Hi everybody, and happy 7 months! I always like to start with how big he is, so here goes:
- Height: 29 inches (95th Percentile)
- Weight: 18 pounds, 7.5 ounces (50th Percentile)
- Head: 18 inches (75th Percentile)
Some of his new things this month are:
- He gets shy now sometimes when people say hello to him. It is sweet because whoever is holding him gets the pleasure of feeling him bury his face in your neck and snuggle closer as he hides!
- He is starting to reach for us. Like, he will be sitting with Chris, see me and reach for me, like he wants me to hold him and vice versa.
- He is doing big push-ups when he is on the floor playing on his tummy! He can get up on all fours for just a few seconds. He has been fighting to figure out crawling for a while now. He is just so desperate to do it! He doesn’t have any interest in sitting up. When he is on his play mat, all he wants to do is practice crawling!
Last month I was excited because Aaron’s first tooth popped through. Now, he doesn’t just have one tooth, he has teeth coming in all over the place! Very shortly after the first tooth came in on the bottom, the one next to it came in. As you can see this month, his smile is really changing now that those bottom two are there. His top two incisors have broken through, and now his front two teeth are very swollen and are close behind. We went from one to six teeth total so fast! We are therefore a little sleep deprived. I talked to a mom whose daughter always had four teeth coming in at a time, and she said to hang in there. While it is tough on our little ones to be such over-achievers in the tooth department, it also means that this whole painful developmental milestone will pass a lot faster. God bless her for saying that!!!
Aaron's Teeth (You can click the picture to make it bigger):
We have been working hard teaching Aaron to eat solid food. He gets a serving of it every evening at this point, and then he is on breast milk the rest of the time. The only thing he doesn’t like is carrots, granted, everyone says to wait a while and try it again. He has had sweet potatoes, squash, pumpkin, peas and prunes. I wish I could say that it has been a piece of cake, but it takes a bit of coercion to get him to eat. Our neighbors must think we are nuts, because we put on his kid CD’s and sing and dance around and do all the motions to keep him from realizing what we are doing to him. It is exhausting! Part of our problem has been that the boob nazi’s all say that you should breastfeed them first before giving solids. What happens in actuality is that he fills up on milk and doesn’t have room left for solids…duh!!! We’ve learned from that mistake. He still tolerates it, but it isn’t his favorite thing to do. Another thing the boob nazi’s say that I think I disagree with is to start with veggies and do fruits last since fruits taste better and that’s all they will want. It has been a month, and we aren’t getting anywhere, so I think I am ready to do fruits and whatever happens we will just deal with it. I have bananas and pears ready. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
Another new development that is very near and dear to our hearts is that Aaron has discovered Maggie this last month! She has, of course, always been around since he was born, but he has decided that he is absolutely in love with her. He lights up like a Christmas tree when she comes by him, and is desperate to pet her (granted, he doesn’t quite understand petting versus grabbing, so he needs quite a bit of supervision). We’ll let her give him a few kisses, and he just squeals with delight!
His sleep has been up and down this month. The nights he has sweet potatoes, he sleeps awesome. It is a slow-release complex carbohydrate, so I think it tides him over well. If only it were logical to give that to him every night, huh? But then, with teething, he will have several days in a row where he really doesn’t sleep that great. Then we will have some nights sprinkled in where he sleeps the whole night without getting up once. All we can do is take it as it comes. He has so much going on developmentally, this seems to just be life right now.
We celebrated our first Mother’s Day with Aaron here. I’ve been a mother since 2009 with Noah, but this was my first one with Aaron here. It’s kind of funny, but I feel like every day is Mother’s Day for me. I have worked so hard and been through so much to be here, child in hand on this holiday. I don’t take it for granted. Every day I look at him, and I get butterflies and my heart squeezes in pure happiness. I love him so much, and feel so grateful that he is here for me to love, care for and play with. I know this holiday is supposed to be about appreciating all that a mother does, but I look at him and am beside myself with appreciation that he’s here to make me a mother again.
It was an easy going day. It started off with a great gift from Aaron: he slept through the night AND slept in! I couldn’t believe it!! Chris made me breakfast, and then we all went to church together. The boys took me out to lunch afterwards, then when we got home Aaron and I snuggled up on the couch and took a nap together, which was just heaven! Chris surprised me with an incredible gift. I have been feeling paranoid for a while now that as time passes, and I am busy with a full time job and Aaron that I am losing my memories of Noah. He created a book for me of all the things I wrote about Noah, complete with pictures and everything! He is leaving it to me to pick out whatever kind of binding materials I want (he just did the formatting of it so it is ready to go.) I got a little teary-eyed when he showed it to me! I have a truly awesome husband.
One last fun video I’ll share is Aaron saying “DADADADADAAA!!!” He’s learned to make a “D” sound and loves it!
