Life These Days

This child has been an absolute delight lately.  He is in the middle of another developmental growth spurt and I just love it.  Literally, every day I wake up and think "what exciting new thing will I see Elijah do today?"  For example, last week in one day I witnessed him learn how to walk using his walker toy, repeat "up!" after I prompted him to say it (it sounded more like "ut!" but I knew what he meant), touch the iPad specifically to make a desired action happen, and pretend to drink out of a cup in the bath.  It was just one thing after another.  Daniel and I looked at each other with delighted grins every time he demonstrated a new skill.  Walking with the walker toy was particularly exciting.  In the morning before we left for school/work, I supported him under his armpits while he walked and held on.  That afternoon, I tried again only this time I let go and he just took off.  He's been going ever since.  I can tell that he doesn't really need the walker.  He is barely leaning on it.  If he did lean on it, it would just topple over because he's so heavy. He just uses it to balance, and for confidence. He really likes it because he gets to walk independently (well, without holding onto us).  He spends much more time upright these days.  I think it will be a matter of days or weeks before he takes his first steps.

We are working much more on verbal skills these days.  We ask him to say "up!" instead of screaming while lifting his arms up to be held.  I spend a lot of time repeating words and naming objects, even though he still hasn't spoken his true first word yet.  I know he's absorbing it all and very soon he will be repeating after us.  We downloaded a new game for the iPad that teaches farm animals.  When Elijah touches the barn door, it opens and there's an animal inside.  You hear the animal make a noise and then a voice says the animal's name.  Many times it sounds like Elijah is trying to imitate the animal noise.  It's pretty adorable.

We are also slowly introducing milk and trying to wean off the bottles.  This past weekend we started mixing 1 ounce of whole milk with 4 ounces of formula.  And we cut him down from 5 bottles a day to 4- when he wakes up, 1 before each nap, and 1 before bed.  I think it will be fairly easy to keep cutting down one at a time, but we'll see.  His naps have gotten shorter and it seems that he can go much longer without getting cranky, so I think the transition to one nap will come very soon as well.  He's only napping 1 hour in the morning and 1-1.5 hours in the afternoon.  And he's sleeping about 7 or 7:30pm-6 or 6:15am.  So 10.5-11 hours at night.  This is much less than he was sleeping just 6 or 8 weeks ago. But he is a very happy boy overall, so I feel that he is getting enough.

I get less and less of the cuddle time I crave.  But when I do, it is just precious.  Last night while he drank his bottle, I tickled his face accidentally with a lock of my hair.  He giggled softly and reached up to play with it.  I encouraged it and let him stroke my hair and giggle.  Daniel was there too and he just smiled and laughed along with Elijah.  It was such a beautiful moment.  I truly feel that times like that are the rewards for all the hard work of being a mom.  And it is worth it one hundred percent.

Elijah's Eleventh month

It's been a whole month since I've blogged.  Elijah is now 11 months old and seems much more a toddler than a baby.  The past month has been.... hard.  And busy.  Every weekend in July was packed full.  We spent the first weekend in Estes Park and then the second weekend my dad and brother stayed with us.  The third weekend my friend Sarah came to visit and the fourth weekend my brother was back with us waiting to move into his new place.  Daniel and I have discovered that if we get lazy, our marriage suffers.  We really have to make our relationship a priority or it gets neglected much too easily.  The good news is that it's easy to fix and the solution involves spending time with my best friend! On top of all of that, we've had some illness, some sleep disruptions, and some new behavior issues to work through with Elijah.  

He had a very high fever on this particular evening

First up: the illness.  We found out at the end of June that Elijah needs to get tubes in his ears.  He has had one ear infection after another, and his pediatrician finally decided that he needed something more intensive than antibiotics.  He has been on so many different antibiotics, and this last one seemed to really upset his stomach.  Thank goodness he does well taking medicine!  Maybe it's all the practice :-)  Unfortunately we weren't able to get into the head and facial surgery department until the end of August.  So he has continued to get ear infections.  Most of the time he doesn't have any obvious symptoms.  But he caught a cold about two weeks ago, and he has been just miserable.  He has this horrible cough and it has really disrupted his sleep.  We don't want to give him tylenol continuously until he can get tubes in his ears, so we're trying to manage Elijah's discomfort and wait it out.  But it seems to be exacerbating his problems with sleep.  So....

Always sleeps with his monkey and sleep sack

Next up: sleep disruptions.  Since he was 7 months old, Elijah has been on a very consistent and predictable sleep schedule.  Bed at 6:30, wake up at 6am, two naps each for 60-90 minutes.  He would fall asleep quickly and easily and stay asleep.  We have been talking about moving his bedtime back for a long time.  There are many reasons we wanted to do that (so we could actually go out and do things that start at 6pm, so he would sleep later than 6am).  So we tried to push it back to 7 or 7:30.  And it just messed up everything.  He would roll around in his crib playing until 7:45 or 8pm!  He was still waking up at 6am no matter what time we put him to bed.  So he was getting only 10 or 10.5 hours of sleep. This coincided with him getting sick so his naps got shorter and shorter and we ended up with an extremely overtired child who is just discovering his independence.  Which brings us to....

Behavior problems.  Elijah has started throwing tantrums.  Not full-blown toddler tantrums, but pretty close.  He screams as loud as he can and his face turns red.  When it first started, I just reacted like I always have- trying to meet whatever need.  Hand him a toy, pick him up, give him food, whatever.  But then I realized that I'm just reinforcing that behavior.  I've discussed it with his teachers at school and we're all on the same page.  Trying not to react when he screams.  Ignore.  It's so hard because for the first time it's not just about feeding, clothing, cuddling, and playing.  We actually have to parent now.  That is scary.  For a few weeks I didn't know if it was the illness, the lack of sleep, or just his emerging toddlerhood.  Well now that he's feeling better and getting more sleep, I believe it was a combination of all three.  It has drastically decreased.  When he's well-rested and feeling well, the tantrums are very rare.  I am so relieved.  I honestly was afraid we were discovering that our child was the "bad kid."  The one who is difficult, impulsive, stubborn, and a bully.  But I think I probably overreacted a bit.

 

After this weekend, I am happy to say that his cough is on its way out, we have moved his bedtime back to 6:30 or 7 (depending on how his naps go), and the tantrums have drastically decreased.  The sleep is still a work in progress.  I am realizing that I should stop being so perfectionistic about it.  I mean, he still sleeps all the way through the night and falls asleep on his own without so much as a whine.  So I should probably thank my lucky stars.  But, I would love it if we could go back to a predictable bedtime with him getting at least 11 hours at night.  Bonus points if he could sleep in past 6am!  We decided to wait until he's over this illness (and maybe even has his tubes in) and try to push back his bedtime again.  I'm also hoping that as winter comes around and it stays darker a little bit later, that might help it happen naturally.  

So now for the good things!  Elijah's speech development has really taken off in the past month.  Around the middle of July we started to recognize him parroting back some things we were saying.  It wasn't recognizable by any means, but he would use the same intonation.  When we said things like "Bye-bye!"  or "all done" or "gentle"  it sounded like he was mimicking us back with his babbling.  He says "Da-DEE" really well, though he still doesn't say it to mean anything.  I'm so excited for that to happen and I think it's just around the corner.  To get a good idea of his speech development, watch this video.  It's one of my favorites!  He is cruising fantastically, but still not walking.  He walks pretty well when we hold onto both hands.  He kind of leans forward the whole time instead of balancing on his own two feet.  He can walk for short distances while holding one hand and it's pretty freaking adorable.  We try to do that more often because it forces him to balance.  He can also crawl up stairs as of last Friday!  He has 4 teeth on top, and 2 on bottom.  He is still eating like a champ!  He LOVES pizza, and pretty much anything else we feed him.  He just tried peanut butter for the first time and of course he loved that too.  I am so happy that he's a good eater.  I know that's likely to change when he hits toddlerhood.  He's doing great on formula, though every time he gets sick I feel a little bit guilty.  I've started to think about how we're going to wean him off bottles.  He is doing so well with solid food that I really think it won't be too difficult.  In the last week I've finally noticed that he's really drinking out of a sippy cup.  He has water with all his meals, but he won't really drink formula out of it.

Duet!

Elijah has fallen asleep in my arms quite a few times in the last few weeks (thanks to his sleep disruptions) and I've been eating it up.  The time that he spends still and in physical contact with me is so fleeting, so I'm sure to take advantage when it does happen.  I soak it all in.  Some of his favorite things to do now are play ball (he actually catches it and throws it back!), read books (especially with lift-the-flap or touch-and-feel aspects), anything outside, go for walks in the stroller, play with kitchen utensils (especially his beloved ladle), chase the dog and eat his tail, and anything that involves putting items in containers.

Reading a "lift-the-flap pop-up" book

For the past 3 weeks I have gone to visit Elijah on my lunch hour about 3 days a week.  I absolutely love it.  It makes the day go by so much faster and makes me feel more connected to Elijah, his teachers, and what he's doing at school all day.  I was afraid to go and visit before because I thought it might be distressing to him for me to leave without him.  But we tried it once and he was just fine.  Yesterday and today there were some tears and reaching for me when I dropped him off.  It's heart-melting and heart-breaking at the same time.  I love that he wants me more than anyone else, but I hate having to leave while he's upset.  I think these were just random incidences, but only time will tell.

Elijah's first haircut!  8.12.13  (We tipped very well)

One of the nights he fell asleep in my arms.  Love it.

Just for fun :-)

We are planning his first birthday party for September first.  Daniel's mom is coming out for it, and a bunch of our friends should be coming as well.  I'm so excited for Elijah to have cake!  It's a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme.  I just cannot believe he is almost one year old.  I've wanted a baby for so long, and now just like that we're through the baby stage and onto toddlerhood!  It's absolutely amazing.  He brings me so much incredible joy every single day.  I love him more than anything or anyone else in the world.  And more and more I realize how lucky we are that he is so healthy.  So just a few weeks left in Elijah's first year.  It's been an incredible year!