20 Months Old

At 20 months, here is where Noah is at:

-I haven't weighed or measured Noah this month, but I assume he is just slightly heavier and taller than he was at 18 months, when he was 27lbs and 35 inches.

-He is in size 4 diapers during the day and night.

-He wears size 2T and 3T clothing. Most 2T clothing is too short, though.

-He wears size 6 shoes.

-He nurses on demand, 4-8 times a day.

-He exclusively feeds himself his solids, either with his hands or with a spoon and fork. If he is given a utensil, he will always use it. He also drinks out of a regular cup quite well, although we try to use a sippy cup as often as he will let us since we run less risk of him purposefully pouring out his water.

-He has 16 full teeth. The only ones left are his 2 year molars.

-His broken leg is pretty much completely healed.

-He sleeps straight through the night now, between 9.5 and 11 hours total.  11 hours is rare.  He gets less total sleep now that he's not nursing overnight, which isn't great, but I am loving not getting up in the middle of the night with him.  Bedtime is still about 8:30pm.

-He naps for one hour, and we are finally at the point that I just plop him in his crib wide awake.

-At 15 months Noah was saying 18 words. At 16 months he was saying 42 words. At 17 months he was saying 79 words. At 18 months he was saying 137 words.  At 19 months Noah was saying over 300 words, although I had only recorded 281.

-At 20 months Noah is saying over 424 words (I have 424 recorded, but I know I'm missing some - I finally alphabetized them in an Excel document!  I know, so overboard.)

Sorry, here's where I record these words in case my computer crashes...

His old words that he's still saying are: Mama, Dada, uh oh, more, this, that, cat, night night, hot, up, yes, woof woof ("what does a dog say?"), baa ("what does a sheep/goat say?"), moo ("what does a cow say?"), car, ball, shoes, cracker, Noah, water, orange, clock, blech, hi, done, dirt, Bert, puff, swish, fluff, book, buzz, Papa, Nana, boo, fish, phone, again, home, sunglasses, Gramper, sit, stretch, glasses, food, laptop, love, hair, quack, bye, tshirt, shirt, aunt, poop, slide, cheese, Colton, danger, banana, feet, please, clock, cold, toes, ooo-ooo-ahh-ahh (monkey sound), bad, burger, boo-boo (as in, an owie), nurse, block, fly, stuck, chalk, out, fit, hat, bye-bye, and shit (yeah, I'm not proud of that), pool, eyes, nose, rice, pour, no, apple, bath, heck, help, eat, T.V., pup, corn, cook, moon, sun, on, off, mouse, brush, ice, neigh, push, yay, peach, buddy, you, hi, mess, flip, hose, toast, home, see you, pieces, pear, foot, me, tape, open, meat, ok, out, street, outside, keys, bits, pee, flies, away, whoa, cheerios, cut, gas, wet, hey, bless, plate, baby, kick, acorn, grass, light, dark, medicine, horse, cake, after, bar, house, two, three, go, doctor, windy, lid, hide, Elmo, get, it, fix, button, thank, beep, one, cookie, high, chair, highchair, whack, walk, tower, cute, breakfast, bawk (chicken), back, moose, lion, tiger, dinner, pocket, Ernie, draw, wall, welcome, Granny, Matt, Lynsey, aunt, Giliane, Nick, Hilary, cuddle, boat, pen, puck, ready, picture, coming, dude, cool, clothes, soother, green, purple, blue, both, you, I, love, fries, toys, red, playdoh, stick, hockey, hit, ribbit, frog (which comes out as f#ck), colour, found, plug, pizza, coffee, cricket, broke, ring, hug, rice, watch, arm, leg, ear, closet, open, dukie (dutch slang for washcloth), chicken, Abby, sweep, music, Emmie, Lexie, other, room, welcome, rain, clap, table, yellow, crayon, crib, music, lotion, cube, self, ice cube, new, giraffe, bite, blanky, dance, meow, cow, dog, rabbit, tomato, tree, bathroom, cup, window, honk, pretty, grape, fork, spoon, knife, goose, bang, Scout, peek-a-boo.

His new words are (and I don't actually expect anyone to read through this list):  

Sun, Whistle, Groceries, Bat, Head, Sweetpea, Soap, Squeeze, Knock, Bib, Beef, Fishies, Hand, Yum, Yummy, Mustard, Tag, Bubbles, Jeans, Kids, Sock, Nipple, Hammer, Dinner, Supper, Piano, Bear, Bed, Room, Bedroom, James, Pasta, Diaper, Zoe, Pushing, Computer, Sick, Basket, Egg, Working, Sleeping, Sleepy, Walking, Bumbo, Noise, What, Wipe, Empty, Big, Fast, Heavy, Football, Tape, Scissors, Getting, Buckle, Seatbelt, Potty, Swirl, Smock, Tray, Header, Baseball, Pass, Penguin, Pumpkin, Shower, Mommy, Daddy, Mom, Right, Flower, Bathtime, Wall, Spin, Heat, Wow, Neat, Clean, Here, Good, Fishies, Sitting, Tub, Bum, Berries, Wash, Washing, Nursing, Helping, Brushing, Puppy, Super, Grover, Drink, Drinking, Eating, Hitting, Warm, Bucky, Gross, Careful, Sleep, Yuck, Yucky, Take, Tickle, Bike, Ride, Riding, Funny, Cord, Cereal, Smell, peel, nothing, teacher, elastic, cushion, nope, yup, Dad, Blow, Goldfish, Throw, There, Is, Sheep, Pink, White, Where, Hiding, Nap, Camera, Pancake, Boots, Sandals, Stinky, Stroller, Squish, Squishy, excuse, fun, happy, me, under, over

-This month, in about 3 days time, Noah went from calling us Mama, Dada, and Wawa (how he pronounced Noah), to Mommy, Daddy, and Noah.  It made me a little bit sad.

-He is putting many two word and some three word phrases together. For example: thank you, bless you, get it, get you, got you, hang on, excuse me, there it is, etc.

-He still loves to play with the vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, any cleaning implement, or anything electronic that isn't meant to be played with.

-As for actual toys, his favourites are our Clifford Stacking Blocks, his Cozy Coupe car, his tricycle, any type of ball, his mini sticks, and mega blocks.

-He knows all 10 of the main colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown, white.

-He knows the shapes circle, star, and square.  We don't really work any discussion of shapes into our play, so far.  He just picked those up because his magnetic doodle pad has circle, star, and square magnets.

-He'll count "one, two, three..." but most of the time when he's counting he still says "Two, two, two, two..." as he points to different objects. It is so cute.

-He loves to colour, play with play-doh, blow bubbles, build towers, play in the corn table, play in the bubble table, play outside, kick balls... I could go on.

-He still loves Sesame Street, and the show Super Why.  I'm impressed with how much he will pay attention to Super Why, considering it's a full half hour show about reading, letters, and writing.

-Noah has been sick twice in the last month. The count is at 15.

-He is getting much less shy, but he still has separation anxiety from me.  The only people who can babysit him are my Mom and Dad (together - my Mom HAS to be there).  They've done this twice in the past couple of weeks so Justin and I could go out on an early dinner date - home in time for bath and bed!

19-20 months was a really nice month for us.  Noah was really fun, agreeable, and obedient.  There were no sleep struggles, which was awesome.  I guess it did suck that he was sick twice, but if he's happy and pleasant (which he's not with this latest cold), I don't mind him being sick as much.

19 Months Old

It has been extremely difficult getting around to writing Noah's 19 month stats.  I just sent him off with Daddy for an hour, so instead of taking some time to relax or make dinner, I'm doing this. 

At 19 months, here is where Noah is at:

-I haven't weighed or measured Noah this month, but I assume he is just slightly heavier and taller than last month, when he was 27lbs and 35 inches.

-He is in size 4 diapers during the day and night.

-He wears size 2T and 3T clothing.  Most 2T clothing is too short, though.

-He wears size 6 shoes.

-He nurses on demand, 4-6 times a day.

-He exclusively feeds himself his solids, either with his hands or with a spoon and fork. If he is given a utensil, he will always use it.  He also drinks out of a regular cup quite well, although we try to use a sippy cup as often as he will let us since we run less risk of him purposefully pouring out his water.

-He has 16 full teeth. The only ones left are his 2 year molars.

-He broke his leg on Saturday, September 24, 2011.  The diagnosis wasn't confirmed until the following Thursday.  He is doing a lot better now, but he is still limping.

-As of his 19 month birthday, he had been on a nap strike for 15 days, where he absolutely refused to nap unless he was actively nursing or in the car.  I think we might have beaten that now, though.  Update on that separately.  Soon, hopefully.

-Half of this month he was been sleeping 11 to 11.5 hours at night, getting up to nurse twice.  I went along with this because it started happening right after he broke his leg.  But when naps went to crap and Noah woke up wanting to nurse already at 11:30pm, I buckled down.  Since then he has been sleeping straight through the night 2/3 of the time and getting up to nurse sometime after 5am 1/3 of the time (one nurse a night is normal for him and I don't mind it).

-Bedtime is after 8:30pm most nights, and we've been sleeping in until about 8am or later every morning.

-He no longer signs to nurse, eat, or for water.  He's strictly verbal.

-At 15 months Noah was saying 18 words. At 16 months he was saying 42 words. At 17 months he was saying 79 words. At 18 months he was saying 137 words.  

-At 19 months Noah is saying way over 300 words.  However, I am not very good at writing them all down, and I need to find a way to automatically alphabetize them on the computer because it's really hard to go through the list to see if a new word is really a new word or not.  As a result, I have only recorded 281 words.

His old words that he's still saying are: Mama, Dada, uh oh, more, this, that, cat, night night, hot, up, yes, woof woof ("what does a dog say?"), baa ("what does a sheep/goat say?"), moo ("what does a cow say?"), car, ball, shoes, cracker, Noah, water, orange, clock, blech, hi, done, dirt, Bert, puff, swish, fluff, book, buzz, Papa, Nana, boo, fish, phone, again, home, sunglasses, Gramper, sit, stretch, glasses, food, laptop, love, hair, quack, bye, tshirt, shirt, aunt, poop, slide, cheese, Colton, danger, banana, feet, please, clock, cold, toes, ooo-ooo-ahh-ahh (monkey sound), bad, burger, boo-boo (as in, an owie), nurse, block, fly, stuck, chalk, out, fit, hat, bye-bye, and shit (yeah, I'm not proud of that), pool, eyes, nose, rice, pour, no, apple, bath, heck, help, eat, T.V., pup, corn, cook, moon, sun, on, off, mouse, brush, ice, neigh, push, yay, peach, buddy, you, hi, mess, flip, hose, toast, home, see you, pieces, pear, foot, me, tape, open, meat, ok, out, street, outside, keys, bits, pee, flies, away, whoa, cheerios, cut, gas, wet, hey, bless.

-Some of his new words are: plate, baby, kick, acorn, grass, light, dark, medicine, horse, cake, after, bar, house, two, three, go, doctor, windy, lid, hide, Elmo, get, it, fix, button, thank, beep, one, cookie, high, chair, highchair, whack, walk, tower, cute, breakfast, bawk (chicken), back, moose, lion, tiger, dinner, pocket, Ernie, draw, wall, welcome, Granny, Matt, Lynsey, aunt, Giliane, Nick, Hilary, cuddle, boat, pen, puck, ready, picture, coming, dude, cool, clothes, soother, green, purple, blue, both, you, I, love, fries, toys, red, playdoh, stick, hockey, hit, ribbit, frog (which comes out as f#ck), colour, found, plug, pizza, coffee, cricket, broke, ring, hug, rice, watch, arm, leg, ear, closet, open, dukie (dutch slang for washcloth), chicken, Abby, sweep, music, Emmie, Lexie, other, room, welcome, rain, clap, table, yellow, crayon, crib, music, lotion, cube, self, ice cube, new, giraffe, bite, blanky, dance, meow, cow, dog, rabbit, tomato, tree, bathroom, cup, window, honk, pretty, grape, fork, spoon, knife, goose, bang, Scout, peek-a-boo.

-In case you didn't read through that long list (I don't blame you), Noah says frog, but it comes out as "f#ck." Quite perfectly pronounced, too.  It has embarrassed me several times.

-He is putting many two word phrases together.  For example: thank you, bless you, get it, get you, got you, hang on, etc.

-He knows that poop and pee go in the toilet, and he shows interest when we go to the bathroom, but I haven't gotten him a potty or even started to bother training him.  I am in no hurry.

-His verbal comprehension continues to be amazing. He understands everything we say to him. We can even reason with him.

-He still wants gets into everything, but he is continuing to obey the word "no" more consistently.

-Currently, his favourite "toys" are our Dyson vacuum cleaner, my hair dryer, any cleaning implement, or anything electronic that isn't meant to be played with.

-He just jumped for the first time, actually getting air.  We weren't trying to teach him, he just suddenly decided to stand there on two feet and figure out how to jump up and land again.  And he did it.

-He loves to colour with us.  We colour with paper and crayons, or on his big AquaDoodle mat.  I love AquaDoodle.

-He knows most of the main colours: green, orange, blue, red, yellow, purple, and black.  He spends most of his time concentrating on green and orange, though.  Especially orange.

-He'll count "one, two, three..." but most of the time when he's counting he says "Two, two, two, two..." as he points to different objects.  This slays me.  It's hilarious.

-He loves to play with playdoh.  I bought it when he broke his leg and wasn't supposed to walk.  I bought a Sesame Street set of shapes and cutters and things, so when he wants to play with playdoh he'll usually say "Elmo!  Cut!"  

-He L.O.V.E.S. Sesame Street.  He either asks to watch "Street" or "Elmo".  He absolutely adores Elmo, and his second favourite character would probably be Abby Cadabby.  He even knows that if I spell "E-L-M-O" that spells Elmo.  I tried spelling it so he wouldn't hear the word, but he figured it out pretty quickly.

-This is the very first month he has shown an interest in loving stuffed animals.  Before now he was only attached to "Pup," his lovey.  And that was only after having him in his crib for months and months.  This month he fell in love with a puppy at Build-A-Bear, so we made one for him.  He adores that puppy.  He hugs him and kisses him and cuddles with him.  We call him "Scout," which Noah pronounces something like "Suck."

-Time outs are still extremely successful around here. They've been so successful, we don't need to use them that often anymore.

-No illnesses for Noah this month. The count is at 13.

-He is getting much less shy, but he still has separation anxiety from me.

-He is such a smart, sweet, gentle little boy who just loves other kids and babies.  He shares, he's nice, he's empathetic... I'm so proud of him!

14 Months Old

Better late than never, right? 


At 14 months old, here is where Noah is at:

-He weighs about 21.5lbs.  He was 22lbs even with his clothes and shoes on, carrying my big pile of keys (I wasn't about to pry them out of his fingers and have a tantrum on my hands in the middle of the doctor's office).  This is just under 50th percentile, according to WHO chart for breastfed babies.

-He is about 32.5 inches tall, 98th percentile, according to WHO chart for breastfed babies.

-He's between the 10th and 25th percentile for weight-for-length, according to the WHO chart for breastfed babies.

-His head measures 19.9 inches around.  Over 100th percentile, according to the WHO chart for breastfed babies.  Massive.  But it's not wide, it's deep, so it doesn't actually look like he has a giant noggin.

-He is just about to move into size 4 diapers 100% of the time.  He still fits size 3 Pampers Cruisers really well, but he is too tall for other size 3 diapers (even though they fit his waist well).

-He still breastfeeds on demand, which is usually around 10 times a day.

-75% of his nutrition still comes from breastfeeding.  He is beginning to want to eat more solids more often.  I let him lead the way.

-He will still eat purees if there are no "solid" solids in sight.  I have a whole bunch of jarred baby food to use up, so I'm still going for it.

-He loves meat and fruit.  They are his favourite.  He also really likes peanut butter sandwiches.  He does not like vegetables anymore.  Sad:(

-He still enjoys a balance of being fed and feeding himself.

-He wears 18 and 24 month clothing, depending on what it is.  Except shorts.  He wears 9 month shorts.  The little skinny-minny.

-He wears size 4 shoes.

-He has 10 teeth.  The front 8 (4 top and 4 bottom), which have been in since he was 8 months old, and now his one year molars on top are poking through his gums a fair bit.  On the bottom his gums are swollen, like he has two marbles under his gums. 

-He's been down to one nap for a month.  This nap is about an hour long, give or take a few minutes.

-He sleeps 11-11.5 hours at night, getting up to nurse once.  I have no idea when he will drop that overnight nursing.

-Did you do the math?  He only sleeps 12-12.5 hours a day.

-Bedtime is still about 8-8:30pm, despite the one nap.  I prefer to start my morning sometime past 7, and if I put him to bed earlier he does wake up earlier.

-He signs to nurse (the sign for milk), for water (waves his hand up and down), and to eat (sticks his finger in his mouth).  Those are the only signs I'm consistent with, otherwise I'm sure he'd sign more.

-He still doesn't say much verbally.  Just Dad, a little bit of Mama, uh oh, that, this...  He just started doing two animal sounds, though.  He says, "Woof woof" when he hears a dog or we ask what a dog says, and he says "Ca Ca" for what a bird says.   He totally started doing both of those on his own, though, imitating the dogs and birds that live around us.  He really is not into copying us verbally, except for those two noises now.

-I am always surprised by how much he understands.  He can follow so many instructions, even multi-step instructions like "Get your shoes so we can go outside!"  He'll run and get his shoes and then go to the door and try to go outside. 

Here are some other examples (by no means a comprehensive list):

*"Do you want to listen to music?"  He'll nod, smile, point to the iPod dock, and start dancing.

*"Do you want to go downstairs?" He'll run to the top of the stairs gate.
*"Are you hungry?" He signs to eat. "Go get in your high chair!"  He'll run over to his high chair and reach up to try and get into it.

*"Can you get Mommy's brush for her?" He will literally go to the bathroom, open the drawer, get out my brush, and bring it to me.

*"No hitting!  Gentle, Noah, gentle..."  He will start gently patting whatever he was being too rough with, be it the cats or my face or his own head. 

*He also can answer "Where's Mommy's nose?" and "Where's Mommy's belly button?" by pointing the the appropriate body part.  He'll even lift up my shirt to find my belly button.  He doesn't point to those things on himself, though.

*On his own body he points out his ears, feet, and hands when asked.

*If we tell him not to do something when we're somewhere other than home, he looks at us very seriously, nods his head, and stops what he's doing.  He also shakes his head no, when appropriate.

-He's a very sweet boy, and very cuddly and kissy.  He loves to hug other babies, our cats, and pictures of animals.

-He loves to get out our swiffers and swiffer all over our floors.  He'll swiffer the carpets, couches, and coffee tables too.  He also imitates me cleaning by rubbing cloths on the floor and tables.

-He loves to play outside.  A little over a month ago he was still not a big fan of it, but now he loves it.  He would spend most of his day outside if he could.  The weather hasn't been very conducive to this, though.

-He got comfortable walking on the grass just before 14 months.  I've mentioned that he is a very careful little guy, so before this it felt too unsteady for him and he would just stand still if we put him on the grass.

-He can open closet doors now, as well as regular doors.  Unwelcome development.

-I can leave the stair gates open without worrying that he will fall down the stairs.  I only use them to confine him to one floor or another, but sometimes I leave them open and he just goes up and down the stairs (without me there) to his heart's content.  He's very careful, and very quick.

-He is a lot more comfortable around strangers, now.  He sticks close to me for a little while, but then gets more adventurous.  He still doesn't smile much at strangers, but he is a lot less scared of them than he used to be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A typical day in our house is very relaxed.  Noah wakes up between 7 and 8 (usually more like between 7:15 and 7:45).  I get up with him, immediately nurse him (he's usually hungry and disgruntled, so this is the reset button), then change his bum.  Then we go out into the rest of the house and play.  I make myself breakfast at some point.  Sometimes Noah wants some, sometimes he waits until later.  After we have breakfast that's usually when I unload and reload the dishwasher.  Then I get in the shower and get ready for the day. 

Sometimes after my shower we'll have time to go outside before Justin gets home for lunch.  Sometimes not, and sometimes it's just not nice enough weather.  Actually, often it's not nice enough weather.  Sometimes this is when I throw laundry in or do some other chores. 

Justin comes home for lunch from 11:00-11:30, and we hang around with him.  Noah often gets little bites to eat during this time.  Justine leaves, and we play more.  Noah goes down for his nap sometime after 12:30.  He generally stays awake for about 5 hours in the morning.  He always nurses before his nap - always.  (He also nurses whenever he asks for it all day long, but these nursing sessions are not at the same times everyday, which is why I only mention the nursings before or after he wakes up).  He sleeps for an hour, and during this time I try to take time to myself to relax.  I make myself lunch and watch something from the PVR.  The hour goes by quickly.  Noah is always awake before I know it.  He almost always nurses immediately when he wakes up, because he's usually pretty ticked off.  It's just his personality - he's rarely happy right when he wakes up.  After nursing he's good to go.

If we are going to go do anything out of the house, like running errands, this is typically when we do it.  Occasionally I can fit errands in before nap, but I rarely have the motivation to rush around to shower and eat and get ready in time to do errands and then be home for when Justin gets home at 11.  I don't have to be there, but I think it's nice that we can all spend a little bit of time together in the middle of the day, especially since we don't see him in the morning before he goes to work.

For the rest of the afternoon it's always different.  Sometimes chores, sometimes hanging out with Justin if he gets home from work early, sometimes visiting with my Mom or Dad or a friend.  Sometimes just hanging out and doing nothing in particular.  Of course, I make dinner in the evening and clean up the kitchen and dishes immeidately afterward.

I tend to have the most motivation to do chores in the hour before I am supposed to start bedtime routine (I aim to start that at 7:30).  That's when I'll suddenly decide to catch up on laundry, vacuum the entire house, and give Noah a haircut.  And those overly ambitious nights are the nights that Noah doesn't get into bed until 8:30.  I generally aim for 8:00, but I'm often a bit later.

I almost always have my house cleaned up and tidied before I start bathing Noah.  I also wash my own face and brush my teeth before I bathe Noah.  It's just this thing I have.  I need to be ready for bed and need everything to be in its place before Noah goes to bed.  I nurse Noah to sleep every night.  I usually cuddle and nurse him for about 20 minutes... I love holding my sleeping little baby.  I really cherish these times with him, especially since he's already 14 months.  Before I know it he won't be sleeping in my arms again - ever.

(I want to clarify that although I do nurse Noah to sleep, he can put himself to sleep, and he does that on a regular basis. If he doesn't show signs of falling asleep in the first 10-15 minutes of nursing, he goes in his crib awake, and is usually asleep within about 5 minutes).

After I put him in his crib, I do whatever little things need to be done, like finishing cleaning up the bathroom after his bath, or put away the things he threw around the house as I was wrangling him into the bathtub.  Then I collapse on my bed and watch TV.  Justin is usually around by then, with no more clients to train, so we hang out and watch TV until I feel tired enough to sleep.


So that's my day!  Sounds nice, doesn't it?  I love spending all my time with Noah, cooking, cleaning, and playing.  It's not amazing every single day, but it's pretty darn close:)

Naps, Illness, Eating...

-Noah is still not 100%.  It's been a full six days, but I am fairly certain he is not back to normal.  He still has diarrhea, and his eating is still being affected.

-In the eating department: Noah is nursing a little more than he was when he was sick, but not completely back to his normal amount.  He is hardly eating any solids, though.  Today was the first day he wanted to eat anything during the daytime, so he ate most of a small orange.  But he would barely eat two bites of dinner.  And then at bedtime he barely nursed. 

-Ever since he's been sick, Noah has been nursing way shorter overnight.  He still wants to nurse at around the same time, but he only does for 4 or 5 minutes and then pops off still awake.  I put him back in his crib and he goes back to sleep, but it's weird.  And everytime he does this I get nervous, because when he had the flu, everytime he threw up it was during a nursing session.  He would pop off prematurely, look at me, and then vomit everything up.  So everytime he pops off, I'm terrified. 

-Noah is now down to 1 nap. He would have to sleep less than 10 hours at night to be able to fit in 2 short naps during the day. He just can't fall asleep before the 4 hour mark. Bummer.  He would have to get up at 6am in order to be able to fit in two naps and get to bed by 8:30pm.  I think he's actually getting more sleep with just the one nap than he does if I force him to have two, since having two naps really pushes his bedtime too late.

-This one nap thing is not very welcome in our life right now.  It makes it so that we can't go anywhere in the car in the late afternoon/early evening.  We live 25 minutes from the main nearby town, and even though Noah can't fit in two naps a day, by 4 or 4:30pm he is at the point where he will almost certainly fall asleep in the car.  This just happened on Sunday, and he ended up sleeping until 5:30pm.  So he didn't fall asleep for the night until sometime after 9pm. 

-I knew it wasn't going to happen, since Noah has never needed as much sleep as most other children his age, but I was hoping that he would have 2 naps throughout part of the summer, mostly because of the long daylight hours.  Bummer.

13 Months

At 13 months old, here is what Noah is up to:

-I'm guessing he weighs about 21.5lbs, but I didn't get him weighed today

-He is about 32-33 inches long (when comparing him to other kids who measured 31.5 inches, he is visibly taller than them by at least an inch, but we haven't been able to get a good measurement of him ourselves).

-He wears size 3 Pampers Cruisers during the day, size 4 Baby Dry at night, which he often leaks through.

-He still nurses 10+ times a day, and signs for it a lot more often that that!

-He signs for "nurse" and "water".  I don't really do any other signs consistently.

-He is still about 75-50% breastfed, with solids making up the other 20-25%.  He has gotten more picky this month, and will spit out any vegetables he puts in his mouth.  He loves meats and fruits, and most starchy foods (potatoes, stuffing, etc).  But he is no longer a fan of vegetables.  This would bother me more, but since he is still breastfeeding I'm not at all worried about any picky eating habits because he is getting more nutrients from breastmilk than he would from vegetables.

-He doesn't eat much "baby food" anymore.  Not because he won't, but because we just usually feed him from what we're eating since we never know how much he will eat.  We have a ton of purees and baby oatmeal left though.  I'm not totally sure what we'll do with it.

-He enjoys a balance of being fed and feeding himself.  He's not totally in one camp or the other.

-He wears 18 and 24 month clothing, depending on what it is. For example, he wears 24 month footless sleepers, but 18 month footed sleepers. He wears some 18 month onesies, some 24 month onesies. It just depends on the piece.  The funniest/weirdest thing is that he fits in 6-9 month shorts, but the waist on them is kind of big on him.  I thought he would wear them last summer, but they never ended up fitting him.  I tried them this year... almost perfect!  I wonder if it's the brand?

-He still has just 8 teeth, the four top and four bottom. He hasn't gotten a new tooth since he was 8 months old.

-He currently has his 10th illness, another cold.

-He goes to bed at about 8pm (sometimes early, but sometimes closer to 8:30), sleeps until sometime past 5am, nurses, and goes back to sleep again until who knows when. It's totally hit and miss with how long he sleeps, but I don't get him out of bed until close to 7:30am.

-Bedtime has been later this month because Noah is in an awkward transition from 2 naps down to 1 nap.  He is increasing the length of his daytime naps (generally to about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes), but slightly decreasing his amount of total sleep in 24 hours, so his nighttime sleep has been shortening.  I'm actually liking the later bedtime.  I'm in less of a rush in the evenings to get dinner cooked, eaten, and Noah bathed and in bed.  We have more time to be a family.  It's nice.

-We're having a hard time fitting 2 naps in everyday.  About half the time he only takes one nap a day, the other half he takes two naps.  This depends on what time he wakes up in the morning.  If he gets up at 7am, he'll definitely have 2 naps.  If he gets up at 8am, whether he has two naps would depend on how early he's able to get to sleep for his first nap, and then how long he sleeps for (this nap is almost always about 1 hour).  If he wakes up at 8:30, he definitely only has one nap.  If he only has one nap, his awake period before bed is usually about 7 hours, give or take.  Sometimes he is 100% fine with this, sometimes he is kind of cranky.  This occasional crankiness is why we haven't just made the leap to one nap. 

-(By the way, I don't consider this transition to be a sleep issue at all... it'll work itself out soon I'm sur - probably within the next month - and until then we are just playing it by ear.  I don't mind at all.  His nighttime sleep and daytime sleep are still doing well).

-He is almost running now! 

-He is very careful, and almost never hurts himself.

-When he goes to climb the stairs, he opens the baby gate at the bottom, walks through it, climbs up the first stair, turns around, closes the baby gate fully, and then proceeds to climb all the way upstairs.  He needs the gate to be shut first.  It's funny.

-He is really good at picking up his basketball, walking across the room, reaching the ball over his head, and scoring a basket. 

-He still "talks on the phone" by putting the phone (or an object that resembles a phone) all the way behind his head and "talking."  He also hands us the phone to talk, too.

-He's still very cuddly, and loves to hug and kiss Mommy.  He also loves to hug and kiss babies of any age.  He is such a little sweetie-pie.

-I am still his number 1 favourite person, and I'm who he wants when he cries, but he is getting friendlier to other people that he knows and is slightly less of a Mommy-suck.

-He still loves to play in the curtains. He breathes really excitedly, giggles, and pops his head out with a huge smile when I say "Where's Noah?!"

-He loves to walk around with a blanket over his head and giggle.

-He still loves to lounge around on the floor and lay his head on pillows.

-Diaper changes are still torture.  I've discovered that actually belting him to the change pad works to keep him on his back, though (with the belt thats attached to the change pad, not an actual belt).  So I just have to deal with the screaming, which I can handle.  I often just change his bum when he walking around to avoid the hassle. 

-He is understanding so much language now.  He follows many directions and points to objects and pictures when we ask where they are.

-His expressive language is still the same.  Besides babbling and gibberish, he says "Uh oh," "Dis," "Dat," "Mama," and "Dad" or "Dada". 

-He loves to "read".  If he is allowed, he will pull every book off his bookshelf and still flipping through them.  If he is allowed, he will also eat every book on his bookshelf.  His favourite book for us to read to him is still Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? He gets a huge smile on his face when we start it.

-He continues to happily allow me to shower while he is awake, and plays in the bathroom while I'm doing so. This is going better (for me) since I reorganized the cupboards and drawers. There's less for him to pull out and toss around, now. (This is a new development since shortly before 12 months... before this I was always having to shower while he was sleeping or else he would scream his head off).


 
There's 13 months for you!  I can't believe Noah is 13 months old already.  It seems so old to me.  And I can't believe I'm on time with this update!  I better post it now before a week suddenly passes...

1 YEAR OLD!

I am getting really bad at posting these on time. 

At 12 months old, here is what Noah is up to:

-He weighs 21lbs even, totally naked, on March 14 (he was 21lbs 11oz with his clothes and diaper on, which I then weighed, and they were exactly 11oz).

-He is still about 31.5 inches long.

-He wears size 3 diapers during the day, size 4 at night, which he often leaks through. 

-He still nurses 10+ times a day, and signs for it a lot more often that that!

-He still has just one formal "meal" of solids - mostly purees - at dinnertime. The rest of the day he snacks on various things, usually what I'm eating, as he wants them.. He's still about 90% breastfed, with solids making up the other 10%.

-He wears 18 and 24 month clothing, depend on the piece.  For example, he wears 24 month footless sleepers, but 18 month footed sleepers.  He wears some 18 month onesies, some 24 month onesies.  It just depends on the piece.

-He still has  just 8 teeth, the four top and four bottom.  He hasn't gotten a new tooth since before he was 8 months old.

-He goes to bed at about 7:30pm, sleeps until sometime past 4:30am (sometimes as late as 6:30am), nurses, and goes back to sleep again until about 7:30am, give or take.  The time changed a couple of weeks ago, and I don't think I'm interested in shifting everything the entire hour.  I think I'll keep bedtime at 7:30 for the spring and summertime.

-He has two naps a day, ranging from 30 minutes to an hour. The first nap is about 3 - 3.5 hours after he wakes up, and the second nap is about 3.5 hours after he wakes up from his first nap.  He can handle awake periods that are a lot longer, with no problem, but we have to fit in both naps so I make sure he gets down on time.

-He is fully walking, all over the house, turning corners, going in circles, waving objects in the air... it's so cute, but it makes me sad!

-He loves to throw balls (and anything else), play with his baseball bats, score points on his basketball hoop, hit his baseball off his Little Tikes Talking T-Ball tee, and practice stick handling with his mini-sticks and hockey puck.

-He "talks on the phone" by putting the phone (or an object that resembles a phone) all the way behind his head.  It's sooo cute!

-He's still cuddling with us a lot, which we obviously love!

-He still loves to give Mommy kisses (sometimes Daddy, sometimes other babies, and once even Gramper!), but he's not as obsessed with it as he was at 11 months.  I've found it comes in waves, ever since he started bakc at like 7 months old.

-He's still a mommy suck, but he is getting a little better about his separation anxiety.  I don't always have to be in the same room as him if other people are around.

-I can now shower with him in the bathroom with me and he doesn't scream!  Instead he stands at the side of the tub and throws shampoo bottles, toys, and one time even a magazine, into the tub with me.  This is a very welcome development.  Not the toy-throwing, but the lack of screaming while I'm showering.

-He loves to play in the curtains.  He breathes really excitedly, giggles, and pops his head out with a huge smile when I say "Where's Noah?!"

-He is still lounging on the floor like a lazy toddler, rolling back and forth and just enjoying being a goof.

-It is so hard to change his diaper.  He often starts screaming, and won't lie on his back.  I've taken to trying to change him while he's walking around.  Every diaper change is a dreaded battle.  Thank goodness he doesn't poop very often.

-It's always hard to know exactly how much an 12 month old understands, but we know for sure he knows the meanings of: Mom, Dad, nurse, up, night-night, hug, kiss, no, this, book, "say hi," "say bye," and "lean back". He demonstrates understanding of those words through his actions. I'm guessing he knows a lot more, but I can't tell.

-He says "Uh oh," "Dis," "Dat," "Mama," and "Dad" or "Dada". It seems like he says all these things in the right settings, but he also uses them at other times, so I don't know if he's really using them as words or just sounds.

-He loves to "read" (flip through his books independently) His favourite book for us to read to him is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  He gets a huge smile on his face when we start it.


Well, it happened.  My baby turned ONE.  Over a week ago. 

It makes me so happy, and it makes me sad.  I love each new stage that Noah goes through (well, I guess not every stage), but it makes me so sad that I can never experience his infant-ness again.  People tell me to have another baby, and while I'm happy that I will (hopefully) experience another baby (or two), it's still not baby Noah.  And that's what I want.  To experience baby Noah again.

With that being said, I feel like being a mom just  keeps getting easier and more enjoyable.  The past year of my life has been phenomenal, and I couldn't be happier.  Nothing in my life has ever been as 'worth it' as being Noah's mom has been.  I love that kid to pieces!

11 Months Old

I don't think I've ever been so late with a monthly update.  Noah turned 11 months over a week ago, so I'm going to keep these updates restricted to those things he was doing at that time.  Some things have changed quite a bit in this past week.

At 11 months old, here is where Noah is at:

-He weighs 20lbs 9oz totally naked, but after a lot of nursings.  That's about 25th percentile.

-He is 31.5 inches long, about 100th percentile.

-He is less than 5th percentile for weight for height (he has tall, slim parents - he can't help it).

-He wears size 3 diapers during the day, and size 4 diapers at night.

-He wears 18 month clothing. His sleepers, onesies, and shirts fit perfectly, maybe a little on the small side.  His 18 month pants are a perfect length.

-He has 8 teeth, the four top and four bottom.

-He started signing 'nurse' at 10.5 months, and ever since then we've been nursing much more than every 2 hours.  He often wants to nurse again 5 minutes after we just finished.

-He still has just one formal "meal" of solids - mostly purees - at dinnertime.  The rest of the day he snacks on various things, usually what I'm eating.  He's still about 90% breastfed, with solids making up the other 10%.

-He goes to bed at about 7pm, sleeps until past 4am, nurses, and goes back to sleep again until about 7am, give or take.  (This has changed since a couple of days after he turned 11 months... that post is still to come.)

-He has two naps a day, ranging from 30 minutes to an hour.  The first nap is about 3 - 3.5 hours after he wakes up (he can make it to 4 pretty easily), and the second nap is 3.5 - 4 hours after he wakes up from his first nap.

-He is totally done with the soother, now.  I take very little credit for this, although I recognize that my actions inadvertently got him to this point.  He always needed it when he was being rocked to sleep.  Then we had a few weeks where he was either nursed to sleep or put in his crib awake.  I would give him his soother when I put him in his crib awake, but he never fell asleep using it.  So after seeing if he still wanted it on several different occasions, I have come to the conclusion that he is definitely over it.  It holds no appeal for him anymore.

-He's getting better at the sippy cup.  Sometimes he'll drink a couple of ounces of water out of it in one sitting.  He likes water now.

-He stands alone, takes a few independent steps (this was just an occasional thing still when he turned 11 months), cruises really well, speed crawls, and climbs.

-He loves to throw balls, play with his baseball bats, score points on his basketball hoop, and practice stick handling with his mini-sticks and hockey puck.  His athlete father is so proud :) 

-He's become extremely cuddly lately, often hugging us and laying his head down on our shoulders, draping himself over us, ect.  He'll even fall asleep sometimes with his head laying on my shoulder, which he hadn't done since he was about 2 months old.

-He loves to give Mommy kisses (sometimes Dad gets one).  He gives me probably a hundred open mouth slobber kisses each day.  Sometimes he just seems overwhelmed with the need to kiss me.  It's adorable.

-He's still a big mommy suck.  He's getting a bit friendlier with other people (smiling, making faces, giggling), but will freak out if I start to walk away. 

-He still has horrifyingly awful separation anxiety.  He still can't handle if I'm not in his sight when we're at home, so I have to plan chores and things carefully.  I can't even go to the bathroom without him.

-He just started doing this hilarious scrunchy face, sometimes doing it with a closed, pursed mouth, other times "showing off" his front teeth.  He breathes really fast in and out of his nose when he does it.  It's hilarious.

-He just started to lounge on the floor like a lazy toddler.  Not for long periods of time, but before this he would never ever sit still or lay down during the day, but now he'll sometimes lay his cheek on the floor, or recline on some pillows in front of the TV (terrible... I blame Dad).

-It's always hard to know exactly how much an 11 month old understands, but we know for sure he knows the meanings of: Mom, Dad, nurse, up, night-night, hug, kiss, no, this, book, "say hi," and "say bye".  He demonstrates understanding of those words through his actions.  I'm guessing he knows a lot more, but I can't tell.

-He just started saying "Uh oh," but its often more of an "Uh uhhh" or an "Oooh oooh." Sometimes he does "Uh uh uh ohh." He mostly does this after he drops something and we say "Uh oh."

-He says "Dis," "Dat," "Mamamama," and "Dad" or "Dada".  It seems like he says all these things in the right settings, but he also uses them at other times, so I don't know if he's really using them as words or just sounds.

-He loves to "read." He pulls out his books and sits and flips through the pages. His two teacher parents are thrilled:)

-We have this book called Who Do You See, and after "I see a bee" I say "buzzz" and he ALWAYS says "zzzzzzzz" as he strokes the bee.  After "I see a lion" I say "Rooaaar!" and he sometimes gently goes "Raaaaa."


I'm sure there is much, much more I could say, but I am already 9 days late with this post.  I am just going to finish it before I waste another day ruminating about it. 

But, as a last thing, I have to say, Noah is becoming hilarious.  His toddler personality that is beginning to emerge (although I still think 1 year olds are babies) cracks me up.  I seriously could not love him any more.  He is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me, and I am incredibly, deeply grateful for him every second of every day!

Interesting Bedtime

Tonight was a weird night.

While I was feeding Noah his solids he got really fussy. He was acting like he was in pain. I took him out of his high chair and he just kept making a soft little whiny moan sound, and leaning into me and cuddling me. Normally if I'm sitting in a chair he won't just sit in my lap and lean into my chest for very long, but he just kept leaning into me and moaning.  It was bedtime, so I took him to the bathroom for his bath, and he did the same thing in there.  It was actually difficult to get him undressed. The only thing I could think of was that maybe his tummy started hurting while he was eating? I don't know.

In the bath he seemed happy. After he got out he got really cold, which was weird because he never gets that cold after his bath.  He was shivering and his extremeties were purple. I got him dressed, and while I was putting him in his sleep sack he was fussing.  This is normal for him, but because of his cuddly moans for the previous half hour, I picked him up to walk over to turn the bathroom light off (I leave it on while I'm putting him in the sleepsack on the bed because it helps me see without being too much light) instead of leaving him lying on the bed (it's 3 steps away, I keep my eye on his at all times, and this is the one time of day that he never rolls over when he's lying on his back).

On the "walk" (ie. 3 steps) to the bathroom, he leaned his head on my shoulder.  When I sat down on the bed he kept his head on my shoulder, and he was making little sighing noises with his voice, not just his breath. I liked having him hugging me like that, because it doesn't happen that often that he lays his head on my shoulder and keeps it there for a long time.  Sometimes he does it after I pick him up from his crib, but usually only keeps it there while I'm standing and rocking back and forth.

So I'm thinking I'll just enjoy the brief cuddle and then nurse him, like I have every single day of his life before bed.  But, BUT, BUT, within 30 seconds he had conked out. It was crazy! He NEVER falls asleep like that. In fact, when he was 2 or 3 months old I had to stop burping him after he fell asleep nursing because he would wake up from the transfer onto my shoulder. Plus, he has never in his entire life not nursed before going to bed at night. But he seriously just totally passed out! He didn't even stir when I got up or when I laid him in his crib.

I did sit on my bed hugging him for like 20 minutes, though. It was too good to pass up. I wanted to just lie down with him draped over me and stay like that for hours. But I knew he would sleep more comfortably in his own bed.

This is so weird. I don't know what to make of it.  I wonder if his tummy was actually hurting and that's why he didn't want to nurse.  Or maybe he was just so exhausted (he did seem tired) and he accidentally fell asleep.  Both of those options are strange to me, because a) he ALWAYS wants to nurse, even when he's sick, and b) he doesn't give in to sleep very easily.  He never has.
 
On a sidenote, I tried pumping for almost an hour to try and at least take the milk out so I wouldn't lose my supply for tomorrow and so I won't get engorged overnight. But I got less than 20 mL out. After almost an hour of pumping. I just can't letdown with the pump anymore. I don't use it often enough (maybe once a month).

My First Day as a "Daycare" Provider

So, I had my first day as Aubrey's daycare provider today.  All in all it went well. 

Solids - Meals were a bit of a gong show because I don't have two high chairs and Noah would never tolerate me feeding Aubrey without him in a highchair eating, too.  Aubrey had to eat in a bumbo on a kitchen chair while I gave Noah finger foods.  Doing that twice (well, doing that even once) was not amazing.  And Aubrey hasn't been a great eater since she's been sick, so that made it less fun.

Nursing - It worked out today that I did all of Noah's nursing while Aubrey was in bed or with someone else.  My parents came over at 2 because they'd been gone on a cruise, so they watched Aubrey while I nursed Noah and put him down for his second nap.  All his other nursings were while Aubrey was either sleeping or Erin was over at lunchtime nursing her.

Naps - Noah performed as expected and freaked out while I was getting Aubrey in her sleep sack and cuddling her (for like 10 seconds!) before her first nap.  He was sleeping when I did this for her second nap.  But Aubrey slept well, an hour and a half for the first nap and half an hour for the second nap (she's been apparently phasing this nap out, so Erin was surprised she took it at all).  Her first nap was at 9:40 until 11:15.  Noah didn't go down for his first nap until 10:35, and he woke up at 11:20.  Luckily Aubrey woke up first, so I was able to change her bum and her clothes before Noah got up (and could freak out again).

Myself - My house was a mess and I hardly had time to eat the entire day.  That was less than ideal.  I felt so much more "go-go-go" than I am with just one baby (and even one baby is busy).  But it wasn't bad.

Aubrey was a total sweetie-pie.  She's a big cuddler, and cuddles with me probably 10x more than my own kid does!!!  She even cuddled with my mom the second my mom picked her up.  It was so nice.  Noah loves to cuddle, but his version of cuddling is climbing all over me and hugging me while standing and giving me kisses.  Aubrey will literally just sit in your lap hugging you with her head on your chest for like 15 minutes.  Noah hasn't done that since he could lift up his head!


All in all, it was fine.  But I wouldn't want to do it everyday for only $34.  It's worth a lot more than that. If we didn't need the money, I probably wouldn't do it.  But I can handle once or twice a week.  And it wasn't as crazy as I anticipated.  It's like having twins for 8 hours of the day.  If it was my own set of twins and I had grown into it (instead of just suddenly having 2 kids each about 11 months old) I think it'd be more than fine.  But it is definitely busier.  You're really on your toes with the feedings and the naps and the diaper changes and the making sure they don't kill each other. 

By accident, of course.

10 Months Old

Here is where Noah is at at 10 months old:

-He's 31 inches tall, 100th percentile.

-He weighs 20lbs 5oz naked (after a good nursing).  That's about 35th percentile, and almost a pound gain in less than a month!

-He is 5th percentile for 'weight for length'

-His head circumference is 19 inches..

-He wears size 3 diapers during the day, and size 4 diapers at night (we just switched to size 4s the night before he turned 10 months because of night-leaking).

-He wears 18 month clothing.  His sleepers, onesies, and shirts fit perfectly, his 18 month pants are a little bit long.

-He has 8 teeth, the four top and four bottom.

-He nurses every 2 hours or so all day long (two nursings during each awake period), and once overnight.  He nurses 7-8 times in a 24 hour period.

-He has one meal of solids (mostly purees) at dinnertime, and throughout the day he might have little nibbles of what I'm eating.  I'm careful about what he has, but I don't follow a specific '3 day wait' rule anymore.

-He is obsessed with fruit.  If he sees a piece of fruit and isn't allowed to eat it, he has a little hissy fit.

-He's still constipated pretty much all the time.  We have only a couple of normal poops in a month.

-After a long break, he's starting to show a little bit of interest in the sippy cup, although he is really terrible at getting water out of it.  he chews more than sucks.  But at least it's water in there!  He seems to love the taste of water now, whereas it disgusted him a few months ago. 

-He goes to bed at 7, has one night nursing sometime after 4am, and wakes up around 7, sometimes later if he has a long awake period around 6am and ends up falling back asleep.

-He has 2 naps a day, each usually 30-40 minutes long (although sometimes he'll have an hour long nap).  He's not on a strict schedule, and his naptimes start anywhere between 10-11am, and 2:30-3:30pm.

-He stands unassisted for far longer periods of time, far more frequently.  His record is several minutes.

-He can stand up from a squatting position without holding on to anything, and can squat down slowly and gracefully from standing without holding on to anything.

-He's a much better cruiser now, and walks with his walker really well.  However, on the hardwood floors he has a tendency to let it get ahead of him and ends up looking like he's charging through the house on a rampage.

-He's been hands and knees crawling and pulling up to stand for 3 months.

-He's been climbing stairs for at least a couple of months, but he's really fast at it now.

-If he loses something under the couch he'll crawl over, lay on his tummy, peer under the couch, and reach for the object.

-He waves "Hi!" when we say "Say 'hi'!"  He lifts his arms when we say "Up!" and understands the word "No," but doesn't always listen to it (these are several months old).  These are the 3 "commands" that we can tell 100% for sure that he understands.

-He still babbles a lot and says things like Dada, Dad, dat, dis, deh, that seem like words, but I'm not sure if he is really intending them to be words.  He likes to imitate singular sounds we make like fff, sss, tthh, but not really any combinations of letters. 

-Just started babbling "Mamama" again after a long break.  I don't think he's calling me "Mama" though.
-He's still pointing a lot to things he wants or places he wants to go.

-His new fascination is with light switches.  He loves to turn lights on and off.

-He puts objects in containers and balls into the holes they're supposed to go into.

-He plays with his "talking" toys a lot more purposefully now.  Instead of mashing his hands around on things in an excited way, he carefully presses specific buttons to hear specific words and noises.  It's need to see him become so purposeful in this area.

-We have this framed print in our house that has the line from the hymn: "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all."  Noah LOVES it, and always points to go over to it.  When we start reading it to him (we point to the words as we read them) he gets this huge adorable smile on his face, and sometimes starts giggling.  It's so cute!

-He started dropping toys off his high chair tray all the time shortly after he turned 9 months.  He would do this occasionally before but I always ignored it.  Then Daddy made a FUN GAME out of it *rolls eyes and sighs*, so I'm trying to break him of this habit.


-He loves it when I spray water in his mouth with a spray bottle.  He laughs and opens his mouth for it again and again.  His face is hilarious.  A squinty wince, with his mouth wide open... so cute.

-He's figured out how to undo the bottom of our top-of-the-stair gate, and he gets really ticked off that he can't pull it all the way open.

-His pincer grasp is about the same as last month.  Not amazing, but not bad.

-He detests the playpen (immediately starts screaming if he's put in it), and doesn't like being in his jumperoo.  So basically, he's a free man all the time.  Therefore, I can't shower unless he's sleeping.  I can't vacuum unless he's in the sling (or my husband is home).

-Diaper changes are still a big battle, but this past month he has added a freak-out everytime we lay him on the change table.  Sometimes he'll cry the entire time he's being changed.  It's ridiculous, really.

-He hugs and kisses Mommy (with a wide open slobbery mouth) all the time.  He's been kissing me for months, but this month he started kissing Daddy!  He'll only kiss his ear, though, because Daddy's face is too scratchy:)  I find that hilarious.  The few times he's tried to kiss his cheek or mouth he came away with an injured, disgusted look on his face.  It cracks us up!

-He is an enormous Mommy-suck.  He is so attached to me I can hardly even describe it.  He cannot be distracted or dissuaded if he wants his Mom, and he wants his Mom often.  After seeing any display of this Mommy-suckyness, people agree that if I were going back to work when my maternity leave is technically over in 2 months, he honestly might never recover.  I am the be-all and end-all in his life, and if I disappeared I honestly think he might will himself to die.


A typical day in our house at 10 months old might look like this:

7:00am - Wake up
7:30am - Nurse
9:30am - Nurse
10:15am - Sleep
11:00am - Wake up
11:30am - Nurse
1:30pm - Nurse
2:15pm - Sleep
3:00pm - Wake up
3:30 - Nurse
5:00 - Nurse
6:00 - Dinner (solids)
6:40 - Bath time
7:00 - Nurse and bedtime (plus 1 night feeding)

That's what a typical day MIGHT look like, but we are by no means on a schedule and the timing of things can be different everyday.  If a nap goes long, or he wants to nurse sooner or later, or he does seem to want to sleep... everyday is different.  The one basically consistent part of our day is the wake, nurse, nurse, nap, nurse, nurse, nap, nurse, nurse, dinner, bath, bedtime (with nursing).  Lately Noah has been nursing to sleep for his naps more often just because that's when his feeding happens to land.  And I'm not a nazi about not letting him fall asleep nursing.  I try to have him fall asleep in a variety of ways throughout the week so that he has "versatility."  I want him to be able to fall asleep nursing, rocking, on his own, or in the car.

Now that Noah is down to 2 short naps a day I have even less time to get things done around the house.  I use his first nap to shower (I have to finish getting ready while he's awake, usually), and his second nap I use to try and relax and eat something, since I don't have time to do that during the rest of the day.  I do most of my chores when Justin is home because it's way easier to clean my house without Noah strapped to my body or trying to climb my legs.

We seem to have had a month off from teething, which has been nice.  And it's been nice going down to 2 naps, which we did right at 9 months, even though that usually means I have less baby-free time.  It's just been a lot easier to do other things now that Noah has awake periods of at least 3 hours, and can usually stay awake (and be happy) for 4 hours or more if we're out doing something.

Noah's 10th month has been lots of fun.  It's crazy watching him grow up so quickly, and I can't believe he's going to be a year old so soon!  I should start thinking about his birthday party...

9 Months Old

At 9 months old, here is where Noah is at:

-On December 23 (9 months and 5 days) he weighed 19lbs 6oz (totally naked).  This is about the 25th percentile.

-He's 30.5 inches tall, which is about 100th percentile

-His head circumference is 19 inches (48.3cm), which is 100th percentile.

-He wears size 3 diapers.

-He wears 12 and 18 month clothing by Carter's (my yardstick).  The 12 month clothing is on the verge of being too small.  Most of the 18 month clothing is a little too big.  We're in the awkward in between stage, since he's 30.5 inches and that's the max height for 12 months and min height for 18 months.

-He has 7 teeth, but his 7th tooth has not grown very much since it popped through.

-He's a very good eater, according to everyone who watches him (they all make comments). He's accepting of so many foods, he opens his mouth well, hardly any food gets on his face... just a good eater.

-He points to everyone and everything with his tiny pointer finger.  And he "shows" you things by holding them up in your direction.  "See??  Look at my toy!!"

-His pincer grasp is getting better.  He picks things up between his thumb and forefinger, it's just not necessarily the tip of his forefinger.  He could still make improvement in this area.  But he doesn't get a ton of chance to practice, and was only presented with the opportunity about a month ago, so I can't really blame him.

-He's still exclusively breastfed (no bottles or cups) except for a dinner of solids, and the occasional snack or taste of food during the day.  Most days he doesn't need anything until dinner, though.

-He nurses usually every 2 hours during the day.  More right now, since I've trying to build my milk supply back up after having the flu for 4 days.

-He is 100% swaddle free, and has been since a few days after he turned 8 months.

-He sleeps very well at night, usually about 11 hours total.  He usually starts nursing to sleep at 7:15, although if he doesn't fall asleep I can put him in bed awake and he'll only cry for about 30 seconds before going to sleep.  He sleeps 9 to 11 hours straight (usually around 10 hours), then nurses and goes back to sleep for a bit.  If he wakes up before 4, I don't get him up to nurse, because I have found that he will STILL wake up sometime in the 4-5:30 range even if I nurse him at 3:45.  He falls back asleep very well if he wakes up in the middle of the night.  In the morning he has no consistent wake up time, but he usually does have a period of wakefulness in the 6-7am range, we don't turn on the lights or get him out of his crib until 7am, so if he wakes closer to 6 he often falls back asleep for a bit.

-Naps are still crap.  A usual day has three 30 minute naps.  We started a half-hearted attempt at nap training, but I'm not very consistent.  It's bad, I know.

-I think he may need to go down to 2 naps a day, because I'm finding it harder and harder to get him to fall asleep before the 3 hour mark.  The problem is that two half hour naps a day is not enough for any child.

-He still uses a soother every time I rock him to sleep, but if he goes to sleep on his own he spits it out (because of crying) and doesn't put it back in.  So he only needs it if I'm rocking him.

-He had his fourth haircut today.

-He had his 4th illness this past week, a stomach bug, but was over it very quickly thanks to breastfeeding.  No such luck for me.

-He's very capable, physically.  He started full-time hands-and-knees crawling and pulling up 2 months ago, so you can imagine how good he is at it now.  He's a great climber, too.

-He's getting better at cruising, but isn't amazing at it.

-He waves!

-He's back to social coughing again - A LOT.  He was doing it way back at around 5 months, but my Dad got him back into it a few weeks ago when he copied him every time he coughed.  He thinks it's hilarious.

-He's very talkative and babbles incessantly, but hasn't connected any words with any actual objects yet.  As far as we can tell, the only word he truly understands is "Up."

-This month he started making an adorable scrunchy face.  He does it often, when he's smiling, whining, whenever.  It's so cute.

-When we click our tongues he copies us, and thinks it's the greatest.

-He never goes in his jumperoo or exersaucer.  He prefers to play with the toys while standing next to it.  Whatever!

-He loves to play peekabo in the mirror, and to watch you make faces at him in the mirror.  This isn't new (he's loved the mirror for a long time), but he's just really really enjoying it this month.

-He still enjoys his jolly jumper, but we don't put him in it very often.  He jumps way too high and hard, and the spring slams shut really hard and he continues to fly past the point where he should have stopped.  It's not dangerous or anything, but sometimes he doesn't like the jolting he gets when that happens.

-He has separation and stranger anxiety, but it's not too bad at the moment.  It seems like it's really bad when he's teething.

-Bathtime hasn't been tons of fun this month.  Some days he hates the actual bath (for whatever reason), some days he's fine.  But everyday is a huge struggle getting him undressed, giving him his vitamin D, getting him dried off, lotioning him (his skin has very dry spots, so he needs to lotion) desitin-ing his bum, diapering him, and getting him dressed again.  He will flip over and bear crawl away so fast (he doesn't like the cold ceramic tile, so he bear crawls... lol).  And he's so strong now, there's really nothing we can do about it.  Justin pretty much has to pin down his upper body while I deal with the diaper.  After that I can dress him as he's sitting and standing.  But getting the diaper on is HARD.

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This past month has had ups and downs.  Noah reached his peak of separation anxiety this month, and I had many days (some entire weeks) where he was literally glued to me.  I couldn't even stand up without him freaking out.  As a SAHM, this gets very tiring.  I couldn't get anything done, my house was a mess, and I couldn't even go to the bathroom without bringing him with me.  Since he hardly naps, the only time I wasn't concentrating on him was at night when he was sleeping.  It got tough after several long days.

I may have connected increased separation anxiety with active teething, though.  It seems to get worse when he's actually cutting a tooth, and he cut 4 teeth in the past month, including his two front teeth (which are rather large, and I assume painful to cut).  Unfortunately none of his teeth cut at the same time, so it meant a lot of painful days for him.

Noah has also reached the lowest of valleys in napping habits.  3 naps a day, all less than 30 minutes.  This is frustrating, and I haven't been very good about nap training.  There are several reasons for this.  One, I don't enjoy listening to him cry, and oh-boy does he cry when I nap train.  Two, for the past couple of weeks (since I decided to nap train) I've had a very hard time figuring out his optimal awake time, which is key if I'm not "putting" him to sleep.  He's seemed to need awake times of at least 3 hours, but I can't fit 3 hour awake times plus 3 half hour naps PLUS the time it takes for him to fall asleep on his own into our day (3 naps means he has 4 awake times).  It seems to be a time of transition, so maybe my efforts will go better if I cut him down to 2 naps a day.

Furthermore, we both got sick again this month with the stomach flu.  I was laid up for 4 days, and today, day 6, I'm still not feeling great.  Being a nursing mom with the stomach flu really sucks.

There have also been good times this month.  Like when I connected the separation anxiety/crankiness with teething and was able to give him Motrin to avoid him being miserable all day long.  Like the seriously improved night time sleep that has given me my evenings and nights back - uninterrupted!  I've also been sleeping pretty good for the most part.  Very few nights do I lie awake for hours on end, although I do still wake up upwards of 6 times a night - and this is medicated sleep, people.  That's how bad a sleeper I am.  But not being rudely awakened by a crying baby 10 times a night is a joy that every mother should experience.  And that being your NORMAL?  It's fantastic.

There have also been GREAT times this past month.  The hugs and kisses and cuddles from my wonderful son.  The fun games of copy cat that make him smile sooo big.  Chasing after his skinny little naked body as he bear crawls out of the bathroom before bathtime so he can go out and happily play with his toys and stand naked at his baby gate.  Seeing him relax on Daddy's lap in the rocking chair by the front window, watching the snow.  Him really being so happy and well behaved after the teething was over.  Being complimented over and over on what a cute, cheerful kid he is.  Listening to Christmas music, and singing Silent Night to Noah before he goes to sleep.  Just enjoying this wonderful time of the year and being sooooooo thankful that our miracle baby is here to share it with us. 

I just can't even put into words how incredibly in love I am with Noah.  He is the perfect baby for us, the only baby for us.  I honestly can't imagine how empty our lives would be if he wasn't here.  And all the challenges and tiring days don't for a second make me wish anything was different.  He completes my life.  I had this big hole, and now it's overflowing because of this most perfect child. 

I am so full of thankfulness and love, I feel like my heart could burst.  I freakin' LOVE my kid, and I love my life, and I can't imagine things being any different.  THANK YOU God, for blessing us with Noah.


(PS - did you know a post can only have at most 20 labels, and those labels can only have a maximum of 200 characters?  I only know since I surpassed that and needed to delete some of my labels on this post.  What is the purpose of that limit?  Let people label as much as they want!!)

Puffs

I gave Noah sweet potato flavoured Puffs today.  It was his first finger food.  He really liked them, but the poor kid couldn't figure out how to get them into his mouth!  He would get one in his fist and then bring his fist to his open mouth and try and try to eat the puff that was clenched tightly in his fist.  He would look so confused by the whole thing.  His hand would be covered in slobber, and he just couldn't figure out that he needed to open his hand to get the puff in his mouth!

I don't know what I was expecting?  A perfect pincer grasp from an 8 month old boy who has never been allowed to handle tiny objects?  lol

We'll work on it.  Behind Daddy's back, because he doesn't want him to eat Puffs.  But it really is the perfect (ie. non-messy) way to teach him how to feed himself and develop fine motor skills.  And they have vitamins in them:)

8 Months Old!

I can't even believe my baby is 8 months old. He's been outside of me for as long as I knew he was inside of me (I found out I was pregnant on July 19th and he was born on March 18th - his EDD was March 29). Where oh where has the time gone??

Here's what Noah is up to at 8 months old:

-He weighs 18lbs 12oz (less than 50th percentile)

-He is 29.5 inches (about 95th percentile)

-He is 10th percentile for weight for height... just a little stringbean.

-He wears 12 month and 18 month clothing.

-He wears size 3 diapers (most Pampers BabyDry).

-He has 4 teeth, three from when he was 5 months old and one he just got in the past week. I think he may be working on his top-right-middle tooth, too. We'll see!

-He is still exclusively breastfed (except for solids at dinner; he still has never had a bottle), and he is getting to be a very cuddly nurser again.

-He eats about 4oz of solids before bedtime, but during the rest of the day it's just breastfeeding. He has finally ingested a small amount of liquid (1/3 pear juice, 2/3 water) from a "sippy cup" (a silicone spout sort of thing, not a true sippy cup). He's usually not that into it, though.

-Most solids still constipate him. So far the only safe foods are pears, prunes, peaches, and butternut squash. Peas, carrots, rice cereal, bananas, apples, apples and apricots, sweet potato, and sweet potato and turkey all constipate him. It's very frustrating, because it takes forever to unplug him again, and it makes it very difficult to introduce new foods. I think the fact that we keep having to switch back to strictly pears and prunes is starting to make him a bit pickier. He was at a point where he loved everything we offered him, but I don't know anymore.

-We just started Oat cereal in hopes that it won't constipate him.

-He's going to sleep at night usually between 7 and 7:30.

-He sleeps amazingly well at night after a very short bout with CIO. He pretty much sleeps 10 to 11 hours straight (with an outside range of 9.5 to 11.5), nurses, and then usually goes back to bed, depending on how long that stretch was (if it was 11.5 hours, he usually won't fall asleep again). He is usually awake when I put him back in his crib, but that seems to be the only time during the day and night that I can lay him down in his crib, walk away, and he'll often drift off to sleep, even if it's 45 minutes later.

-Bedtime routine is boob, solids, bath, boob, bed. He falls asleep nursing nearly every night.

-He has 2 or 3 naps a day.

-His normal awake time is about 2.5 hours.  Sometimes as short as an hour and 15 minutes, and often he has a stretch of 3 hours or more in the evening.

-His naps are still crappy most of the time. In an entire week he maybe has 2 or 3 naps that are about an hour long. The rest are all 30-40 minutes.

-He's still rocked to sleep with a soother for all his naps. I've tried letting him CIO for naps, but the crying is usually much worse than it was at nighttime when we used CIO, so I don't feel he's ready to go to sleep independently for all his naps.
-He is still swaddled at nighttime, but we recently have stopped swaddling for naps. I think it's going okay.

-He sleeps on his tummy even when he's swaddled.  I thought this was just the worst thing until I remembered that when I used to sleep on my tummy (before being pregnant and nursing... I haven't slept on my tummy in a very very long time) I would always sleep with my arms straight down at my sides.  So it's not like it's uncomfortable.

-Everytime we go to get him out of his crib he's standing up waiting for us. It's one of those things I always dreamed of about being a mom:)

-He crawls on his hands and knees exclusively. He started doing this right at 7 months, and had ditched army crawling completely by 7.5 months. The only time he'll army crawl is if he's trying to get under something that's too low to crawl under.

-He pulls up to standing using everything (even just a flat wall) and can sit down again on his own. His crib is on the 2nd lowest setting. He no longer needs someone to sit behind him when he's standing in case he falls, because he pretty much never falls. He doesn't even lean on the things that are supporting him. He just needs a hand on something to steady himself.

-He can just sit there in a squatting position, not holding on to anything.

-He can stand on his own - without holding on to anything - for a few seconds at a time. His record is about 5 seconds. This is by no means something he has mastered, though.

-He is understanding object permanence and looks for dropped objects.

-He has seperation anxiety and stranger anxiety. Fun fun!:)

-If he wants to be picked up and you are across the room, he will whine and crawl over to you and use your legs to stand up until you pick him up.

-He gives me lots of kisses everyday. He's started to "talk" while he does it, I think because when I kiss him I often am going "Muah, muah muah, muah." He's started to open his mouth, plant it on me, and go "Ahhhhhh." He doesn't kiss anybody else, usually, but yesterday he gave his friend Aubrey (3 weeks older) a kiss on the cheek, "Ahhh" and everything..

-He likes to sit in the bumbo on the kitchen counter while I cook.

-He babbles lots and sometimes purposefully imitates the sounds we make ("bat"). His most common sound is "Dada."

-He laughs his head off when Justin turns the ring stacker upside down, spins it like a top, and says "BING!"

-He doesn't get his soother much during the day, so he's falling out of love with it. When he does get it during the day, he plays with it more than he sucks on it.

-He still does the head-tilt thing, but it's becoming less frequent than it was a month ago.

-He loves our cats, but they do not love him. It makes me not love them.

There it is!  Happy 8 months, my sweet little Noah!  The past 8 months have been the best and happiest 8 months of my life.

Gluten Wars

Today my dear husband and I fought.  Over what I consider to be the most ridiculous thing.

Back story.  As we all know, Noah gets constipated from nearly everything.  As a result, he has been off rice cereal (since it has a reputation for constipation) for over a month.  He hasn't had any other type of cereal because his father is incredibly stubborn.  He wishes we all ate a paleo diet (meats, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, AND THAT'S IT).  He hates grains, and he especially detests gluten.  He saw rice cereal as a compromise, since he didn't even want Noah to eat that.  But he wouldn't let me feed him the "Add Water" kind because of the extra milk ingredients in it.  I had to get the "Add Breastmilk or Formula" kind.  (I'm not sure what all the cereals are like in the U.S. because my friend goes across the border to buy hers - way cheaper - and the ingredients are different even though it's by the same company.  But here in Canada those two kinds of cereal have vastly different ingredients).

Well, perhaps it was a compromise, but it was an unsuccessful one, since Noah couldn't tolerate it.

I have gone along with this gluten-free thing for awhile, but Noah has not been getting the additional iron he needs because he is exclusively breastfed (no formula) besides the dinner of fruit and vegetables he gets at night.  The iron in breastmilk is the best absorbed iron you can get from ANY source - including meat.  About 50% of the iron in breastmilk is absorbed and utilized by the baby, as compared to 4% of the iron in formula.

That's great.  But once the baby starts eating solids, the iron is breastmilk is no longer as well absorbed because it starts to bind to the molecules in the solid food.  So while I'm not totally on board with the whole BABY NEEDS MORE IRON AT 6 MONTHS thing, I do agree that sometime in the second half of the first year baby should start to receive more iron supplementation.

Noah is 8 months old.  So I do some more research on the benefits of continuing to keep him gluten-free for awhile longer.  I see none.  There ARE benefits to being totally gluten-free, but I have no intention of keeping Noah gluten-free his entire life (if it were totally up to my husband, he would be, but it's not).  So I may as well introduce it now in a controlled setting.

So yesterday I decided - and informed Justin - that I was going to start Noah on Oat cereal.  It's not as high in gluten as wheat, but it will provide extra iron and possibly not make Noah constipated like the rice cereal.  Justin disagrees with the idea.  I tell him I don't care.  He says "I really don't have any say in this, do I?"  I say "No."

End of story?

Not quite.

Today I go out and buy the Oat cereal (and the only option is the "Add Water" variety).  And some Sweet Potato Whole Wheat Puffs.  And some vegetable Mum Mums.

Justin looks in the grocery bags and discovers these purchases. 

He pretty much acts like he wants to divorce me.

He fails to notice (or care, once it's pointed out to him) that I purposefully did not buy anything with any SOY ingredients whatsoever, since soy is like majorly unhealthy (it's not even allowed to be sold as a type of baby formula in Australia), and basically like giving my baby boy an estrogen supplement.

My husband is usually very happy and friendly and smiley.  But he stopped talking to me for awhile tonight.

And just to rub it in (not intentionally) he had to FEED Noah that dreaded gluten-containing, milk-ingredients-containing Oat cereal.

Honestly, this "fight" was going to have to happen at some point, whether it's at 8 months or 12 months.  No matter when I introduced gluten, it was going to cause a commotion in our house.

Hopefully it's worth it and Noah doesn't get constipated.

Still Swaddling the CuddleBug, and Tooth #4

De-swaddling didn't go so well for us today.

Granted, it went way better than the first day of our last Operation NoSwaddle (which, coincidentally, coincided with the last time Noah was teething... so weird).  This time I just put him in a sleep sack for all 3 of his naps. He went to sleep okay for all of them. His first nap was normal, about 30 minutes long.  I thought we might be in the clear.

His second nap he slept 10 minutes - INCLUDING the time he spent in my arms. He had been up for awhile, so I let him CIO after he woke up.  I don't usually do CIO during the daytime.  In fact, I never really have.  But I'm never sure what to do during the day.  At nighttime I now know he won't cry for too long, and that he's actually tired and will fall asleep on his own.  Naptime is another story.  He's a chronic short napper anyway, and he seems more than happy with his 30 minute naps (I'm not, but I've learned to live with it).  So when he wakes up even earlier than that, I never really know what to do.  I always get him eventually, because I don't like him to CIO in the daytime, especially when I don't actually know if he's tired or not.  Anyway, after this nap of only 10 minutes, I let him CIO basically by default.  He started crying, and I waited to see if he would calm down and go back to sleep.  Then because I waited, I didn't want to go in there because I didn't want to teach him that if he cries for a long time Mommy will eventually come.  It would be terrible if that lesson spilled over into nighttime.  Even though the research says that daytime and nighttime are controlled by different areas of the brain and have nothing to do with each other, really, it still worries me.  So I defaulted.   He cried for 25 minutes, and it was awful.  He was SCREAMING, and he was all over his crib, standing up, sitting down, rolling around, standing up again, just screaming.  Seriously, it was terrible.  But I'm fairly certain he was just mad, because he would bury his face in the mattress and be quiet for 10 seconds and then start screaming again (I was watching through the crack in the door).

After 25 minutes of wailing he went back to sleep for 40 minutes. But then he woke up crying and crying again and I didn't have the heart to put him through that again, so I got him up.

Then his third nap he woke up after 10 minutes AGAIN.  I just got him that time. It was 5pm and I didn't want him to take forever to fall asleep and then go to bed late because his nap went to late.

He was in a mood the whole rest of the day after that CIO nap. I discovered that he's cutting another tooth. On his bottom to the right of his middle teeth. He already has had the matching tooth on the other side for over 2 months, so I've been wondering when this one will come in. I discovered that it's cutting at the grocery store, of all places. So for dinner he had pears and prunes laced with Motrin and Tylenol.   Yes, just pears and prunes.  That's all he's had for days.  We're still waiting on a normal poop. It's been weeks.
So I think we might stick it out with no swaddle for most of his naps, but I'm still swaddling him at night for now.  I was hoping to just put him in the sleep sack tonight, but I can't have him be exhausted from not sleeping during the day OR at night.


On a much more positive note, Noah has been SO cuddly the past few days. SO cuddly. Lots of hugs and kisses and just constantly climbing into my lap whiel we're on the ground playing.  Plus, each day we've had about 3 marathon cuddle/nursing sessions.  Noah is still nursed pretty much exclusively, we just add in a meal of solids at nighttime before bed.  During the day I usually nurse him when he's wide awake, not to put him to sleep, so he eats for MAYBE 10 minutes and then he wants to be on the go and play. But everyday for the past few days he's just laid there in my lap, awake, cuddling, suckling, staring at me, and playing with my face.  He's not even eating, he's just suckling with no swallowing.  He touches my nose, and I say "Nose!" He touches my mouth and I say "Mouth!"  I nibble his fingers and he smiles and laughs.  I started being able to say "Where's Mommy's nose??" and he'll grab or touch my nose. I don't know if it's just a coincidence, but he does it about 75% of the time that I say "Where's Mommy's nose??"
 
I love that he's just about 8 months old and we're having these long cuddle sessions.  Especially since at about 4 months he became a very distractable eater, and generally only nurses for about 7-10 minutes at a time.  I know he's not actually eating for most of the time that he's lying there, but I don't care. I adore the cuddle time.  I like the cuddles I get during the rest of the day, because I do get lots of hugs and kisses and cuddles.  But there is no other time during the day (unless he's sleeping) that he would lie in my lap, quiet and still, for half an hour.  And I'm getting 3 of these cuddle/nursing sessions everyday lately!  I love it.  LOVE it.

Various Updates

Noah is 7 months 6 days

-Noah is starting to go even further with real crawling.  He'd done both hands and a knee before, or two knees and a hand, but yesterday he just started going hand-knee-hand-knee-hand-knee-hand-knee.  I think that's as much as he's done at once so far.

-He is really enjoying standing at his activity table and playing by himself.  Of course, Justin or I have to be there behind him for when he topples.

-He just got his third haircut today!  I really wanted it, but now that I've done it I wish I had let it stay a little bit longer.  I used a 3/4 for the top and 5/8 for the side.  5/8 for the side was fine, but I think next time I'll go with 7/8 for the top.  He looks like such a little boy.  Right now I'm watching him stand at his activity table by himself and with his new haircut and since he's so tall he almost looks like a toddler instead of a baby!

-He seems to have gotten the memo that he's 7 months old, because since that day he's been decreasing his number of naps and increasing his awake times.  Everyday has been 2 or 3 naps.  Like I predicted, he seems to have decided on his own that he wants longer awake periods because when I try to put him down after 2 hours he will not fall asleep.  Awake times are in the 2.5 to 3 hour range now.  Every day this week he has had one long nap (a long nap in our house is an hour), and a couple of days have had 2 long naps.  He seems to have fallen into a pattern of napping around 9am, 1pm, and 4pm.  Dare I say this?  It seems as soon as I blog about something he goes and changes things up!  He has never had any sort of reliable nap times (a reliable routine, yes, like awake 2 hours sleep half an hour, rinse and repeat, but a reliable concrete naptime, no.) so this is refreshing!
-His nighttime sleeping is still hit or miss.  It seems to be half and half whether he eats once or twice, and solids at dinner have no bearing on that. 

-Constipation has reared it's ugly head again for Noah.  Boo.


Not about Noah... and TMI:

-My dear husband and I have now "done the deed" 4 times since Noah was born, twice this weekend (I decided it was time to get out of this 'rut':).  It still hurts like a mofo - almost as much as 9 weeks post partum - and Noah is 7 months old!!  Did my OB try to close me up like a vault when he stitched me up?!  For heavens sake, this is ridiculous!  Is it ever going to get any better?  I feel revirginized every time.

Constipated AGAIN

(7 months 1 week)

Noah is constpated again.  Again.

I was thinking this was happening because his last poop was Wednesday and now it's Sunday and he didn't poop in this whole time, even though he's been eating about 3 ounces of baby food every evening in addition to all his breastfeeding.  That is a lot of food to consume without pooping.

Finally, this morning (Sunday morning) he started crying and crying while he was playing and I could just tell it was his "I'm constipated!" cry.  I laid him on his back and held his knees up to his chest (I feel like a widwife) while he cried and cried and tried to push his poop out.

All he got out was a small, hard, dry, nugget.  It didn't leave any residue on his bum or on his diaper.  It was that dry.

All he's had to eat since his last regular poop was sweet potato & turkey (probably hardly any turkey in it), pears, and prunes.  When he had his last regular poop he had been eating pears and prunes, so he probably got constipated from the sweet potato, which is SUPPOSEDLY easy to digest.  Like rice cereal is supposedly easy to digest.  Whatever.

I never thought introducing solids would be so hard on Noah's system.  I thought it would be challenging because he wouldn't like them (and it took him a couple of weeks for that) but I didn't figure he'd get all constipated.  I'm not really sure what I should do.  I think I'm just going to go back to only giving him some pears, prunes, or peaches in the evening.  Pooping foods.

In the meantime we'll have some challenges trying to get him to clear his system, which will probably take several days again.  Yipee.

7 Months Old!!

At 7 months old, here is where Noah is at:


-Noah weighs about 18.5lbs. He was 18lbs 12oz after just eating and with his diaper and sleeper on. His sleeper weighs 5 oz, a dry size 3 diaper weighs 1oz (and his was a little wet, so add at least an ounce). So subtract 7oz there. Even if you don't include the fact that he just ate, that brings him in at, say, 18lbs 5oz. We'll stick with 18 1/2lbs. That's about the 50th percentile.

-He is 29 inches tall, still. That's 100th percentile.

-He's about 10th percentile for "weight for height."

-He wears size 3 Pampers Baby Dry diapers.

-He wears all 12 month clothing and it fits him perfectly. Hopefully we can stick at this size for longer than we were in all the other sizes, since his growth seems to have slowed down due to his age. Every other size got less than 2 months of wear, but he's been in 12 month since he was 5 months. I think we'll make it past the 2 month mark!

-He has 3 teeth - two from when he had just turned 5 months and one he got just before 6 months.

-He's basically exclusively breastfed, still. No bottles or cups. We started solids at 6 1/2 months (rice cereal, bananas, sweet potato, and pears - just a tablespoon or two at night before bed) but he got very constipated so we stopped everything but the occasional tablespoon of pears or prunes (or mixed) once a day. It took him a week and a half for his poops to get soft again (at 7 months 2 days), so we'll see how solids go from here. No rice cereal, though.

-He nurses 7 or 8 times in a 24 hour period.

-He nurses about every 2 hours during the day, sometimes a little shorter depending on how he ate last, sometimes up to 3 hours. I'm not too concerned about timing because he only eats when he's hungry and he stops when he's not.

-We don't follow any sort of Sleep, Eat, Play schedule. Noah doesn't eat huge amounts at once, because once he's not feeling hungry anymore he wants to go play. So sometimes it's sleep, play, eat, play, sometimes it's sleep, eat, play, eat, sleep.... whatever works for us.

-He's very distractable while nursing and when he's done, if he's not feeling cuddly, he literally climbs off of my lap. But sometimes he lies there and we talk to each other and laugh. I love those times.

-He loves to play with my face while he's nursing, especially my mouth. When I bite his fingers he starts giggling around my nipple and loses his latch. It's so adorable. Except when he fish-hooks my lip. Ouch!

-He is still swaddled at night and for all his naps. Since the nights are cooler now I often double wrap him, once in his swaddler and then overtop with a giant receiving blanket. This keeps him warmer and he gets out of it less easily. The swaddler or receiving blanket on their own he gets out of in about 10 seconds flat when he wants to.

-He goes to bed between 7 and 7:45, depending on when he woke up from his last nap. It's usually closer to 7. He wakes up in the morning between 6 and 6:40, but we don't allow him to get out of bed before 7 because the time change is coming up and I do NOT want to have to get up with him at 5am! We just treat early wakings like it's still nighttime until we hit 7am.

-His nighttime sleeping is all over the place at the moment. Throughout his seventh month he's had a couple of great nights where he sleeps almost 11 hours straight, and he's had terrible nights where I'm up over and over. The worst was when I was up with him no less than 15 times one night. In general I'd say he sleeps 6.5-9 hours straight overnight and gets up to nurse once or twice. Probably 3/4 of his nights he eats only once. If he eats twice it's not that he's hungry, he's just kind of struggling with sleeping.

-For most of his seventh month he had four 30 minute naps a day with awake times of about 2 hours. I'm not interested in trying to do anything about this at the moment, and especially not before the time change (when trying to make it to his 7 oclock bedtime will be like staying up until 8 oclock to his little body. He's definitely going to need that fourth nap).

-He gets a soother for all of his naps, but I try not to give it to him much during the rest of the day unless he's really cranky. For awhile I tried giving him a soother more often during the day because I thought maybe it would help him fill his sucking needs so he wouldn't need it at night, but it actually seemed to do the opposite.

-He's a master at army crawling, and has been for over a month.

-He can crawl backwards on his hands and knees, and is almost crawling forward on his hands and knees as well. He can move an arm and a leg forward together, but gets confused after that.

-He can go from a lying down position to a sitting position all on his own, and has gotten pretty smooth at it.

-He's a very good sitter (obviously, since he can even get into that position on his own). But that's old news. He's been sitting for a couple of months.

-He started "walking" holding on to my hands again. He did this at 2 months, but then stopped doing it. He's started up again.

-He objects when you take a toy away and looks for a dropped object some of the time, depending on how interested he was in the toy or the object.

-He has some very babble-y days, and some more quiet days.

-He is starting to close his mouth more the past few days. I know that sounds weird, but when your child constantly has a kind of shocked look on his face (mouth open) and then starts keeping his mouth closed, it's kind of alarming. He seems so much more grown up!

-He recently started tilting his head all the way to the side to look at us and other things. It's so silly:)

-He is getting into everything. It's fun to watch, but it really is a pain. The most annoying part is how he likes to chew on cords, and makes a beeline for them from across the room. No matter how many times I remove him from the area and distract him with a different toy, within 10 seconds he's crawling back over to the cords.

-We had to put our top of the stairs gate up and get rid of all of our "decor" because Noah is such a crazy rascal. We have an open concept house, so baby proofing is challenging. We can't just block off one room and make it baby proofed. Upstairs our kitchen/dining room/living room is all one big room. And downstairs our family room is very difficult because of our entertainment unit and various cords that we're going to have to hide somehow.

-He enjoys crawling all over my lap when we're sitting on the floor.

-He likes to grab everyone's hair, especially Daddy's since Daddy actually lets him.

-He still loves his jolly jumper, but he jumps so high now that the spring snaps shut and he doesn't really like that.

-He loves to jump in your lap.

-He still puts absolutely everything into his mouth, more so than the other babies his age that we spend time around; they look at things before they put them in their mouths. Noah just puts them straight into his mouth.

-He loves other kids. I've forgot to mention this in previous months, but he absolutely loves other kids. Babies, toddlers, whatever. He finds them so interesting to watch and play with. His cousin Elijah, who's exactly a year older than him, is not a fan of this:)

-Sometimes he's cooperative when he's being changed, sometimes he's not. I rearranged his room this month so his change table is in different spot. He no longer has a curtain hanging right beside him that he can grab, so he's not quite as squirmy there. He's probably actually more cooperative now than he was a month ago.

-He loves peekabo, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Head, and Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.

-He doesn't use his playmat ever unless he crawls onto it to chew on the toys while on his tummy.

-He almost NEVER lies on his back, except when he's sleeping.

-He slams his legs around less while he's sleeping, although he does do it. I don't have to pin his legs down after I lay him in bed very often anymore.

-He has started with the separation anxiety. What fun!


Our day is pretty much the same as it has been for the past two or three months. Noah gets up, gets his diaper changed, but isn't hungry for awhile so he doesn't eat for 30-60 minutes. We play upstairs for awhile until about 2 hours has passed, and then Noah goes down for his first nap. This is when I grab a quick shower. Since he only naps for 30 minutes I usually end up finishing getting ready with him playing on the floor of our bedroom.

For the rest of the day it's pretty much awake for 2 hours, sleep for 30 minutes. 3 or 4 naps a day, depending on if something happened to make a fourth nap too hard to fit in. Noah loves running around doing errands with me, and never fusses when we're out. He just loves seeing all the different sights and people. Still, we don't tend to run errands very often because his 18lbs plus our carseat that weighs probably 20lbs is a pain to get in and out of the van. So we only go do errands maybe once a week, if I can help it.

We have tea with Erin and Aubrey once a week (usually Wednesday) and often go visit Granny (my mom) and Grandper (my dad) if he's home in town once a week as well. We haven't been making it to church for awhile now because... well, that's a post on it's own.

Bedtime routine goes boob, solids (if he has them), bath, boob, bed. Whether he has solids or not makes no difference to how long he sleeps overnight, so if we can't fit them in without going to bed too late (since they take forever for Noah to eat) or simply because I don't want to give them to him because I have a lot of milk for Noah to drain before bedtime, then we don't worry about it. Daddy always feeds Noah his solids if he's home, but he goes back to the school to coach from 6:45-9:10 most nights, so he often isn't home for this.
Noah still loves his bath and that's always a nice time for us. After bathtime he gets swaddled up and then nurses right to sleep. Sometimes he'll pop himself off after 8 minutes, often I have to pop him off after 25 to 30 minutes. Then he goes in his crib, sleeping. If he wakes up after awhile it totally depends on him what I have to do. Sometimes he just needs a soother, sometimes he needs a cuddle while still lying down, sometimes I have to pick him up, and sometimes I actually have to rock him to sleep again.

There is no sleep training in our house because Noah doesn't have the temperament for it and it doesn't mesh with my parenting style. Plus, there are so many things that disrupt a baby's sleep (teething, milestones, growth spurts, hunger, separation anxiety, gas, constipation, throwing up, etc) I think I'd just get so frustrated whenever things didn't go perfectly because I had put so much effort into sleep training. I'd rather just go with the flow. We have great nights and we have bad nights, but most nights are somewhere in the middle. And that's okay.

I LOVE being Noah's mom. And I feel so blessed that I am a stay-at-home mom. It's not perfect. Yes, I miss adult interaction sometimes, but I do get together with people throughout the week, and my husband is home from 3 to 6:45 most evenings. And frankly, I was a teacher, so it's not like I had much adult interaction anyway! I'd much rather spend the day with my own child than with somebody else's children.

It's a lot of work being a SAHM. Your house gets a lot dirtier when you're actually there 24/7. I try to spend most of my time with Noah instead of running to household, so I actually end up doing a lot of my chores when Justin is actually home so that I don't have to leave Noah playing alone for hours while I clean the house or fold laundry. But it works for us this way. Noah gets to play with his mom or dad most of the time, Justin doesn't have to do any housework (although he does help with some things out of the goodness of his heart), and I get to spend a lot of time loving my child.

Both Justin and I are so glad I can stay home. It's a lot less money (I couldn't believe it when I calculated how much money we'd be clearing every month if I were to go back to work), but we are all a lot happier for it. I'm happier being the one who takes care of Noah (instead of someone else doing it), Justin is happier because he doesn't have to do half of the housework (he just does the "man chores" like cutting the grass and putting the garbage out to the road), and Noah is happier because he gets to be with me, in his own house, and gets to be on his own schedule in his own timing without trying to fit it in to the ideas of someone else. I couldn't imagine working and then trying to get all the household chores done in the small window of time that I'm actually home, instead of spending time with Noah. I would be extremely unhappy.

Life is great, and my sleeping is improved (although it's the sleep of the drugged). We're doing well at the 7 month mark.