February 2009 Archive
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February 8, 2009
TLG - Snapshot
TLG at 7.5 MonthsI want to try to jot down some notes about TheLittleGuy before another few weeks or months go by. He's growing and changing very fast and I'm afraid if I don't write some of this down I'll forget it all as we move on to the next phase. The changes happen incrementally day-by-day, but then 2 weeks will go by and we'll all of a sudden realize he's got a whole new pattern or skill.
I know - this is unremarkable in that it's all normal baby stuff. Nevertheless, he's our only baby, so we want to try to mention the notable baby things that he does.
So, here's what things are like right now, at the beginning of February 2009. He's 7.5 (well, by the time I post this, now 7.75) months old.
He has 8 visible teeth, four on the bottom (which came through first) and four on the top, which all showed up within just a few days of each other.
He is not crawling yet. But he is mobilizing around and does a little bit of a commando-crawl (pulling himself forward with his arms). Just today we watched him figure out how to get from laying on his tummy to sitting.
He still is primarily on breastmilk for food, but he eats cereal (rice +/or oat) + [something]) in the morning and at night. The [something] is often carrots, but we've also tried peas, apple, pears, sweet potato, banana, prunes, and avocado. We think we'll have him start doing a meal with cereal at daycare soon - it may eventually decrease how much I have to pump during the day. We let him play with sippy cups of water and sometimes he drinks from them, but not a whole lot.
He's not really into finger foods much yet, although we'll keep trying.
His sleep pattern is mixed right now. He got sick in mid-December and has had a runny nose and phlegmy cough since. Between that, the 5 teeth that came through in January, and developmental stuff (rolling, starting to pull up, working on crawling) his sleep has been a bit fitful. He usually goes to sleep around 6:30 or 7 after a bath, rubdown, story, and nursing, but may wake just once or twice or several times before getting up for good around 7 or 8 in the morning.
Some of his favorite toys right now include: red plastic bat, O-ball, teddy bears, blue monkey, blue puppy, cookie tin, tambourine, crinkly snake/dragon, leap frog music toy, green mirror, jacob's ladder blocks, and lamaze jingly block toy.
Some of his favorite books right now include: Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you See?, Snuggle Puppy, Moo Ba LaLaLa, A to Z, Hush Little Ones, Polar Bear Polar Bear What do you Hear?
He really likes to stretch his arms out and hug his Dad. He also really likes the 'jump jump jumping bean!' routine that we learned in his baby yoga class.
He likes his bathtime and the Sandra Boynton bathtime book a lot.
He's pretty worn out after a day at 'school' and comes home, plays for a little bit, has some cereal + [something], and then is ready for his bedtime routine. So far he's not the kind of kid who fights sleep, but rather makes it quite clear that he just wants to go to bed! I hope this attitude persists, actually.
We just discovered that he is able to turn his tongue sideways (he's using it to check out all his new teeth). His father can do that, but I can't. We can both curl our tongues, so we expect that TLG can, too, but haven't seen him try that yet.
He likes to watch the cats if they are in view and sometimes talks to them as they walk by.
He only has a few consonants - Mah, Buh, and sometimes Uh-vah! But there is lots of inflection in his babbling sometimes. We're convinced he tried to sing along to Snuggle Puppy once and that we heard him say 'Uh-oh' at an appropriate moment.
When we take him out and about he likes to watch people and will sometimes pick someone and stare at them until they notice him and (he hopes) smile at him.
He doesn't really show many signs of stranger anxiety yet, but he does fuss a bit when we pick him up from school if we don't pick him up right away. Our m.o. is to try to sneak by him and gather up all of his stuff before he sees us, but that rarely works.
He can sit in high chairs at restaurants and can last through a casual meal (say at Noodles or IHOP or Chipotle something like that), but we haven't tried a place where we couldn't get out easily if we had to.
He laughs a lot at PeekABoo with Dad and when I nom-nom his tummy and sides. He likes to pull my face towards his using my hair and slobber on, er, kiss, me. He really likes to play with his Dad's baseball caps.
He is still a giant among babies - bigger than most of the kids in his room, although one of the youngest there. He weighs more than 25 pounds and is now too tall for his exersaucers (his feet go flat, even at the highest setting). His 18-month onesies are starting to be too small (too short in the torso), so we just picked up some 24-month onesies for him today.
The next few months up until his first birthday should bring several more break-throughs and milestones. He's my little man - so much fun to hang around with! We can't wait to see what he does next.
Here's a pic from a week or two ago. A bunch more pics from month 8 are here.
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