Isaiah is 14 Months Old!

Who am I kidding, I am not even a "blogger" anymore.  I just don't have or make the time.  However, I don't want Isaiah's baby/toddler/childhood to pass by without me recording ANYTHING.  Even if it's just every couple of months.

So, at 14 months old, Isaiah...

-Weighs 23lbs, which is about 65th percentile.

-Is 30 inches tall, which is apparently 25th percentile.... I knew he was a shorty!  Justin is in denial.

-Has 8 teeth - he just got 2 teeth (the two on the bottom to complete the set of four in the middle) this past month after 2 or 3 months of no new teeth.

-Started talking at 13.5 months old, just like Noah.  He's been saying Dada for a long long time, but he said it even when not referring to Justin, so I don't count that so much.  His first official word was "more" (more food, of course), followed by Mama, no (nah), and Noah (Nah-Nah).

-He also started signing to nurse on the same day he said his first word.

-He actually eats now.  When he turned one he liked the tastes of things but never actually swallowed anything.  He swallows things now.  He doesn't eat A LOT - maybe 3-5% of his nutrition is from solids, the rest from breastmilk - but it's an increase.  He started drinking water from straws and sippy cups, too.

-He still sleeps not so great.  Up 4-8 times a night.

-He naps well.  He went to one nap right at 12 months and that one nap is anywhere from 1 to 2.5 hours long.  Generally it's about an hour and a half.

-He was walking the week before his first birthday, and within about a week was walking totally full time.  He never crawls anymore... *tear*... crawling babies are so adorable.

-He wears 18 month pajamas and 24 month pants and shirts.  He's not as tall as Noah was, and he could fit into 18 month shirts, but I like them to be a little bigger so they don't ride up when he gets picked up.  All our 18 month pants are too short for him though, and the 24 month pants aren't TOO long... If we're going outside I cuff them, but he's not tripping over them or anything.

-This is random, but something I want to remember - He loves to sit on Noah's potties.  LOVES it.  He just sits there and grins, then stands up, sits back down, stands up, sits back down.  It's hilarious.

-He gets into everything.  Just like Noah did.  But he does something Noah never did: When I tell him "No", he says "NAAAHH!"  back at me in this kind of throaty voice.  It's quite funny.  I'm not sure what age that will stop being funny at. haha

-He is such a little cuddle bug.  We still babywear for several hours a day.  We all love the cuddles :)

-He LOVES Noah, and Noah loves him.  The two of them are as best of friends as brothers can be when they're 2.5 years apart.

Can I just take a moment to revel in the fact that It's the 22nd of the month, Isaiah's actual 14 month birthday, and I'm ACTUALLY posting this on the correct day??

I should really post more often.  Life is so full and it's just passing us by with no record of it.  Sigh.

Isaiah is ONE!

Isaiah turned one on September 22!  It's so strange how it feels like he was just born, but at the same time it feels like he's always been a part of our family.  Since I haven't posted in forever this is going to be a mash up of what he's like now and what's been going on with him in the past few months.

At one year old...

-Isaiah weighs 21.6 lbs (weighed on our digital scale).

-He's only 29.5 inches tall, but that was with him standing up and I'm sure he wasn't totally straight, so it's possible he's a little taller.  Still, that's 2 inches shorter than Noah was at this same age.

-His head is 19 inches around, which I believe is exactly what they hope a child's head circumference is at 12 months old.

-He finally got teeth around.. eek, I'm kind of forgetting here.  Okay I just checked pictures and it was around 9.5 months.  I know it was definitely after we moved, and we moved when he was 9 months and one week old.  

-He is not a good teether.  With Noah we hardly ever knew he was teething.  Seriously, even molars, they just appeared.  No distress, no nothing.  With Isaiah?  His gums swell and bruise, he gets blood blisters where the tooth is trying to come through... He even had a hanging flap of skin when his top left tooth was cutting.  It was horrid.  And of course he's cranky from all that - who wouldn't be?  

-He got 6 teeth pretty much one right after the other between about 9.5 and 10 months - the top four and the bottom two.  He hasn't gotten any since, but he's started teething again just int he past week.  His bottom lateral incisors and his top cuspids seem to be on the move.  I can't tell what will be first. 

-Oddly, his first tooth was the top left lateral incisor (I had to look up what it was called... it's the tooth next to the top middle teeth). 

-He started walking just before his birthday.  Literally, in the week leading up to the big day it was like he knew it was coming and was determined to be "walking" before he turned 1.  I thought it would happen after his birthday but he suddenly made big leaps and bounds in that one week, and he is a walker!  He probably spends equal amount of time walking and crawling right now, but each day he walks more and more, and he really enjoys himself while he's doing it.  You should see the little stinker smile he has the whole time he's toddling around.

-He doesn't eat ANYTHING.  He is still exclusively breastfed.  We do baby led weaning and started giving him things to taste at about 9.5 months.  This is how that went:

This was actually his very first taste of something and it was strawberry.  He kept licking it and then making lemon-tasting type faces.  It was very amusing.  In general he really enjoys tasting things, but he will not swallow anything unless it's by accident (and then he chokes and gags it down).  I don't do the puree thing but I have tried giving him pureed food a time or two, and while he's fine with tasting it, he pushes it right back out of his mouth.  It actually seems that he hasn't lost the tongue-thrust reflex yet.

-He also doesn't drink from a cup or bottle or anything.  I am literally his only source of nutrition.  But hey, he more than tripled his birth weight and he is a really healthy baby (waaaay healthier than Noah as a baby) who has only been sick 3 or 4 times in his year of life (pretty sure Noah was sick like 13 times in his first year of life).  So there you go.

-After learning that breastfeeding is his only source of nutrition, it probably doesn't surprise anyone that he's up 3-6 times each night nursing.  Blaaah.  One day this will all be a distant memory...

-We cosleep, of course.

-We still babywear for hours each day.  Isaiah has finally been in a stroller (once) when Noah wanted him to go in one.  He thought it was like an amusement park ride and shrieked and cried every time we stopped moving.  He did the same thing when I took him and Noah on a wagon ride.  And the few times I've sat him in a grocery cart next to Noah (just for a short time during the grocery trip because Noah was asking for Isaiah to be next to him), he's gotten so hyper and excited.  It's funny how these things are novel experiences for him.

-Isaiah's favourite toy is... anything Noah is playing with.  And vice versa.  Really though, Isaiah really likes anything big that he can push around.  Walkers, bikes, ride ons, brooms, whatever.

Okay, it's 9pm and I have a doozy of a cold (I basically haven't been sick since Christmas so I shouldn't complain), so I want to go to bed.  First, a few pictures of the cutie...

9.5 months:

This is on his 10 month "birthday"... I can see 5 of his 6 teeth, which is how I knew he got them all between 9.5 and 10 months.  Otherwise I honestly wouldn't have remembered.

Just a few days before he turned 11 months old:

About a week before turning one:

Hahaha....

The day before his birthday... he keeps climbing in the warming drawer in my stove!

(don't mind the ugly floor, our kitchen is finally getting reno'd this month!)

Isaiah's 1st Birthday!!:

I liked the little smile he had once he realized what this present was:

"Noah, back off!"

Isaiah is 8 Months Old

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

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

So, at 8 months old...

-Isaiah weighs 19.5 lbs.

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

-His head circumference is 18.25 inches.

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

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

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

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

-He is pulling up to stand.

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

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

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

-He's doing pretty well in the car.

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

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

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

Isaiah is 7 (and a half) Months Old

I'm so so behind on writing this since Isaiah turned 7 months on April 22 and it's not May 6.  But I still have to write a few things. This is not his 7.5 month update, though, it will only be up until he turned 7 months.

So, at 7 months old...

-Isaiah weighed 19lbs

-He was about 28.75 inches long

-Still no teeth... I never would have guessed he would still have no teeth at 7 months since he started teething at 4 weeks old.

-Still exclusively breastfed with no bottles and no solids.

-I stopped bathing him in the sink right at 7 months old when he started literally trying to climb out.

-We switched to using all fitteds and wool covers (all sustainablebabyish) around 6 or 6.5 months.  He'd had red, raw chafe marks on his chunky thighs from his PUL covers that would NOT go away.  It was an expensive switch, but a fun one!  And the new diapering system is sooooo cozy for him.

-Still in the awkward place between 2 and 3 naps, but hopefully moving closer to 2.

-He is army crawling.  Still not cross crawling, even though he's been pushing up on his hands and knees and rocking since he turned 5 months old.

-He's a great sitter, moves from sitting up to laying down fairly easily, and looks like he's starting to try and figure out how to get from laying down to sitting up on his own.

-He is a lot more content to stay in one spot than Noah was.  Maybe it's because I babywear all the time so he gets carried around the house constantly, seeing different things, so when I do put him down he is fine staying within the same area.  Noah was already into everything all the time at this age, crawling through the whole house.  Isaiah stays in the play area when I put him there.

-We cosleep, and honestly sleep is not wonderful for him lately, but still within the range of what is biologically normal.  He wakes up to nurse 2 or 3 times a night, lately it's usually 3 times. I would be at my wits end without cosleeping.  I'm going to figure out how to nurse him while laying down more easily.  At this point it's too hard to get positioned properly, so I might as well sit up to do it (and that's what I do).  But sometimes I'm sooo tired that I would really like to be lying down with my eyes closed.  It's hard to do this properly when we're sleeping on different mattresses though.

-He's okay in the car and has fallen asleep in it a couple of times when it was nap time for him.  Unfortunately, though, he won't fall asleep in the car without crying for awhile first.

-We still babywearing all the time.  I'm still a carrier-churning maniac, and right now I think I have 30.

Here are some pictures from right around when he turned 7 months old... I am not neglecting my child or my attention to his milestones, development, and picture taking.... I'm just neglecting my blog!

First bath in the big tub:

Noah had to join!:

He plays in his exersaucer beside the kitchen table while we eat dinner:

Noah always did this too:

Isaiah is 6 Months Old

9 days late... oops.

-Isaiah is about 18.5 lbs.

-He is 28 inches.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-He loves Noah!

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

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

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

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

Happy baby! 

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

Isaiah is 5 Months Old!

This is 5 days late... does it count that I've been thinking about it since before he turned 5 months?

-Isaiah is a little over 17 lbs (Weighed naked on our digital scale he was 17.2 lbs on his 5 month birthday).

-He is 27.25 inches tall and in 9 month clothing.  He's grown almost 2 inches in the past month and can't squeeze into 6 month at all anymore.

-His head circumference is about 17 inches.

-Same as last month, he is on the medium rise setting on his diapers. Even though we have hundreds of diapers (I'm slowly selling off the pocket diapers that there is no chance of me using anymore), we exclusively use Flip covers with various inserts (stay dry, organic cotton, Thirsties inserts, flats, or prefolds) during the day, with a few bumGenius Freetimes thrown in, mostly for Daddy. At night he wears an sbish snapless fitted (with both doublers) with a Blueberry one size cover with aplix. The rise on the cover is completely unsnapped to fit over the fitted.

-He still has those two bottom teeth playing peekaboo, and his bottom gums are swelling out in other areas, so I think some of his other teeth are moving around.  The poor baby's stubborn teeth just won't poke all the way through!

-He has no bottles ever, nor will he ever have one unless something horrible happens, like me ending up in the hospital on my deathbed unable to breastfeed.

-We've been cosleeping for over a month, and we love it.  He sleeps like an infant is supposed to - getting up to nurse anywhere from 1 to 3 times in the night.  He can fall asleep if I put him down when he's awake, as long as he's calm and relaxed.  I lie there with him, though.

-Overall he sleeps about 11.5-12 hours at night, and goes to bed between 7 and 8, depending on when he woke up from his final nap - right now it's usually closer to 7.

-Isaiah doesn't nap in a crib anymore, just on me while I wear him (which is what we're doing right now).  His naps are usually 30-40 minutes, but occasionally we get one around an hour long.

-He is down to 3 naps a day, which isn't a lot of napping time considering his naps are usually only 30-40 minutes long, but it seems to be all he needs.  Apparently I breed children who need freakishly short naps.

-He still sleeps on his tummy, which I am less nervous about now that we cosleep.

-Isaiah is THE happiest baby I have ever met.  His constant enormous smile makes us all smile constantly, too.  I love his shrieks and giggles and how he "talks" to us.  He has such an awesome personality.

-He's getting very good at grabbing things and putting them in his mouth.

-He rolled over for the first time at 15 months (front to back), and didn't do it again until 19 weeks when he started going both ways.  Then he didn't really do it much until the week before he turned 5 months.  Now he's just like Noah was at the same age - if you lay him down on his back he will immediately roll onto his front.

-He is friendly to people and smiles at them when they talk to and smile at him, but he's very selective about who he wants to hold him.  He is obviously awesome with me, good with Justin, good with my mom or sister, but kind of awful with my inlaws.  He likes them from afar, but if they even start talking about holding him he gets a scared look on his face and will start crying.  So weird.

-He really likes his Dad, I think maybe more than Noah did when he was this age, but my memory might be skewed because once Noah was about 6 or 7 months (and for a long time after that) he had a HUGE preference for me, and it sometimes seemed like he didn't even like his Dad (which was sad and  ridiculous because Justin is the world's greatest Dad!)

-He can sit independently for up to 15 seconds if he's interested in balancing himself properly.  He is nowhere near mastering this, but I have no doubt that by 6 months he'll be sitting independently.

-He loves Noah!

-We still babywear all the time, which makes us all very happy, and our carrier stash continues to grow. I've sold a ton of carriers, but I'm pretty sure I have about 25 right now.  I honestly lost track, and I need to do inventory.

-Evenings are no longer witching hours for Isaiah.  He's pretty happy, the only difference is that if he is tired, he NEEDS to be with me.  If Justin is carrying him around while I get stuff ready for bed he will start to WAIL, and then stop as soon as I take him.  We can hold this off for a bit if Justin follows me around while I get stuff ready, but he HAS to see me. It's only when he's feeling tired, but as soon as I take him he can often be perfectly happy for another half hour before starting bedtime routine.  We find it rather amusing.

-He still has all his baths in the kitchen sink because it's easier for me.

Picture time!

The day he turned 5 months!  This was not a planned "photo shoot", he just happened to be naked on my bedroom floor:

I'm currently selling this wrap: 

Brothers:

I did not tell Noah to put him arms around Isaiah... that's all him!

Because he's teething he is ALWAYS chewing on his tongue!  I think it's cute :)

LOVE this kid!