Wasn’t Nico just born? Has it really been almost 7 months??? Time is just flying and June really whizzed by. I ended up taking a bunch of photos and videos — probably because I felt so guilty about not taking many in April and May. But I was actually busier in June than in either of those months. Between some big deadlines at both of my jobs, I ended up working nearly 80 hours this month and Frank was really busy at work too. At some point I turned 34, Frank celebrated his first Father’s Day, Frank had a horrible neck spasm that sent him to a chiropractor, and Nico grew up a litle more. All of that was pretty much a blur, though. My goal was to be a full-time mom and do some part-time work, but this month that sure didn’t pan out — I was doing both pretty much full-time. July and August promise to be a little bit more sane and we even have some fun travel planned. We’re all looking forward to that.
Nico made tremendous leaps and bounds all month long! Here are some highlights:
He started the month with 2 teeth and finished it with seven! 4 on the bottom and 3 (plus one about to come in) on the top. Poor little guy had 4 top teeth pushing and shoving to come in all at the same time, just after 2 had come through on the bottom. The good news is that there are only 20 total, so he’s getting a lot of the hard work out of the way early on.
June 8th – Nico had his first babysitter this month. I had been staying up until 2 or 3 AM writing and then getting up with him around 9 every day and trying to write if he took naps. But I could see that there was no way I could keep up that pace and also that even with that pace I wouldn’t meet my deadlines. So I found a babysitter to come for 4 hours a day, two days a week. I still spent most of the month working until the wee hours, but having her here for 8 hours a week made a huge difference! And she’s great — she is going to grad school in the fall for speech/language pathology and she knows sign language, so she’s signing with him and spends a lot of time reading to him and teaching him new things. I haven’t worked up to leaving him alone with her yet, but it’s great to have here there while I work. An added benefit is that I can just go downstairs if he cries or needs to eat, so I don’t need to pump or anything. So far it’s really easy and quite a lifesaver for me.
June 9th – Nico turned 6 months old!
He makes a ton of sounds now, although it’s way too early for any of them to mean anything. For a long time “guh” was his main sound. That was replaced by “buh.” Those are still his two favorites. But “dadada” is now a very popular one. And he says “kuh” “wuh” “yuh” “ha” “fuh” “tuh” “puh” “suh” and “juh.” Now that he’s got those top teeth, he loves feeling them against his lips so he says a lot of “vuh” and “fuh.”
He still won’t eat any food. At all. If anything goes in his mouth, he gags and gags and gags until he throws up. This proved to be a good thing a couple of times when he ended up with paper in his mouth (part of the binding of a board book, part of a paper napkin at a restaurant…). He gagged and we swept the paper out. But he really should be eating by now. We’ll be talking to his pediatrician about this on Friday at his 7 month visit.
He crawled backward for the first 2 weeks of June, but couldn’t figure out how to go forward. On June 14th he crawled forward for the first time. He still doesn’t go too far, though, even though he can. He figured out how to sit back up from crawling on June 24th, so now he likes to go a few steps and sit down, go a few steps and sit down. Mostly, though, he just wants to stand up. He’ll pull himself to his feet from our legs if we’re sitting on the ground or from anything that’s about 6 inches off the ground. He climbs up the coffee table and the couch. And he balances on his own — often just holding on with 1 hand so he can do something with the other one. He is getting more and more stable every day and we think he’s going to forget about crawling and go straight to walking. He always has wanted to be vertical…
I keep telling him about all the advantages of staying a baby for a while and telling him that the faster he grows up, the sooner he’s going to have to get a job. But he doesn’t care. He just pushes those teeth through and tries to stand up and forgets all about being a baby. It makes me sad — he’s growing up too fast!
June 14th was a big day for 2 other things too. He seemed to understand when we said “where’s the cat?” He’d stop what he was doing and look around until he spotted the cat. He could care less about “where’s Daddy?” or “where’s Mommy?” But “where’s the cat?” elicited an immediate reaction without fail, every time. That day he also showed a real interest in reading. I was sitting on the floor with him next to a bookshelf and we were reading his all-time favorite book, Pajama Time. When it was done, he pulled himself over my leg, hung out on his belly on my leg, grabbed a book off the shelf with one hand, and brought the book back with him as he came back to sit on my lap. An adorable fluke, right? That’s what I thought until he did it again. And then a third time. He was deliberately selecting books and bringing them back to me to read, waiting until the end of the story, and doing it again. Eventually he was more interested in just pulling the books off the shelf, but he started by wanting me to read to him!
He is getting much more demonstrative with his love. He gives real hugs and “kisses” (which are just huge slobbery messes as he puts his wide open mouth against our cheek or chin and holds it there until we are sufficiently soggy). He’ll often hug my neck, pull back to look at me and smile, and then hug me again. It melts my heart every time!
He started having mini temper tantrums this month. He suddenly gets angry if we take something away from him and cries if we don’t substitute it with something else. He has also cried if we redirect him from something he wanted to do. I used to have a hard time picturing him as a toddler having a tantrum (even though I knew it was coming). Now I can totally picture it — and it scares me!
My parents came to visit at the end of June, helping with big house projects and watching Nico so I could work. It was extremely helpful and he had a lot of fun with his Grandma and Grandpa.
To those of you still reading (and I have been assured that it’s more than just the grandparents who read to the end), thank you for indulging me in sharing these minute details about my little boy and enjoy the photos!
Just in time for Father’s Day…here are photos from my first Mother’s Day. These were supposed to be included in yesterday’s slide show, but there was some sort of glitch so here they are as their very own presentation. I also learned a lesson — when I realized that a bunch of photos had been excluded, I “unpublished” my blog post so I could re-do the slide show before you all found out about it. But, ahem, the email notification system seems to not care when I “unpublish” something. So I guess I need to make sure I finish what I start from now on. There are no do-overs in Dreamweaver.
Stay tuned for photos from our visit to NJ and also for our Memorial Day BBQ photos.
Frank posted that compilation of videos from May which reminded me that I hadn’t put up photos from that month. As I looked, I realized that even though I did the mass update at the end of April / beginning of May, I hadn’t actually put the remaining April photos up either. So here’s a combined slide show.
Nico turned 4 months old in April and 5 months old in May. Does it make me a bad mom to be combining 2/5 of his entire life into one slide show and bullet list? Here are the highlights from the 2 months (It’s a long list and we figure the grandparents are the only ones who will read the whole thing!):
April
He sat up unsupported for the first time at 16 1/2 weeks (April 3rd). Frank sat him up — he didn’t sit himself up — but this was the first time he didn’t topple over. You may have seen that video — it happened while my parents were in town for the Cherry Blossoms.
Because he could suddenly sit up, we put together his high chair on Easter. We expected to keep the high chair in its box until he turned a year old or so, figuring he wouldn’t be able to sit up. But at 4 months he was arching out of the Bumbo seat and it turned out that he LOVED the high chair. Actually, he loved it for a full 2 months. We could put him in there any time we wanted to get anything done in the house. (Now he’s on to us, though, and he’ll only hang out there while we eat.)
He started rolling to his side to fall asleep during his naps.
He had his 4-month visit with the doctor and weighed 16 pounds, 2 ounces. He was 26 1/4 inches long. He surprised the doctor by being able to sit up on his own. (She didn’t believe me when I said he could, so she took him and sat him on the exam table and he stayed.) He was due for vaccines at his 4 month visit, but Frank was home sick so she wanted to hold off and give them to him when everyone was healthy at home.
The doctor shocked me by telling me that he was exhibiting signs of readiness for solid food (sitting up, being interested in food, and maybe a couple of other indicators). She wanted us to start giving him things like banana, avocado, sweet potato, squash, apple and pear between his 4 month and 6 month visit.
I wasn’t ready to start him on solid food this early, but because we trust his doctor we gave him a couple of tastes. You may have seen his introduction to banana in the videos Frank posted a few days ago. We also gave him some apple in a little mesh bag. He didn’t really like either. (It’s gotten worse now — if we try to give him food he gags until he makes himself throw up.)
I quit one of my 2 jobs and had my last day at work on April 16th. He came to work with me at my second job for the first time on April 19th. Of course, every time he came to the 1st job, he slept for 3 of the 4 hours I was there and was perfectly quiet and still the rest of the time. My first day at the second job? He found his voice and shrieked in delight for an hour straight — while I was on a conference call. I’m pretty sure they all thought I was lying when I told them how mellow he had been at the other job. Fortunately he’s still allowed to go back there.
I got a job as a grant writer at another local nonprofit, which I can do entirely from home. I kept the 2nd job, which I do for 10 hours a week — 6 from home and 4 from the office (with Nico).
I started doing some volunteer work for my midwives, and of course Nico joins me there as well. He has very little say in how he spends his days, when you think about it…
He sucked his thumb for the 1st time in April. (4/19) He still prefers the pacifier, though — I don’t think the thumb is big enough to satisfy his need for sucking.
When he was at my office playing on the floor, I looked over to see him grab his pacifier and pop it into his mouth, and then sit there playing and sucking away. It was pretty cute. It’s amazing that he can recognize the pacifier — no matter which one we use — and put it in his own mouth the right way.
He started bringing his feet to his hands in April in classic happy baby pose.
His first 2 teeth broke through on April 23rd — at 4 1/2 months. He got the 2 middle bottoms ones first. (He has since gotten the 2 next to them and his middle top teeth have been on the verge of breaking through for several weeks.) He didn’t get fussy until the teeth broke through the surface. Then he was less smiley and definitely visibly in pain for about a week while they kept pushing their way up into his mouth. Hyland’s teething tablets help, as do Boiron chamomilla 30C tablets (crushed between 2 spoons first) and ice in his little mesh bag.
May
I got to celebrate my very first Mother’s Day and it was great! I got breakfast in bed, flowers from the yard, a trip to the Brookside Gardens (even though it suddenly decided to get cold!), and dinner out.
He had an off-cycle doctor visit at 5 months for the vaccines he had missed in April. He got his second round of DTaP and his first rounds of HIB and Polio. She said she didn’t need to see him again until he turned 7 months now.
He started getting ready to crawl. I think one of the videos Frank posted was of him on the bed pushing over his feet to land on his tummy. He tucks one foot, pushes off the other, briefly goes to one knee and then flops on his belly. As the month progressed, he got better and better at getting himself into position and started doing a plank pose or a mini downward facing dog. But he hasn’t figured out how to go forward yet — he just goes in reverse or rolls over.
We went to my parents’ house in NJ and Frank’s parents came to visit as did Uncle Danny, Aunt Morgan, and Cousin Brady. The boys had a great time together and the grandparents got their fill of the grandkids. It was a nice weekend.
He caught a cold and we had to bring him to the doctor for his second sick visit (the first was in the winter when he got RSV). This time he acted much sicker than he did that time, and the doctor thought it was that his sinuses were putting pressure on those top teeth. When we started treating the teething pain with the homeopathics, he returned to his normal self right away.
When he babbles, he consistently makes a “guh” sound. By the end of the month he had added “kuh” “tuh” “fuh” and “puh.”
By the end of the month I couldn’t count on Nico being in the same place I had left him. He spins, moves backward, and rolls and it’s always a game to find out where he’ll be when I come back. We have installed outlet covers and know that our days of a non-child-proof home are numbered.
I’m still loving being home with him and feel extremely fortunate that I’ve been able to find jobs that are flexible — both in terms of when I get my work done and in terms of bringing Nico with me. It’s amazing that I can find such joy in being home all day with a boy who can’t say a word to me. But he makes me laugh all the time and we have a lot of fun at home, going for walks, and meeting up with friends.
Here are a few videos that we took last month. No great milestones were recorded, other than his first banana and first ride on the swings, but they are fun none-the-less.
There are 9 videos in this playlist. Press the four arrows button at the bottom right of the video window to view in full screen.
If you can’t see the video window above, click here.
Matthew hosted the cousins again when Julia and her family were driving through from a family vacation in Orlando. We hadn’t seen baby Robert since our baby shower last fall and if he was big then, he’s huge now! He is also just about ready to walk, which was very fun to watch.
We got to celebrate a bit with Matthew and Carrie too — they recently got engaged and are planning a November wedding at the foot of a waterfall in Hawaii.
Our grad school friends were last here en masse for a combined baby shower for Bonnie and me. They returned in April because Bonnie and Tom were bringing their baby, Holly, to DC so Bonnie could run the Cherry Blossom 10 mile race. As always, it was a relaxing weekend of just sitting around and catching up and, of course, eating. Debi, David, Mandi, Bahar, Satish and Manav joined us via skype and Holly and Nico had fun on their first play date. Photos are here – my favorites are from the brunch outside on the deck.
Staying with the theme of gorgeous spring flowers in DC, Frank and I took Nico to the US Arboretum the day before Easter. We had been there once before but didn’t realize how sprawling the place is — we had parked and walked and thought we covered a lot of ground. This time, we drove the circuit to get a feel for what was planted where. Then we parked near the Asian gardens, walked through there on a trail that led down to the Anacostia River, and then came back up to walk over to the grove of magnolia trees in full bloom. They were simply gorgeous, as you can see in the photos here.
We have always loved going down to the Tidal Basin in spring to take pictures of the blooming cherry blossoms. It’s been several years since we’ve been able to drag ourselves out of bed before the sun comes up to get sunrise photos without a crowd. This year was no different — why wake a sleeping baby? Instead we went down during the work day on Friday. Even though it was one of the two “peak bloom” dates, the crowds were manageable and we got some really pretty pictures, which you can see here.
It makes me sad — he’s growing up too fast!
