard at his victory. I have it on video but I'll have to get Aaron to upload it on here because it's more complicated than it seems. I don't know the vision capabilities of a two month old, but I do know that Clark can follow us around a room with his eyes and when we get up in his face and smile, he smiles right back at us. That's got to mean something good, right?

Some other big milestones include sucking his thumb, holding his hands together, and being much more alert when he's awake. Jake continues to bark at every leaf that falls on the ground outside, and back in the day it wouldn't even phase Clark, but he now reacts to it by opening his eyes really wide or flinching. I also react to Jake's barking by spanking the crap out of him every time and telling him to shut up, but so far I've had no luck with that. Jake also takes it upon himself to seek out the dirty diapers in the house and rip them into smithereens, which is awesome. On that note, would anybody like a free maltipoo? Ahh, I'm joking. He's still my little puppy and I love him unconditionally, but dad gum, that dog is annoying these days.

During month number two, we finally took our first road trip down to Jackson and Hattiesburg. It literally took me 24 hours to pack Clark's personal belongings. This is so unbelievably out of the ordinary for me. In our pre-Clark days, we would throw some clothes (clean or unclean, it didn't matter) in a Walmart bag minutes before walking out the door and everything was fine. This time, however, I actually sat down, pondered for a few moments, and made a list of every possible thing I thought Clark might need in the 72 hours we were away from our house. Looking back, that was pretty stupid. He's a baby. Diapers, wipes, and a few outfits would pretty much do the job. I probably didn't need to bring our cd player so he could fall asleep listening to his lullabys, or five different blankets depending on the temperature, or five million outfits just in case he got poop on one. Oh well, we live and learn.

Anyway, the long weekend in Jackson and Hattiesburg was great. We passed him around like a football to every member of my family and a large majority of Aaron's family. Clark got to meet both sets of great grandmothers for the first time, and of course got some great quality time in with all the grandparents. He handled all the driving like an ultimate road trip champion and his sleep schedule didn't get too terribly messed up, which is impressive. I got pooped on at the very end of the trip, but the good news is that Aaron didn't, so you can breathe a sigh of relief now.

Since the day Clark was born, we have taken 1,465 pictures of him. That includes one I just took about 20 seconds ago of him sleeping in the nude, but I'll be kind to his integrity and won't post it on the world wide web. My biggest regret so far is that out of all those pictures, there are ZERO pictures of me, Aaron and Clark as a family. There are one or two that were taken at the hospital, but I still look eight months pregnant and we clearly were sleep deprived, so I refuse to show those off. I'm so depressed about it. I just want one good picture of our family to put in a frame and proudly display it somewhere in our house but dad gum it just hasn't happened yet. In fact, if I keep talking about it, I'll start saying inappropriate words because it just makes me that upset. I want a freaking family photo and thats all I'm going to say about that.

We still think that Clark is the cutest and most wonderful thing to ever hit the face of the earth. It seems like every single day we see a new facial expression, or he figures something out on his own, or we just realize that he is drastically different than the day before. Sometimes I catch myself referring to the old days when he was just a baby. Well, obviously he is still a baby, but he's kind of a little guy now with his own personality and likes and dislikes. He's growing so darn fast and its really hard to keep up sometimes. We still go in his room several times at night just to stare at him as he sleeps. I'm always so tempted to wake him up from his naps just so I can hold him. Can you blame us? Look at this thing!

We have tons of people here in Oxford offering to watch him so Aaron and I can go on a date, but we haven't taken advantage of that yet because I think separation anxiety would get the best of me. Well, probably not, and busy law school work doesn't help, but I know that the first time we do leave him with someone so we can go on a date, all we will do is talk about him and wonder what he is doing. I love just to stare at him and learn everything about him. It's a good thing I have 1,468 pictures of him. That's right, I've already taken two more pictures since I wrote that. And he's still asleep in the nude. He's the most awesome little person we've ever known.

We love to show him off because we're so proud of him, so go ahead and come on out to the village of Taylor, Mississippi and get some one on one Clark time. He would love to show off his mad bullying skills with the turtle and the snail.