9 Months Old and We Have A Screamer!

Nathan has figured out how to get his way. Whine, Whine, Scream! This week, the boy has thrown a few temper tantrums. The worst one occurred when he wanted to play with the computer. He'll also whine to let you know that he wants to be picked up instead of being pulled to standing. While the screaming is a bit annoying, it's neat to see that he knows what he wants.

My sleep plan has not worked quite as well as expected. The waiting until he's tired thing worked, but it seemed like he was getting tired later and later every night. At one point, he was going down for the night at 10:30. So, we decided to have him cry it out again and after 3 days, his bed time is now pushed back to 8 or 8:30ish, and he now goes down without crying. I'm finding that the 2-3-4 hour nap system works well for Nathan. For the past few days, I've been carefully monitoring his sleepy signals and found that he will easily go down for a nap about 2 hours after he first wakes up, 3 hours after he wakes up from his first nap, and then we put him down for the night around 8. He's been napping longer, and sleeping pretty well. Last week his naps were so erratic. There was a day this week where he did not take any good naps. He would go down for 5 minutes, but then wake right up. That day, he was super clingy and fussy. It was also mopping day. So this is what ended up happening:

Nathan is cruising a lot better, but he seems to prefer cruising to the left. His crawl is less floppier, but still no 4 point crawling. Nathan's starting to bang 2 objects that are in his hands together, but he's still not clapping. Today, he was pretty consistent with giving me high fives. At his 9 month check up, everything looked good, except for his circumcision site. I won't go into the details here, but it was pretty funny how the  pediatrician drew a picture of a penis on the examining table to explain what happened. Last time I saw an illustration of a penis was in a middle school student notebook. 

Anyways...

Nathan has reached 17 pounds and is measuring 28 inches. 

Since Nathan was starting to walk, I wanted to get him a little plastic walker, so we went to the consignment store to see what goods they had to offer. Kaching! They were having a clearance, so we ended up getting a bunch of clothes for next summer and a few toys. This is Nathan's favorite. He likes playing with the beads on the top.

He also likes playing with good old pots and whisks.

And wigs...

A few days ago, Nathan went over to a friend's house for a play date. It was fun. There was music playing in the background, with toys and babies everywhere!

 

It was cool to see the babies finally start interacting and playing together. 

Recently, Nathan has gotten pretty lazy when it comes to eating. He was pretty much content with just opening his mouth and having food delivered right into his mouth. Well, today, I shoved a spoon full of food into his hand and while he was a bit confused at first, he eventually brought the food to his mouth and even tilted the spoon up a bit so that he could eat everything on the spoon. He then handed me the empty spoon for more. He seemed to be proud of himself. 

The last few days has been a bit rough for me. I found out that I got a case of mastitis, which comes with flu like symptoms. Taking care of a baby while dizzy, tired, feverish, and with chills is not fun. Luckily my friend Hope came by to help me out for a few hours and Steve came home early to save the day. After I went to the doctor, I was able to just lay in bed the rest of the day and rest. With some antibiotics in my system and after many hours of much needed rest, I'd say I'm feeling about 95% better. Until next week!

Crawling and Cruising

Eat Your Vegetables!

This has been an exciting week as far as major milestones go. One day I had Nathan playing in his bug box while I was cooking. When I looked over towards his direction, he was working on standing up. Now, considering that he was in a cardboard box, I decided to stand by, while he worked, in case he toppled over. Sure enough, seconds later, he was standing!

Looking for Trouble

Then, later that night, before bed, I had him stand against his crib. Before I knew it, he was cruising along the crib bars, going for the clock radio that is beside his crib. The next day, I had him practice his cruising on other surfaces like the sofa or coffee table.

And then there's crawling. Nathan's crawl is...developing. He pretty much only crawls when he wants to get something that he can't reach. So, his crawl always starts out with one arm reaching out and then his head flops to the other side. Kick, kick, kick. Then his other arm reaches out, and his head flops to the other side. He repeats this exaggerated front crawl swimming style crawl until his hand reaches the desired object. In the picture below, Nathan had just successfully crawled to explore Teddy's food egg. He hurries over towards the action and gives me this look.

Don't worry, I was paying attention to make sure Nathan didn't eat any of Teddy's food. He picked up a piece, looked at it, but then put it down. (Even though his pincer grasp is pretty good. He's now averaging a 8 out of 10 successful food in the mouth events.)

Sleep has been weird lately. He's been waking up more often at night. One night, he woke up 3 times! Naps have also been weird too. Most of the time he sleeps for about 40 minutes. But then one day, he slept for 2.5 hours. It must have been a growth spurt because when he woke up, Steve and I both thought that he looked taller. We measured him and he was 29 inches long. Last time I measured him, it was a month ago and he measured 27 inches. I guess with all this excitement of growing and moving, I'd have a difficult time sleeping well too. 

I have come to realize that my little boy is not so helpless anymore. During breakfast this morning, I was watching him eat his little puffs. One of the puffs was stuck on his lip and to fix it, he lifted his left hand towards it and pushed the puff into his mouth. If you're reading this, you're probably thinking, woopdee doo, he pushed food into his mouth. But for some reason, that little act made me so proud of him. [Sniff] my little man is growing up. 

Tomorrow is our last swimming lesson. I've been a bit disappointed about what we've been learning in the class, I was expecting that Nathan would be able to float on his back by the end of the lesson, but really, the only thing that we've gained was being able to hold his breath under water, more confidence when in the water, and cute water baby pictures!

It was good to be able to take the class with the other mommies and their babies. The expression on each of their faces are too cute. I love to watch the babies and their mommies. There's a really sweet thing about the interaction. 

Steve enjoyed his first Father's day and this was the last week of his sabbatical. It has also been really interesting to see how his interaction with Nathan has evolved over the past month. I can tell that Steve is a lot more comfortable with playing with Nathan and Nathan is starting to trust him as much as he trusts me. 

It's hard to believe that Nathan has been a part of our lives as long as he was living inside the baby bump. It's been a quick 38 times 2 weeks. He's grown so much and I look forward to watching him grow and change even more. 

My No Cry Sleep Plan

Sleeping on his knees. Must be comfortable?

So almost 9 months later, I've figured out a sleep system that I am happy with. I'm pretty much making this post so that I can remember these tips for our next child. (Just watch, it probably won't work with him/her) But after enduring many days of heart wrenching crying to sleep and celebrating more nights of Nathan just falling asleep on his own quietly, I think I've got a pretty good system down. Now, this means that he is not going down at the exact same time every night, but at least it's within a window of 1 hour. Right now it's between 8:00 and 9:00. He usually wakes up ready for the day 11 hours later.

Crying it out is necessary if the baby can't fall asleep by themselves. It didn't take long, maybe a couple of days of just letting him cry it out for him to figure out that he can fall asleep on his own. Other moms can attest to how letting their babies cry it out has greatly improved their baby's sleep. This is good to do when they are about 4-6 months. I now know that if if Nathan is crying for a long time, he is either super overtired, or not sleepy. In the latter case, I won't let him cry it out.

Have a bedtime routine and follow it. The bedtime routine takes about 1 hour to 1.5 hours. It starts with a bath, then short baby massage, play time, story, lullaby, and put down. A shortened bed time routine which consists of story, lullaby and put down takes about 7 minutes. I just do lullaby and put down for naps, which takes only 3 minutes.

Wait for tired signals. One of the reasons that the bedtime routine takes so long is the play time that comes before story time. During that time, while we are playing quietly, I am waiting for Nathan to show the signs. I look for eye rubbing and clumsiness. If he starts to get fussy, that's when I start the story. If I put him down before he shows signs of being tired, he will just cry and cry in the crib. If I wait for him to show me that he's tired, he will usually yawn while I'm singing the lullaby and a few minutes after I put him down, he will fall asleep quietly.

If has fallen asleep and for some reason wakes up crying, wait a bit. Usually he will settle down and fall asleep. But if his crying escalates and he's rolling around vigorously in bed, I will go up and try to

• pat him until he falls asleep. If he still is restless, and it is before 10 pm, I will
• take him out of the crib and let him play until he shows tired signs. And then do the routine again. But if it's later than 10:30, I will 
• nurse him until he falls asleep and then put him back into his crib. This really only happens if he is sick or teething. 

I used to stress myself out by sticking to a strict bedtime of 7:30. Most of the time he would fall asleep on his own within 15 minutes, but on the days that he didn't, I felt super stressed. Not that I had anything important to do after he went to bed, but it was just stressfull, listening to him cry, and then having to soothe him. So this method leaves a slightly unpredictable bedtime, but our baby is happy and calm when he falls asleep. And I have a feeling that his bedtime will only become more predictable as I follow these guidelines. 

So at almost 9 months old, this is what I'm finding works. It will probably change in a few weeks, or even a few days. But I guess that's just what babies do. Change. 

37 Weeks Old

We've been home for over a week and things are almost getting back to normal. Steve is on his last week of sabbatical so I think it will be weird not to have him around all the time. This week has been a pretty eventful week, with visiting grandparents, and swim lessons.

Nathan is still kind of on California time as far as sleep goes. He's going to bed around 8:30 - 9:30 and waking up for the day at 8:00. I still have to nurse him once around at 4 or 5, but it's a short feed and he's back to sleep. This schedule works pretty well, but I wish he would go to sleep just a bit earlier.

As far as foods goes, Nathan tried Tex-Mex food this week by having boracho beans and chicken. He also tried some homemade chicken tikka masala and absolutely loved that as well. He's starting to do better with finger feeding himself and can get the food into his mouth if it's bigger pieces. He can probably get 1 out of 8 cheerios into his mouth.

Nathan is working on the milestone of cruising and crawling all at the same time. He can kind of do both a little, but not very well. He's also trying to pull himself up on anything he an find. So far he's only successfully done it while holding a stationary arm, but it seems like he's trying to crawl/pull up on everything: pillows, bodies, and even his bath tub. He can also pick up a cup and drink from it. He's actually been practicing that skill in the bath tub. One day he picked up a toy and started to pretend drink from it.

When the grandparents were here, we went hiking at Spicewood Springs. Nathan enjoyed sticking his toes into the cool spring water.

On Monday, Nathan started his Starfish I swim class. It is definitely not one of those hard core classes where you throw your baby in to teach them to swim. We pretty much hold our babies in different positions and walk around in a circle singing songs. At one point, we dunk the babies in the water to help them learn to hold their breath. Nathan is starting to get the hang of it and will preemptively hold his breath before I dunk him, which is pretty cool. Here's a picture of Nathan and his friends after today's class. I think he's a bit fussy because his friends are fighting over his sippy cup. 

Also, here is a list of things that I think Nathan did intentionally. These things also could've been coincidences, but I thought I would document them here. 

• gave me high five
• said "Teddy"
• gave me fist bumps
• showed me the sign for milk
• turned towards me and gave me a hug
• turned to give me a kiss after I said "ching ching" (chinese for kiss)
• turned away from me when I said "ching ching"

Big Adventures of Week 35 and 36

I didn't get a chance to post last week because we were on vacation in California. I was a bit nervous about how traveling will be with a baby, but in the end, it turned out great. This post will be about Nathan's adventures in California.

Nathan did pretty good on the plane. The first time he flew, he slept for part of the plane trip, but this time, he seemed to not want to sleep. So we had to keep him busy and entertained for the about 3 hours. We rotated through the toys that we brought and as a last resort, we turned to food. We found out that he can now feed himself a rice cracker.

After we got the rental car, we ended up driving through a small shopping area and got some pretty good chinese food. Nathan was super friendly towards the waitress. He even grabbed her finger and wouldn't let go.

The first night, we drove to Santa Cruz, where we would go whale watching the next day. It was about a 4 hour excursion and Nathan handled it like a pro. The weather was windy and cold, but we bundled up and cuddled to stay warm. In the end, it was worth it. We saw 2 humpback whales who swam right up to the boat. If we wanted, we could reach our arms out and touch them.

We were able to get a picture of Nathan with the whales. He was a bit curious when they first appeared, and he handled their stinky sprays pretty well, but after awhile, he lost interest and fell asleep. 

After the cruise, we stopped and got some Hawaiian food, Nathan tried some garlic shrimp and liked it.

Then came the long trip to Yosemite. We decided to take the scenic route and visit Big Sur on the way, but traffic was pretty bad along Route 1, so we stopped here to take some pictures of the coast and took another detour. 

Seven hours later, we arrived at Yosemite. Nathan for the most part, handled the ride pretty well, as long as I was entertaining him, he slept for about 1.5 hours total, so you can imagine that it was pretty exhausting. On the way, we were able to see lots of farms. It was pretty cool to see where so much of our food is being grown.

We stayed in the canvas tents at Camp Curry in the valley of Yosemite. It rained the first night, so with the pitter patter of the rain, we all slept like babies. I think it may have been the first time that we all slept through the night.

On the first day, we decided to do a few easy hikes. The first one was to mirror lake, which was about a 1 mile easy, paved hike. You can see Nathan's little arm behind me. 

Then, we hiked through the woods to check out Yosemite Falls. We actually hiked half way and then took the shuttle the rest of the way. Here's Nathan sitting beside one of the giant redwood trees.

In the afternoon, we drove about 30 minutes to see some giant sequoia trees at tuolumne grove. The hike was a pretty moderate down hill trek down and up a paved road. There were only a few sequoias scattered among all of the redwoods, but they were still pretty impressive. 

For dinner, we ordered a pizza and then called it a night. Nathan went to bed before us so we built a little fort for him to sleep in.

The next day, we decided to go on our long hike. After studying the maps, we decided to go hike the Vernal Falls Trail. Steve was very ambitious and had planned on doing the Nevada Falls trail as well, but once we reached the top of the Vernal Falls, we decided to call it quits and head back. The trail was pretty much a steep uphill with stairs at the end of the trail. The mist trail was what they called it and we now know why they call it the mist trail. It was beautiful. Probably one of the most beautiful sights that I have seen with my own two eyes. 

On the way up, Nathan became very interested with this squirrel, who came very close to us. 

On the way down, we decided to take the long winding trail down the mountain to avoid the slick, steep steps that we went up on. We were toting precious cargo and didn't want to risk his life any more than we had already done. 

On a side note, Nathan's cheeks became very red on this trip. I don't know if it was the dry air, or if it was the friction from being carried in the Ergo Baby carrier for many hours, but it was weird. I tried looking up to see if this was a problem for anyone else, but I didn't come across anything. 

The drive back to San Francisco was ok. Nathan seemed to sleep a bit more and traffic wasn't as bad. It only took us 5 and half hours to get there. We were very lucky to be able to stay with family right in the city and that first night, Nathan fell asleep quickly and slept like a baby. 

On the first day, our aunt and uncle loaned us their car so we decided to drive to the Golden Gate Bridge, looked around, and then we drove to Fisherman's Wharf for some clam chowder bread bowls.

We stopped by the penny arcade on pier 42 and put a quarter into this machine. Nathan loved it and was giggling the whole time it was playing. 

We then went back and met up with the family. Nathan's great grandparents arrived too and we had a very nice lunch together. The house we stayed at had lots of mirrors, so Nathan really enjoyed looking at himself in the mirror. 

That evening, we walked to a Hong Kong cafe close by and had some Americanized Chinese food. It was...interesting, but I wasn't super impressed. Again, Nathan was super friendly with the waitress and the people around us. We got compliments from 2 different people on what a good/cute/bright baby he is. Who would've thought that these compliments would make me so proud.

The next day, Nathan took a super long nap, the longest one he's taken all of vacation. After he woke up, we drove to Golden Gate Park and first went to the California Academy of Sciences. Just like we expected, Nathan was completely fascinated with the aquarium. 

Afterwards, we just drove around the park and got out to go see the Japanese tea gardens and the botanical gardens. We didn't go in, but just took a few pictures outside. We then went back to the house for dinner. 

It seemed like Nathan came out of his shell on this trip. He has started to become way more vocal and social than he was before. He would answer back and even initiate conversation with people. He doesn't do it so much with me, but with "strangers" he is super social, which is sooo unlike Steve or me. 

With so much going on in the house, Nathan did not want to go to sleep at night. He ended up going to sleep around 8 or 9 pm CA time (10 or 11 Texas time) each night. Usually, he would fall asleep shortly after sunset. So, we are currently trying to help him adjust to the jet lag. His current bed time is 10 pm. We are hoping to push that up about 15 minutes each night until it's back to his usual 7:30 time. 

The next morning, we ventured out towards downtown. We first walked to West Portal, caught the MUNI to the Ferry Building and walked around the Saturday Farmers Market. I tried some fresh oysters and we all sampled some fresh fruit. Nathan liked the apricots. They were much juicier than the ones that you get here in Texas. 

After an hour, we headed towards Chinatown. Truthfully, I was a bit underwhelmed. There were a lot of touristy junk shops and Cantonese style restaurants. I was expecting to see at least one Taiwanese restaurant, but we may have just missed it. We ended up having some dim sum and Nathan tried a bit of the steamed ribs. He sucked on the bone, but that was about it. 

We then found our way to North Beach, looked around, and then caught a trolley by Fisherman's Wharf to take us back to a MUNI station. We got nice seats up front, so Nathan was able to stand on Steve's lap and look out the window. He really enjoyed the ride. 

Later that evening, Nathan attended a piano recital and for the most part, enjoyed listening to the music. If he got fussy, I just took him out to the entrance and danced to the music with him. Between that and looking at a flower arrangement at the front of the recital place, he would occasionally let out a loud giggle, which was super cute to me, but maybe not to the performer who was concentrating a few yards away. 

That night, Nathan was super social. He might have even said his first word, "hi" to people. He was just so social, and interactive. It was really neat to see him listen and respond to other people. 

We decided to start our final full day of San Francisco with a hearty seafood meal at the Wharf. Nathan was very content playing beside me while I chowed down on a delicious plate of Cioppino. He tried some of the fish, but I think the flesh was a bit too firm for him to swallow (even after I mashed it up with a fork). This may have been Nathan's first trip to a fancy restaurant. 

Mommy's wearing a Bib. Just like Nathan.

 Then, we went on a big adventure. We rented bikes to ride across the bridge into Sausalito in Marin County. The baby bike seat was perfect, although we had to show the guy who worked at the store how to adjust the seat. And the helmet that they gave Nathan was entirely too big for him, but it managed to stay on his head if we put a hat between his head and the helmet, so we made it work. 

When he first sat in the seat, he gave us a huge smile. He was really excited to be on the seat. For the most part, he really enjoyed the ride. He started to fuss a bit after we crossed the bridge to take a break. I wouldn't blame him. The ride across the bridge was a bit scary, cold, and SUPER windy. 

Our lips and face felt a bit windburned so after we applied some lip balm, we decided to put some on him too. This is what it's like applying lip balm on a baby:

He wanted to eat it. Either it was his instinct, or the delicious vanilla scent. But nonetheless, it was cute. 

The view after we crossed the bridge was pretty amazing. The ride to Sausalito was a bit more challenging than I expected. People were describing a downhill ride, but we had to take a detour and the path ended up being a combination of uphill and downhill stretches. When we finally arrived into town, we followed the advice of the guy at the bike rental place and immediately got in line to purchase tickets for the ferry back to San Francisco. There was a line of people, and for the first time, we got preferential treatment because we had a baby in tow. The lady directing the line pointed at me, I gave her a "you pointing at me" look as I pointed at myself, she gave me a nod and so I moved towards her. She directed Steve towards the front of the line and he stepped up to buy tickets. Within seconds, we were being directed to board the ship. 

On the ship, Nathan got really friendly with the bartenders who were right behind us. I first notice him yelling and then looked back to see what he was yelling at. The guys at the bar were making funny faces at him and he thought that it was amusing. He continue to holler back. It was quite cute. 

Soon we heard an announcement for us to go down a level to pick up our bikes. After we got our bikes we stood in a line for a few minutes as the boat docked. 

Apparently we then had to hoist our bikes up a flight of stairs to the ramp. As we got closer to the stairs, we heard people grunt as they lifted their bikes up and climbed up the stairs. When we were up, with Nathan in the carrier in front of me, the guy told me to hold the frame and lift. I tried, but the bike seat was weighing the bike down. He kept urging me to lift, I kept trying and finally, with Steve's help at the back end, I was able to hoist the bike up the stairs. Half way, another guy comes to the rescue and says "You shouldn't be doing this!" 

On our way to return the bike, we stopped by Ben and Jerry's. We ordered 2 scoops with one being a frozen green yogurt. Nathan had a few bites and really like it (no surprise). After we finished with the scoop of yogurt, we proceeded to eat the scoop of mint ice cream, which was off limits to Nathan. Of course he didn't know this and we had to endure the puppy dog eyes as he looked back and forth between the ice cream cone and us. 

After a brief nap at the house, we decided to go climb the Moraga Steps that was a few blocks down the street. 

It had gotten pretty chilly and it was super windy at the top of 330 some steps. The view, though foggy, was still nice as we saw most of San Francisco and a cool solar farm in the distance. 

We boarded or flight home the next day and that night Nathan slept through the night. He went down at around 10:30 and didn't wake up until 6:30. Unfortunately, this was a one time occurrence, but I know that the light at the end of the tunnel is near. 

Last night, I also discovered a 4th tooth. It's his outer incisors on the upper left side. I'm not sure when that tooth emerged, but I'm glad it did. He seems to be his normal happy self...for now.