Dearest 8 Month Old

Sep2

So…You are CRAWLING!! (Properly!!) After a couple of months of watching you like a hawk to try to capture that first moment, you obviously decided to do it when I was distracted for a second and crawled straight past me before I started squealing with excitement, which then made you start crying. I need to work on that. Sorry.

So, umm, we learned you can’t be placed on the bed anymore whilst i make your feed because you’ll just flip over and merrily crawl into the dark. Unfortunately you fell off and banged your nose. Cue blood and a panicked rush to A&E. Thankfully you were ok. I knew you were fine when you got excited pulling at the doctors stethoscope. I glued you to my hip for a few days after that!

Other things you’ve been doing this month…

- Pulling yourself up holding the sofa. Then getting excited, letting go and falling flat on your back. If you could learn to fall on your bum quite quickly then that would be great for both of is.

- I’m sure this has spurred a fresh batch of grey hairs to make an appearance. In my fringe! Again!!

- You had your first big family do at your granddads house last week and you loved it! I thought you might bawl at so much commotion but you loved all the attention and kept playing your “tilt head from side to side” game with your 7 year old uncle. People absolutely adore this about you usually and will copy you to egg you on. You did it so much though that the poor lad got bored and eventually walked off. You looked a bit confused.

- You’ve started throwing ALL your food on the floor for some reason. Then you try to get out of your high chair to get it again. I presume so you can eat it… Or possibly just to chuck it again. What’s that about? I keep finding stuff everywhere!

- After weeks of multiple wake ups you did a very surprising thing.. You slept till 6.30am. I couldn’t believe it!! I didn’t think that day would ever come. Whilst I enjoy the night feeds immensely, if you wanted to drop them all completely then that would be grand, I mean, fine.

Until next time baby!! Mwah!

Napping and Yapping…Do it for Mamama!

Jul16

These days it feels like Baby Boy’s routine is all about eating and sleeping. Oh and pooing, of course. Can’t forget the pooing. For a baby that has never liked milk I was expecting similar battles when he started weaning. By battles I mean chasing him around with a bottle, waving toys in front of him as a means of distraction and sometimes sitting next to him putting it to his lips every minute or so, literally. He’s perfected the art of pushing it away at the speed of lightning and clamping his mouth firmly shut! To my utter surprise (and deep joy), he loves eating and unless he gets bored, he will obediently wolf it down. He even sleeps during the day. 2 hours at a time. This is a baby who hasn’t napped properly since he was born. So napping in the day has come as a blissful blessing. The first time he did it i thought it was because he’d had a rough night. After a week i started getting very excited at the thought of 2 whole hours where i could…do…stuff. Wow.

I don’t know how long it’ll last and apparently there is something called “8 month sleep regression”??!! What the! Where does this stuff come from?? Why? Why?? Is it to remind mummies of the sleepless night fun they were missing? Maybe (hopefully!!), Baby Boy will miss that little memo and not do it. Well, you know. Wishful thinking. Hmm.

In other news, on Thursday, during one of the many meal times, baby had gone into “whinge mode” which is usually spurred by my “pushy-mum-have-one-more-spoon-darling-its-so-Yummmmm!” baby started babbling. This is very new and there are two types at the moment. 1 is happy squealing, face slapping and using dummy as weapon. The other is frowning and annoyed gibberish. This particular meal time, Baby Boy had had quite enough and was whinging, arms outstretched, asking to be picked up. The fact his daddy was home doesn’t help. Anytime daddy is in sight, everything is forgotten and his little
eyes could light up the entire house, he is that delighted. This meant Baby Boys attention was fixated on daddy and his patience was running thin. As his whinging was about to crescendo into full on crying he started babbling “mamamama”. Yes he said mama!! Excitedly, I pointed out to Daddy dearest baby’s “first word”. Daddy dearest attempted to raise a feeble argument through girlie giggles about how it’s not really a word (Puh!) but promptly plonked himself next to me on the floor and started recording a food covered baby, waiting for him to repeat it. Baby Boy was amused for about a second before realising he wasn’t going to be picked up and raised the grumpiness up a level and firmly denying us joys of more cute babbling. We didn’t need to wait too long. His favourite time “talking” is now 5 -6am. He’s still not said mama again though. And it does so count as a word!

Silent Sunday – 09/07/2011

Jul9

Tears, Tantrums and The Baby

Jul7

The last couple of weeks have been slightly strange. Ok, not strange. More like, bloody exhausting. A fresh wave of sleepless nights is visiting our household which I think I owe to the lovely age of “teething” we now seem to have entered. Coupled with the transition of getting the baby to sleep in his cot rather than the (3rd borrowed) basket that he has now grown out of, it has been tiring to say the least. It felt like I had a new-born again and, unfortunately, unlike the first lot of sleepless nights which I got through probably just on sheer baby euphoria, on this second wave I felt like I was starting to lose my patience a bit and go bonkers. Slowly.

Baby boy is now 6 months old and doesn’t sleep through yet. I know this is normal for a lot of babies so I’m not really worried and have become used to 1- 2 wake ups a night. This particular wave of sleepless nights though seemed to come from the depths of sleepless nights hell and meant I was regularly waking up about 4 times a night to provide feeds, cuddles, transfers back to cot, waiting at base of cot, waiting outside baby’s bedroom door, more feeds, cuddles, and so forth.

After about day 3 of sleepless hell, the lack of sleep was causing me to become a grumpy, stomping stroppy 5 year old type mooching about the house, trying hard to hold onto lunch dates / inkling of a social life / seeing other adults before 6pm (when the OH gets home from work). In turn, my moods were swinging from utterly weepy to utterly uber shouty bitch. Of course all of which was being directed to the Dear Husband. (“What do you mean you’re going to football / Do you never think maybe *I* might want to have a social life too??”). The OHs reaction to all of this is usually stunned silence or “don’t cry, calm down”. I’m not sure anyones told him that the only response to that is “What?! Am I not calm!??. I am calm! Dont tell me to calm down..!!” etc. On one particularly bad day, post bad night, I was meant to drive to a friend’s house about 15 minutes away and all I could think about was how tired I was. So after some huffing and puffing I eventually wailed that I was “sooo tired!”

OH: “Why don’t you have a nap then?”

Me: “Because I want to go oooout!”

OH: “Oh, I thought you were tired?”

Me: “I want to do boooooth!”

OH “Shall I drive you?”

Me: “Nooo, its meant to be a girlie day”….[Insert more weepy whining here]

(Yes, there is something about lack of sleep that brings out the whining a bit extremely).

After about Day 8 of sleepless nights hell, the “teething” pain seemed to subside without any kind of visible result. Although i’ve realised that most unknown pains or cause for crankiness are now always classed as “must be teething”. This week Baby Boy is also taking to the cot which is a massive relief. Not sure where we would have found yet another basket for him to sleep in that was actually big enough and wide enough for his little river-dance-in-his-sleep legs. We back to the “normal” amount of wake ups a night. This week we (umm.. *I*) have had no tantrums. So far. But its Thursday already. That’s definitely good!

Long live 1 – 2 wake ups a night (for now. Sleeping through is very good too. Just for info).

Listography – Things I want to do this Summer

Jul5

This week the theme for the Listography is Things I want to do this Summer, guest hosted by the Reluctant Housedad whilst Kate Takes 5 takes a break.

There are LOADS of things I would love to do this summer and usually you’d need to tie me down to the sofa to keep me still. I’m not someone that can sit indoors much. Since baby has come along though, things have had to change a teeny bit. Like being home for his naps. And feeds and other things that basically mean you need to be indoors somewhere. Soooo…here goes:

1. Look after baby and watch him grow.

This summer Baby Boy will be going through some of his major milestones, hopefully, as he learns how to sit up properly, unaided and makes a complete mess of himself discovering all the messy and yummy foods out there. Will he learn to crawl soon? Will he pull himself up? Is he going to cut those bloody teeth quickly? Is he ever going to sleep through? I wonder if he’ll say Mama (oh pleeeease!) or Dada first. Basically, tope of my list is to wake up each day with baby, after hopefully some decent sleep, and watch my baby grow in all sorts of amazingly perfect and utterly cute ways.

2. Go on Holiday…

Somewhere…Anywhere. It just needs to be a nice break away. I initially started off with the idea of a long haul flight with baby. That would not be crazy right? Some nice hot sun, all his baby stuff packed; fully prepared. The more I thought about it the more (I stress, reluctantly) decided it might be wiser to holiday closer to home. So Europe? Somewhere very modern where baby facilities are plentiful and the overall hotel is family friendly. Not such a long flight. Hmmm…but what if? So now we are thinking about a holiday somewhere in the UK. Where baby facilities will be plentiful. Maybe in August or September sometime.

3. Visit Witches

I live in an area that has a history of Witches. Ever heard of the Pendle Witches? In the 1600′s, during the reign of James 1, black magic and witchcraft were the most heinous crimes of the time and amongst those tried were a bunch of women from the Pendle area. They were tried and hung for their alleged evil ways and ever since, the area has become famous as the home of the Pendle Witches. There is a Witches trail that is still in existence and even a little shop dedicated to all things witchery called Witches Galore. I keep meaning to visit the shop and check out the little town of Newchurch and never get around to it. It is a stones throw from where I live and is something I will be going to this summer.

4. Attend the annual Family reunion.

We always have one BIG family function in the summer. Usually it consists of a BIG sit down meal and a massive amount of organised chaos. It’ll consist of about 12 adults (my parents age), their combined total of 28 children (including moi!), 8 children under the age of 16 and 6 babies / toddlers (including Baby Boy). That equals a hell of a lot of noise.

5. Clean the Garage.

Well, more, direct the hubby to clean the garage. Imagine a clean garage with wall to wall storage areas and a place you can store all your spare luggage and never-ending of shoes. All neatly arranged into shoe racks. On the opposite wall there are utility cupboards for all of hubby’s DIY junk. And of course, the car is parked neatly in the middle of all of that. Now imagine the complete opposite; that’s our garage. Filled from bottom to top with all manner of junk, cardboard boxes and stuff we’re not even sure belongs to us. The door just about shuts if you manage to shove stuff in far enough. It does really need a good clean. But its been two years. And counting.

Silent Sunday – 03/07/2011

Jul2

How Much Is Enough?

Jun24

I think I’m starting to get a bit confused with the “building up” of food and drink for the baby. Maybe its information overload or worrying unecessarily but I think I may be after some advice from other parents out there.

The reason for my puzzled state goes something like this. My, now 6 month old, baby boy has never been fantastic on milk and its always been a bit of a challenge to make him drink all his bottles. I think on a GOOD day he manages about 20oz. On a NORMAL day this can range between 15 – 20 oz. The Health visitors have never seen it as a problem, as he is following a line on his growth chart and is consistent in his growth pattern. So…not the best milk drinker, but so far, so ok.

Now. Since food has been introduced it is becoming even more difficult to get him to drink the “required” 20oz a day. Apparently that is what the guidelines say. And apparently after 6 months this becomes even more important due to depleting baby iron reserves. At the moment he us having 2 meals comfortably a day and in the next month or so I should be building up to a 3rd meal.

My worry is that milk is just going to get pushed out even more than it is doing now. Having scrutinised a few suggested baby meal planners it looks like baby should be having about 4 bottles and 3 meals a day. That sounds like a heck of a lot of food and drink to give to my little one even in a couple of months time. And for one who seems to have a dislike of milk anyway its like the perfect little “get out of milk, free” card for him. He loves food and wolfs it down. It just the milk he doesnt seem keen on…or the bottle? Or the brand of formula? Or…hmmm, I don’t know what.

At the moment I’m thinking I’d like to stick to two meals a day so that the 3rd ”meal” could then be a bottle of milk. Or maybe substitute with something like a yoghurt or milk based pudding. Have other parents done this? Does it work? Will it give him enough of what he needs to keep going/growing/thriving? Or should I be giving him smaller portions of food and that way he has to drink more milk?

I would love to hear what other parents are doing / have experienced. Do people out there have milk-haters, food lovers? Did milk get crowded out of your little ones diet earlier than you wanted? Did you sneak it in every other which way instead? Basically, as you can see, I am a bit… ok…a LOT confused.

Blimmin ‘Eck – 6 months!!

Jun17

So yesterday I came home with you in my arms, a teeny tiny bundle all lost in the baby grow that was too big for you, and big wide eyes silently soaking up the brand new world. And in what feels like a few weeks, you’re a 6 month old!! A cheeky little 6 month old at that!!

This month….

1. You now know your name. You whip your head around, all ears, as soon as someone calls you. And we call you a lot! Just to watch you all alert. I know it’s a bit mean. Hehe, sorry!

2. You have learned to jump like a little jack in the box in the jumperoo. But you will occasionally stand so poised you remind me of a little ballet dancer. Other times you look like you’re doing a little jig.

3. You can now scream from about 7am till 8pm in the evening. Blimey, it isn’t half deafening. You don’t seem to tire of it at all! Whilst it’s cute (well, ok not so much anymore), I won’t miss this phase when it’s over!

4. You can give hugs!! (hurrah hurrah!!). It’s not really a full blown proper hug. More, you grab my face and either burrow your own into it, or you try to bite my cheek, complete with a generous layer of drool. I class it as a hug. Muslins are good!

5. You’ve started enjoying fruit, phew. I did worry a bit at first and had visions of you living off veg (mainly the smelly stuff!) and porridge but I think we’re both getting there! Let’s try a bit of baby led weaning next month.

6. You love the theme tune of This Morning. It has a similar effect as saying your name. You whip your head around and will stare happily at the TV and then go about your way when it’s finished. I haven’t noticed you do it to anything else yet but I’m sure it’ll happen.

7. You love being picked up. By anyone! A smile flashed in your direction and you’re anyones.

8. Having said that though you constantly turn around to check your Daddy or I are in the same room. Else a little nervous laughter comes out. Shortly followed by “get me out of here” whinging.

9. My manager came to visit you this month and you spent the whole time pulling his hair, smacking his face and tugging at his shirt. Thank god he has 3 boys of his own. He loved playing with you. I think!

10. You can now put your dummy in your mouth perfectly. The HV said once you could do that you’d be ready for BLW. Hmmm, so next month is going to be interesting!