Beautiful Boy

These days my primary concern is being able to look after the family. Between caring for Areg and entertaining Chi Chi, let alone ensuring that Anush is doing well, I don't have very much time for my personal projects, including updating my blogs as frequently as I would like.

Fatherhood is I suppose nothing like you had imagined while waiting for baby to make his grand appearance. For me at least, I imagined myself being serious and stern in some ways with caring for the child, even in the way I communicated with him. I vowed I would never use "baby talk" for instance, I figured it would be best to speak with the child as an adult and respect him as such. Little did I know that you cannot help but speak baby talk -- it's like a dormant language that comes into fluency as soon as you're in the presence of an infant. I've read that baby talk actually strengthens a baby's communication skills as he prepares to begin talking on his own. But I don't think that assumption really matters much. My main goal in talking with him is not so much trying to make him understand, but to provoke a smile. Watching that grin form on his puffy face is one of the greatest things I've ever seen. It's addictive, I can't get enough of seeing him be amused.

Early this morning when I awoke I noticed that he was playing in his swinging crib, making those cooing sounds he makes when he's excited about something he sees, a pattern, a toy he likes, whatever. Because he is so restless by nature he turned himself around 90 degrees while in a lying position, accomplished by repeatedly kicking his legs in the air and moving his rear end to the right in the movement. That was something new to me, he's turned himself before but not to such a degree. Shortly after I approached I realized that he had learned how to make the animals hanging from the battery-operated mobile affixed to one of the crib's rails shake, simply by moving about excitedly. When I turned on the mobile so that the animals began rotating clockwise above him he began to flail fervently, practically non-stop. He only did slow down when he worked himself an appetite and sounded the alarm.

Areg cries often but I don't know if that qualifies him as being a cry baby. He is not colicky, as there are long periods where he doesn't make a peep, especially when he's being rocked or bounced. I learned that unfamiliar, random sounds can startle him just the other day when I sneezed rather loudly in the bedroom a few inches beside him. He turned bright red and was having trouble breathing for several seconds before the alarm finally started. But when I sneezed just as loud yesterday while holding him he didn't react the same way; he seemed to shrug it off instead. The crying is attributed mainly to being hungry, needing a change or being bored. And there's usually sobbing involved in connection to being bathed -- either he doesn't want to get in or out of the tub, or he is hungry after being pampered, he doesn't like the feeling of whatever clothes his mom and grandma want to dress him with, etc. 

I don't know what else to tell about him for now. The photo above I think sums up this post best.