I have come to realize that writing is cathartic for me. When I have things to “work out” writing about them helps me. If life is going smoothly I don’t write as often. So if you don’t hear from me, consider it a good thing. In light of recent peer pressure I am back on the horse. This time, though, everything is going splendidly. I will fill you in on recent achievements, milestones, challenges and the general parent deemed cuteness of our baby.
Since Sleep has been the topic of my latest posts, I will start there and move on to more exciting things. Sleep has been great, we are still getting lots of it and usually 2-3 naps a day with a total of about 4 hours of naps. On occasion we have had regressions and I have learned that the so called “cortisol response” written about in so many baby books is no laughing matter. When babies get overly tired and miss a nap, their body responds like it is under stress and they become hyper to deal with the lack of sleep. What does this mean in my life…NO NAPS… and BAD NIGHTIME SLEEP! Everytime it happens I am reminded that naps and bedtime go hand in hand. If one is bad, so is the other. And so I remain a protector of sleep, despite the eye rolling of people that know me, the comments of people who don’t, I stay true to what works best for our family…a well rested baby.
Most recently sleep has been interrupted because of a natural regression. When babies learn new tricks, their little brains go into overdrive and they actually practice them while asleep and wake themselves up, resulting in temporary bad sleep patterns & night wakings. For those of you with kids, I learned about this from the pediatrician who reccomended two book called Touchpoints and Wonder Weeks, which explain these regressions and the predictability of them. Anyhow, Carson’s latest trick is rolling over in his crib and crawling, rather, scooting around. He’s been rolling over for months now, but just started doing it in his crib. He’s a back sleeper and now he rolls to his stomach, I go flip him back over when he starts to cry, he rolls over again, looks deliberately at the door to see if I am going to come in and save him and it continues over and over again like a scene out of Groundhog Day.
While this game was very amusing to him, it began to get old with me pretty quickly. Playtime is not quite as much fun at 4am. So rather than continuing to entertain him during his little tricks, I stopped rolling him back over. Boy was he pissed! Lucky for me he quickly learned that he can fall asleep on his stomach if I don’t interfere. It took about 30 minutes of some good crying before he figured it out, but he now sleeps on his stomach, on his back or his side and for the moment, balance is restored.
While he sleeps I have seen him do all kinds of funny things he is learning, he laughs, he grabs at the air, he screams, he makes this noise “abbaaabaaababb” which is really quite entertaining to listen to, anytime of day. I am finding the antics of my son to be quite hilarious.
Speaking of entertainment – we have started on the baby food. Three times a day we put him in the highchair and feed him his real food. Some he likes, some he doesn’t, either way, it gets everywhere which is, again, hilarious. My favorite is when it gets in his hair and under the folds in his chin, I suppose it is my favorite because Andy is responsible for bathtime. We have found it much easier to feed the little tyke if we eat at the same time. He is fascinated with watching us eat, so we eat a spoonful, then he eats a spoonful as though to mimic us. He’s just started to try and feed himself, which if left unguided, his mouthful of strained peas ends up as an eyeful of strained peas, which is, you guessed it…hilarious.
Speaking of food, he’s still packing it away as he remains top of his class in height and weight. 21 lbs of baby is no small feat to carry around. I will tell you, next time you see some young mom or dad carrying their baby in a front baby carrier, it may seem like a very blissful hike through a national park or even through the county fair. I am here to tell you- its not! Feel sorry for them, feel very sorry for them. Ten minutes of hiking with that load will wear you out and I guarantee whatever parent is carrying the baby will be secretly harboring ill will to the nonbabycarrying parent after just twenty!
Not to get distracted from the topic of food and therefore mouths… two teeth have arrived, front and center on the bottom. Lucky for us teething hasn’t been to bad so far. One day of a slight fever and he was fine. Let the chewing begin!
While crawling doesn’t seem to be in the very near future, mobility is coming none the less. I’m not sure how to describe the technique or even the mechanics of how he actually achieves this but he does manage to move. I guess the closest thing to it would be swiveling. He can’t go forward, he can’t go backward, but he can swivel. To get where he wants to go he uses either small swivels or big swivels and eventually he’ll get to that toy out of reach. Yup - Hilarious. I could save him the trouble and get them for him, but really, its not really as much fun to watch.
Apparently Carson thinks he is hilarious too, because he laughs, A LOT. Not only is he very ticklish on his feet, sides, under his chin and his armpits he laughs at me, he laughs at Andy, he laughs at the dog if she happens to walk by, he laughs at a fly that buzzes near his head, he laughs when he sucks on his toes, he laughs at almost anything. We are blessed with a happy baby. As the pediatrician put it, watch out for that one, he’s gonna cause some mischief! I have no doubt about that, but I’m pretty sure it will be the hard to punish for because you can’t help but laugh, kind of mischief. Hmmm…kind of sounds like another closely related person in my family.
So life at the Meier’s goes on as we continue to sleep, not sleep, worry, not worry, work, relax, enjoy and most of all LAUGH.
Until next time,
Kelly
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