2 Months Update

2 Months Vaccinations
Eli turned 9 weeks yesterday! He had his 2 months vaccinations on Saturday. He was very brave- only cried for a little bit when the doctor was giving him the shots. He seems to like the grape flavor oral vaccine because right after the doctor gave that to him, he stopped crying. We are so very proud of him! :) He didn't have any negative reaction from the vaccines either. He was extra tired and sleepy for the rest of the day and night so he slept a lot.

Play
Eli loves it when I read to him. He looks at the pictures and he talks back and it's like he knows exactly what I'm talking about! He is a chatterbox that's for sure.

Feeding
Eli has always been a slow eater. As a newborn, it would take him on average 40 minutes to finish his bottle. When he is really hungry, he would finish it within 30 minutes. He also spits up a lot so we don't mind him eating so slowly since it's suppose to help with his spit ups. We used playtex drop-ins because it's supposed to help with spit up. Also, their slow flow is VERY SLOW... so as a newborn, we noticed significant improvement in terms of spit ups when we used Playtex.

This past week though, he has been extremely fussy and unhappy during his feedings. He just seems angry when he eats! Because of his fussiness, it takes him at least 45 minutes (sometimes up to an hr) to finish his bottle because he would drink a little and then he would stop to express his anger lol. After talking to a mommy friend, she said her baby (same age as Eli) takes only 10 minutes per feeding! He is on the medium flow right now. So I decided to give playtex medium flow a try on Saturday morning. Turns out that the medium flow is way too fast for our little Eli. As he was eating, there was milk dripping out of his mouth lol. Frustrated from the hour long feedings, we decided to try using other bottles/nipples because other brand nipples' slow flow (level 1) is still going to be faster than playtex. We already have BornFree level 1 bottles at home so we decided to give that a try. Eli finished his feeding without fussing, at a record breaking speed of 20 minutes! Needless to say- we were over the moon. Now the challenge is... is he going to spit up? Turns out that he didn't have any excessive spit up either. So I did more research and decided on buying Dr. Brown's natural flow bottles. It's suppose to be best for spit ups and their level one nipple is very similar to BornFree so it's a good speed for him. The only down side is that there are many parts to this bottle and it takes a long time to wash. Eli has been using Dr. Brown (sometimes BornFree because Danny likes BornFree better- it's smaller and I think it's much cuter haha) and his feeding time is between 15 - 20 minutes! Thank goodness for that... because he eats 6x a day... I am saving myself and him a lot of time by switching nipples/bottles. Now he finishes eating within 20 minutes or so and the rest of his wake time he gets to play :)

Sleep
We moved Eli's bedtime from 7:30pm to 6:30pm because he seems to be overtired by the time we finish our bath and bedtime bottle. So far the new time is working out. He sleeps from 6:30pm all the way till 1am ish for a bottle and then usually wakes up around 4am for a diaper change and wake up around 6am for his morning bottle. I do sneak in a diaper change around 10pm or so before we head to bed so he is comfy and dry (and so we can snooze a little longer). He is usually dead asleep and won't even notice.

His daytime naps are still inconsistent. Some days he would have long naps (1 - 2hrs)... while other days he would catnap all day (20 - 40 mins). He usually takes 4 naps a day (2 morning naps and 2 afternoon naps). If he doesn't sleep enough during the day, he gets extra cranky toward 5pm and it's really difficult to soothe him. Luckily, I know I get a break after 6:30pm because he almost always sleeps well at night. It's really nice to know, no matter how cranky and irritable he is, I know that I can give him a bath at 5:45pm, a bottle at 6pm, and by 6:30pm or so, he is down for the night and I can breathe.


Sleep Training
I've been reading up on sleep training for weeks now.  Eli's daytime naps are just horrible. He gets so grumpy when he doesn't nap well. I've been doing everything I can to set up a nap time routine and put him down when he is sleepy but not overtired. Just as I think there is improvement, he would prove me wrong. It's quite frustrating. We plan on sleep training him at 12 weeks so when I go back to work/school after Thanksgiving (he will be 15 weeks by then), it will be easier for my in-laws to take care of Eli. It sucks to hear him cry and he is just so darn stubborn, but perhaps it's the only thing that will work.