Isaiah at 18 Months

Isaiah was 18 months on March 22, so I wanted to record a few things about him at this moment in time.

-He's 25lbs and just shy of 32 inches tall.

-He still only has 8 teeth.  His molars have been huge bruised "marbles" under his gums for MONTHS, but just now one is actually cutting through so that part of it is through the gums.  The other ones are still just bruises.

-He gets up between 2 and 4 times a night to nurse.  It's just recently he started sometimes getting up only 2 times.  I love those nights.  But I usually end up laying awake for 2 or 3 hours anyway.

-We cosleep, and we love it and have no plans to stop.

-He doesn't talk much, but he does say Mama, Dada, Noah, more, no, yah, ball, block, Papa, Nana, baby, bird, moo, cheep, and maybe a few other things.

-He likes to build now, not just destroy.

-His "lovey" is a panda that Noah built him at Build-A-Bear, named "Pandy".  He ADORES Pandy, which is especially cute because Noah made him for him. I don't think I have a picture of it, unfortunately.

-He hasn't been sick that many times.  4 or 5 times total, one of them being right now (we all have a cold except Justin).

-He's a super smiley, friendly baby, but he is not easy.  He is pretty high maintenance and requires a lot of attention.  But he's a toddler, so yeah.  I expect that.

-I've always said that 12-18 months is my least favourite age (for so many reasons), and literally just in the 1.5 weeks before Isaiah turned 18 months he suddenly got a little easier.  Up until that point he still wanted to be held or worn every second, even while I was cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, etc.  Right before turning 18 months he suddenly preferred to play than to be worn.  Nothing else got easier, really, but that made a HUGE difference.

-He is a MAJOR STINKER.

-He loves to strut around like a peacock on the dining room table.

-He's not a "good eater" even though he always wants to eat.  He just doesn't actually ingest a whole lot, and he's rather picky.  He still gets about 95% of his nutrition from breastmilk, which is fine.  It's healthier than most things he could eat anyway.

-In the tub he is constantly doing this (don't mind the old lady tiles):

-He continues to be a hitter, scratcher, pincher, and biter. He's always done these things, ever since he was an infant. It's usually not even malicious, but it HURTS! We are just finally starting to make some headway with the whole "Be gentle, be gentle" and petting things instead of hitting. And finally when we say "No biting! Just kissing." He will kiss whatever he was about to bite. Up until now those things didn't work. And interestingly, if he's hitting or biting and we just say "No hitting!" or "No biting!" it will make him do it even more. Every single time.

Trying to bite for no reason:

Still trying to bite...

A split second before I yelled "ISAIAH NOOO!!" and he smashed Noah on the head with the old diaper sprayer:

-He's a HUGE gym rat, and pretty much his favourite place to be is in our garage gym.

In short, he's "challenging", but he's a pretty awesome kid!  We like him :)

Isaiah is 8 Months Old

Last time I logged in it had been so long that I forgot my password and had to change it.  And that just happened AGAIN!  Screw google for not letting you use the same password you've used in the past!  I'm never going to remember the one I just chose!

Anyway, Isaiah is 8 months old today... yay for being on time with a post!

So, at 8 months old...

-Isaiah weighs 19.5 lbs.

-He is about 28.5-29 inches long... it was hard to measure him; he didnt want to stay still.

-His head circumference is 18.25 inches.

-Still no teeth... I never would have guessed he would still have no teeth at 8 months since he started teething at 4 weeks old.

-Still exclusively breastfed with no bottles and no solids.  He did have a tiny taste of a pear I was eating the other day, but he just licked it, didn't actually ingest anything.

-Like last month, he's still in the awkward place between 2 and 3 naps, but moving closer to 2.

-He is now cross-crawling on his hands and knees!  I just love crawling babies, they are so darn cute.

-He is pulling up to stand.

-He moves from laying down to sitting up (and vice versa) with ease.

-He is starting to become more adventurous in travelling around the house, so we now close the gate at the top of the stairs.  We also recently put our mattresses on the ground because he is too mobile.

-We cosleep, and honestly sleep is not wonderful for him lately, but still within the range of what is biologically normal. The past few weeks have been really yucky for sleep.  One night he woke up 6 times.  He is waking up a minimum of 3 times a night, and almost always wakes up within the first hour of going to bed.  I expect this now so it doesn't bother me like it did when Noah did it. I just go in, nurse him, and he goes easily back to sleep.

-He's doing pretty well in the car.

-We still babywearing all the time. I'm still a carrier-churning maniac, and right now I have 32.

I have been awful about taking pictures in the past few weeks, but here are a few of the recent ones!

Right after a haircut... I didn't realize 1/8 inch was so freaking short!:

Randomness

Literally I cannot remember the last time this child "slept through the night".  And by "sleeping through the night," I don't mean sleeping 7pm to 5am and not waking up to nurse.  I mean not waking up and then deciding to STAY AWAKE for an hour or an hour and a half.  

What the HECK!!!!!!!  This was happening a couple of times a week for quite awhile, but it has been weeks (literally) since it HASN'T happened.  It's frustrating.  If we didn't sleep together I would be the most miserable person ever.  

Whoa.

~~~

THIS child has decided he does not want a haircut.  This isn't new, he has been hating haircuts for the past year.  But now he has decided that he wants long hair like Mommy, and to wear it in a ponytail.

Noah is the kind of kid who "forgets" to hate things if he has no exposure to them.  Therefore, I've been wondering why he still detests haircuts even though he's only had 2 or 3 since he started hating them a year ago.

Wonder no longer.  Apparently my Dad, aka Gramper, talks to Noah about how he needs a haircut all the time.  I just about smacked him when I found out.  Now Noah is THREE, and he remembers the most random crap that happened ages ago, so there will be no forgetting that he detests haircuts anymore.  And freaking Gramper has been constantly reminding him of this by talking to him about haircuts on a weekly basis.  STUPID GRAMPER!

Yesterday morning I was going to the bathroom and Noah stood in front of me and said, "Someday you will have a penis, like me!"  I bit back laughter and said "No, no I won't."  Noah looked me in the eyes and very sweetly said "Someday!" in a "Cheer up, Mom, it's okay that you don't have a penis right now, it will happen soon!" voice.

I just about died laughing.

Isaiah is 6 Months Old

9 days late... oops.

-Isaiah is about 18.5 lbs.

-He is 28 inches.

-His head circumference is about __ inches (it was 17 inches at 5 months)

-Same as last month, he is on the medium rise setting on his diapers. We exclusively use Flip covers with various inserts (stay dry, organic cotton, Thirsties inserts, flats, or prefolds) during the day, with a few bumGenius Freetimes thrown in, mostly for Daddy. At night he wears an sbish snapless fitted (with both doublers) with a Blueberry one size cover with aplix. The rise on the cover is completely unsnapped to fit over the fitted.

-He still has those two bottom teeth playing peekaboo (since he was 4 weeks old), and his bottom gums are swelling out in other areas, so I think some of his other teeth are moving around. I cannot believe those teeth haven't come through!

-He has no bottles ever, nor will he ever.

-He has had no solids, and we don't plan to introduce them anytime soon.

-We cosleep, and I can't imagine how much life would suck if we didn't.  He sleeps like an infant is supposed to - getting up to nurse anywhere from 1 to 3 times in the night.  1 time a night has been rare this past month, it's usually twice.  But almost every night this past month he has had a long awake period in the middle of the night, ranging anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half (this is why life would suck if we didn't cosleep).

-He goes to bed between 7 and 8, depending on when he woke up from his final nap, and wakes up between 6:30 and 7:30 (we are very very lucky if he sleeps all the way until 7:30, though).

-Isaiah isn't sleeping very well on me anymore, so most of his naps are in bed.  Like last month, most of his naps are 30-45 minutes long, but a few times a week we get one that ranges from an hour to an hour and 45 minutes long.  I big-puffy-heart LOVE those ones.

-We're in that awkward place between 2 and 3 naps.  He needs 3 but we can only fit in 2 most days.

-He still sleeps on his tummy, but this month he started flipping to his back on his own while he's in bed (he has been rolling over for a long time, obviously, but just never did it in bed until recently) and so occasionally he sleeps on his back.  He's finally at the point where I can lay him down on his back and his windmilling arms wouldn't wake him up immediately.  I don't usually do this, though, because he sleeps shorter periods when he's on his back.

-In the past I have said that Isaiah is the happiest baby I have ever met... Well, the past 2 or 3 weeks he's been kind of miserable.  He still has big smiles and giggles, but he's a lot fussier again this month.  It's been reminding me of when he was a newborn and things sucked.  Obviously it's not THAT bad, but we have seen far far better days.

-He started pushing himself up on his hands and knees and rocking right when he turned 5 months old.  Still not cross-crawling, though.

-He scoots himself all over the house, but hasn't perfected the army crawl like Noah had at this age.

-He is a really good sitter.  His back is straight, he doesn't need to be propped up by anything, and he can stay like that for a good 10 minutes.  Right when I started thinking he might not be sitting "properly" by the time he turned 6 months, he started sitting really well!  Just a few days before he turned 6 months old.

-He is friendly to people and smiles at them when they talk to and smile at him.

-He loves Noah!

-He is getting better in the car.  He won't nap in there (booo!  My sympathies to those of you whose children don't nap in the car!  I never understood how this was possible before), but at least he doesn't scream the entire time we're in there.  If I provide him with a steady rotation of toys he can make it through a 20 minute car ride with no issues... once a day, anyway.  The car ride back home usually involves screaming.

-He still has all his baths in the kitchen sink because it's easier for me.  I have no idea when I'm going to switch this to the bath tub.  Now that he sits up straight he is fitting really well in the sink and I have even less motivation to change the location.  Oh well!

-While last month I had 25 baby carriers, now I have 35 (even though I continue to sell them off).  Hello, my name is Lauren, and I am a babywearing addict.

This was a very cranky day... and he has since decided he doesn't like the soother (which I didn't even give to him until he turned 5 months old... I was shocked he took it in the first place!):

Happy baby! 

I forgot to mention... instead of reclining in the bouncy chair, he now insists on sitting straight up.  He can even do a sit up to get in this position if I lay him in the chair.

Sick Again!

Last Thursday I wrote about a really crappy night of sleep courtesy of dear Isaiah.  I said I wasn't worried about it because (and I quote) "this likely won't be repeated tonight."

Well, turns out it was repeated the next 4 or 5 nights!  Haha.  No seriously. The next night at Isaiah's first wake up I heard how congested he was, and he continued to wake up about every 2 hours all night, with some long awake periods.  He's been sick for the past week.  Poor little guy.  He's still really congested.  I have to use a saline spray and the Nosefrida on him before almost every time we nurse because he can't get any air through his nostrils.

I have no idea where this virus came from, because none of the rest of us are sick and we didn't spend any time around anyone who was sick.  It's a mystery.  I also have no idea how I got through Noah being sick so often when he was 0-18 months old without a Nosefrida.  Seriously, NO IDEA.  That thing is amazing.

Isaiah has been pretty cranky for the past week.  Between teething and his cold (and sometimes being hungry because he's too congested to be able to nurse), he's been a big ball of crank.  Thankfully it is March Break, so Justin has been home for some moral support.

Back to the sleep thing though... The past few nights have been better because Isaiah has gotten used to being congested and has stopped protesting having to breathe through his mouth.  Last night he slept 7:45 to 5:15am, then after about half an hour of being awake he went back to sleep until 8:30am.  I went to sleep around 10pm and then stayed in bed until 8am (Justin was up with Noah)... it was amazing!

Picture time!

As Isaiah gets older he gets blonder:

He's got the hands and knees thing down... and he can end up halfway across the room independently, but he just can't seem to get the cross crawling thing down ;)

I did not tell Noah to get in the picture... he just kept going next to Isaiah and making ridiculous faces.  This picture cracked me up:

Apparently I Don't Blog, But My Kid is Moving

Apparently I don't blog anymore.  I don't really know what's going on except that I just don't have time to sit down and write actual posts.  My kids won't tolerate it.  The only reason I'm writing this one is because Isaiah is sleeping in (more on that in a minute) and Noah is playing on my iPod.  Although as soon as I started typing this Noah asked "Can I go get Isaiah?  Is he awake?"  No, no you may not.

So, it's 8:30 and Isaiah is sleeping in, and here's why.  This is what his night looked like last night:

7:25 - 10:30 - sleep (3 hours 5 minutes)
10:30-10:40 - nurse
10:40 - 1:15 - sleep (2 hours 35 minutes)
1:15 - 1:25 - nurse
1:25 - 3:45 - sleep (2 hours 20 minutes)
3:45 - 3:55 - nurse
3:55 - 5:20 - AWAKE... for 1 hour and 25 minutes
5:20 - 6:50 - sleep (1 hour 30 minutes)
7:00 - 7:10 - nurse
7:10 - 8:35 and counting - sleep

What the heck.  Obviously I could do without the getting up every 1-3 hours, but that hour and a half long party in the wee hours of the morning was definitely the kicker.  I mean, I still have to get up at 6:45 regardless of whether Isaiah decides sleeping is for the birds.

Thankfully I've been a mom for long enough to know that a) this is completely normal and to be expected, and therefore not the end of the world, and b) this likely won't be repeated tonight.  And since we cosleep I also didn't have to walk around the house or rock in a rocking chair while he was awake.  I just lied beside him and pretended to be asleep while he laid his head on my arms and sides and back (depending on what position I was in.  Then finally I laid on my stomach next to him with my left arm draped over him body, and he drifted off.

This leads me to another point... this kid is getting mobile.  He isn't army crawling forward, but he's going backward.  He is spinning in circles and can end up feet awake from where he's placed on the floor.  And finally... he's pushing himself up on his hands and knees.  Like, fully pushing himself up.  As in, 3 inches of daylight between his belly and the floor.  Since he turned 5 months old.

What??

I was hoping since we cosleep that he'd take longer than Noah to become mobile (Noah was a very early mover and crawler).  Apparently not.