First, his official monthly picture:
Developments
The biggest news this month is that Daniel is gettiing better and better at crawling. Initially it's been more of an army-crawl or, as my parents described it, like doing the butterfly swim stroke on the floor. He's still not really pushing off with his knees yet but he can move pretty well with his current technique. It doesn't seem like that long ago that we were celebrating when he could scoot a few inches to grab a toy, now he is traveling the full length of the floor, and quickly!
In other news, he seems to be working on his third and fourth teeth, the top two middle ones. One night a few weeks ago, for the first time in a long time, he woke up crying at night and had to be soothed back to sleep, and a few other evenings he had a harder time getting down. The teeth still haven't pushed through but I can definitely feel the bumps under his gums.
He is also learning to say ma-ma. I know he's not actually saying the word "mama" yet but I still love to hear him make the sounds in his sweet little voice. It still amazes me that 8 months ago he was this little newborn who couldn't even hold up his own head and now he's crawlling, saying mama and...kissing the dishwasher?
Yes, kissing the dishwasher. In recent weeks he has learned how to give kisses (sloppy but so sweet) and become more interactive with his reflection in the mirror. These two developments, along with crawling and saying mama, are all on display in this video, in which he spies his reflection in the stainless steel dishwasher door and decides to show some affection:
Sleeping
Not much to report here. Still sleeping well at night and napping reasonably well by day. We've moved away from our previous routine of putting him down for a nap within 2 hours of waking and now he "sleeps by the clock." Up 6:30-7:30, down for his first nap by 9:30-10, wake him up by 12 if he is still napping, back down againi by 2:30-3, and down for the night by 7:30-8. It works out to 14-15 hours of sleep per day, which seems to be good for him. He goes down easily nearly every time if we abide by that schedule and he seems alert and playful during the day.
Eating
We've had some big changes on the food front. At his last checkup he had dropped down to about the 10th percentile in weight so the doctor said it was time to bump up his solid food offerings (which we had planned to do anyway but hadn't gotten around to setting up his high chair at Grandma's). So we've gone from one solid meal a day to three.
For now we are viewing the solid food as a supplement to, rather than substitute for, the breastmilk he still gets four times a day. So a typical day's food for him now involves nursing when he wakes up, breakfast of cereal and fruit (or sometimes avocado), a bottle before his first nap, a solid lunch of veggies and sometimes shredded chicken, a bottle before his second nap, a solid dinner, and nursing before bed. He's eating everything we put in front of him pretty well but we're trying to keep the milk intake up and have introduced a sippy cup of water too to fight the constipation issues he's been having.
For a few days whenever the backed up feeling hit he'd stop crawling, stick his butt in the air, cry, and look up with this "help me!" look on his face. At first we thought it was a bad reaction to his first experience with yogurt (and since I haven't reintroduced it yet I still can't rule that out), but he seems to be feeling better now. He's already doing pretty well with a sippy cup with a straw and can pick it up, hold it, and put it in his mouth to drink without assistance (though not consistently). He can use the spout sippies too but needs a little help tilting it back far enough. We haven't introduced any other liquids yet and I'm in no great hurry, but once he becomes better with the cup we'll start transitioning his milk from bottles to cups.
I've been trying to make most of his food for him (in addition to the milk, of course). It's not that I don't trust the jarred foods, but it's nice to know I'm feeding him something made with love, and know exactly what's in it. So far I've successfully pureed sweet potatoes, apples, blueberries, green beans, avocado, peas, parsnips, and chicken, and I've started a frozen stockpile of these. So Daniel continues to take over the freezer, between that, his milk, and his teethers.
Caregivers
This month Kevin's mom, who normally watches Daniel during the day, was out of town for a week. Then, Kevin left for a two week business trip to Bangalore, India the following weekend so my mom came back to help me out that week. This week I'm solo parenting and dropping Daniel off at MIL's again during the day, but for two straight weeks Daniel and my mom, his "Mimi," had the opportunity to bond during the day. As I expected, Mom was wonderful with him. One of the benefits of being a working mom is that it creates space for Daniel to form a close relationship with my MIL, so it was nice for him and my mother to get some special one-on-one time too. Daniel's lucky to have two grandmothers (and grandfathers) who love him so much and are so good with him.
He adjusted pretty easily to being at home during the day and being with my mom instead of MIL. He and Mimi will have the opportunity to bond again in a few weeks when MIL travels again.
While Kevin is away, Daniel and I have been able to talk to him on Skype almost every day, and we can see each other on video. It's cute to see Daniel break into a big smile when he hears and sees Daddy! And Kevin recorded himself reading a book called Guess How Much I Miss You that I read to Daniel every day so he can hear Kevin's voice. I'm managing well enough going solo (though I was 15 minutes late to work today after Daniel needed more attention than usual this morning) but I know it's hard for Kevin to be so far away for so long. Saturday afternoon can't come quickly enough for any of us!
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