This Is How I MomSolving the puzzle of motherhood one piece at a time

I’m not exactly sure when it happened – I think it might still be a work in progress. But somehow, sometime along the way, a new normal came along. This idea of normal is consistently evolving and is definitely nothing like the normal we used to live before Logan came along. This new normal involves a lot more running around, playing, supervising an emerging toddler, changing diapers, giving baths, waking up early, sleeping early, waking up at night, budgeting free time and soothing an emotional new human.

It is a lot more hectic and active, involves a lot less sleep, occasional frustration and less time, but it is so much more fulfilled and fun than the old normal used to be. But sometime over the course of the last year, we learned to just accept things as they happen and go with the flow. Night with little sleep? Tough luck, next one might be better. I think it’s really important to understand that not everything is in our control anymore and that you have to make the best of things – I have a feeling this will be infinitely more true when we add another little person in our lives (no plans as of right now, but one day!).

Sometimes, even when bordering on zombie state in the morning, it’s important to just enjoy the pretty sunrise you can catch thanks to a certain early bird:

And now that things are fairly predictable, we have time to do stuff like bake birthday cupcakes for a very special person:

And birthday cakes to celebrate that very special person’s birthday with extended family:

Life may not be perfect, but it is fun. So much more fun than it ever used to be. Thank you for my new normal, little boy. I love you.

Somehow, over the course of just one measly year, a little person has nestled his way deep into my heart. I barely even remember how life was before Logan came along, but I do remember it was nowhere near as fulfilled. Sure, we had more time to do leisurely things and our schedule wasn’t nearly as tight as it is now, but the love and joy this little person has shown us is worth so much more than all the free time in the world. This is how one year has changed Logan:

Whoa. Still blows my mind. My baby is no longer a baby… I’m glad I more or less chronicled his first year in pictures, and hope to continue to be able to do so in his future. It’s important to me, and I think he might find his early life interesting in the future, too.

Anyway, what is Logan up to these days? While he’s not yet walking, he stands and cruises (a little reluctantly). He crawls, he dashes and he climbs stairs (up, not down). He’s very mobile, and while it might still be months until he walks, he’s doing everything but. I’m thinking about getting him a walker soon.

We’re down to 2-3 bottles a day and I intend to have him weaned and on whole (or 2%) milk within a month. He eats 3 regular meals and has 1-2 snacks in between. His favorites are yogurt, cheese, fruit, tomatoes and eggs. He’s not terribly fond of meats or breads yet. He feeds himself, but I don’t let him self-feed yogurt yet. He still eats that from the spoon without complaint.

Sleep has improved. *knocks on wood* For over a week now, we’ve had pretty consistent 10-11 hours of sleep a night, with few and short to no wake-ups. In fact, the night we returned from Germany, he slept 14 hours! I’m sure jet lag had a hand in it, but since I was working on correcting my own sleep schedule at the same time, this was amazing. He either has two short naps or one long nap per day. I’d say it’s about a 50/50 chance at either scenario. If he sleeps particularly well at night, a 1-nap day is more likely.

He’s having a blast trying to figure out the world. He hates most toys, though ones that make sound or flash will hold his interest for a few minutes. Much more interesting is everything around the house, especially the things mama doesn’t want him to get into.

It’s really fun to watch him figure out concepts, though. He’s a huge fan of open-close, and everything that is in his reach and can be opened and closed has been opened and closed by him at some point in time now. I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but he understands object permanence. If daddy disappears up the stairs, he’ll crawl over to the stairs and attempt to climb them (provided the gate is open) in search of daddy. He also understands a lot of buttons and what they do.

While he isn’t talking other than “mama” and “dada” yet, he’s been babbling up a storm featuring many different vowels and consonants. He understands a lot of words, too. New words he gets are “down”, “no”, “ok”, “come here”, “diaper”, “nose”, “bedtime” and I -think- “bath”.

He’s still overall very joyful, but a little clingy. He only clings to me and not so much his dad, though. It’s cute but exhausting. He loves most people, though he’s not sure about some (mostly males) and takes a little to warm up to them. But once he warms up, he’s the life of the party.

Sometimes, Logan throws tantrums. I thought they didn’t come until later, but perhaps it’s the frustration about not being able to properly communicate his needs. Whatever it is, sometimes he’ll throw himself on the floor and bawl theatrically. As soon as he’s picked up, it’s as if it never happened. We’re starting to just let him cry it out when we’re certain nothing is wrong with him. Much as I love him, I can’t have him attached to me 24/7. After crying for a little while, he’ll crawl off and do his own thing. The sheer drama he can command is pretty comical.

We’re not sure about his weight and height, since his one year check-up is not til the 5th, but I can’t wait to find out how much he’s grown! He’s in 18-24 month clothing, though, that’s for sure.

I can’t wait to see how much he’s going to change this coming year!

This is new to me. I suppose Logan’s lack of crawling always worried me a little – he was scooting and rolling, but not reliably getting to where he wanted to be, and all the other babies that I see from my mommy groups have been on the move for a while at this point.

Now that he’s crawling though, I really miss my baby being predictably confined to a space. We have most areas of the house baby-proofed, but there are some things that will need more elaborate solutions.. like computer cables, that are more or less unprotected at the moment. We’re always watching him when he’s around the computer area and do a pretty good job of warding him off.

However, with crawling and pulling up comes greater opportunity for, well, falling and tumbling and bumping and hurting. We’ve seen a great deal of this lately – most notably a very, very scary tumble down the stairs when we neglected to fully close the baby gate after he’d just become mobile. We’re not making that mistake again of course, but the memory is fresh. Logan was completely fine – he had a little bruise and cried for about 20 seconds and that was that. Mommy and daddy on the other hand still feel guilty.

Anyway, that really prompted us to up our awareness and remove potentially dangerous situations. I really want to nail some boards in front of the computer cords when we get a spare moment (probably not until after our excursion to Germany), but we have a pretty good handle on everything else.

Logan’s been developing his motor skills a lot since starting to crawl, and interestingly is babbling a lot less since then. I’ve read that when babies concentrate on one area of skills, other already developed skills may take a backseat until they’ve mastered the new thing. It seems plausible, though I miss the random “mamas”.

We also think he just got over a minor ear infection (the pedi was called, but we were advised that unless things get more severe, he’ll probably get over whatever it is himself), which turned him into quite the crabmonster for a few days. Thankfully, we now have our happy baby back.

It really is true that once you have kids you never stop worrying. Sick babies are stress – not taking care of them, that comes with the territory, but worrying about their well-being and wishing you could take their pain away. I expect the stress and worrying will change as he gets older, but never again disappear. I have so much new-found appreciation for my own mother since becoming a mom myself.

On a more positive note, Logan’s passport arrived! I’m happy to report it only took two weeks, and they processed it despite of a spelling error on his birth certificate (in my name, nonetheless). One less thing to worry about!

The last few weeks have been very exciting! I feel that even though Logan refined all his skills from 7-9 months, there wasn’t that much “new” development. He really cranked it up a notch in the past two weeks, though. Logan can now sit up by himself and crawl, both very proficiently. He’s also starting to pull up on stuff, though that’s largely confined to his crib still. Pretty happy about that.

The crawling really only started yesterday, at about 9 months and 4 weeks. Fairly late, but I must say it’s kind of like he just decided one day that he’s been avoiding it long enough and it’s time to just do it. He didn’t have an awkward learning stage, and he’s had all the different moves down forever. He just put all the puzzle pieces together and decided to go cruisin’. Still baffles me. I was starting to think he’d skip it. Anyway, I ordered cabinet locks today. Much needed.

The sitting up is kind of a blessing and a curse.

In the middle of the night, I wake up to strange noises coming out of the video monitor, and when I look I see Logan sitting in his crib trying to eat it. The first night after learning how to sit up, he was up for three hours at night. Three hours of sitting up. Gah. He’s been progressively getting better about NOT sitting up at night, though he still does at least for a little while. At first, when I laid him back down, he’d just sit back up.

I learned not to lie him back down and instead wait until he either a) gets upset or b) lies down by himself. Works pretty well. He has slightly more trouble calming himself enough to sleep, but 20 minutes beats 3 hours. Beats it by a lot.

Nighttime sleep in general is still iffy. Some nights, he goes 8-9 hours without waking up at all. Other nights he’s up 3+ times. It certainly didn’t help that he had both front top teeth coming in at once a few weeks ago, which made for awful sleep. Usually, he goes to bed between 7:30pm and 8:30pm and is up for the day between 5:30am and 7am. The more he’s up at night, the later we’re up for the day.

Naps are starting to be more sporadic. We’re at the point where we usually have one very short nap (30mins) and one long nap (usually 2-3 hours in the afternoon). There’ve been a few days where we only had one nap. I think in another month or so we might consolidate it down to one nap a day. Perhaps we can delay it until he’s starting to walk, but we’ll see.

His play style has changed a lot. He’s figuring out how objects interact with each other, and how to manipulate them (ie opening and closing things, dropping and picking up, throwing and crawling after it to throw it again, bashing things together, putting things on top of one another). It’s pretty cool to see him figure out concepts like gravity and object permanence.

He babbles like crazy and says dada and mama, usually to the correct parent. The “mamas” are often accompanied by some sort of need (wanting to be picked up, hungry, thirsty, tired, hurt) and looking at me, whereas the “dadas” usually come out when he’s having fun. Figures. Still, there’s nothing more precious than a baby in need babbling your name. His good moods still prevail, he’s a happy baby overall and only really gets crabby when he’s bored or tired or hurts himself on something.

Since he’s figured out how to crawl, he’s bored less often, but hurts himself more often, so I guess the crabbiness evens out.

Eating’s going great. He’s basically had everything I can think of other than honey and peanut butter, and I’m starting to think about how to wean him off formula (probably at about a year of age).

We’ve been enjoying the last few days of summer – Washington state weather declines usually as soon as August winks out – and I’m getting really excited about this fall/winter season. Halloween, his first birthday and Christmas are going to be so much fun, and I can’t wait to see how they’ll evolve over the years.

After our long road trip to Yellowstone, Logan is not getting much of a break. In October he and I are off to – gasp – Germany to visit Logan’s grandparents (my parents)! And yes, it’s only going to be Logan and me. Daddy is staying at home to work. I have truly mixed feelings about this.

For one, I’m going to miss him like mad. We’ve hardly been apart in the last few years – at most two days when he flew out to a job interview in California – and now I’m going to be gone for sixteen days. Sixteen! I’m mad. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I suppose?

Also, I’m going to have two 14-hour travels with an 11-month old baby boy. An almost-toddler that hates sitting still or being confined to his seat, and of course everyone hates children on flights. Let alone 10-hour flights. I hope all goes well. I think I have been preparing as well as I possibly can given the circumstances, but a large part of how the travel goes is up to Logan and his mood at the time of take-off.

Here’s what I’ve done so far (or is on the travel preparation to-do list):

- Infants under 2 years old usually travel for a small fee on a parent’s lap. Some airlines let you purchase a seat for your infant if you bring a car seat, which is always recommended for safety and comfort reasons. Alas, we didn’t have the money for that this time.

- I’ve done research on airlines and found one that not only flies straight to Germany (with a layover in Frankfurt, but hey, I’m going to be in the right country after just one flight at least), but also has bassinets available for babies up to a weight of 14kg and 83cm, which Logan is under. He’ll be 11 months old, but they don’t have an age limit. Many airlines do!

- I did want to get a night flight, but sadly there was no 6pm+ flight available with the airline I picked out. Instead, we leave in the middle of the day, which should span one nap and a considerable amount of night sleep (4+h).

- I will sleep in on the day we leave, so I won’t get tired on the flight(s). Ideally I want to stay awake the whole time to supervise Logan and make sure he’s ok.

- I called the airline to reserve a bulkhead seat. Infant bassinets attach to these, and they have extra legroom, which means Logan can play on the floor.

- I will buy a completely new set of toys for the flight, and introduce them at about a rate of one per hour.

- I will take his bottle and sippy cup and let him drink during take-off and landing to make pressure acclimation as painless as possible.

- I bought an umbrella stroller to make getting around the airports easier. The stroller can come on board, but flight personnel will take it and stow it away until we depart the airplane.

- I made sure we have an adequate amount of time on our layover (2 hours).

- We have applied for an expedited passport for him. Not all places that normally take passport photos will take infant passport photos. I didn’t know that before!

- I will take two outfit changes for Logan and perhaps an extra shirt for me. Just in case something happens. I will also take infant tylenol and perhaps even nose drops for air pressure equalization in case he’s congested. Ear planes for me. Lifesavers.

- I will take his favorite snacks, lovie and blanket.

I think that’s all I can think of right now. It’s going to be an adventure, and I’m scared. I’m already scared of planes – in fact, most of my worst nightmares involve planes – this is going to add a whole new level. We’ll get through it though, and it’s worth it to have my parents see their grandson. In case of my father, for the first time!

Yikes! 3/4ths of a year! This month has been pretty exciting. We bought a new car – well, leased actually, we went on a 4-day road trip to Yellowstone (700 miles!) and caged the little guy as he’s getting more and more mobile. Caged as in, we bought two of these and connected them to make a safe play area in the living room.

Logan’s definitely not an early crawler. He’s still close to crawling, rolling and getting on all fours and rocking back and forth, but his main ways of getting about are rolling and scooting on his butt. Little guy makes his own path. There’s still no pulling up on stuff to speak of.

However, we had some big improvements in the language department! Mama, dada, ada, baba, blabla and fah are some of his most-used words, but sometimes he gets crazy and up to 3- and 4-syllable words. He also understands more words. “Mama”, “Dada”, “more”, “all done”, “sit”, “up”, “Logan”, “good job” and “kissy” are the ones we’ve figured out he knows for sure. I kinda hope he knows “no”, but since he doesn’t stop doing whatever he’s not supposed to do and I have to manually detach him, I don’t have my hopes up high.

He actually gives kisses now. When we say “kissy”, he’ll open his mouth and wait to get kissed. It’s very cute! When we point at something, he’ll follow the finger and look at the thing we pointed at. That’s pretty amazing to me!

He has an excellent pincer grasp and can eat pretty much anything we do now, at least anything that’s soft. We’ve gone through pretty much everything but peanut butter, cow’s milk and honey. Some of his current favorites are blueberries, strawberries, cherries, mangoes, oats and mashed potatoes. He’s also pretty fond of meats, but shies away from cheese (I keep trying!). Yogurt is still a definite favorite. He’s not a picky eater, but he does have preferences. Sometimes it’s easy to get him to eat veggies, other times he won’t touch them. On the whole, it’s going fairly well!

We haven’t had his 9-month checkup yet, it’s scheduled for the 3rd and then we’ll find out how tall he is now and what he weighs. He wears 18-24 month clothes, some of his 12-month stuff still fits too. I’m expecting his numbers to be fairly big!

This is Logan at Old Faithful in Yellowstone, waiting for the geyser to erupt!

We’re up to three teeth – the upper right one has broken through! It actually happened during our trip to Yellowstone. He was a little crabby for a few days, but overall it didn’t seem too bad. Speaking of the trip, Logan handled it like a trooper. We drove 12 hours each way, and while he wasn’t happy for some parts of it, he slept a lot and I was able to entertain him by sitting next to him in the backseat for stretches too.

He slept in a pack and play that the hotel provided. I was kinda worried about how he’d handle it, but it wasn’t too bad. He didn’t sleep all that well the first night, but the other two nights went really well. In fact, it was a lot harder to get him to sleep in his crib upon our return! He was so excited to be home that he just didn’t want to sleep. It was cute… but exhausting. Now, though, things are back to almost normal. We’ve had a few night wakings the past nights, but nothing bad.

Overall, this month has been a blast. He’s so much more interactive, talks to us, expects replies, makes himself understood, plays games and loves life. 3 more months to his birthday party!

This week, Munchkin Meals is focusing on breakfast. In a perfect world, Logan (8 months) would eat everything on my plate. In the real world, he gets his own meals and is somewhat less interested in them. He eats – which I’m thankful for! I’ve heard of some babies that have NO interest in solids – but after a few bites of everything he tends to get disinterested. In an effort to counter this, I try to make his plate colorful and flavorful. I usually offer a vegetable, a fruit and a carb for breakfast. Dinner focuses more on proteins, though sometimes we have yogurt for breakfast (mostly when I’ve found a food he absolutely doesn’t want to eat… yogurt always works).

In this picture, Logan is having ww bread with philadelphia, tomatoes, cucumbers and grapes. He’s also holding a book, because having toys to play with keeps him interested in his food for longer. Funny how that goes.

He’s surprisingly fond of tomatoes, I think it must be the color. Next grocery haul, I’ll grab some peppers and perhaps some other more colorful stuff.

In this one, we – again – have toast with philadelphia, cheerios and microwaved apples with cinnamon. This was after a disastrous experience with peas and I was at the point where I kind of just wanted him to eat something; I’d given up on vegetables for that day.

Waffles, eggs, broccoli, mangoes, nectarines, peaches, plums, yogurt and cream of wheat are some other breakfast favorites at our place!

For the past 3 days or so, Logan’s been obsessed with saying dada. It’s the cutest thing EVER! He was babbling before, but never so consistently, or so pronounced. Now he’s just chattering away. “Dada dadi dadada baba dada blada”, all day long.

The older he gets, the more fun he becomes. Especially now that he’s starting to understand some things (words, cause/effect, pointing) and does hilarious things all the time, sometimes even with the intent to make us laugh. I really really love the stage, but I have a feeling I’m going to be saying that about many stages to come!

This seemed like fun, and since Logan’s been eating stuff that’s starting to qualify as interesting, here we go! For reference, he’s 8 months as of July 1st. This fun project is hosted by Brittany at A Healthy Slice of Life, who has a little munchkin that’s a month older than Logan.

Logan’s breakfast entailed mozzarella/cheddar cheese, cut-up cherries and broccoli florets. He was pretty enthusiastic about it at first, but he didn’t get into the cheese much. It’s a work in progress. I offer it up about twice a week.

Just to prove I definitely don’t make up his initial enthusiasm :

Lunch is usually something simple – he gets cheerios and other finger snack food, and he also had about half a pouch of this:

He loves basically all flavors of Plum Organics. They, and baby yogurt are my go-to things when he doesn’t seem in the mood for table food. He ALWAYS eats a ton of the pouches, and yogurt is probably his favorite food, ever.

We ended up going to a 4th of July event in Bellevue for a few hours and had some Red Mango frozen yogurt there. Logan ate about half my mango and strawberry toppings, but I didn’t remember to take a picture of it. I’m really quite new at this food blogging thing.

We tried something new for dinner – a turkey meatball, blueberries and finger food. It was his first time eating meatball (the husband and I had them too) and his second time eating blueberries.

He’s pretty picky about what berries he likes. He loves any and all of them in purees, but as for raw berries… he flat out denies raspberries, and this is what I’ve dubbed his blueberry face…:

That said, he does eat blueberries, and I think it’s just an initial hurdle. I’m pretty blessed that – so far – he isn’t a picky eater. *knock on wood* He’s a lot more likely yo go after finger food than the real food I offer up, but he always at least feeds himself a few bites of everything. Sometimes I hit the jackpot and find something he loves, in which case he eats the whole plate.

Happy belated July 4th – it was a beautiful end to the day over here.

2/3rds of a year. My little jelly bean has completely disappeared – instead, I have a joyful, (mostly) predictable, interactive, playful young child with many, MANY opinions.

He sits for long periods of time – I haven’t really noticed that he has a limit, other than getting distracted and wanting to roll places. You plop him down, he sits. He was a pretty stable sitter last month, but this month he’s mastered it. We’re not yet crawling. I think he’s pretty close, but he hasn’t put the puzzle pieces together. Instead, he’ll just roll across the room when he gets frustrated. Oh well, we’re not in a rush. No pulling up on stuff yet, either, though I think the not crawling has a lot to do with that.

He plays hard and sleeps hard. Our nap schedule has changed – it used to be every 1 1/2 to 2 hours, but now it’s every 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours, which means he usually gets 2 and very rarely 3 naps per day. They usually last between 1 and 2 hours. We go to bed at 7:15-7:30pm and he’s usually out anywhere between 8:00pm to 8:30pm. Rarely as early as 7:40pm. Since he’s gotten used to his crib, he sleeps really well. Sometimes, we’re up once per night which can last up to two hours, but a lot of nights we’re not up at all. He wakes up anytime between 5:00am and 7:00am. We still use ocean and rain sounds as white noise throughout nap and sleep times!

He has his bottom two front teeth. I *think* he’s working on the top pair now since he’s been drooling a lot and been a little crabby, but as they haven’t broken through, I am not sure.

He understands words! We’re up to “hi”, “Logan”, “up”, “sit”, “more”, “good job” and “all done”. He reacts to “mama” by smiling, but I’m not sure if he actually associates that with me. He babbles a lot and screeches, but I think that any mamas and dadas he’s said are accidental and just practicing speech, not actually referring to us.

Solids are going pretty well. His motor control has improved hugely this month, and he can now pick up little things such as blueberries, cheerios and peas. He bites and chews and doesn’t gag much anymore. He has some trouble with slippery fruit and vegetables. Can’t blame him there! He basically loves everything I’ve given him. Except raw raspberries. He eats the purees that have raspberry in them, but I guess the texture throws him off.

He’s very interactive and loves people – except when someone other than daddy or me is carrying him, then he’ll bawl. Stranger anxiety, I suppose. But when they talk to him, he’s all smiles.

His favorite toys are remotes, phones, cables, the wipes box and plastic bags. Oh, and a toy piano. Oh, and he LOVES peek-a-boo.

I think that’s it! Life’s really fun with this guy around.