Jetlag Blues

He's sleeping peacefully beside me as I'm typing this, but it took a looong time to get him into his present state. While he's managed to sleep a little bit since we started traveling, I don't think he's slept for much more than 2 hours at a time...

I'm happy to report that he was pretty well behaved on the plane. The seats we got up by the bulkhead are extremely spacious (so that the bassinet will fit), so it was fairly easy on us as well. He stayed on my lap for most of the trip.

While the new environment had him pretty keyed up, we think the biggest problem was that he's teething again (top front teeth). Fortunately his fussiness was pretty low key and mainly manifested in difficulty sleeping (though part of the blame for this lies with the people who were always moving about). In the end, I just took him into the bathroom to eliminate all external stimuli and stayed there until he fell asleep. The trick was to position myself so that he couldn't grab at any of tissue or toilet paper from the dispensers on the walls.

He's napped a couple times since we landed, but at 2am local time, he was wide awake. His "midnight" snack was more of an afternoon nibble by his clock. He finally went down around 6:20am.

We're not really sure how quickly he'll adjust to the time change, but we've built in a couple relaxed days into our schedule. Here's to hoping that it won't take much more than that...

Andrew - Month 9

Month 9 has been relatively calm. No big changes, but lots of teeny tiny improvements. He's getting better at the act of walking (and running!) and can now stand without any support for quite some time (10+ seconds), even when he's not standing on something firm (e.g. the bed). He also took his first couple steps all by himself last week.

The funnest change is that he can now shake his head, and do so more or less on demand. And if he does it at just the right time when you're talking to him, it's hilarious. He hasn't equated shaking his head with "no", but I'm pretty sure he has equated shaking his head with "making the adults laugh".

A few random observations:

When Andrew flips over from his back to his tummy he invariably turns to his right.

Every now and then Andrew gets to watch me put on my motorcycle gear. All seems to go well until I pull on my helmet, and then he gets upset. I'm not quite sure if he thinks I'm now someone/something else or if the helmet has eaten my head, but he definitely doesn't like it.

When Andrew laughs his nose crinkles just like mommy's does! The amount of crinkle is directly proportional to how hard they're laughing.

Andrew now knows to either remove or move the pacifier to one side of his mouth before coughing or talking. He's also started to spit the pacifier out when he sees Charity give him the sign for milk!

All Night Long

Andrew slept through the night! Woo-hoo!

This is the first time he's not needed a night feeding. He woke up a few times, but was content to be comforted back to sleep.

Andrew - Month 8

Oh, he's definitely moving now. Not just crawling, which he's really gotten the hang of, but he's starting to walk as well (with help of course). While it's an exciting development, it also has its drawbacks. The most annoying is when we're trying to change his diaper. It has now become a race to see who's faster: us getting the diaper on him or him getting bored and flipping over and crawling away. If you've never tried it, trying to get a diaper on a squirming baby bent on escaping is no easy task.

On the upside, it's great fun when he crawls up to you, grabs your legs to stand up, and insists on you taking him for a walk. His goal is to grab your hands to help balance himself, at which point he'll happily drag you from one room to the next for as long as you're willing (or he comes across something shiny to chew on).

Andrew has also been working on his assertiveness this month. He's added his voice to his actions so when he doesn't want to do something, not only is he pushing back against you, he's also being vocal about it. This new behavior has been manifesting itself with increasing frequency at bedtime.

All this has led us to abandon the crib. He's now sleeping on a queen-sized mattress that we've put on the floor. This gives him the room he wants to crawl about before falling asleep, as well as enough space to roll around after he's fallen asleep. On a restless night, it's entirely conceivable that he'll roll to all four corners of the bed. We've found him in some pretty hilarious positions...

Alas, all good things must come to an end -- I'm heading back into the workforce as this month comes to a close. Fortunately for us, Charity's mother has retired and will be helping us with Andrew during the day.

Crawling

Can't say he is at an expert level yet, but he is surely crawling...

Andrew - Month 7

As you might have noticed from the videos, big things were afoot in the past month: we've started him on solids, and he's now mobile. It's been quite fun feeding him and trying to figure out his likes/dislikes. He'll try anything at least once, which is great. I can only hope he'll keep it up.

This month also marks his first hair cut, with me behind the scissors. At least at first. Charity was not entirely pleased with my initial efforts so Grandma had to help "fix" it the next day. Unfortunately for Andrew, I subscribe to the "practice makes perfect" school of thought. He'll just have to bear with me while I get the hang of it. I figure I'd I start early, before he knows any better and can complain ;)

I had the great pleasure of staying home with him this month on paternity leave, and I have to say I can definitely get used to this whole napping in the afternoon business (in addition to getting to spend so much time with him). It took a while, but by the end of the month we had a pretty good routine going.

Andrew is at his most random in the morning, waking up anytime between 6-8am. Once up though, he's pretty much predictable. He would take three 30 minute naps during the day every 2 hours or so. He'd eat solids after the first nap, drink milk after the second, and more milk after the third. Any errands I needed to run would happen after his second feeding.

Charity would feed Andrew solids again when she got home from work. After a bit of play, we'd initiate his bedtime routine: a bath, reading Goodnight Moon, and more milk. By this time (about 7:30pm) he'd usually drift off to sleep on his own...

On a good night, he'd wake up hungry around 2am, when I'd bottle-feed him, and that would be it. More often than not though, he'd wake up a couple more times during the night, just looking for comfort. All it would take is a touch or the pacifier and he'd just fall back to sleep.

Sit Up

Oh dear. Andrew learned a new trick today -- how to sit up!

It may be great for him, but I'm going to have to lower his crib down to the lowest position. From a sitting position, he can already haul himself up to a standing position as long as there's something that will support his weight. And in a crib, all four sides can fulfill this role quite nicely. I don't even want to think what mischief he can get into while standing in his crib.

Hence the lowering operation, which will make it extremely difficult to put him down to sleep. Charity can't even reach that far, and will have to put him down in a sitting position first. Not exactly the ideal scenario when trying to get him to sleep.