Myles Monthly: 7

As you may know, I didn't decide to start my blog until my son Myles was about 8 months old. And well... now he is 17 months old! So I am focusing on getting caught up with monthly updates and monthly favorites, so I can get, and hopefully stay, up to date with current times.

Seven Months Old
 February 15th- March 14th, 2013

Statistics

Born: 7 lbs 6 oz and 19.5 inches
Seven Months: 18 lbs 8 oz and 27.5 inches

  Health 
 Well after 4 months of teething and putting EVERYTHING in his mouth, we finally got teeth! His two bottom teeth broke through this month. I thought for sure they were going to come way sooner, but they held out for a long time. He really didn't seem extra fussy or irritated by them; just the normal chewing on everything possible. I didn't even realize they were coming in until I felt them poking through. I'm glad he started getting his teeth though because it is not a very fun process, so the sooner they all come in, the better!

I also discovered his first mole. It is in the cutest place too! The picture isn't very good, but it is on the left side of his lower back, just above his hip. This still remains his only mole. Hopefully it stays that way and I didn't pass on my 'moley' genes to Myles. 

Eating
Not too much had changed since last month in the eating department. He was still boycotting baby food and really wasn't eating much of anything besides my milk. He nursed often during the day, but for very short amounts of time: 5-10 minutes max every 1-2 hours. He started to engage with me more when he nursed too. He would always have to be playing with something with his outside hand; it was either my hair, my face (nose, eyes, mouth), or his hair. I loved that time we were able to share together and that I was beginning to see and feel his interaction with me.

By this time, I had completely let go of trying to get him to take a bottle. I finally came to terms with the fact that he wasn't ever going to take a bottle again. I couldn't do anything about it anymore and I just had to make the best out of the situation. I wasn't pushing the sippy cup either. Every once in a while he would chew on a sippy, but he never actually got anything out of it. It just wasn't his thing and I didn't want to keep making him try to drink from it.

Even though he wasn't really eating anything, I continued to give him new things to try. He grew fond of the baby Mum-Mums and puffs. He liked the things he could pick up and put in his mouth himself. He also got his first taste of a tortilla chip! I don't think he actually ate any, but he liked chewing on it.

Sleeping 

Not much had changed since Six Months. Still taking 30 minute naps about every 2 hours now. I stopped putting him in his crib for his naps. Since he started pulling up to standing this month, it was impossible to get him to fall asleep for his naps in the crib. I would nurse until he was drowsy, then lay him down in the crib. He would instantly get up and stand at the crib railing, crying and crying. I was still not sleeping at all during the night, so I was too exhausted to fight him several times a day, just for a 30 minute nap. I just started laying down with him when he took his naps. He would side-lay nurse until he fell asleep and I would just hangout until he woke up. It worked for us at the time because I needed the break and it got him to sleep. 

We still had the same nighttime routine of bath, jammies, goodnight snuggles, nursing, then crib. He was also still in the Baby Merlin's Magic Sleepsuit with the sound machine running through the night. He went down fine most nights and finally started sleeping a little bit longer stretches in the beginning of the night. On a good night, he would go 4 or 5 hours before waking up for the first time. He still had bad nights when he would wake up every couple hours, but they were becoming less and less frequent. I was finally seeing a bit of progress, not anything significant to an outsider, but it gave me hope! We still co-slept from about 7am to whenever he woke up, usually around 9am. He liked to custer feed in the morning and wake about every 30 minutes, so it was easier to just co-sleep with him during that time. And I was able to sleep a bit more. I was still having a hard time sleeping at night. Even though Myles was getting better, I would still lay awake most of the night. 
 

Outings

• As you can see in the picture below, I took Myles outside in the snow for the first time this month. It had snowed plenty before this, but I never wanted to take Myles outside for fear of getting sick. One day my step-dad and brother were outside shoveling while it was lightly snowing, so I decided to bundle the little man up and let him experience the snow. Really I just wanted to put him in this snowsuit and snuggle up his cuteness. We only went outside for a couple minutes, but I let him touch the falling snow and placed some in his hands. Nothing too exciting as I was not comfortable with letting him crawl around in it. He couldn't move around in the snowsuit anyway :)

• Still enjoying swimming this month. It was easy to see that he loved being in the water. 30 minutes of pure bliss for this little guy. He worked on back-floats, kicking, pushing down the turtles, and his favorite, picking up the balls. He wouldn't let them go to drop them in the basket though. He just wanted to carry the ball around the entire time.

• Since it was still snowing most of this month, we tried to find as many indoor activities as possible. Myles was getting more and more mobile and really wanting to explore. It was fun finding new things for him to do as he became more engaged and active. We went to the library for the first time. We looked at some books (he was not interested yet) and checked out some of their toys.

• We also went to the pet store for the first time. I figured Myles would have liked seeing all the different animals and hearing them make noises. He was just starting to  'understand' the idea of other live creatures. His favorites were dogs and birds. I'm not sure he really knew what was going on, but it definitely kept his attention and he was reaching out to touch a lot of the animals. It was awesome to see his reaction to encountering many of these animals for the first time. 

• Lastly, we celebrated my dad's birthday. He is a leap year baby, so he turned 13 1/4 years old :) or 53 in normal years. We ate at an little Italian place and Myles had pasta sauce for the first time and actually loved it. I didn't want to give him too much because of the acid, but since he was still on his food strike since last month, I was happy he was eating something!

Milestones
This month brought a lot of motor skill milestones. He started crawling and pulling himself up to standing, and with that his sitting up finally got steady. Those three things pretty much happened all at once. As soon as he started really crawling, the rest came together easily. 

• A week after he turned 6 months, he started officially crawling. The video below is what I consider his first time crawling. He really only takes a couple 'steps' forward, but every day after this, he got better and better. Within a week or two, he was a pro. He was on a mission to go everywhere and get into everything!

• About a week after he started crawling, he pulled himself up to standing for the first time. The first time was in his crib, then he had to try it on everything! We lowered his crib mattress as soon as he did it the first time. I did not want to take any chances! Look at the little man, he was so proud of himself! 

• Since he was getting so good at sitting up, we decided to try out the big boy seat in his stroller.  For the first time, we went to the mall. He did pretty good, but he didn't like sitting in there for too long. He was ready for me to hold him after about 15 minutes. 

• This month was a double-whammy in motherhood milestones for me! I had my first projectile poop experience. Don't look down if you can't handle poop up close and personal :) I made the huge mistake of assuming he was done pooping.  Reality was, he was just beginning. Liquid poop explosion all over me, him, the floor, the furniture, etc. A mere two days later, I got hit with the classic puke-in-the-mouth. I was playing with Myles and had him over my head making him laugh. I was making goofy noises, then... Burp... Spit-up... Right into my mouth. It was literally perfect timing right as my mouth was open.
  I officially stepped into the elite class of motherhood this month!

• And lastly, a huge milestone in a boy's life: his first mohawk! After he lost all of his newborn hair, it finally grew back enough to shape into his very own fohawk. It's funny looking at his hair then when I thought it was so long. 

 It still hasn't grown in on the sides yet though :/

Likes

• He discovered the hamper this month. He loved sitting in it and being pushed around or rocked back and forth. If he was ever in a bad mood, putting him in the hamper always turned his attitude around!

• His favorite song was LMFAO "Sexy and I know It". He would go crazy the second he heard the beginning beats. He would start kicking his legs and screaming in excitement. I have this video of him dancing to it, but I can't find it anywhere but Facebook. Do any of you know if you can download or save a video from Facebook? I can do it easily with pictures, but not videos.

• He really started to excel in swim class this month. He was beginning to understand the swimming concept and would kick and kick to get across the pool! Look at those little legs go:

• Still loving to put everything in his mouth and since he started crawling, it was even harder to keep things out of his mouth. He would crawl around grabbing up whatever he could reach, stuff it in his mouth, and start chewing on it. His favorites were toes and shoes. He was obsessed with putting shoes in his mouth. We had to hide all of our shoes because he would make a bee-line straight for them every time he was on the ground!

Dislikes

• This month bath time became a fighting battle. Once he started being able to pull up to standing, it was game over. As soon as I put him in the tub, he would stand up by the edge. Standing up in itself wasn't that big of a deal, but because he was still in a baby tub inside of the big tub, he was not stable. I didn't want him to get hurt, so I would make him sit back down, but then he would get really mad and just try to stand back up again. Also when he stood up, he would sometimes try to climb out of the tub altogether. So bath time this month was short and sweet. I would sometimes take showers with him to avoid having to deal with bath time meltdown.

• Now that Myles was mobile, he had his first encounter with the word "no". We were staying at my parents and their house is a newly-mobile babies dream... and a parents worse nightmare! They have little trinkets everywhere and plants... OMG the plants! Myles would not keep his hands off of the plants for anything. He was always grabbing at the leaves. It was a lot of redirection...a lot... over and over... he never stopped, but I was able to get him to pay attention to something else for a couple minutes before he would be right back over to the plants. He wouldn't get too upset when told "no" but he definitely didn't like not being able to touch and play with whatever he wanted. He was very persistent and I can't say that in the process of teaching him to not rip the plants that we didn't have some casualties.  

 

Come back to check out my favorites from months seven & eight!