Two month appointment results

Folks were asking about Elliot's two month appointment with the pediatrician. He weighed in on November 6th at 10 lb, 6 oz, which means he's still gaining more than an ounce a day -- almost an ounce and a half. I reckon we give him perhaps thirty ounces of milk a day (which amounts to a gallon every few days), so he incorporates about five percent of that into his own body. Consider -- he turns a twentieth part of his food into himself. A parlor game of ours is for me to point out some enlarged or altered part of his anatomy, and for Sarah to make the rejoinder that what I'm pointing to is, in fact, "made of milk". All that new hair he is growing? Made of milk. Scratchy fingernails that need to be cut again? Made of milk.

It kind of knocks me out (and seems to gross other people out) to try to think about what an ounce and half of baby's body actually looks like, and how much living *stuff* that is to create in 24 hours flat. Every 24 hours. That's a lot of petri dishes growing a lot of cells.

He has moved from the 10th percentile of weight up to the 22nd percentile, which impressed the doc because among other things it means (gather round, math people) that he has moved up one whole standard deviation. He is mounting a frontal assault on the south face of the bell curve.

I think he's about 22" long. And he is beginning to outgrow a few of his favorite newborn (0-3 month) clothes.

His eyelashes are darker and longer, long enough that they have begun to curve around and outwards.

The skin on his skull is thicker and more flesh-colored, less translucent, hiding more of the tracery of the veins on his head.

He can hold his head up and look around for almost as long as he wants, though eventually it will topple over, either because he gets worn out or because he gets ambitious and loses control.

He sleeps 3-5 hours at a stretch in the night. But we haven't developed a set bedtime. Sometimes we're all in by 9:30, sometimes it's 11.

After losing the birth hair from the top of his head, and having a stubbly scalp for a couple of weeks, he grew back a new crop of downy hair. It spirals around a point just to the left front of the middle of his head -- like a cartoon baby. It's getting long enough -- almost -- to be able to get messed up, or have bed-head.

-blwh