MILESTONES:
He is learning how to sit while leaning forward on his hands. He can't last long before toppling over though, usually around 10 seconds. But he HATES IT! He has NO interest in sitting whatsoever. I try to practice with him by putting him in this position but he usually gets mad and pushes his legs to stand up. I think he doesn't like it for 2 reasons.. it puts too much pressure on his tummy and it seems like his legs don't spread out easily so I think it's uncomfortable on his legs too. He just LOVES to roll! He is such a rollie pollie! It's so cute and I love it BUT it has gotten so hard to change his diaper, change his clothes, put him in his sleep sack.. because he just rolls over. I find myself having to dress him while he's on his tummy but it's kind of hard to change his diaper that way! He pretty much only rolls to his right, so he always gets stuck because he keeps rolling and rolling but only one direction and eventually has no more room to roll wherever he is. I am anxious to have carpet downstairs where he can roll around and learn how to crawl on soft ground instead of on hard wood floors. He still loves to stand and he can stand by himself holding onto the side of the pack n' play (by me putting him there) but slowly slides down the side, hah.
PERSONALITY:
It seems like he's always getting new quirks. He started doing this sniffing thing where he scrunches his nose and mouth and breathes in and out really fast over and over. Haha. It's really funny. He also started scrunching his nose when he smiles so his smile looks a little different now. He loves being up on daddy's shoulders and grabbing onto his hair and making funny faces. He started yelling and squealing often. It seems like he's mad but I think he's just learning how to use his vocal cords. His laugh is just so cute, it makes me happy! He laughs at the most random things. For example one time in the middle of the night while I was nursing him I started unbuttoning (the snap kind) his pj's because they were wet from his diaper leaking. Every time I would snap open a button he would chuckle while he was eating. Silly boy. He has never been scared of other people holding him but this month he has been more cranky or serious around other people, mostly children. He hasn't been as social as he normally is. I'm not sure if it's a phase or what. He will be acting his normal self, blowing raspberries and being silly and as soon as a someone he's not familiar with is around he'll get really quiet and just stare at them really curiously with his big eyes, haha.
FEEDINGS:
Still exclusively breastfeeding. I was really concerned about my milk supply this month. He started waking up in the night/early morning consistently so I was thinking he wasn't getting enough during the day. I thought it was a growth spurt at first but it has lasted pretty much all month. But I have been pumping a lot and it seems like I have enough? Since his weight gain was fine, I'm wondering if my supply was never an issue. But nursing is going pretty well besides that. Every night before bed, I have been giving him a bottle with an extra few ounces from my freezer supply after he's done nursing just to make sure he's getting enough. But I'm almost out of my freezer supply so I'm going to have to figure something else out. He has been doing something funny this month while he eats.. he will sneak his index finger in the corner of his mouth while nursing, trying to suck on his finger at the same time. But he only does it on my right side. It's so cute! But I do have to take his finger out because it messes up the suction, but he just keeps on doing it. Spit up is pretty rare now, I love it. He also eats really fast which I also love. Lately I will start to feed him and try to find something on TV to watch while he's eating and by the time I find something to watch he's already done! Compared to when he was a newborn and I could practically finish a movie by the time I fed and burped him!
SOLIDS:
We started solids last week!!! It's so exciting! I chose to do baby led weaning as I wrote about in his 4 month post (baby feeds himself normal food instead of being spoon fed purees). I really like the concept of it so I want to at least try it out and see how it goes. They gag a lot at first because they are learning how to move food around in their mouth and I'll admit it does make me nervous! If I give him something soft like roasted sweet potato or banana, he takes a big bite and doesn't know how to move it around and gags. But it's on the middle of his tongue, no where near his throat. They just have a strong gag reflex to prevent choking (gagging is different from choking). I find he does a lot better with toast or pasta. It's so cute and entertaining to watch. He grabs it with his whole hand, and just munches on it like a little chipmunk! He seems to really enjoy exploring food so I am going to stick with baby led weaning unless I can't handle the gagging anymore. Other foods we've tried include oatmeal, avocado, peach, pear, steak, broccoli and cauliflower.
PLAY:
Okay so he used to be able to play by himself for a long time! The major change this month is that he is suddenly a bit clingy! Plus he gets bored so much easier!! So independent play time has gotten somewhat difficult. Especially if it's close to his nap time.. he gets clingy and doesn't want me to put him down. He has NEVER been like this! But he also has been going through wonder week 26 so I think that could be part of it too because it seems like the last week hasn't been as bad as the weeks before. I think another part of it is that ever since he started rolling a lot (for the past month) I've been right by his side pretty much the whole time that he's awake so he may be getting used to being entertained by me. He needs a lot more stimulation to be entertained where as a few months ago he could stare at the ceiling fan for 20 minutes and be fine. He loves to jump on your lap so my mom got him a stationary bouncer that he loves! It took him a couple days to realize he could jump in it but now he really enjoys it. He still explores everything with his mouth.
SLEEP:
Last month naps were all over the place and bedtime was suddenly a nightmare. The last few weeks have been MUCH better and more consistent. I just had to figure out his new optimal wake-times. Something that no one around me understands about Noah is that he is still VERY SENSITIVE with the amount of time that he's awake. People think it's perfectly fine to keep him awake for hours and once he is tired he'll just fall asleep no problem. Unfortunately it's not that simple. And I don't think it's fair to do that to him all the time. He needs his sleep! It becomes really hard for him to fall asleep once he is over tired as I keep saying time and time again. That is just how he is. It makes going out and doing things hard but what can you do. But to be fair he has gotten a lot better lately. It's just all about the timing. Like I said before, the past few weeks he hasn't been sleeping through the night, he usually wakes up crying around 5 am but once in a while it's as early as 12 or 1 am.. it's confusing. I am thinking when he wakes up around 5 it's partially out of habit, and then realizes he's hungry. But I'm not 100% sure why he is waking up earlier than that sometimes. There is no way he's hungry after only 2 hours of eating and going to sleep. I am wondering if he's having some early teething pains even though he has no signs of teeth coming through. He is always gnawing on everything but he has done that for a while, so I'm really not too sure. I hope he goes back to sleeping through the night again soon!
SCHEDULE:
He is back on somewhat of a predictable schedule. We can't always stick to it of course because of things that come up like church, family things, errands. We are still figuring out the best time for bedtime, sometimes it seems like he does fine going down at 7, sometimes 7:30 works better so it's kind of tricky to figure out. I'm just really happy that he's not crying before bed like he was randomly doing last month. If he does cry it's only for 5-10 minutes. Our typical day looks like this lately:
7:15 Wake up, nurse, solids, play
8:20 Nap
10:45 Wake up
11:00 Nurse, solids, play
12:00 Nap
2:00 Wake up, nurse, play
3:40 Cat nap
4:30 - 4:45 Wake up
5:00 Nurse, solids, play
Around 7:00 Bedtime routine.. Nurse, bottle with pumped milk and into bed by 7:15 - 7:30
9:45 - 10:00 Dreamfeed (feed him in his sleep then put back down)
*This month around 5:00 am he'll wake up and I'll feed him and put him back down
Sometimes lately he has been crying around the time I normally do the dreamfeed. So I'll just feed him and put him back down. I'm not sure if he's waking out of habit there or of actual hunger. So throughout the day he is still eating on average around every 3 hours.. I would like to be on a 4 hour schedule soon but we'll see.
I love my baby, he is so handsome :)
Baby Led Weaning is super messy
.jpg)
He loves eating his feet
No comments:
Post a Comment