My Peaceful Little Boy

Since birth, Jack's life has been characterized by complete chaos. In fact, even before Jack was born, Josh and I had already started down that long, disruptive, stressful road toward relocating back to PA, so perhaps my little boy was doomed before he even got out of the gate. When he did finally come into the world, it was abundantly clear that he was not happy about it. While both of my babies came out screaming, Anna was instantly comforted by Josh's voice when he said his first words to her. Jack, on the other hand, just kept on screaming even after the nurse had him resting gently on my chest. At that moment I knew Jack was going to be different. Since then, Jack has busted apart all of my Babywise-driven notions of the normal course for a newborn. At six months he's still spitting up all day long, has yet to sleeping consistently through the night, and cries pretty much any time he's not asleep or being held. As that's the case, you can imagine my joy when I found my angsty, refluxy, needy little boy passed out -- at will -- in our bed this morning. I laid Jack down so I could help Anna get dressed and completely forgot about him because he was so quiet. In fact, when it occurred to me that I had left him on the bed, my heart jumped thinking that if he wasn't crying, he must be dead. (Maybe this is why he cries to so much -- so I don't forget him!). I went back into our room and there was my little belly sleeper, dead asleep on his back! Anna used to fall asleep like this all the time -- on our bed, on her play mat, in the back yard... anywhere. But this was a true first for Jack and it made me happy to see him so peaceful.