Busy August!

Nick had an extremely busy August, hence the paucity of posts, but here are some of the high- and low-lights:

-Nick adjusted to daycare: It was rough at first, but after about a month now, he is comfortable going to daycare every day from about 8am to 3pm. We ultimately will extend these hours further, but this is a really good start, considering how upset he used to get when we left him. Now when I go to pick him up, he's usually contentedly playing with toys and I have to call his name to get his attention. This is a good thing!

-First real sickness: At the start of August, Nick got sick. Very sick. The poor kid was teething, but on top of that, he had a really sore throat and cough, and the doctor also diagnosed him with pink eye and two ear infections. This was probably a function of starting him in daycare and the related increased exposure to other kids and their germs. We expected it, but it was so very sad because he was miserable. Fortunately, after visiting the doctor, giving him medicine, and lots of TLC, Nick survived and is back to his happy self. Whew.

-Family visits: Nick spent the first two weeks of August with BOTH sets of grandparents (lucky kid). First, his dad's parents flew in to spend some time with us, joined shortly thereafter by his mom's (my) parents. It was crowded in our little house, but everyone stayed with us and it was a loud, busy, fun time. At this time, he was getting over being sick (see above), so it was great to have a few extra helping hands.

-Baptism: Because family was visiting us, we were (finally) able to get Nick baptized! It was a sweet ceremony at our church. Nick spent the majority of it chewing on his little cloth shoes. Very cute.

-Gaining weight: Although he is still very underweight, Nick is growing and putting on weight. This is a good thing. I had been going to the pediatrician to check his weight every two weeks, just to make sure, but now she says he's doing much better. We don't have to go in again until his one-year checkup now. I can't believe he's almost one year old...

Nick is still cruising on furniture, and is starting to get very good at climbing. He loves to be independent, preferring to pull himself up and push his walking toys on his own. He has six teeth now (two on bottom and four on top), which he uses to eat all sorts of solid foods. We mostly feed him whatever we are eating for meals, which makes life easier for us, and also expands his palate. He pretty much enjoys everything except for bananas, which he still hates.

For the past few months, Nick has been shaking his head "no." He wags his head from side to side when you ask him a question, or make eye contact, or shake your head at him in any direction. Even if you shake your head up and down ("Yes, Nicholas, yes...") he still shakes his head solemnly from side to side. We think that he thinks he's imitating us, but doesn't realize he's doing something different.

It's super cute. Until I think about toddler-Nick being old enough to actually say no.

Daycare

We made the decision to start baby Nick in daycare, which began this week. Even though I don't yet have a job outside the house, we thought it would be best to get him used to being in a daycare during the days so that I can hopefully start a law job soon. Also, now that he is more mobile, it is harder for me to even do my "work from home" work during the day. Anyway, it was a good idea for a number of reasons.

He has successfully survived three days of daycare - the first day I sent him for three hours, then four, and yesterday he was there for five days. He seems to be OK - of course, he cries when I leave, but he seems happy when I come back again at the end of the day. The first day, he came back home and was SO tired! He slept for several hours that day, lying on the floor of the play room.

I also think it is good for him to have the experience of playing with other kids his age. With the exception of his friend Ella, baby Nick doesn't have many other little ones to play with on a regular basis. Daycare will afford him the opportunity to learn how to share and play and handle other little ones who also have teeth and poky fingers and kicky legs.

TEETH

New developments in Baby Nick's life include the arrival of teeth. The two bottom teeth, which broke through the gums last month, are now both poking out and are about halfway grown in. Nick enjoys using his new teeth to experience the world, which unfortunately includes fingers and noses in addition to toys and food. We are working on encouraging Nick not to bite us.

The advent of teeth has encouraged the introduction of a wealth of new foods, including meats and pastas. Nick seems to enjoy everything we feed him with the exception of bananas. Peaches remain an all-time favorite. He is also experimenting with finger foods, which is fun. He is able to grab little cereal puffs between thumb and forefinger, and successfully maneuvers them into his mouth. He also now can throw puffs to the ground when he is frustrated or finished eating. The dog appreciates this new habit.

Toys

It's amazing what qualifies as a baby "toy." I was cleaning up Nick's play area last night after he had gone to sleep, and about half of his "toys" are repurposed household items. Included are empty Gatorade bottles, empty green tea bottles (plastic), a small plastic container that used to hold chocolate-covered fruit, brightly colored party salsa bowls, and most recently, small nesting Easter eggs. C and I realized that we can go to the super-duper on-sale section of the grocery store and find "toys" for usually under a dollar. Hooray!

We found that Nick doesn't care much for stuffed animal toys. We have a whole shelf of stuffed animals in his room that just sit there, watching him. He loves anything that is hard plastic that makes noise when you hit it with another toy. He likes to rub the plastic toys against the textured walls, probably because it makes a weird noise and feels cool. He loves toys with buttons, and is attracted to anything with a wire (whether he's supposed to be playing with it or not).

We have a babysitter who watches Nick part-time a few days a week. She observed that Nick is very analytical, even at 9 months. He is always turning his toys over to look at the back of them, or at their undersides, to see what's going on on the reverse. Once he knows where something is, he is determined to get it again, even if you "hide" it by putting it up high where he cannot reach it. This is particularly true for cell phones and TV remotes. I have a feeling that we will need to do a better babyproofing of the house in the very near future...

Texas round 2!

May has been a busy month for baby Nick. We took our second trip to Texas, which meant Nick took his third and fourth plane trips. I was a little nervous that Nick would be difficult on the plane, now that he's a little older and able to crawl. Additionally, he cut his very first tooth the day before we left (naturally). All things considered, the flight ended up being fine. Nick slept for half of it, then C and I took turns walking and bouncing the baby up and down the aisle of the plane.

As always, we spent as much time on the trip as possible visiting with Texas family and friends. Nick was able to spend time with his maternal great-grandparents, mom's family and dad's family, including his two paternal aunts and his newest baby cousin who is 7 weeks old. We drove out to the country to celebrate Mother's Day, and even made it to Houston to see some of our friends. The drive to Houston is very different with a baby in the car!

Now that he is eight months old, Nick has been eating a variety of solids - now we've added sweet potatoes, avocado, peas, squash, bananas (which he seems to hate), and he's even gotten to gum bread and celery sticks. His one tooth grew throughout the trip home, and now it is poking out over the gums. Nick likes to saw everything with his new tooth - especially plastic toys and our fingers.

One of his new favorite things to do is SPLASH in the bathtub. We're looking forward to bringing Nick to the beach for his first experience with the ocean and sand. Considering how much he loves the tub, we think that the ocean will be fun for him.

His other favorite thing is climbing - Nick can now pull up on boxes and tables and couches... anything within reach. At the end of May he started pulling up and 'cruising' from one side of the couch to the other. He also has gotten better at dropping from standing to a sitting position, and pulling back up again.

It gets better

Sorry for the radio silence - I've been crazy busy lately, between the working-from-home and the being-Nick's-mom, getting back into my running schedule, and working on he organization. I love being busy, but it certainly makes blogging more difficult.

Anyway, I'm writing because I had a proud mom-moment the other day. I was at my favorite coffee shop, picking up a boba tea. Another mom was sitting outside with a baby in a stroller. She flagged me over and asked me about my son - how old he was, what he was doing at the time, how big he is, etc. Turns out, she has a three week old boy, and this is her first trip out of the house. She was in the throes of overwhelmed first-time parenthood, and wanted to know how long it had taken before I felt "normal" again.

I ended up chatting with her for a while, telling her stories about my experience and assuring her that it does get better. Her baby will sleep, and he will figure out how to nurse. He will learn to entertain himself, and he will stop crying when he hears your voice. I promised her that she would start to feel human again in a week or two, and that it only gets better from there!

I love talking to new/expecting moms and giving advice. I know that all kids are different so my stories are only so helpful... however, I also know that it is extremely comforting to hear what other people are doing, even if only to fool yourself into thinking that your situation is normal. Every new challenge is scary. It is less scary if you know that every other parent has had the same fears, has made the same mistakes, and has experienced the same things.

I know that I have a lot to learn, but it is nice to compare notes with others. And it was fun the other day to be the smooth, confident, knowledgeable mom... at least for a few minutes!

Sleep milestone

SO very happy to report that last night, Nick slept for EIGHT HOURS IN A ROW!

This is my son who woke up every two hours all night long for the first six or so months of his life. It was somewhat disconcerting, because I realized early on that I don't dream if I'm woken up every two or three hours. I suppose I don't have enough time to fall into a deep enough sleep to reach dreams (or at least, to remember them).

Last night, I woke up from an incredibly strange dream where I was in my parent's old house, standing right outside the living room which was completely filled with cockroaches. All size cockroaches. The biggest ones were the size of cats. They weren't moving, but I wasn't sure whether they were dead or stunned or just holding still to trick me into walking into the room.

Anyway, the point is that I woke up from a very rare dream, shocked that I had just been dreaming because my lovely amazing wonderful child had slept through the night!

Standing up!

Today my little boy hit another pretty cool milestone... he pulled himself up, independently, to a standing position. True to form, his inspiration was electronic. We have our Wii system stored in a cardboard box, and Nick crawled over to the box and pulled himself up to see what was inside.

Also, baby has now tasted apples and bananas in addition to the cereal and carrots he tried to start with. He's still not really a fan of solid food, but he's eating it. That's the part that counts. He makes ridiculous faces when he takes in solids... he winces and squints his eyes like the food is burning hot (though it's not hot at all - we feed him room temperature food).

He still crawls and crawls and crawls. Sometimes at the end of the night, he has rug burns on his knees and elbows from dragging them across the carpet. He is definitely enjoying his new mobility!

Microclean

Now that Nick can crawl, we are presented with new house issues. We're not quite at the point of full-on baby-proofing (soon), but we still have to watch where he goes to keep him out of trouble.

I learned that Nick will naturally gravitate towards things he isn't supposed to put in his mouth. In addition to the power cords and remote controls, Nick finds every piece of fuzz, penny, crumpled receipt, candy wrapper, lost pen, etc. that is on our floor. The other day I was checking my email, looked away for about 30 seconds, and when I turned back, Nick had found a cluster of pine needles and was happily gumming them. Yuck!

I have always cared about house cleanliness, but Nick brings it to a new level, which I'm calling "microclean." The sort of clean that occurs when you lie on your stomach in the middle of the floor (no joke, I have done this), checking to see what is visible at four inches off the floor that is invisible when you're four feet away. It's actually kind of gross.

First Easter

This Sunday was baby Nick's first Easter! He is just shy of seven months right now, so he definitely had no idea what was going on. We spent the morning in church, which meant that I spent about 30 minutes pacing back and forth outside bouncing the baby on my hip. I was in good company - there were probably a dozen other little kids outside, getting their wiggles out by climbing on statues, rolling in the grass, and chasing bubbles.

I loved watching the bigger kids because it made me think about what it will be like to have a son who can run and jump and talk to me. In just a few Easters, I will be buying candy, making Easter baskets, and hiding eggs. I have so many fun memories of egg hunts from my own childhood and I can't wait to make new memories with Nick!

Getting bigger!

Baby Nick keeps growing and growing... maybe because he is eating solids now. I had to revamp his closet recently to set aside the clothing he has outgrown, which was a little sad. It was fun, though, to pull out new clothes that he can finally wear now. I remember receiving the onesies and pants when I was pregnant, and being unable to picture a kid big enough to fit inside them... and now my baby stretches them out!

Regarding solids: we introduced carrots the other day - homemade and pureed. Baby didn't seem to like the taste of them, maybe because it was something strange and new. After the first feeding, I regretted picking carrots because orange is a very tough color for clothes and bibs.

More to come.

Observations

1. It is not physically possible to feed a baby solids without making RIDICULOUS faces. Thank goodness no one ever video tapes me feeding him!

2. Time really flies when baby crawls. I used to have moments of relative calm and relaxation when he was awake, when he would lie on his back and be content. Now that he can crawl, I spend most of his awake time making sure that he is not getting into trouble (i.e. eating the remote control or bonking his head on the table).

3. There is nothing better than that moment right after the baby goes to sleep. Except maybe baby laughs. Tied.

Solids!

Now that Nick is six months old, we have ventured into the realm of solid foods. Today was the first attempt. Nick's first solid food: brown rice cereal. We bought a pre-ground brown rice from the store (which looks like beige fish food in its dry state) and mixed it with a little bit of milk until it had the consistency of oatmeal soup. We only prepared a teaspoon or two, because his stomach is still pretty tiny.

Nick has been playing with plastic spoons for the past few weeks, so he was happy to see the spoon heading towards his face. He "goal-tended" by swiping at the spoon with his arms, so Dad had to hold his hands down to make way. When we finally got the spoon into his mouth, he was a little bit confused, but he ended up eating the cereal. He took down every other spoonful - he drooled out the rest of them.

By the end of the feeding, he was enjoying himself (which made it more difficult). He would open his mouth, bite down on the spoon, and then laugh and blow out air, which would spray the food back out again. Good thing he was wearing a bib!

We'll keep doing one meal a day with the cereal, for about a week or so, before we start introducing more fun things like veggies and fruits. Will post the progress.

Here is a picture of Nick with food on his face.

His Daddy's son

It's official: Nick is mobile! A few days ago, he started seriously scooting inch-worm style across the floor, maybe making it a foot or two before stopping. In the past few days, the inch-worm has developed into a full-on commando crawl. He starts out by reaching his hands as far forward as he can, Superman style, then pushes with his legs until his body scoots forward. He doesn't take his belly off the ground, preferring to drag it along with him.

We quickly found that Nick crawls the fastest if we place the Playstation controller a few feet in front of him. He scoots forward until he can get it to his mouth. Though he has not yet mastered the art of gaming, he definitely is interested in the game controller (definitely his Daddy's boy!).

Not only that, he also has discovered the power cords that snake across the floor and plug into our computers/ipad/cell phones/controllers. He has enough dexterity to grip the cord and pull (consequently unplugging) it. Must keep an eye on this one...

Mr. Kicks-a-Lot

Baby Nick is quite the kicker! This comes as no surprise to his mom, who experienced five-ish months of rib- and bladder-kicking while he was in utero. Now that he is bigger and stronger, he loves to kick and kick and kick and kick... when you hold him up in the air, it sometimes looks like he is running in place.

Sometimes it can be dangerous... This morning when I leaned over to kiss my baby on the cheek, he pumped his legs around and kicked me right in the eyeball with his little heel.

This afternoon I was clipping his teeny tiny toe nails (they grow SO fast), and I noticed a blister on one of his toes. It was a tiny blister, but a blister nonetheless! No doubt due to his extensive foot-use. I can only imagine how it will be when he really starts walking.

Keep a close watch!

A six month post is forthcoming (hard to believe that my little boy is already half a year old!), but I thought I would start posting smaller mid-month posts now that he is more active and, consequently, more interesting.

Nick is now rolling both front-to-back and back-to-front, and he can also scoot himself like a little inch worm when he is on his belly. As a result, he can now propel himself from one location to another, though he usually stays within a one foot radius of where he started out. Crawling is imminent.

This afternoon, I am checking my email while the baby is playing on his mat with his toys. I look away for one second (seriously, just one second), and when I look back at him, he has rolled to the edge of the play mat and is happily gumming the strap of my EXTREMELY nice Coach purse. Yikes! I explained to him that purses are not for teething, but I don't think he got the message...

Five months

Nick’s fourth month was extremely eventful, filled with a number of firsts. The highlight was a trip to Texas, which was particularly special because Nick got to meet both sets of his maternal great-grandparents, his nine-month-old cousin, and many of his uncles and aunts. This trip also included his first ride on an airplane, his first introduction to ‘cold’ weather, and his first visit to the family farm in the country (where his parents were married almost five years earlier).

It was fun to introduce my son to the places I remember when I was growing up in Texas. He saw the farm houses and my grandparent’s bed and breakfast, visited many of the restaurants we love, saw my trail around Town Lake, and even toured my old high school. Even though he was too young to know what was going on, I still enjoyed taking him around and showing him my favorite places. We hope to continue travelling to Texas periodically so that Nick will know the people and the places that are dear to our hearts. Additionally, it would make me sad to raise a boy who didn’t know Texas at all, since the great state figured so prominently in the first half of his parents’ lives. I am thrilled to report that Nick was a wonderful traveler, so we anticipate more trips to Texas in the near future (particularly while he is under two years old and can fly for free).

In terms of milestones, he continues to grow and gets stronger every week. He doesn’t like tummy time any more (though we keep doing it), because he prefers to pull up, sit up, stand (supported), and look around. He loves people and making new friends – he refuses to nap when we have people over or if we go out. Nick’s new favorite toy is a little saucer bouncer with a series of toys that help him practice manipulation and dexterity. He is getting much better with his hand-eye coordination as well, which means we have to be careful what we put in front of him! As a result, mom has started wearing her hair up to prevent the pulling…

4 months!

Nick is growing so quickly from week to week. During tummy time, he is very strong and can push up on his arms with his head at ninety degrees off the ground. He doesn’t like to be on his tummy, though, because he prefers to look around. He is extremely alert when he is awake, and spends much of his time staring at the world around him – particularly at our faces. He has giant eyes (just like his mom) which, coupled with his eyebrows, make him look constantly surprised.

He is also a very smiley boy. Now, when you smile at him, he smiles back, with a nose-crinkling, eye-squinting, open-mouthed gummy expression. He also is beginning to experiment with vocalization, which includes throaty giggles and high-pitched cooing. Nick likes to have “conversations” with me, where I ask him questions or tell him about my day, and he makes pleasant noises in response.

Nick’s motor skills are developing as well. He now can reach for a toy or an object that is held in front of him, and will grasp it with purpose and pull it towards himself (usually in order to put it into his mouth). He is just big enough to sit up in his new bouncer, which he enjoys because it allows him to see all around him while freeing both of his hands for grabbing. He mostly drools on the bouncer, but he’s getting better about actually playing with the rattles and plastic shapes attached to its trays.

This month, we have had several outings to see the new baby K (see pictures). She is about the same size as Nick, though a few pounds lighter. Nick likes to look at her, though she is less interested than he is. She usually spends playdates sleeping.