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

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.

Since Logan has been developing a pretty good pincer grasp, we’re finally moving away from purees. Yay! I still feed him yogurt, and when he has grains (oats, cream of wheat, barley, etc) I usually mash it up with a puree, but other than that, he now feeds himself.

Loves: Cheerios, Plum Organics Little Cremes, cheese (except sharp cheddar), tomatoes, yogurt, purees, broccoli, carrots, grapes, watermelon, strawberries, cherries, blueberries, rice, bread
Dislikes: Eggs, meats (except bacon), cream of wheat, beans

This boy is not yet fond of the protein. But we’re getting there. He still eats a little, but yogurt is definitely his favorite protein source so far.

I’m making more of an effort to provide whole meals now that he’s approaching 8 months, and we’re up to 2 meals and a snack per day. I’ll be introducing him to fish and pasta and peas sometime this week.

Logan has been sleeping elevated since he was a newborn. Back then, he seemed to sleep the best (and longest) in his rock’n'play sleeper, so we just kind of.. stuck with it. We’ve made several attempts to get him into his crib since, but they always failed. I think several factors played into that. For one, the crib was in his own bedroom, but he wasn’t really used to his bedroom. We’d go in there when he was already asleep or close to asleep, and he never got a chance to get comfy with it. Obviously, the elevation change takes a lot of getting used to as well. So, previous attempts to get him into his crib ultimately ended in hours and hours of crying sessions. We got a 40-minute stretch of sleep out of him, once.

So, through a combination of laziness and busy life, Logan’s been sleeping in his rock’n'play that he has long outgrown. I’ve been thinking that some of his sleep issues have to do with him no longer liking to sleep in it. Two nights ago, little man started wailing loudly out of the blue at about 8pm. I went upstairs just to find him on his tummy. In the rock’n'play. Not good. Not comfy for him, either. Or safe, for that matter.

That was the last straw. We set up the crib the day after, and last night was Logan’s first night in his crib. I want to say it went.. better than expected. I put two blankets under his mattress to help with the elevation change. At 7:40pm, after giving him his bottle, he pulled his lovie over his face and just kind of passed out without further complaint.

At 9pm, he woke up. Not unhappily at first, but eventually disoriented and unhappy about his change in circumstances. I was there to help him, giving him a little more milk, rubbing his tummy, but to no avail. Then, out of the blue, he figured out he can roll on his tummy. Cue instant sleep.

Dumbfounded, I went back downstairs. He slept until 12:30am (!), which is much longer than usual. However, at about 12:30am we hit a rough stretch where Logan was pretty convinced that it was in fact play time and not sleep time. He fell asleep once but woke back up quickly, and we did the whole spiel again. The whole thing lasted til about 3:30am. But, what baffles me is that he was not actually upset, he was just exploring.

He then continued to sleep til 5:20am.

On the whole, I was expecting much worse. I obviously was not happy about the 3-hour awake stretch, but I’m sure that once he really gets used to the crib, that won’t be an issue anymore. I am happy we finally took the plunge, since it’s been something I’ve put off for too long.

On an unrelated note, we also have… teeth! The two bottom front teeth came in, and little guy now has an actual chomp. He’s pretty fascinated by his new acquisitions, while I’m kind of scared of putting my fingers anywhere near his mouth now. Terrible picture – he doesn’t exactly let me get too close to them – but here you have ‘em.

Daytime is becoming really, really fun. Little guy has a blast exploring and playing and I only wish we had more nice summer days so we could go outside more. On the few occasions that it doesn’t rain, we’ve been making good use of the sun.

and feelin’ good! The move really took a lot of energy out of me this month, but I’m happy it’s over. I’m still working on feeling “normal”, but it’s a little better every month. Once I get those last pesky pounds off, I think I’ll be much happier. I know I’m not defined by my weight, but I just don’t feel quite right in my skin when I’m not at a certain weight, if that makes any sense.

Weight loss has been slow this month. I weighed in at 133.7, which means I only lost one pound in May. Still, I DID lose weight and my size 6 pants are getting more loose, so I’ll take it.

I’ve had little appetite lately and some nausea after dinner, so I’ve automatically been eating less. My sweet tooth has been pretty kind and less prominent too, which helps. My exercise still primarily consists of lugging Logan around, lugging Logan up the stairs, lugging Logan down the stairs, taking walks with Logan and running errands with Logan. Oh, and then there’s situps and pushups. Pretty bland, but as busy as life has been lately, I don’t feel at all bad about lounging on the couch with my family instead of running in the rain.

In June, I’m aiming to get at least one or two good hikes in. Seeing as this is my bedroom window view, it shouldn’t be too hard…

Little bugger is still doing great, and I can’t believe how big he’s getting!

I do think getting more sleep would help a lot with my physical well-being, but I know that eventually things will get much better. For now, I just try my best not to fall asleep on the nursery floor for our 2am playdates.