Guest Post by The Naptown Organizer: An Easy Going Baby

{Nicole here. This guest post is brought to you by my awesome ~~friend~~ internet bestie Jayne! You can find her at The Naptown Organizer! And if you head over there today, you can find a post by me! Hope you enjoy the swap}

Hi all over here @ the Kavanaugh Report!!!

I'm Jayne, otherwise known as the Naptown Organizer, and one of Nicole's mama friends. The Naptown Organizer blog is my mama blog (and source of mama sanity, sometimes!), where I post on topics such as motherhood, parenting, being a little bit (okay a lot) crunchy granola and also maybe a tad bit obsessive compulsive. I'd love it if you'd head on over and check it out!
Nicole and I met after having our babies fairly close to one another, and have had a bunch of time to get to know each other since then. This has pretty much led us to realize that we are almost the exact same person in many, many ways. Nicole & I are very like minded in how we have approached motherhood, parenting, work, and in general the lifestyle changes that accompany mothering, and that is a huge accomplishment once you realize how many types of parents and people there are in this world. I'm pretty sure we were meant to be close friends, we just didn't find each other until now :)
One thing we did realize, though, pretty soon after the boys were born, was just how different they are. You've heard from Nicole about Hen, who seems to be a pretty rough and tumble kind of guy who requires a lot of attention. Nicole asked me to pop on over here to do somewhat of a contrast post about my son, whom I refer to in the blogosphere as little man.

Since his birth, little man has been a pretty typical baby. He ate, he slept (some), he fussed when he needed something. However, pretty early on, we started to notice that little man was a fairly easy baby. The only times he would cry were if he were hungry. He wouldn't cry if he had a dirty diaper, and for the most part he didn't even cry when he was tired. Of course, like any baby, there are always those days when they just have a few rough patches, but those were few and far between. As he got a little bigger, and started to sleep through the night consistently, little man really started to show just how easy and calm he was. He also was content just to be held or worn in a wrap or carrier, he just wanted to feel either DH (my husband) or I close to him, and then he was happy.

Once he began to be able to smile, laugh, and interact with us, his smiles and happy giggles were constant. He would wake up from naps or in the morning with huge grins on his face like he was so very happy to see my husband and me. DH would play with him and the laughter coming from the two of them just warmed my heart- it was infectious. My mom continues to say he has a smile that just lights up a room, and he really does.

Little man has always been a very cuddly baby, as I mentioned a little bit above. When we play, he wants to sit close to me with one hand or foot touching me, so that he knows I am still there. So long as I am with him, he is perfectly content to just sit happily with a toy and play quietly.

While he did initially sleep through the night very quickly (6-7 hour or more stretches at 7 weeks old), there have been many times that he has woken in the night, but he is so easy to get back to sleep. All he really wanted was to cuddle and nurse, and he would fall back asleep in my arms in minutes. There also have been a few tough times more recently as he now has 16 teeth, including his molars. Getting those teeth caused/sometimes still is causing a few toddler tantrums, where he was so uncomfortable he would just fling his little body on the floor and cry, but those episodes were few and always had a concrete reason, like a mountain of a tooth that popped through his gums the next day. There are also days that if we don't get him enough sleep (he continues to be very dependent on sleep, sometimes sleeping as much as 16-18 hours a day still) he will tell us by giving a few cries or a few tears, but mainly, he is such an easy child.

There are some worries that I have about him being such an easy going child, but most of them have to do with me. There are so many people that tell me now that I am pregnant with my second child, that the second baby is just going to be SO needy because my first was so easy, sort of like a karma type thing. I don't know if I believe that fully, but it still worries me. You never truly know what to expect with each new baby until they come, you meet them, and as a family, you figure everything out. But I do wonder how I would react if the next babe was much more challenging, if I would have the limitless patience I feel like I have with little man, or if I would lose my patience with both of them? Only time will tell.

After looking back on the past year and a half with little man, I honestly can't tell you one thing I would change about him, even the times when he doesn't want to eat a stitch of real food, or needs just a half hour more of snuggling before bed, or wants to hold my hand and be physically close to me all the time, because all of those little things add up to who he is. And I absolutely love him for exactly who he is, the good and the not-so-great. I think this is one thing that Nicole and I see eye to eye on and we are completely on the same page. At the end of the day, no matter what kind of a child you are given, whether they are super happy frappy, really clingy, very independent, or extremely strong willed (or any of the other millions of personality types of babies)- you just love them. You take comfort in knowing that all of the personality traits they have now are going to be good for them in the future, as I see little man being greatly connected to our family and- in the future- his own, and I see Hen being a strong, driven, motivated adult when he grows up. And, no matter what, when they look at us today with those beautiful little faces, they are ours, and they are perfect.