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!
Showing posts with label Standing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Standing. Show all posts
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Walking Update
It's been awhile since I wrote about Noah's walking. Last time I wrote he was 11 months and 4 days old, and had started taking up to 8 steps at a time.
He is now 11 months and 3 weeks old, and in the past few days has started to walk a lot more frequently. He is very very careful when he walks, which means he sits down as soon as he is uncomfortable with how unsteady he feels. But he is attempting it often. Almost every chance he gets. He has taken more than 8 steps at a time - at times he has walked as far as 9 feet.
He can also stand up out of nowhere. He doesn't need to hold on to anything or be near anything. He'll be crawling around, then he just gets himself in a squatting position and stands right up! That started right around 11.5 months.
I don't know when you consider a baby to be a "walker." I kind of think its not until they choose walking over crawling as their primary mode of transportation. Either way, he is definitely walking!
He is now 11 months and 3 weeks old, and in the past few days has started to walk a lot more frequently. He is very very careful when he walks, which means he sits down as soon as he is uncomfortable with how unsteady he feels. But he is attempting it often. Almost every chance he gets. He has taken more than 8 steps at a time - at times he has walked as far as 9 feet.
He can also stand up out of nowhere. He doesn't need to hold on to anything or be near anything. He'll be crawling around, then he just gets himself in a squatting position and stands right up! That started right around 11.5 months.
I don't know when you consider a baby to be a "walker." I kind of think its not until they choose walking over crawling as their primary mode of transportation. Either way, he is definitely walking!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
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!
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!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
First Step!
Noah is 10 months and 1 week old (January 26, 2011)
Noah took his first, albeit unsteady, step today!
Noah is pretty good at standing unassisted, and he's a great cruiser, so I've just been waiting for this to happen any day. And today was the day. He was standing about 2 feet away from me. I said "Walk to Mommy, Noah!" He took one unsteady step, and then went down on all fours ("Why would I walk when I'm so good at crawling?")
He's not walking or anything, and I don't see that happening in the next month. But I felt that his very first independent step was worth mentioning.
My baby's growing up!
Noah took his first, albeit unsteady, step today!
Noah is pretty good at standing unassisted, and he's a great cruiser, so I've just been waiting for this to happen any day. And today was the day. He was standing about 2 feet away from me. I said "Walk to Mommy, Noah!" He took one unsteady step, and then went down on all fours ("Why would I walk when I'm so good at crawling?")
He's not walking or anything, and I don't see that happening in the next month. But I felt that his very first independent step was worth mentioning.
My baby's growing up!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
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...
-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...
Thursday, January 6, 2011
First Blood Shed
(Noah is 9 months, 2 weeks, 5 days old)
Poor Noah got hurt today, and it was the very first time he's ever shed blood besides the times that medical care providers have violated his skin with needles.
He was standing at my chair wanting me to pick him up. He kept bobbing his legs because he really really wanted me to pick him up. I was taking my time, watching playback of a Flip video of him Justin took on New Year's Eve that I hadn't seen yet. Eventually he bobbed too much and went straight down and banged his mouth on the kitchen chair. It gave him a slightly fat lip and something in his mouth area was bleeding. We couldn't really tell what it was.
It didn't bleed too much, and after snuggles from Mommy he felt better. Needless to say, I felt terrible. Why oh why didn't I pick him up sooner? It was all my fault! Woe is me! And woe is my fat-lipped son!
Poor Noah got hurt today, and it was the very first time he's ever shed blood besides the times that medical care providers have violated his skin with needles.
He was standing at my chair wanting me to pick him up. He kept bobbing his legs because he really really wanted me to pick him up. I was taking my time, watching playback of a Flip video of him Justin took on New Year's Eve that I hadn't seen yet. Eventually he bobbed too much and went straight down and banged his mouth on the kitchen chair. It gave him a slightly fat lip and something in his mouth area was bleeding. We couldn't really tell what it was.
It didn't bleed too much, and after snuggles from Mommy he felt better. Needless to say, I felt terrible. Why oh why didn't I pick him up sooner? It was all my fault! Woe is me! And woe is my fat-lipped son!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Walker-Walker
(Noah is 9 months, 1.5 weeks)
Noah has been fairly early to meet many of his milestones. He was sitting at 5 1/2 months, army crawling at 5 months, getting himself to a sitting position from lying down at 6 months, pushing up on his hands and feet at 6 months, full-time hands and knees crawling at 7 months on the nose, pulling up to stand at 7 months on the nose, standing independently (not holding on to anything) for "longish" periods at 8 months... he's grown up very quickly.
Because he's met so many milestones so early, I kind of expected him to be even further along by 9 months. I thought he'd be even better at standing independently (he can stand for about 15 solid seconds without holding on to anything, and he does this a few times a day, but I just thought it would be more by now considering how quickly he's developed so far). I thought he'd be motoring around the house using his walker (an actual push walker, not a walker that you put a baby IN). He's not, and that's okay.
Despite my personal expectations of him being "high", I was pretty annoyed all during Christmas when everyone's questions were "Is he walking? Is he talking?"
Ummm, no, he's 9 months old. Walking and talking at 9 months old is very early. It's like asking a parent of a 4 month old if their kid is sitting up independently yet. It's not impossible, but it's pretty friggin uncommon. It's like expecting a 5 month old to crawl on his hands and knees. Again, not impossible, but pretty friggin uncommon.
I was bothered by these questions because Noah is doing really well for his age, but everyone was wondering about walking and talking, two skills that usually happen more around the year mark. I'm not kidding either, when I say "everyone." Well, it may be a slight exaggerration, but about 90% of the people we saw over Christmas asked those questions.
Noah got his walker back at 7 months when he was pulling up to stand and standing at things without us spotting him. His Nana and Papa figured he'd go crazy for it. Well, he liked the "toy" aspect of it, but hasn't been so interested in the function of it. We've pretty much pushed it to the side and not pulled it out to play with much over the past couple of months, because everytime we'd put Noah behind it, instead of walking forward he would sit down and crawl away.
(That's the "problem" with good crawlers... they are already very efficient at getting around, and don't necessarily have any desire to learn a new method.)
Yesterday my parents were over for dinner and they were saying that Noah is for sure going to be walking by a year. I didn't necessarily think so, especially since a couple of months ago everyone was saying he'd be walking at 9 months (I never thought he would be, for the record, and that's definitely not going to happen this month). I wanted to show them how uninterested Noah is in walking, so I took out his walker to demonstrate. To my surprise, Noah started walking behind it.
He made a total liar out of me. Don't kids always do that??
He suddenly has gotten pretty good at walking behind that walker. Funny how that can happen out of nowhere.
Today we had an 8 month old (and his parents) over for a playdate. This was our first playdate together, and I was very surprised to see that 8 month old James is about as physically skilled as Noah was at 5 months. He still falls all the time while he's sitting up, just rolls over if he wants to get somewhere, doesn't pull up on anything (his crib mattress is still where it was when he was a newborn), and spends a lot of time lying on his back to play (Noah hasn't spent any time lying on his back - unless he's sleeping - since he was 4 months old).
This reminded me (not that I need reminding) that there is such a huge range of "normal." And made me even more annoyed by all the questions I got at Christmas time. I was also impressed by the relaxed nature of this mother, who also happens to be a infant/child public health nurse. Personally, I'd probably be freaking out if that's where my child was at developmentally at 8 months. But she's not worried at all, because, like I said, the range of what's "normal" is pretty large.
If Noah walks by 12 months, that's cool. If not... I'm going to try my best not to be bothered by it.
If people would stop asking me if he's walking and talking, that would be very helpful.
Noah has been fairly early to meet many of his milestones. He was sitting at 5 1/2 months, army crawling at 5 months, getting himself to a sitting position from lying down at 6 months, pushing up on his hands and feet at 6 months, full-time hands and knees crawling at 7 months on the nose, pulling up to stand at 7 months on the nose, standing independently (not holding on to anything) for "longish" periods at 8 months... he's grown up very quickly.
Because he's met so many milestones so early, I kind of expected him to be even further along by 9 months. I thought he'd be even better at standing independently (he can stand for about 15 solid seconds without holding on to anything, and he does this a few times a day, but I just thought it would be more by now considering how quickly he's developed so far). I thought he'd be motoring around the house using his walker (an actual push walker, not a walker that you put a baby IN). He's not, and that's okay.
Despite my personal expectations of him being "high", I was pretty annoyed all during Christmas when everyone's questions were "Is he walking? Is he talking?"
Ummm, no, he's 9 months old. Walking and talking at 9 months old is very early. It's like asking a parent of a 4 month old if their kid is sitting up independently yet. It's not impossible, but it's pretty friggin uncommon. It's like expecting a 5 month old to crawl on his hands and knees. Again, not impossible, but pretty friggin uncommon.
I was bothered by these questions because Noah is doing really well for his age, but everyone was wondering about walking and talking, two skills that usually happen more around the year mark. I'm not kidding either, when I say "everyone." Well, it may be a slight exaggerration, but about 90% of the people we saw over Christmas asked those questions.
Noah got his walker back at 7 months when he was pulling up to stand and standing at things without us spotting him. His Nana and Papa figured he'd go crazy for it. Well, he liked the "toy" aspect of it, but hasn't been so interested in the function of it. We've pretty much pushed it to the side and not pulled it out to play with much over the past couple of months, because everytime we'd put Noah behind it, instead of walking forward he would sit down and crawl away.
(That's the "problem" with good crawlers... they are already very efficient at getting around, and don't necessarily have any desire to learn a new method.)
Yesterday my parents were over for dinner and they were saying that Noah is for sure going to be walking by a year. I didn't necessarily think so, especially since a couple of months ago everyone was saying he'd be walking at 9 months (I never thought he would be, for the record, and that's definitely not going to happen this month). I wanted to show them how uninterested Noah is in walking, so I took out his walker to demonstrate. To my surprise, Noah started walking behind it.
He made a total liar out of me. Don't kids always do that??
He suddenly has gotten pretty good at walking behind that walker. Funny how that can happen out of nowhere.
Today we had an 8 month old (and his parents) over for a playdate. This was our first playdate together, and I was very surprised to see that 8 month old James is about as physically skilled as Noah was at 5 months. He still falls all the time while he's sitting up, just rolls over if he wants to get somewhere, doesn't pull up on anything (his crib mattress is still where it was when he was a newborn), and spends a lot of time lying on his back to play (Noah hasn't spent any time lying on his back - unless he's sleeping - since he was 4 months old).
This reminded me (not that I need reminding) that there is such a huge range of "normal." And made me even more annoyed by all the questions I got at Christmas time. I was also impressed by the relaxed nature of this mother, who also happens to be a infant/child public health nurse. Personally, I'd probably be freaking out if that's where my child was at developmentally at 8 months. But she's not worried at all, because, like I said, the range of what's "normal" is pretty large.
If Noah walks by 12 months, that's cool. If not... I'm going to try my best not to be bothered by it.
If people would stop asking me if he's walking and talking, that would be very helpful.
Monday, December 6, 2010
8 1/2 Month Pictures
I have so many things I need to post on here and on FB. I decided to go with here first. I was just uploading pictures from my camera onto my computer and found some I just really want to post for my own memories. So, I bestow upon you a plethora of pictures.
Yes, Noah can hang from the top of his gate:
We bought his this Santa hat, size 12-24 months. He's 8 1/2 months, and the hat barely fits on his head. I had to shove it on. I think I'm returning it, but he looks sooo cute, doesn't he?
I was cleaning up after dinner while Justin got ready for his first basketball game of the season. Noah had just gotten up from his nap, and Justin wanted to know what to do with him. I told him to take him with him. I figured when I went in there (the spare bedroom where Justin keeps his clothes) that Noah would be crawling around on the floor. Instead, he was still in his sleep sack with his soother in his mouth, sitting in the middle of the bed playing with a hanger and his Dad's belt. It melted my heart.
Little stinker getting into my cupboards:
I want it!
And his little stinker face:
In a track suit:
He started waving this past Saturday!!
I think he looks young here:)
Mommy and Noah at 8 1/2 months... couldn't get a smile from him:
But we got a wave!!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Standing Alone
For the past month (since about 7 1/2 months) Noah has been occasionally standing alone - as in not hanging on to anyone or anything - for short bursts. He started out with bursts of just a couple of seconds of steady standing, and by last week (8 months and 1 week) he had a record of standing totally unassisted for almost 10 seconds straight.
It all just depends on his mood. He can do it really well if he wants to, but he isn't always interested in doing it when we try to get him to. A lot of the time that we stand him up in front of us he tries to jump up and down, because our hands are under his armpits. If I hang onto his hands he doesn't usually try to jump, but sometimes he'll just sit down so that he can crawl away.
Sometimes he forgets himself and lets go of what he's holding onto when he's standing. At this point he'll either plop on his bum after a second, or actually stay steady for awhile before doing a slow and controlled move to his bum.
He's not adept at this unassisted standing thing, by any means. But I'm pretty impressed with his degree of balance so far!
It all just depends on his mood. He can do it really well if he wants to, but he isn't always interested in doing it when we try to get him to. A lot of the time that we stand him up in front of us he tries to jump up and down, because our hands are under his armpits. If I hang onto his hands he doesn't usually try to jump, but sometimes he'll just sit down so that he can crawl away.
Sometimes he forgets himself and lets go of what he's holding onto when he's standing. At this point he'll either plop on his bum after a second, or actually stay steady for awhile before doing a slow and controlled move to his bum.
He's not adept at this unassisted standing thing, by any means. But I'm pretty impressed with his degree of balance so far!
Monday, November 29, 2010
Baby Proof
As anybody with a mobile baby knows, baby proofing is an ongoing process. You don't get it all done at once. Or, you don't if you have a fairly large 6 bedroom, 2 bathroom house. We started 3 months ago when Noah perfected his army crawl. And we're still going.
Yesterday we baby proofed our downstairs. Our main floor is mostly baby proofed, but there's no TV except in our bedroom. Now that high school basketball season is upon us, I'm spending many long days alone at home with Noah (this is a post on it's own). When my husband leaves before (or just after) Noah wakes up in the morning and gets home after Noah goes to bed (or just shows up for 30 to 60 minutes sometime in there), I need to be able to watch some TV or something some of the time that Noah is playing. We live in a tiny farm town 25 minutes from the real town (we're looking to move back, but that is ALSO another post of it's own), so it's not like Noah and I have anywhere to GO unless we want to make a full day of it and use my parents' house as a home base for feedings and naps (seriously, running to the mall turns into a 6 hour long affair). Furthermore, I can't clean my house or anything, because Noah has such bad separation anxiety (also another post on it's own). So we need somewhere else in my house that we can go besides the main floor.
Despite the fact that Noah has been on the go since 5 1/2 months, our downstairs was NOT baby proofed. There were visible cords everywhere that he was always yanking at. There were deathtrap coffee tables that he could maim himself on. Whenever we were down there I was constantly pulling him away from things, so he was getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated. Needless to say, we didn't spend much time down there.
After yesterday, it's about 90% baby proofed. We put a walk through gate up at the bottom of the stairs, since Noah is a stair climber. We got rid of the dangerous coffee tables; they have found homes in our various extra bedrooms. We put outlet covers in the empty sockets, and moved furniture around so that all but one of the plugs with cords coming out of it are covered.
We have three problems remaining.
One is the outlet that has this tall lamp plugged into it. I don't know how to cover the lamp and the outlet. We put a couch in front of the other lamp and outlet, but the location of this lamp doesn't really allow that to happen. And it really is the best location for the lamp, lighting-wise. So far Noah hasn't gone to play with it. We'll see.
Another problem is that we have a low entertainment unit, so Noah can pull himself up and reach and touch the TV. The big, expensive, 50 inch LCD TV. Not something you want a baby pawing at. We need to find something that lifts the TV up higher so Noah can't grab at the screen. Or we need a new entertainment unit. But getting one tall enough and safe enough would be really expensive.
Finally, we need to install cabinet locks on the entertainment unit doors. Noah opens them and pulls out all the wires and chews on them. Not good. We have the locks, but we have to screw them in the doors, so it'll take awhile to do it.
I've been wanting to babyproof the downstairs for a long time now, but the way my husband is I actually have to say "We are doing this now. Let's go." Saying "We should go babyproof the downstairs" is apparently just a suggestion intended to be ignored. About 10 times. And I couldn't do it myself because a lot of the furniture that needed rearranging was WAY too heavy.
So now our upstairs and our downstairs family rooms are baby proofed. So Noah and I have more than one big play room to spend our time in, which helps with the stir-craziness.
A baby proofed house is not nearly as pretty. Our house used to be so immaculate. We had the right furniture, the right accents, the right decorations, the right arrangements. Now everything is shoved to the side or put away to accommodate our little Monkey.
I'm not complaining. I love having the "problem" of our house being less attractive than it used to be because we're blessed to have a baby. In fact, I think it's ridiculous that some people inwardly judge me for accommodating Noah in all areas of my house. So many people think you shouldn't have to adjust your entire lifestyle to fit your child.
However, I don't think our once immaculate, tastefully decorated house will show as nicely as it would have 9 months ago!
Yesterday we baby proofed our downstairs. Our main floor is mostly baby proofed, but there's no TV except in our bedroom. Now that high school basketball season is upon us, I'm spending many long days alone at home with Noah (this is a post on it's own). When my husband leaves before (or just after) Noah wakes up in the morning and gets home after Noah goes to bed (or just shows up for 30 to 60 minutes sometime in there), I need to be able to watch some TV or something some of the time that Noah is playing. We live in a tiny farm town 25 minutes from the real town (we're looking to move back, but that is ALSO another post of it's own), so it's not like Noah and I have anywhere to GO unless we want to make a full day of it and use my parents' house as a home base for feedings and naps (seriously, running to the mall turns into a 6 hour long affair). Furthermore, I can't clean my house or anything, because Noah has such bad separation anxiety (also another post on it's own). So we need somewhere else in my house that we can go besides the main floor.
Despite the fact that Noah has been on the go since 5 1/2 months, our downstairs was NOT baby proofed. There were visible cords everywhere that he was always yanking at. There were deathtrap coffee tables that he could maim himself on. Whenever we were down there I was constantly pulling him away from things, so he was getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated. Needless to say, we didn't spend much time down there.
After yesterday, it's about 90% baby proofed. We put a walk through gate up at the bottom of the stairs, since Noah is a stair climber. We got rid of the dangerous coffee tables; they have found homes in our various extra bedrooms. We put outlet covers in the empty sockets, and moved furniture around so that all but one of the plugs with cords coming out of it are covered.
We have three problems remaining.
One is the outlet that has this tall lamp plugged into it. I don't know how to cover the lamp and the outlet. We put a couch in front of the other lamp and outlet, but the location of this lamp doesn't really allow that to happen. And it really is the best location for the lamp, lighting-wise. So far Noah hasn't gone to play with it. We'll see.
Another problem is that we have a low entertainment unit, so Noah can pull himself up and reach and touch the TV. The big, expensive, 50 inch LCD TV. Not something you want a baby pawing at. We need to find something that lifts the TV up higher so Noah can't grab at the screen. Or we need a new entertainment unit. But getting one tall enough and safe enough would be really expensive.
Finally, we need to install cabinet locks on the entertainment unit doors. Noah opens them and pulls out all the wires and chews on them. Not good. We have the locks, but we have to screw them in the doors, so it'll take awhile to do it.
I've been wanting to babyproof the downstairs for a long time now, but the way my husband is I actually have to say "We are doing this now. Let's go." Saying "We should go babyproof the downstairs" is apparently just a suggestion intended to be ignored. About 10 times. And I couldn't do it myself because a lot of the furniture that needed rearranging was WAY too heavy.
So now our upstairs and our downstairs family rooms are baby proofed. So Noah and I have more than one big play room to spend our time in, which helps with the stir-craziness.
A baby proofed house is not nearly as pretty. Our house used to be so immaculate. We had the right furniture, the right accents, the right decorations, the right arrangements. Now everything is shoved to the side or put away to accommodate our little Monkey.
I'm not complaining. I love having the "problem" of our house being less attractive than it used to be because we're blessed to have a baby. In fact, I think it's ridiculous that some people inwardly judge me for accommodating Noah in all areas of my house. So many people think you shouldn't have to adjust your entire lifestyle to fit your child.
However, I don't think our once immaculate, tastefully decorated house will show as nicely as it would have 9 months ago!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
They Grow Up So Fast
Noah is doing all these things that it doesn't look like he should be doing. He's tall (but skinny) for 8 months, but he still looks too small to be doing all the crazy stuff he does. For example:
-He's a speed crawler and just takes off on his own out of the living room down the hallway and goes into bedrooms and closets and bathrooms on his own.
-He is always pulling up to stand using anything he can.
-He'll pull up on the couch, turn his body, reach his hand over, grab the coffee table, and cruise over to the coffee table. He also has an extremely long reach to grab anything on top of said coffee table.
-He'll stand up by using just the wall as support - nothing to actually grab onto. Then he'll just turn around and keep one hand on the wall and check out what's going on around him.
-He crawls over to the windows and pulls himself up so he can stand there watching the world go by.
-If I'm on the couch and he's really hungry he'll pull up to stand and then list his legs and actually try and climb UP the couch. All while whining. It's hilarious.
-He'll pull up to stand just using one hand on one leg of the jumperoo. Then he just hangs out there.
-He can balance himself when he's just sitting in a squat, ass to ankles.
-About a week ago he was playing with Justin on the floor. He was standing up, squatting down, stand up, squatting down while they were playing. He was sitting in a squat, and then just pushed up with his legs and stood up without holding on to anything. He just stood up! On his own! He put his hand on Justin's leg to steady himself once he got up there, but it was crazy!
-He doesn't even need anyone spotting him as he travels throughout the house, even though we have all hardwood and ceramic floors. I mean, we need to make sure he doesn't get into anything dangerous, but he almost never falls down.
All these things are things he's been doing since no later than 7 1/2 months old. He just seems too young and small to be doing all this! I can't believe how fast he's growing up. It's so much fun, though.
I hardly ever post pictures, but I'm going to bombard you now! Here are some from when he was 7 months old.
-He's a speed crawler and just takes off on his own out of the living room down the hallway and goes into bedrooms and closets and bathrooms on his own.
-He is always pulling up to stand using anything he can.
-He'll pull up on the couch, turn his body, reach his hand over, grab the coffee table, and cruise over to the coffee table. He also has an extremely long reach to grab anything on top of said coffee table.
-He'll stand up by using just the wall as support - nothing to actually grab onto. Then he'll just turn around and keep one hand on the wall and check out what's going on around him.
-He crawls over to the windows and pulls himself up so he can stand there watching the world go by.
-If I'm on the couch and he's really hungry he'll pull up to stand and then list his legs and actually try and climb UP the couch. All while whining. It's hilarious.
-He'll pull up to stand just using one hand on one leg of the jumperoo. Then he just hangs out there.
-He can balance himself when he's just sitting in a squat, ass to ankles.
-About a week ago he was playing with Justin on the floor. He was standing up, squatting down, stand up, squatting down while they were playing. He was sitting in a squat, and then just pushed up with his legs and stood up without holding on to anything. He just stood up! On his own! He put his hand on Justin's leg to steady himself once he got up there, but it was crazy!
-He doesn't even need anyone spotting him as he travels throughout the house, even though we have all hardwood and ceramic floors. I mean, we need to make sure he doesn't get into anything dangerous, but he almost never falls down.
All these things are things he's been doing since no later than 7 1/2 months old. He just seems too young and small to be doing all this! I can't believe how fast he's growing up. It's so much fun, though.
I hardly ever post pictures, but I'm going to bombard you now! Here are some from when he was 7 months old.
Climbing under the coffee table:
Crawling on the table at Josiah's baptism:
Everytime I put him in the pack 'n play he refuses to "play." He just wants to get out:
This is how we find our monkey after every nap (and now in the mornings). Look at that mischevious face!:
Little stinker:
Playing:
Whaaat?:
What a flirt:
Happy kid:
Checking out the world:
"Oh, hey Mom":
"I need a new bib, this one's wet":
Here, he's 8 months old:
Trying to escape from jail:
This is a terribly framed picture that Justin took, but his face is cute and it demonstrates his squat... although he's hanging on to something here:
If it sounds like I'm bragging about my child, I absolutely am! I think Noah's the bomb.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Another Great Night and a Great Day
Noah had another great night last night. He slept 10 hours straight, nursed, and went back to bed for another couple of hours.
He great day today, too. He woke up at 8 (7, new time), and had good naps. 40 minutes, an hour, and an hour. We had a very busy day.
We were planning on going to church and everything was all ready, we had our bags and carseat by the door and were just waiting for Noah to get up (never would I EVER wake up Noah if he was going to have a long nap). Well, Noah woke up about 8 minutes too late for us to make it to church on time. And at my church you can't just sneak in the back, because my church fills up from the back to the front. So unless we get there early, there are no seats at the back. My family has always sat at the very front of the church my entire life. Every Sunday. Even though we were often 5 minutes late. But I'm not doing that a) with a baby who I don't want to stick in the nursery for the entire service, and b) being 10 minutes late.
So we skipped church for the billionth time in the past 10 months (since I got injured and was bedridden at 30 weeks pregnant). But since we were all showered and dressed and packed up already at 9:30, I decided we were going to DO STUFF. I ran to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions, and then we headed into town.
We went to the Wal, where we got about 50 jars of baby food. They were on sale. Seriously, with all those and everything we already had we could stock a whole baby food section. We also picked up some more mesh feeder bag things, since Noah loves them (he will sit in his high chair for an hour munching on something in there. It's especially helpful when he's grumpy), and we bought a new kind of bottle/sippy cup that maybe he will like more than the bottles and sippy cups we already have. Probably not. But we bought some pear juice for when I'm ready to have him try, since I'm pretty sure we're going to have to bribe him to like sippy cups through using juice.
Then we went to visit Justin's Nona Anna at her old people's rez. It is like a 6 star hotel there. Very nice.
Then we went to my parents' for Noah to have a nap (which was a little over an hour long - also very nice). They weren't there, which was for the best because we had a lot more to do in town and it would have been harder for us to do if they were home. I have a hard time taking Noah away from them because they adore him so much.
After his nap we went to Tonnie Bogs (yeah that's not the real name of the store... I think it's only in Canada though) to buy some more sleepers (we don't have enough that fit him right now) and a snow suit. We got a 12 month snow suit, but there's no way it will fit him all winter. It fits him perfect right now. There was no 18 month suit though, unless we wanted to pay $70. Which I was definitely not doing. We'll just keep the tags on this one until we actually have to use it, and if we end up having to get an 18 month one it will be at a time when they're probably on sale.
Then we went to Justin's Nona Maria's, where Noah made $20. Nice.
I should mention that Noah cried for both of Justin's Nonas. We tried to just get him used to them from afar, and he was more than happy to do that. But once they tried to hold him he was crying within 30 seconds. We tried more than once. Too bad, so sad.
After Nona Maria's we went to Justin's parents' house. You may ask, "Why don't Justin's parents have their mothers over so that you can see everyone at once instead of going all over tarnation with a 7 month old?"
"Because," I will answer, "Italians are stupid."
Seriously. So stupid.
So we went to Justin's parents and Noah had a nap in the pack 'n play that they finally bought when he was 7 months old (another example of stupid Italians being stubborn, thinking that I should pack up my own pack 'n play that I use everyday everytime I want to "swing by" their house). It took over 20 minutes for me to get him to sleep because the people don't own a fan - WHO DOESN'T OWN A FAN? - and Noah has a difficult time falling asleep without white noise. My fault. I ended up having to nurse him to sleep. But he slept for an hour.
He woke up at like 5:45. So late!! Then he played for awhile with his Nana until we made the trek home at about 6:45. It was actually a pretty good visit. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I enjoyed myself.
So because he woke up so late, he didn't get to bed until 8:15pm, which is 9:15 on the old clock! And he was HAPPY as a clam all day long and all evening long. He showed everyone the tricks he mastered right after the last time he saw them (hands and knees crawling and pulling up to stand). Then tonight he was splashing up a storm in his bath (I was soaked) and didn't whine once the whole time. He usually has a period of whining during his bath these days, but not tonight. He was pretty hyper.
Now I'm home and I'm going to relax with my husband and eat ice cream. Ahhhhh.
He great day today, too. He woke up at 8 (7, new time), and had good naps. 40 minutes, an hour, and an hour. We had a very busy day.
We were planning on going to church and everything was all ready, we had our bags and carseat by the door and were just waiting for Noah to get up (never would I EVER wake up Noah if he was going to have a long nap). Well, Noah woke up about 8 minutes too late for us to make it to church on time. And at my church you can't just sneak in the back, because my church fills up from the back to the front. So unless we get there early, there are no seats at the back. My family has always sat at the very front of the church my entire life. Every Sunday. Even though we were often 5 minutes late. But I'm not doing that a) with a baby who I don't want to stick in the nursery for the entire service, and b) being 10 minutes late.
So we skipped church for the billionth time in the past 10 months (since I got injured and was bedridden at 30 weeks pregnant). But since we were all showered and dressed and packed up already at 9:30, I decided we were going to DO STUFF. I ran to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions, and then we headed into town.
We went to the Wal, where we got about 50 jars of baby food. They were on sale. Seriously, with all those and everything we already had we could stock a whole baby food section. We also picked up some more mesh feeder bag things, since Noah loves them (he will sit in his high chair for an hour munching on something in there. It's especially helpful when he's grumpy), and we bought a new kind of bottle/sippy cup that maybe he will like more than the bottles and sippy cups we already have. Probably not. But we bought some pear juice for when I'm ready to have him try, since I'm pretty sure we're going to have to bribe him to like sippy cups through using juice.
Then we went to visit Justin's Nona Anna at her old people's rez. It is like a 6 star hotel there. Very nice.
Then we went to my parents' for Noah to have a nap (which was a little over an hour long - also very nice). They weren't there, which was for the best because we had a lot more to do in town and it would have been harder for us to do if they were home. I have a hard time taking Noah away from them because they adore him so much.
After his nap we went to Tonnie Bogs (yeah that's not the real name of the store... I think it's only in Canada though) to buy some more sleepers (we don't have enough that fit him right now) and a snow suit. We got a 12 month snow suit, but there's no way it will fit him all winter. It fits him perfect right now. There was no 18 month suit though, unless we wanted to pay $70. Which I was definitely not doing. We'll just keep the tags on this one until we actually have to use it, and if we end up having to get an 18 month one it will be at a time when they're probably on sale.
Then we went to Justin's Nona Maria's, where Noah made $20. Nice.
I should mention that Noah cried for both of Justin's Nonas. We tried to just get him used to them from afar, and he was more than happy to do that. But once they tried to hold him he was crying within 30 seconds. We tried more than once. Too bad, so sad.
After Nona Maria's we went to Justin's parents' house. You may ask, "Why don't Justin's parents have their mothers over so that you can see everyone at once instead of going all over tarnation with a 7 month old?"
"Because," I will answer, "Italians are stupid."
Seriously. So stupid.
So we went to Justin's parents and Noah had a nap in the pack 'n play that they finally bought when he was 7 months old (another example of stupid Italians being stubborn, thinking that I should pack up my own pack 'n play that I use everyday everytime I want to "swing by" their house). It took over 20 minutes for me to get him to sleep because the people don't own a fan - WHO DOESN'T OWN A FAN? - and Noah has a difficult time falling asleep without white noise. My fault. I ended up having to nurse him to sleep. But he slept for an hour.
He woke up at like 5:45. So late!! Then he played for awhile with his Nana until we made the trek home at about 6:45. It was actually a pretty good visit. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I enjoyed myself.
So because he woke up so late, he didn't get to bed until 8:15pm, which is 9:15 on the old clock! And he was HAPPY as a clam all day long and all evening long. He showed everyone the tricks he mastered right after the last time he saw them (hands and knees crawling and pulling up to stand). Then tonight he was splashing up a storm in his bath (I was soaked) and didn't whine once the whole time. He usually has a period of whining during his bath these days, but not tonight. He was pretty hyper.
Now I'm home and I'm going to relax with my husband and eat ice cream. Ahhhhh.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Slow Down, Boy!
As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours.
Today Noah turned into a little daredevil and started pulling up (and trying to pull up) on anything and everything. Chair legs, baby gates, side of crib, side of pack 'n play, coffee tables... even this tiny flimsy little bucket we have that we keep little toys in. It's not even a foot tall and it's bendy and he's flipping it over and trying to stand up using it as leverage.
He's also pushing himself up on his hands and feet, like he's about to bear crawl. Literally I cannot even sit on my laptop while he plays on the ground anymore unless there's nothing anywhere near him that he can try and pull up on. He bonked his head more times than I can count, today.
Where did my little baby go? He's only 7 months and 1 week old, and he's crawling and pulling up independently... slow down, Noah!
At least I can hang on to his babyhood with the breastfeeding thing. Since his body clearly isn't ready for solids we're still breastfeeding exclusively with a bit of fruit before bed. If he was already eating 2 or 3 meals a day he would seem even older!!
He was so strange today. He was either really really cheerful and smiley or he was crying (or on the verge of crying). There was really no in between. And he spent pretty much the same amount of time at both ends of the spectrum. Tonight he was so fussy, was frantically gnawing on things, and kept bursting into tears during bath time (even though he shouldn't have been overtired). I thought maybe he might be having teething pain, so I gave him some Motrin before I nursed him to sleep. It was the easiest time I've ever had drugging him. Here's the trick: swaddle him, so he can't push your hand away, and squeeze his cheeks so he can't push the medicine out of his mouth. Worked like a charm!
All day when Noah wasn't being a cheerful stunt-baby, he wanted to be touching me, and was constantly crawling over to be picked up. Speaking of being picked up, this is something I forgot to mention in his 7 month post. Back at about 6 1/2 months he started to understand the word "Up" and actually act on it. It is so cute. I say "Up!" and he reaches up if he's sitting or lying down. If he's on all fours, he lays down on his belly and lifts his arms up to the sides and wiggles them around like he's doing the superman. It's too cute!
Between the haircut, the real crawling, the pulling up, the decreased number of naps (from 4 to 3), and the lengthened nap times (we're getting one or two naps that are an hour long each day), it feels like in the past week Noah has gone through a month's worth of changes.
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This post is all over the place, as is my brain. I haven't slept well the past couple of nights. Two nights ago I went to bed at 10, and Noah got up already at 1:00am. Instead of getting him right away I waited to see if he would fall back asleep on his own, since it was so early. I waited 15 minutes and then he started actually crying, so I tried to rock him. That made him cry harder, which meant he was hungry, so I nursed him. After that I couldn't fall back asleep until sometime after 4:30. Probably because I was "up" for longer than I would have been if I had just nursed Noah right away. Then he woke up again at 5:45 - for the DAY. So that was that.
Then last night I was restless until Noah got up at 4am. 4:00 is a great time for Noah to get up to eat, so I'm not complaining about that. But it didn't go so smoothly. He ate, but he was acting kind of weird while he was eating. He kept popping off with his eyes closed and then opening his mouth for more. Over and over. Finally I just gave him a soother instead and went to his room to rock him because he was acting weird. His eyes were closed but he was moving his head all over.
After about a minute of rocking him suddenly he explosively pukes. It shoots the soother out of his mouth, gets all over me, all over him, all over the blanket between his head and my arm. He didn't really seem affected by it at first. His eyes were still closed, so even though his shoulder was soaked I was thinking I would just put him back in his crib anyway.
Then he opened his eyes. All bets were off. I had to put him in his crib, get a new swaddler and head blanket and set them out on my bed, get out a new sleeper and set it up on the change table, then I had to unwrap Noah and undress him in his crib, which of course made him think it was playtime even though I wasn't talking and all the lights were off. So I changed his bum (since he was naked anyway), put on the new sleeper, swaddled him in the new swaddler (which was PINK - borrowed from baby Aubrey - since the other ones were in the wash), and tried to nurse him back to sleep again.
He wouldn't go back to sleep nursing, so I ended up rocking him and walking him for forever before he fell back asleep. So he got up at 4:00 and I didn't get back to bed until 5:10. And then Justin was being noisy so I eventually had to kick him out of the bed. And then at 6:30 Noah was up for the day.
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I've mentioned on here that for months and months now Noah has been crying several times at the beginning of every night and needing me to cuddle him back to sleep. Well, this seemed to get a bit worse after I rearranged his room. He used to just need a soother popped in, but after the rearrangement he often needed to actually be picked up. With the new arrangement the nightlight wasn't as covered as it was with the old arrangement, so his room was a bit brighter. They (whoever "they" are) say that you sleep best in pitch darkness because your body's cells can detect light. I agree with this, because I can't sleep worth beans when I'm not in pitch darkness.
So last night and tonight I have put a nightlight in the hallway, but turned off the nightlight in Noah's bedroom and then closed the door to his room so it's basically pitch dark in there. And both last night and tonight Noah has made little whimpers a couple of times, but it never turned into crying.
To be fair, he didn't need me for the beginning of the two nights before these past two nights, either. But he did actually cry during one of those nights. He just managed to fall back asleep on his own after a minute.
I wonder if when he opens his eyes a little bit and sees NOTHING, he thinks his eyes are still closed and his body thinks he's still sleeping so he just shuts up and doesn't get into a full cry? We'll have to see if this pattern continues. Stay tuned...
Today Noah turned into a little daredevil and started pulling up (and trying to pull up) on anything and everything. Chair legs, baby gates, side of crib, side of pack 'n play, coffee tables... even this tiny flimsy little bucket we have that we keep little toys in. It's not even a foot tall and it's bendy and he's flipping it over and trying to stand up using it as leverage.
He's also pushing himself up on his hands and feet, like he's about to bear crawl. Literally I cannot even sit on my laptop while he plays on the ground anymore unless there's nothing anywhere near him that he can try and pull up on. He bonked his head more times than I can count, today.
Where did my little baby go? He's only 7 months and 1 week old, and he's crawling and pulling up independently... slow down, Noah!
At least I can hang on to his babyhood with the breastfeeding thing. Since his body clearly isn't ready for solids we're still breastfeeding exclusively with a bit of fruit before bed. If he was already eating 2 or 3 meals a day he would seem even older!!
He was so strange today. He was either really really cheerful and smiley or he was crying (or on the verge of crying). There was really no in between. And he spent pretty much the same amount of time at both ends of the spectrum. Tonight he was so fussy, was frantically gnawing on things, and kept bursting into tears during bath time (even though he shouldn't have been overtired). I thought maybe he might be having teething pain, so I gave him some Motrin before I nursed him to sleep. It was the easiest time I've ever had drugging him. Here's the trick: swaddle him, so he can't push your hand away, and squeeze his cheeks so he can't push the medicine out of his mouth. Worked like a charm!
All day when Noah wasn't being a cheerful stunt-baby, he wanted to be touching me, and was constantly crawling over to be picked up. Speaking of being picked up, this is something I forgot to mention in his 7 month post. Back at about 6 1/2 months he started to understand the word "Up" and actually act on it. It is so cute. I say "Up!" and he reaches up if he's sitting or lying down. If he's on all fours, he lays down on his belly and lifts his arms up to the sides and wiggles them around like he's doing the superman. It's too cute!
Between the haircut, the real crawling, the pulling up, the decreased number of naps (from 4 to 3), and the lengthened nap times (we're getting one or two naps that are an hour long each day), it feels like in the past week Noah has gone through a month's worth of changes.
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This post is all over the place, as is my brain. I haven't slept well the past couple of nights. Two nights ago I went to bed at 10, and Noah got up already at 1:00am. Instead of getting him right away I waited to see if he would fall back asleep on his own, since it was so early. I waited 15 minutes and then he started actually crying, so I tried to rock him. That made him cry harder, which meant he was hungry, so I nursed him. After that I couldn't fall back asleep until sometime after 4:30. Probably because I was "up" for longer than I would have been if I had just nursed Noah right away. Then he woke up again at 5:45 - for the DAY. So that was that.
Then last night I was restless until Noah got up at 4am. 4:00 is a great time for Noah to get up to eat, so I'm not complaining about that. But it didn't go so smoothly. He ate, but he was acting kind of weird while he was eating. He kept popping off with his eyes closed and then opening his mouth for more. Over and over. Finally I just gave him a soother instead and went to his room to rock him because he was acting weird. His eyes were closed but he was moving his head all over.
After about a minute of rocking him suddenly he explosively pukes. It shoots the soother out of his mouth, gets all over me, all over him, all over the blanket between his head and my arm. He didn't really seem affected by it at first. His eyes were still closed, so even though his shoulder was soaked I was thinking I would just put him back in his crib anyway.
Then he opened his eyes. All bets were off. I had to put him in his crib, get a new swaddler and head blanket and set them out on my bed, get out a new sleeper and set it up on the change table, then I had to unwrap Noah and undress him in his crib, which of course made him think it was playtime even though I wasn't talking and all the lights were off. So I changed his bum (since he was naked anyway), put on the new sleeper, swaddled him in the new swaddler (which was PINK - borrowed from baby Aubrey - since the other ones were in the wash), and tried to nurse him back to sleep again.
He wouldn't go back to sleep nursing, so I ended up rocking him and walking him for forever before he fell back asleep. So he got up at 4:00 and I didn't get back to bed until 5:10. And then Justin was being noisy so I eventually had to kick him out of the bed. And then at 6:30 Noah was up for the day.
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I've mentioned on here that for months and months now Noah has been crying several times at the beginning of every night and needing me to cuddle him back to sleep. Well, this seemed to get a bit worse after I rearranged his room. He used to just need a soother popped in, but after the rearrangement he often needed to actually be picked up. With the new arrangement the nightlight wasn't as covered as it was with the old arrangement, so his room was a bit brighter. They (whoever "they" are) say that you sleep best in pitch darkness because your body's cells can detect light. I agree with this, because I can't sleep worth beans when I'm not in pitch darkness.
So last night and tonight I have put a nightlight in the hallway, but turned off the nightlight in Noah's bedroom and then closed the door to his room so it's basically pitch dark in there. And both last night and tonight Noah has made little whimpers a couple of times, but it never turned into crying.
To be fair, he didn't need me for the beginning of the two nights before these past two nights, either. But he did actually cry during one of those nights. He just managed to fall back asleep on his own after a minute.
I wonder if when he opens his eyes a little bit and sees NOTHING, he thinks his eyes are still closed and his body thinks he's still sleeping so he just shuts up and doesn't get into a full cry? We'll have to see if this pattern continues. Stay tuned...
Sunday, October 24, 2010
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.
-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.
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