Just so amazed!

In two and a half hours, it’ll be exactly two weeks since Jackson arrived, and I’m just so amazed at everything about him. As I sit here watching him nap peacefully in his rock and play all swaddled up, I just can’t stop thinking about how beautiful and amazing our time with him has been so far.

 

Our little guy is already teaching us so much about the important things in life. Paying careful attention to his eating and sleeping habits is like having a front row seat in a masterclass on how to efficiently use energy. There are days when his chief focus is to eat as much food as possible* — you experienced parents probably know this as “cluster feeding” — and all other activities become secondary. On those cluster feeding days, he sleeps less; it’s like his entire anatomy says, “look, we’re gonna put everything on hold today. We need to take in as many nutrients as possible, and that means, we don’t have time for anything else!” It’s just so cool to watch nature, at its most elementary level, do it’s thing through Jackson.

 

And then there are days, usually following the cluster feeding days, when his anatomy decides to prioritize a different activity, like sleeping. And it all makes sense. And I, I am just so amazed by it all! If he spends a whole day stocking up on nutrients, it naturally follows that he’s going to spend the next day or two creating the best environment possible for those nutrients to go to work. What better way to do that than by sleeping. While he sleeps, essential activities such as crazy-fast multiplication/growth of cells and memory consolidation can be efficiently carried out. He’s learning so much about his new world and family so quickly that he needs to sleep as much as possible in order to make all those memories stick!

 

Jackson is teaching me so much and I’m just so amazed by him. I want to spend every minute with him. His schedules and rhythms often seem random, but I deeply feel like it’s all very purposeful and well-orchestrated by nature in a manner that is just too beautifully simple for me to understand. And I am… just SO amazed!

 

~Daddy-O!

 

laying on daddy

 

 

* There must be a special place in Heaven for women who breastfeed. The amount of effort, sacrifice, and energy it takes Jenny to deliver Jackson’s food to him is just unbelievable. On the cluster feeding days, Jenny is lucky to have more than a 15 to 30-min stretch of time away from breastfeeding. He literally spends all day fervently suctioning out every drop of milk from his mother’s breasts, our little milk monster! More on breastfeeding and suck/swallow/breathe process later; it’s become one of my favorite topics…