That's a pic of the little stinker starting to crawl through the coffee table. I decided not to discourage him in doing so because we are still waiting for him to pull up on anything (although sometimes he tries to pull up on the side of the bathtub, and sometimes he pulls up on me to get into a standing position). I thought pulling himself up onto the bottom of the coffee table was a good first step. Now for some more updates on what our big boy is doing these days:
Behold!
Last week Blake started extending his arm with hand open to "point" to objects. We joked that he was always saying "behold!" "Behold the fan!" "Behold the light!" "Behold the closet!" And I was wondering how we would teach him to actually point instead of just presenting his open hand turned upwards in the direction of his item of interest. But then just the other day he started to point, and now he points to everything! As I feed him in his booster seat in the kitchen, in the course of one meal he must point to the basement door about 20 times, and the kitchen chandelier another 10 times.
Items of Baby Fascination
That brings me to another topic of Blake's recent fascinations. He simply can't get enough of a few very simple things. The first is the hallway lights which we have been trained to turn on and off for him, ad nauseum. We try to put his hand on the switch to let him "help" but typically he gets frustrated with us touching his hand and prefers to just watch the light show. We even lift him him to touch his beloved lights, but he pulls his hand away and clings to Mike or me, apparently afraid of the lights. What could be going on in a baby head that would make the lights seem both fascinating and scary at the same time?
His other fascination is the ceiling fan. I have found him laying on his back in the living room just watching the fan and then doing a little happy-freak-out dance which involves thumping his arms and legs on the floor at full speed. The rest of the time he just points and either opens his mouth in sort of surprised "huh!" kind of sound, or he makes a "k" sound. (Like "car")
Another item of fascination is the closet in his room. Not only do the closet doors open to reveal a new world, but inside the closet is a small closet organizer which reveals yet ANOTHER new world! He opens and closes all 4 doors with our help. When we go get the baby in the morning, or when he wakes up from a nap, as soon as we pick him up out of the crib he points to the closet in hopes that we will take him over to explore.
Food
With the arrival of his first tooth, Blake has suddenly decided that he will only eat fruit. He was previously eating veggies and protein-mixes (turkey and rice, chicken and apples) quite well, and oatmeal was never a problem. Now he just turns his head when I offer anything but fruit and continues to make hungry whining noises until I bring out something he likes. In the last couple days he has improved slightly in that I have been able to re-introduce carrots and sweet potatoes.
I've tried a few "new" food items recently...I baked black beans and then mashed them up, but Blake HATED them (cringed multiple times and then finally vomited!), I cooked some carrots and offered him very little pieces, which he took happily (they just take a long time for him to "chew"). I offered him frozen peas that I cut up in small pieces and removed the skin, and he liked them well enough. I also dipped the tip of my finger in my yogurt today a couple times and let him lick it off, which he loved, but since I am not sure if he is over his milk protein allergy I didn't think I should offer him any more; we will probably wait a couple months before we try diary in earnest. We offered him organic puffs last week, but he got some eczema on his back (which cleared up after we stopped giving him puffs) so I am concerned that he might have a wheat allergy. Since we never identified all that he was allergic to while he was nursing, I am definitely very cautious in introducing new foods.
Sounds:
Blake is constantly making "kkk" sounds. He sometimes babbles and days dadada and other sounds. I really think he has said "ball" and "car" and "book" but he doesn't do it on command and he doesn't usually repeat it, so that might just be wishful thinking from Mommy. But, without a doubt, he is making a ton of noises, and his recent favorite is "kkk."
Object Identification:
The other day I had given Blake a bottle to hold/feed himself in the car. After a few minutes he got bored with the bottle and let it fall at his feet, but then a few minutes later he started to fuss and I knew he was hungry. So I said "Little boy, where is your bottle?" He immediately reached down to get the bottle that was at his feet! So, I think he really understood what I was asking him! (or at least he understood "bottle"!) Then today he was pointing in the general direction of the window and I was trying to figure out what had caught his attention. I saw his favorite red bumpy ball over there and I asked "do you see your ball?" and he pointed right to the ball. And sometimes I hear Mike coming down the steps and I say to Blake "Do you hear Dada?" and starts kicking his feet and flailing his arms in joyful anticipation (his typical response to seeing Dada). Yeah, baby! He is starting to understand us!
Uncle Matt:
Blake's Uncle Matt came to visit for the first time this weekend. Not only was Matt a huge help during Mike's (belated) birthday party, but he did great with Blake! Matt was a lot of fun, and Blake seemed to really enjoy him. Unfortunately, the only pics we took of the two together involved Blake skinny-dipping in our kiddie pool on the deck, and those pics aren't decent enough for a "family blog"! Thanks, Uncle Matt, for being so good to our little guy!
Sleep:
Blake is sleeping so well these days! Some (rare) days he sleeps through the night. Most nights, though, he wakes around midnight quite desperate for a bottle (which I give him). He has been sleeping until about 6:30am, which is a great improvement to the 5:30am which tortured us a couple months ago. But the best story is his naps. He now consistently sleeps 1 hr 45 minutes for a morning nap, and does best if he gets to sleep between 9 and 9:30am. For the afternoon nap he generally sleeps another 1.5 hrs, and does best if he goes down between 1 and 1:30pm. Bedtime is slightly later than it used to be, now between 7pm and 7:30pm most nights.
Surprisingly, he is not really interested in us rocking him to sleep, or even feeding him his bottle before bed any more. When we give him his bottle before he goes to sleep (which happens most naps and bed time), typically Blake drinks a couple ounces and then gets excessively wiggly, wanting a book, or arching backwards to see the closet doors behind us. However, if I put him down in his crib with his bottle, he very happily takes the bottle and feeds himself, or starts to play with his rings and roll around. It seems like he would rather do it himself, and the days may be behind us when we rock him to sleep. That said, sometimes Blake still snuggles up to us, sometimes in the middle of the night, or on rare occasion, when we are putting him down for the night or a nap. He will turn close to my body, as if to nurse, and just look up at me. Sometimes he takes the bottle in this position, but sometimes he seems to just want to be close. Oh, those are precious moments!
Need for Speed
One last little story. Today Blake was cruising around the kitchen in his walker, and he started to pick up some real speed on some of the longer stretches of unobstructed floor-space. He was sailing between the mudroom and the kitchen table, but veered to the side a little too far and collided with my secretary desk at full speed. I was sitting at the table right there, and I quickly came down to Blake's level to make sure he was okay and not scared. How did he respond? He just GIGGLED and GIGGLED and GIGGLED. He could hardly stop. It was so cute, and so surprising! The little boy who is afraid of our hallway light fixtures is delighted when he knocks the sense out of himself drag-racing around the kitchen!
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