Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Big Week!






Little guy had his 6 month appointment with Dr. Julie last Wednesday. It went well. He's 16# 14 oz and 28 1/2 inches long. He's in the 97% for length, but only the 25% for weight. Dr. Julie was a little concerned since he dropped percentiles in weight, but said he should be fine once he starts solid. I was worried until I started reading La Leche info and remembered from back in the day about exclusively breast fed baby's growth slowing down a bit after 3 months, so I  felt some better. We have a weight check in a month just to be sure. 

Dr. Julie gave us the okay for solids and we were so excited. We started on Saturday so Dad could be there. Christopher has been grabbing at out food for so long that we thought he would be thrilled to have some of his own. We were wrong! Poor kiddo was a little confused why we were sticking a spoon in his face. We finally got one bite down and were so excited we yelled a big "Yay" and that made him start bawling. So the first time didn't go exactly how we pictured, but he did much better the next day. Conan set him on his lap and we pretended to eat the rice cereal for a while until Little Guy couldn't stand it anymore and needed some for himself. We got a few bites down and he's doing better every day. Since he's such a terrible bottle drinker we decided we were going to go straight to the sippy cup. He's doing pretty well holding it and can chew on the top. We have the no spill cup, so he hasn't really figured out how to suck on it to get liquid out. I think if we put a little juice in there instead of water he'll get it pretty quick :-). 

Christopher is also sleeping through the night now!! It had gotten really bad. All of the yoga mom's babies were getting better and better on their sleep and Christopher kept getting worse. I was happy if he would sleep more than an hour at a time. So, I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby (best library borrow EVER) and we started implementing some of the things he recommended. We started with naps and got him on a pretty good schedule during the day. We both knew we had to do "extinction" (crying it out) but were just dreading it. We finally decided on a day to do it, but then a few nights before Little Guy just wanted to be held all night. I tried feeding him and he wasn't hungry, we tried rocking him, changing him, nothing. So we knew it was time. We had a horrid 20 minutes and then he stopped. The rest of the night he did some short cries, but nothing too terrible. Dr. Julie said it would be about a week before he figured it out, but the next night he did amazing. We had the baby monitor and you could hear him start to wimper a little, and then just go back to sleep. I could not believe that was all it took. He seems so much happier now that he's getting a good night's sleep and I can't tell you how relieved Mom and Dad are. I think he just gave us the best Christmas present we could ever get!

As if sleeping through the night and eating solids aren't enough, we just saw that Christopher is getting a tooth! He's been acting like he was teething for months (chewing on things, drooling, biting), so I just assumed it was a baby thing and we weren't going to see a tooth for a long time. But, he was chewing on my finger today and I felt it. We saw a little baby white spot on his lower gum. We got so excited, which made him laugh really hard. Hopefully it's not going to hurt him too bad. I'm so excited Dad has this whole week off to witness all of the fun things Christopher is doing! We can't wait until Christmas!

1 comment:

Bizibit said...

That is the greatest face ever in the second picture! Did I give you teether mesh bag thingys...put a chunk of ice in it and let him go to town, he won't get dirty with that...just wet. Congrats on getting some sleeping through the night too :-D Can't wait to meet up with him again!