Thursday, February 2, 2012

Growing, growing, growing!

Tyler just celebrated his 6 month birthday a little over a week ago, and I believe a half year has never gone by quicker. In fact, just the other day I was thinking about how time has been flying... I didn't really have much concept of time (or really never paid much attention to it) while I was in middle and high school, then in college I started to realize just how quickly the semesters went by. When I got married, the first year of marriage zipped by, and now that I have a child, well, sometimes I think a month has gone by in the blink of an eye. Does this mean I'm officially getting old?


Although it makes me sad that Tyler is growing, I am starting to appreciate it as well. First of all, my 6 month old baby sleeps much better than my 4 month old did! Last Monday (the day after his 6 month birthday) I told myself I just needed to get him sleep trained. I was just so tired of being tired, and wanted him to be getting good quality sleep as well. The first step in my plan was to get him sleeping in his crib in the nursery rather than in the pack-and-play in ours. I figured it would be easier to let him fuss a little and soothe himself if he was in a different room than if he was next to my bed. Well I didn't even need to worry about the fussing, because that night I put him down in his crib, turned on his mobile, and within 20 seconds he rolled over to his side and fell asleep. I couldn't believe it! I did the same thing with his naps the next day and again, he just rolled over and passed out. It was like that for the whole week! And instead of waking 3, 4 or 5 times a night, he woke up just once... AND it was after sleeping for 6 straight hours (then he went back to sleep for 3 or 4 more). So I definitely was getting better sleep. Unfortunately, this Monday my dear child did not want to go to sleep on his own! Jordon even had to take him for a car ride! He woke twice during the night (so not as bad as before) but I felt defeated because I thought my nights of freedom were over. Last night though, it was a little difficult to get him to sleep but he managed to soothe himself in his crib (it just took a little longer than it had before). He also slept 9 straight hours. Amazing. I'd like to say I got 9 straight hours of sleep, but I had to wake up at 4:30am to pump (my body is not used to waiting so long to feed baby... I pumped 11 oz. in 5 minutes!). We're traveling this weekend, so we'll see how he sleeps during/after our trip!

His little teeth are growing on in too! I think his sleep improvement definitely has something to do with his teeth finally breaking through. Of course when they broke through you could only see the top ridge of them, but now the first to break through is about halfway through, and the tooth that followed 3 days later is about a quarter of the way in. They are far enough that when he gives me a smile it is no longer a tooth-less grin, but a cute smile with two visible pearly-whites! Although I'm happy he is no longer in pain from teething, it is sort of sad that I'll never see that tooth-less grin again.

Tyler is sitting up very well these days, but if he gets distracted he always tips over. It's pretty funny actually. He has the hardest head too! We've laid a blanket down over the area run in our living room, but I still hear a small *bam* every time he flips over while holding his head up, or tips unexpectedly. And he never cries! Plus he still rolls under the coffee table all the time and lifts his head exactly at the edge so it bumps the table. I cringe every time... I think it's about time to either bubble wrap my furniture or move the coffee table out of there. I'm not sure if he's getting closer to crawling or not. He pushes himself up in a push-up position so well, but just doesn't understand the concept of moving those little knees. Sometimes he lifts his arms and legs off the floor (so he's just hanging out on his belly) and wiggles everything, so I think maybe he wants to swim places haha. I'm sure he'll figure it out soon enough though.

On the food front, Tyler is being adventurous! He's tried and liked a lot of different things so far... brown rice cereal, oatmeal, avocado, sweet potato, apple, banana (favorite), butternut squash, pear, and carrot. And he's eating more, amount-wise, as well. He eats a good meal about twice a day... sometimes I offer a third but I think he's pretty content with two because he never eats all of the third. I'm so excited for when I can just give him small pieces of finger foods on his high chair tray and let him go at it! (And no, he isn't actually eating crackers in the photos above. He was loving playing with that empty Cheez-it box, and we took the saltines to feed to the ducks at the pond on campus.)

So as sad as it is to see my baby boy grow into a toddler, I'm so excited by all of this progress! We're visiting the pediatrician tomorrow, and I'm anxious to see how much he weighs and how tall he is. And as always, I have all sorts of questions for the doctor... yup, I'm officially a mom :-)


No comments:

Post a Comment