Lunchtime Fun

So I'm sitting at the kitchen table feeding JJ his sweet potatoes on bites of my cilantro & garlic bread  (that's cilantro & garlic baked in, not garlic bread like you serve with Italian), and JJ and John start mimicking each other.

Like, JJ looks at John and sort of lays his head to one side, so John lays his head over too.

Then John drops his head down more... and JJ drops HIS head to his little food tray.

Simultaneously getting sweet potato in his hair.  *facepalm*

JJ smacks his food tray... John pat-pat smacks his arm or the table.

And they go on like this for minutes at a time.  It's extremely cute.  I promise I'll do my best to snag video next time they get started.

Meanwhile, this will have to do:

Table banging... "MOOOM!! MORE FOOD!!!"

"OOH!!! FOOD!!!"

"OM-NOM-NOM-NOM-NOM!!!"

"I'm the baby, gotta love me!"

And one more just because it's adorable...

Nothing outdoes the classic cuteness of the OshKosh.

Except, of course, for teh babeh.

Helpless cooing in 3... 2... 1...

He so rarely lets me get the good snuzzle pics!

So you know those moments (hours... evenings...) where your child suddenly decides that all is right with the world, that 6:45 isn't such an unreasonable bedtime, decides to not only cooperate with the evening routine, but actively help you get it done and smile the whole time?  The rare and miraculous once in a blue moon evenings that tell you, yes, there IS a person in there, and yes, he IS learning, and no, he doesn't hate you for making him go to sleep when it's still light out?

We just had one of those.

In fact, the whole day has been incredibly smooth sailing, despite the atrociously early beginning thereof.

Yeah, JJ decided to get going at quarter past 5 today.  *groan*  Of course, it's tough to complain, because he also slept through from bedtime last night (almost 10.5 hours) with only one wake-up, and that was the post-bedtime top-off feed that I don't usually count anyway.  Once I realized that, well, I decided to stop being irritated about the 5am wake-up call.

Because of the early morning, it turned into a two-nap day, falling neatly into the ideal 2 nap day pattern, and baby was up for the afternoon at 2:30 on the dot, already awake when I went to go get him.

Ate his lunch (pureed squash ... but on toast fingers... yeah, I'm back to purées are EBIL, but that's another post)... drank some water...

Took a good half dozen sorta-maybe steps while clinging to my fingers...

Did NOT freak out during his evening play-time with Grandma (read: mommy's sanity-saving baby-free hour).  Normally he lasts about 40 minutes and then starts freaking out because Grandma is nice but she's NOT MOMMY!!!!

Sat (SAT) in his bath and played happily with his toys for fifteen whole minutes without making me constantly re-sit him.

(Here's the big one) REFUSED TO NURSE IN CLUTCH HOLD AND NURSED TO SLEEP IN CRADLE HOLD INSTEAD.  Y'all have no idea.  He is seven, almost eight months old, almost thirty inches long, and until a month ago was still exclusively nursing in clutch hold.  It's taken the last month to introduce it and for him to realize that it WORKS BETTER, so for him to actively refuse clutch is a huge big honkin' deal in the Nolan household!

So... seriously... who is this perfect little angel and what has he done with my child?????

He's sleeping now, and I'm waiting for the "Mooooooooooooooooooom, I'm still hungry!!!!!!!" cries to start, but I'm hoping a smooth day bodes well for a smooth night and it won't take too long to get him back to sleep.

ETA: Okay, so we're coming up on two hours since bedtime here.  At the hour mark I snuck into the bedroom, reeeeaaaaaal quiet-like, because I hadn't heard JJ fuss for his top-off feed yet.  And what do I find?  A peacefully sleeping baby who has flipped over on his tummy and clearly made it through the transition all. on. his. own.

One more bit of ultimate cuteness...

I can melt now, right?  Okay, just checking.  *melt*

Sleep Regressions SUCK!!!

It's official, my kid is the cutest kid ever. :P

That's his baby-mirror he's playing with... I recently figured out a way to attach it to his pack 'n play, so now I'm typically being woken in the morning by baby-giggles as he plays with his "friend"... infinitely preferable to being woken by "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH", let me tell you.

Okay, so y'all probably remember my moaning and whining about the 4 month sleep regression.

The 8 month?  Yeah, it's worse.

He's back to waking up an average of three times a night, and this time adjusting his reflux meds didn't fix it.  HELPED, oh wow did it help (he was up to 5-6x a night again and I was one cranky momma!), but the remaining three aren't reflux related.  Totally different cry, that.  Now, if they were spread out, I could deal with it, but they're all clustered between about 2 am and 6.

*whimpers*


He's also trying to drop a nap.  Yeah, he wants to go down to one nap already, he's been trying for a month, but until today I just wasn't seeing enough to indicate he was really ready.  Oh, we tried a couple of times, and there have been a few days where everything lined up just right and one nap did the job, but most days he just hasn't been up to the 4-5 hour wake times needed to pull off one nap.

Sacked out in the new pack 'n play.

BUT... that first nap in the morning keeps sneaking earlier and earlier.  Today he was only awake for an hour and forty before he got cranky and hungry and passed out at the breast in four minutes flat.  I haven't seen that short of a morning wake time since he was still taking three 2 hour naps every day.  Aaaand then he refused to nap again until 1:45, and only slept until 2:30.  Used to be he had to be awake by 4pm in order to sleep at 7.  Then 3:30, and it's been 3pm for a while now... so he was about due to back it up another half hour.

So, I'm thinking since John's off work tomorrow, it'd be a good day to take a real stab at the single nap day JJ apparently REALLY wants.

Kid's gonna have to get used to our Ergo (thank you, miss Elora!!!), if he's gonna only take one nap, because I absolutely cannot be stuck on my butt entertaining him all day with only one break.  Can't.  Won't.  Nuh uh.  Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.

Even if he is the cutest thing ever.

Lotsa stuff...

I realized this morning that it's been almost a month since I've posted!  Woops, sorry folks!  I owe y'all a major update!

So...

JJ turned 7 months old on the 2nd.  He'd been doing the all-fours rocking for a couple of weeks, so I knew it was time to retire the Arm's Reach and get him a deeper bed... but oops, bad Mommy, I didn't get around to it in time!  On the 4th (yes, Independence Day, how's that for irony), my son decided to let me know he was up from his nap by climbing out of the Arm's Reach, onto the night-stand, and riding the stereo down to the floor!

I swear to you, my heart stopped dead in my chest for the ten seconds between the massive THUDTHUDTHUD and the WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!  The fact that I was across the living room, through the door, and halfway around the bed before he started crying not withstanding.  And there's my baby on the floor, shrieking with the stereo cable in his hand.  Thankfully he was fine, but we watched him like a hawk and ran out that same morning to pick up a pack'nplay I found on Craigslist.

This, I captioned "There.  Climb outta THAT, ye wee beastie, ye!"

A friend promptly responded, 

"His expression says 'Okay, Mom, just turn your back and gimme five.'"

In the week since, he has made HUGE strides on his pulling up and cruising skills, because the rails of the P'nP are juuuuust high enough that he can reach them and peek over the side once standing, but much too tall for him to use to climb out.

For now.  *facepalm*

But each day he tolerates a little more time inside it in its guise as a play-pen, so I'm finally getting some baby-not-on-mommy time while he's awake on a regular basis, which is LOVELY.  

Lately he's started playing with more consonant sounds.  We've got "buh", "guh", and the most recent addition appears to be an attempt at "th", but there are a lot of spit bubbles involved.  ;)  He's also discovered that he can blow buzzers (or "tummy-flurbers", as John calls them) on my shoulder if he gets a good seal with that wide open mouth!

John & JJ being silly billies...

He's working his way through quite a range of table food, trying out whatever unprocessed something is on the menu, cut into fingers he can hold in his fist & gnaw on.  No teeth yet, but the symptoms resurface periodically, so it can't be far off.

We've decided not to bother with sippy cups, except for traveling, because he's so grabby for our glasses that we just started teaching him to drink from a cup.

And cups?  Not the only thing he grabs for.

"Hi, Mom!"

"Don't mind me... I'm just a cute little baby..."

"Dang... Missed."

The cat isn't safe either.

It's gonna be worth it next year.

Quick baby update:  JJ will be seven months old on Monday.  *blinks*  He's getting heavy, over seventeen pounds now, and you can see it.  On both of us.  I'm putting on muscle from toting the little monkey around all day.  We've started in on the solids, and most things so far are going over just fine.

The broccoli was a big hit. :)

So... on to wider things...

When I was a kid (like, four), my mother had this really extensive fruit and vegetable garden.  Raised beds, separate asparagus and strawberry patches, trellis setups for peas and green beans and cucumbers, sapling fruit trees along the driveway, the works.

I had this little 3" deep section at one end of one bed, where I grew giant sunflowers and zinnias and radishes.  It was fun.

Twenty-five years later, I'm finding out just how much WORK went into establishing that garden, because I'm trying to put a similarly sized one in at our current home.  Not doing raised beds, since the soil is pretty good as it is, just planting straight in the ground.

That's the plan anyway.

See, right now, the yard looks like this:

My adorable son in the foreground...

... and grass, all the way to the fence in the waaaaaay way background, except for one strip of flower-bed about three feet deep that took a solid month to rescue from hip high weeds because I had to work around half a dozen peonies and several burdock plants.  The flower-bed is finally cleared, and I've gotten started on the grass.

THAT, my friends, is putting up a fight.

I don't have a sod-kicker, and can't afford to rent one, so my only real option (because I am so not soaking close to a thousand square feet in chemicals) is to actually dig out the grass.  

With a shovel.

One.  Square.  At a time.

This is grass that was laid as sod over twenty years ago, when John's grandmother got past where she could keep up with the garden.  Over the last two decades, it's gotten itself nicely incorporated into the underlying soil, and managed to get invaded by dandelions, three different kinds of clover, and even the occasional thistle.  So when I say digging, I mean that getting a foot-square chunk loose takes about ten minutes.

I can't do long strips or mats like you see sod in at the garden center, because I have to be able to manage them by myself.  Means I'm limited to about 18" wide and 24" long, max.  

So every day, once JJ goes down for a nap, I slather on the sunscreen, pin my sun hat to my hair, and head out to sweat some more.  

I've settled on a process of cutting the squares and flopping them grass side down onto the next row.  In about a week I'll start circling back to knock off the loosed dirt and toss the (by then hopefully) dead grass into the composter.  

Then, of course, I have to get the in between rows.

*headdesk*

Here's what it looks like now:

By the end of July I want to have the grass cleared out to where the composter is standing.  I've pretty much given up on getting anything planted this year, just going to get rid of the grass and focus on building the soil now that I have my ComposTumbler back.  Also ordered a few pounds of seed to put in a green fertilizer crop that will keep the weeds down, capture all that lovely nitrogen I'm stirring up, and loosen up the deeper layers of soil.  That way next spring I can just till the whole mess under as soon as the ground thaws, and have a nice big garden ready for planting as soon as the weather gets decent.

Big job... but it's gonna be worth it next year.

Right?  *whimper*

My favorite things...

Admit it.  Every last one of you is singing the song.

But no, I'm not going to inflict a video of my personal rendition upon you.

I'm just popping on between diaper changes to gush a little, and vent a little, and wowzers, have I really almost made it through seven whole months of parent-hood?

My favorite thing about JJ's recent developments has GOT to be his newfound ability to entertain himself in the cosleeper for half an hour in the mornings.  This affords me the unbelievable luxury of waking up slowly, rather than being yanked into consciousness by the shrieking banshee child.

There's also introductions to the puppy-dog, which are going AWESOMELY well.  John was a bit worried about how Lady (our Malamute) would respond to JJ, so he's been very cautious now that we have her back with us.  She is, I am happy to report, being a wonderfully behaved goggie around teh babbeh.  (Yes, I'm speaking lolcat/babytalk, sue me.)  She has shared Mommy-lap with JJ and given him his first doggie face-washing.  The look on his face, y'all, was priceless.  One of those "I need 24/7 video coverage of my entire house and yard" moments.

Despite teething issues, JJ is continuing to sleep decently most nights, thank God.  It's interesting, I can tell how comfy (or not) he is by how many times he wakes up at night to nurse.  Once = comfy baby.  Twice = iffy, might be teeth, might be just wanting to snuggle.  3x or more = Not. A. Happy. Camper.

Kiddo is getting HEAVY... haven't popped him on the scale lately, but I've had to let the waist on his diapers out another notch.  Kid's getting him a little belly.

The other day I ran across some pictures of me at this age, and now I can see how he looks like me.  It's nice, because mostly I think he looks like John.  Oh, he definitely got the red hair, but it's already as dark as mine, so I don't really hold out hope for it STAYING red as he gets older.  Dark dark brown with red highlights, though... that's gonna be some niiiice hair.

Oh, dear.  I'm gonna have to watch out for the little girls with this one, aren't I? *facepalm*

The progress toward crawling is a little scary in its pace, the little bugger is desperate to be mobile by any means fair or foul.  There's a lot of army-style belly-crawling, lots of wiggles and scoots, and rocking on his hands and knees, but he also pulls up to his feet if he's got parental fingers to hold onto.  Still thinking he might (mostly) skip the crawling stage and go straight to cruising.

He's fascinated with the handset phones, he figured out how to make it go "beep!" and hasn't allowed me a peaceful call since.  The little green light that says my computer is charged is also a source of obsession, and he's constantly trying to get his little hands on the cord.

So, I'm actually really glad that this post sat unfinished overnight, because this morning JJ wiggled his way over to Mommy, just so he could lay his head on my shoulder and snuggle.  *melt*

Oh yeah, and one more thing... this right here:

This is my favorite time of day.

So here's the deal.

Warning, Mommy-Wars annoy me, so this is kinda rant-ish.

My son schedules himself.

If he's not maintaining his usual pattern, it's because something is wrong.

Nobody believes me.

I have friends all over the spectrum of parenting styles, and everybody thinks I'm doing it wrong.

The more mainstream types are convinced he's never going to sleep on his own because I nurse him to sleep, and any disruptions to his naps or night sleep are laid at the door of "You must not be maintaining his schedule consistently" or "Could you be feeding him too much?"

The more AP-leaning sorts say things like "It's normal for a six month old to still be waking up multiple times a night, you know," and "You know it's really hard to make a baby stick to a schedule."

Now, I'm pretty crunchy.  We cloth diaper, babywear, cosleep, baby-led weaning, homemade toys, sensory play, yadda yadda yadda.  I'm breaking ground for that garden so I can grow our veggies instead of buying produce that got sprayed with God knows what.  I'm learning to make sourdough bread from scratch, including my making own starter.

Some things, we do more mainstream.  Vaccinations and baby-entertainment gear, mainly, because there have been pertussis outbreaks here recently, and it's really tough to cut sod with a baby on my hip.

But scheduling?  Nope.  He really is that predictable, as long as he's comfy.  Everything's right with his world, JJ takes two naps during the day, of 90 minutes to 2 hours each, and conks out for the night between 6:30 and 7.  He rouses once after bedtime to top off his tummy, then sleeps until 6:30 or 7 in the morning, with one wake-up during the night to nurse, anywhere between 1 and 3am.  Takes 15-20 minutes, and he never really wakes up.

Now, if he's having a growth spurt, his gums are super sore, or his reflux is acting up, all that goes haywire in extremely short order.  But that's the point.  If he's a happy baby, he sleeps like an angel.  If he's waking me up more than twice a night, something is wrong, and because I'm sleep-deprived at that point, I usually require a little help figuring out what that something might be.

I know that most babies aren't nearly that predictable.  I get that.  I am aware that I was blessed with an incredibly easy baby for my first time out, quite likely I'm using up all my free passes on this one, and his next sibling will probably be one of those all over the map babies that's perfectly happy with random naps and being wide awake at 3am.

I can hear my mother already.  It's your turn, dear.  I hope you have a child JUST like you.

Thanks, Mom.  'Preciate it.

But honestly, folks... it seems like a thoroughly unpredictable child is considered some kind of AP badge of honor, like if your kid is sleeping through the night "too early" you must be forcing the issue, and baby being off their routine is really nothing to worry about because it's normal.

By the same token, the far end of the scheduling school of thought has a predictable baby that sleeps through the night, takes regular naps, and has planned out meal- and play-times followed like clockwork as its Holy Grail, leaving very little room for a child's individual needs or personality.  If your kid isn't meeting that standard, well, you must not be doing your job!

Lucky me, JJ does six of one and a half dozen of the other, so they all think I'm nuts!

Don't mind me, I'm just going insane over here.

Okay, enough ranting, time for baby cuteness.

A couple of days ago JJ was seriously bored and I was a little tired of entertaining him, so I improvised.

Pimento jar (baby food sized), Parsley jar, Meat Tenderizer jar.

All with a dozen or so red kidney beans inside and the lids glued on.

Little dude was FASCINATED.

They all move differently and make different sounds.  The pimento jar is glass, so it's louder and kinda musical.  Plus the pop-top lid makes it drum-y, which he loves.  The parsley jar, he mostly rolls, and the meat tenderizer jar... heh.  It's his favorite because it's just small enough around for him to get a grip on, and you should have seen his face when he worked out how to make it make noise.

*shake*  Those little eyebrows start to lift.

*shake shake*  His eyes pop and his mouth does that surprised "Oh!" thing for a second, and then he flashes me this huge wide-eyed open-mouthed grin and proceeds to make with the maracas.

*shakeshakeshakerattleshake*

It also apparently makes a really awesome chew toy.

I love my life!