Mr. Cuddles

Today was a much better day. He has thing where he doesn't want to work - crawl, sit, stand - and he gets easily overwhelmed. This morning, mostly he just wanted to be held. Which is fine with me, because I, of course, love every minute of it. But my back can't take it! He loves to rock, but I can only do it for so long because I have to either walk around or rock him in a chair with no back. I think my first investment when we get back home is in a glider - not a rocker, but a glider. I am already picturing many nights, rocking him to sleep...

He does this thing where he will crawl one or two steps and then start rocking himself back and forth. This is a sign of... well, I'm not entirely sure, but I know it's a sign of some sort of stress, and he has taught himself self-soothing by rocking himself. He also tends to do this as soon as we put him in the crib - but since we have been cuddling him, the self-soothing seems to be slowing down a little. And, this afternoon, when he started rocking when he was supposed to be crawling, I was on the floor next to him and started rubbing his back. This seemed to help - and the next thing I knew, he was half way across the room! He seems to be a lot more adventuress and more confident since we have been working with him.

He's still not sure of being outside, since he's been outside more in the past few days than his entire life before that, but we kept him in our arms and he seemed a lot more comfortable being outside than he was even yesterday. Small strides, but huge gains.

As for the "name game", his name has already been decided and given to the appropriate people - and no, we are not saying what it is yet. Again, we are only on day 5 of our bonding, which is only the first step in a long line of paperwork and process.