Timothy's Seventh Month

Wow, our little guy has changed so much, and so quickly lately! He's getting so big, and seeming less like a baby. He's growing up way too fast!

He's army crawling around like crazy, getting into all kinds of trouble. We had to set up the play yard to go around his play gym in the living room so that he could be safely contained while I'm cooking. I used to be able to just leave him, and it took him a while to roll too far from the play gym. Not any more! He can scoot so quickly, and seems magnetically drawn to things like electrical cords, the books on the bookcase, the trash can... we don't keep him "fenced in" all the time, when we're able to monitor him we open up the play yard and just keep our eye on him. He must be watched constantly!

Making a mess on the new rug

Just a couple of months ago I bought a cushioned corner guard to go on our fireplace, because Timothy's play area is right next to it, and I didn't want him to roll over and bump his head on the fireplace. As I was sticking the strips to the fireplace, I was thinking about how he would pull them off one day, but I though it would be at least a year! He pulled one strip partly off this month, and started chewing it. So I went out and bought a rug to go over the fireplace instead. 

Tooth wise, he's added his two top teeth! Still waiting on the other bottom tooth, but I think that one's finally starting to erupt this week. I find it quite amusing that he got one bottom tooth, and then went on to top teeth instead of getting the second bottom tooth! Gotta buck the trends.

His growth spurt at the beginning of this month threw my milk supply a little bit of a loop, so the sleeping through the night stuff had to take a break. He's gone back to waking up once a night, and if he doesn't wake up on his own, I usually wake up anyway and just go feed him. He doesn't even completely wake up, and it's so much easier on me than basically having 12 hours off feeding, and then 12 hours on. Maybe closer to his first birthday we'll try to go back to sleeping through the night, but it was just too long between feeds for me. 

Pear and french toast!

He's starting to really take off with actually eating food, rather than just tasting it, smearing it around and throwing it on the floor. He has started completely consuming some of the foods we've given him, like slices of pear, small strips of omelet, potato fries and pieces of chicken.

Meatloaf, potato fries and broccoli

These solid foods have definitely made the diapers more interesting. They're much more messy and stinky, so I actually looked into Elimination Communication. I've heard of it several times, and always thought, "That's crazy. No way. Not interested." But what finally convinced me to give it a try was a YouTube video that wasn't pushing full-time EC. I realized that if I could maybe get Timothy to poop on the toilet, we wouldn't have to deal with the pain of cleaning those poopy cloth diapers. 

Chasing my foam roller around the living room is fun!

This week, we started trying it, and he actually pooped on the toilet for me the first day we tried! He has also peed on the toilet several times. He actually seems to like it. We missed a poop yesterday while we were out and about though, and had to deal with the dirty diaper, so it's not going to be perfect, but I'm excited about every little bit that goes in the toilet, and hopefully this will make potty training easier in the future!

We also finally tried letting grandparents put him to bed for us, like I had mentioned ALL the way back in his Second Month post! He was definitely way too little for me to really want to do it then, but just a few days ago I finally felt ready to try it, and it went fantastically. My parents said he wasn't grumpy with them at all, they had lots of fun, he ate some pear for them, took his bottle and went right off to sleep with no problems. It's great to have the freedom to take longer date nights and not have to be back in time for bedtime!

Examining Daddy's ear

Sign language has kinda fallen to the wayside, he doesn't seem as interested anymore, and I was getting tired of trying to sign to him so much when he didn't seem to notice. I might pick it up again in the next month or so, but for now I've let myself relax on it. 

He's still completely obsessed with sucking his fingers, and making interesting noises. He likes to make a gasping sound that Matt says sounds like stridor, when the airway is partially blocked. There is definitely nothing wrong with him, he just likes making sounds to scare us into thinking he's dying. He's also learned how to fake cough, and does that sometimes, but mostly the squeaky sounds we call his "cat" noises are his current favorites.

We got him some blocks recently, and he really enjoys knocking over towers that are built for him. He loves riding on Daddy's shoulders. And he's actually been a little less fussy in the evenings before bedtime in general. He is a really fun little guy. Life with Timothy just keeps getting better and better!

Timothy's Sixth Month

I can't believe we're past Timothy's six month birthday! It's crazy that he's halfway to a year old already. Here's my recap of everything that was going on with our little guy this past month!

Very early in June, he learned how to roll from his back to his tummy! I find it quite amusing that he likes to roll while keeping the arm he's rolling towards by his side, making the task technically more difficult, but he still does it with ease. He had figured out rolling tummy to back pretty early on and then stopped doing it. But once he learned to roll to from back to tummy, he started rolling both ways quite regularly, and has traveled all around the living room away from his play gym just by rolling. 

Also early in June, he slept through the entire night! 7pm to 6am! I was stunned, but figured it was a fluke... and then he did it again, and again. Last week, he slept through the night almost every night. It's been nice, but it makes the night's where he doesn't sleep through the night a little more tiring... although I don't usually get to sleep through the night even when he does due to the discomfort of being overly full of milk. Oh, the number of nursing problems that no one warned me about beforehand! 

The third exciting thing from the beginning of June was the eruption of his first tooth! (So maybe teething doesn't affect his sleeping...? That's fine with me!) Finally, all that drooling has resulted in visible evidence that something was happening! His one little tooth is quite sharp, and has resulted in a bit of pain ("please, please, please, don't bite me" has become my nursing thought) and we don't enjoy letting him chew on our fingers quite as much anymore. But it's still an exciting milestone!

He's become very squirmy and energetic. He doesn't like to be held and cuddled much anymore, unless he's terribly sleepy, or something scared him. Even nursing is no longer very cuddly, if he's not grabbing my hair, pinching my face or trying to stick his fingers in my mouth, he's kicking his feet or doing butt raises! 

The squealing has only increased since last month, sometimes he sounds like a cat! He's also perfected his whining, later in the afternoon when he's getting tired he whines if one of us isn't constantly entertaining him. It's simultaneously cute, pathetic, and the most annoying sound ever!

He's been completely obsessed with sucking on his first two fingers this month. No pacifier for our little guy! Why bother when fingers are always accessible? Most naps, when I go in to check on him, he's on his tummy, two fingers in his mouth. 

When he's not working on crawling, he likes to practice standing, but he doesn't really care for sitting very much. I think he would skip right to standing and walking if he could, he's desperately trying to crawl, but finds it quite frustrating and usually doesn't try very long before he starts whining and looking for entertainment to take his mind off of it.

Solid food has been fun this past week! Every time he eats, he makes hilarious faces as soon as he touches the food to his mouth... but he continues trying to eat it! I didn't think he was actually swallowing anything, but I found some tiny pieces of broccoli in one of his diapers, so he is getting a little bit.

Speaking of diapers, cloth is definitely saving us money, but we're having some problems with diaper rash, and I have been trying to figure out what the problem is for what seems like this whole month! Thankfully, the rash doesn't seem to bother Timothy, but it's irritating me! I'm having to make changes to the wash routine and possibly do some treatment. Cloth isn't as easy as it seems it should be, but so far it's still worth it.

On his half-birthday, Timothy started making an expression that we're calling the "Scrunchy Face." It's absolutely adorable. He's also been even more giggly lately, the other day he was playing by himself and just started laughing for no particular reason!

At his 6-month well check he was 26.5 inches tall and 17.2 pounds! The Dr. said he's completely thriving, and that he couldn't be happier with how well he's doing. 

I can't believe we've already had half a year with our little chunk-a-lunk-a, and how much joy he adds to our lives!

Timothy's Fifth Month

Whew, so glad that leap is over! It took a little longer than I was hoping, the fussiness seemed to continue for a couple more weeks longer than I anticipated, and I'm not sure if it was due to the leap, or just the timing of the 4-month sleep regression (or both together) but he did have some trouble getting to sleep for several nights, and two nights where he woke me up three times, which felt like torture after all the nights he only woke once! Waking only once did become his standard this month, so I can't complain too much about the 4-month old sleep regression. And after about a week of rocky naps, he settled back to being a good napper too. 

He's been much more giggly, we're finally getting good laughs out of him more easily! He laughed at Daddy singing him a song, and often thinks it's funny when either of us "eats" him with scarfing sound effects. His favorite sounds to make are very emphatic, loud squeals and grunts. And he's more easily bored with toys, and more easily frustrated when he can't do exactly what he wants (crawling is hard, y'all!) when he tries.

He's also gotten a little more clingy this month, there have been several times when grandparents/aunts/uncles wanted to hold him, but if I gave him to them too soon, he'd start wailing. I need to make sure he gets a few good minutes to warm up to them before getting handed off. 

Here's how he uses his play gym to help him roll from back to tummy!

He's finally gotten back into rolling from his tummy to his back some more after taking a break for a couple months, and he's also working on rolling from back to tummy. He's great at getting onto his side, and has even rolled all the way to his tummy by pushing off with his feet on the leg of his play gym, but that doesn't completely count. He can sometimes get his knees up under him for his scooting, but he hasn't been pushing up on his arms to a crawling position yet. 

We've started letting him sit in his booster/high chair at the table with us while we're eating, and he watches us eat and enthusiastically eats the toys we give him.... and equally enthusiastically flings them on the floor. Which seems quite intentional sometimes, although supposedly babies don't intentionally throw/drop things until much older. At the end of this month he can start eating solids, so that will be interesting!

This is how he naps in the car... the hat helps block the light, and interesting, distracting things going by outside!

For Memorial Day weekend, we did 2 day trips! Timothy's first time to the mountains and the beach! We separated them by one day at home so we'd have some time to recover. Overall they went really well, and the supercharging stops were mostly timed nicely to coincide with when Timothy was supposed to be nursing anyway, so it worked out really well... except for the one time he wasn't interested in feeding, even though he was supposed to be hungry!

First day trip was up to the mountains, to spend the day with Matt's parents who were up there for the week. We had a fun day eating at our favorite mountain restaurant, hiking and just relaxing on the veranda and enjoying the view. Timothy did great napping in the car during the day, and we left after his bedtime feed and he slept the whole way home.

The second day trip to the beach was to spend the day with my family, and some friends, who had rented a cottage on the beach for the weekend. We had a relaxing day eating lunch at the cottage, playing Sushi Go, and spending a short time out on the beach so Timothy could experience sand and the ocean! He did great sitting in his seat while Matt and I ate at our favorite Wilmington restaurant, Indochine. And then he slept all the way home again.

We're enjoying doing day trips with him, it's easier for him to sleep the first few hours after bedtime in the car on the way home, and then we all get to sleep in our own beds at home, which is much better sleep for Matt and me, and seems to be better sleep for Timothy too. 

Timothy is just getting to be more and more fun as he becomes more giggly, more independent and opinionated, and shows us more of his own little personality! He's a sweet, cheerful baby, and I can't believe he's only been part of our lives for 5 months... but at the same time, I feel like he's growing up too fast.