River is 7 Months Old

River is 7 months old!

-He weighs barely 17.5 lbs according to our digital scale when he’s naked (32nd percentile). 

-He is about 29 inches (98th percentile).

-He wears 12 month sleepers (I literally never put him in anything but a fleece sleeper). We switched to 12 month sleepers before 6.5 months. 

-His hair is blonde and his eyes are blue, but a greyish muddy blue. Not a clear blue. 

-He has his two bottom teeth.  One came in two days before six months and he other came in a few days later. 

-He is still exclusively breastfed. No solids or bottles.

-He nurses every 1.5-2 hours during the day.  Sometimes shorter. He can no longer go longer than 2 hours. 

-He's very distractable while nursing. We have to be somewhere quiet, otherwise he pops off to look around. No people or TV.

-He’s okay with getting his diaper changed, but he’s not super cooperative because he wants to roll onto his belly every time he’s laying on his back. 

-He poops more frequently than he used to. It’s several times a week now - every 2-3 days. I do diaper laundry every three days and there are usually at least two poopy diapers in there (sometimes he poops a couple of times in a day and then not for a couple of more days). 

-He wears Flip diaper covers on the middle rise (I just moved the rise a couple of weeks ago) with prefolds (Indian cotton and Thirsties hemp prefolds).  

-At night he wears a sloomb medium OBF with a Disana wool cover. I *just* stopped putting the Geffen Quick Absorber on the outside because he is no longer nursing 6-8 times a night. 

-He has three naps a day. Typically the first one is about 60-90 minutes. The second is 40-90 minutes. The last one is 30-45 minutes. 

-He sleeps about 10 hours at night total. 

-He has awake periods of about 2 hours and 30 minutes. Sometimes he pushes it to 2 hours 45 minutes. I can get him to sleep earlier and faster when it’s in the bedroom, as opposed to in the kitchen (where we do his daytime naps when Justin is at work). 

-Three naps are getting harder to fit in the day because his awake periods are 2:15-2:30. His night time sleep is usually only 10 hours, and he’s starting to shorten his second nap more often, so that’s how we’re still fitting three naps in. I would like to go down to two, but with shorter night time sleep his awake periods would have to be longer than he can handle right now. 

-I still wear him for all of his naps, with loud white noise. 

-He actually seems to like to be worn now (sometimes, anyway). He doesn’t like it as much as Isaiah did, though. 

-We are cosleeping and nursing overnight, but I did some “sleep training” this month to improve night sleep. It had gotten so bad, it was intolerable. I have been keeping a journal on how each night has gone, and I’ll post that separately. 

-Night time usually has 2-4 wake ups now, which is a LOT better than before. We even had a night in the last couple of weeks with only one wake up!

-Now that I’ve sleep trained he actually nurses to sleep more often now. If he doesn’t, I lay him in bed and lay down beside him and he goes to sleep without nursing. This may or may. It involve crying. It depends on the night. 

-He is a tummy sleeper and has been since about 2 weeks old. 

-He’s a pretty good sitter. Considering how strong he is, and how advanced he’s been physically his whole life, I thought he’d be better by now. But he can do better now than he could a month ago 

-He is excellent at army crawling. He is super fast at it now. 

-He’s been rocking on his hands and knees since 5.5 months. He can take a few cross-crawling steps in this position but then flops to his belly to army crawl, because it’s easier and faster for him right now. 

-He pulls up to stand on everything (since 6.5 months). 

-He’s starting to cruise along furniture (inexpertly). 

-He can climb the fairly large step between the kitchen and living room. 

-He smiles SUPER easily.

-He seems to like other people fine as long as they don’t want to hold him. 

-He is a HUGE mama’s boy. Even worse than a month ago. He can only tolerate being away from me for so long before there’s nothing anyone can do, he’ll just cry and cry and not stop until he’s with me again. Even if he’s just laying on the floor of the bathroom watching me get ready, he’d rather do that than be held by someone. 

-I pretty much have to eat all my meals sitting on the floor so he can climb on me. 

-He is extremely drooly, but that’s nothing new.

-He puts everything in his mouth. He always has to be chewing or licking something. Even if it’s just the floor. 

-He still doesn’t take a soother, just chews on it. 

-He still likes his doorway jumper, but we’ve used it less this month than in other months. We only use it when Noah, Isaiah, and I sit on the floor next to him and play card and board games. 

-He hardly ever uses his play mat anymore because he immediately rolls onto his tummy and creeps off of it.  We haven’t put it away yet. I don’t know why. 

-He cannot, under any circumstances, be left on any elevated surface without being watched every second. He can creep to the edge of our king sized bed very quickly.

Unlike last month, this month has NOT been the best yet. He’s been really fussy, and separation anxiety is rearing its ugly head. Not that he’s ever been okay with being away from me, but it’s even worse now. 

Still. Anything beats colic.  And when he’s happy, which is often, he freaking adorable.