Rolling

At 12 days GV rolled from his tummy to his back. We even managed to catch it in photos as it was happening.  At 5 weeks he could do it over and over again.  Then he would do it off and on but around 3 months he stopped. It wasn't like he would try and try and never get it, he just wouldn't try. About 5 months he could roll from back to tummy. A few weeks ago he started rolling to his tummy when he didn't want to go to sleep and then he'd do it in his sleep and wake himself up. Or he'd roll to his tummy to get to a toy.

But he hasn't been crawling. It's not that I want to push him to crawl (I'm not sure I'm READY for a mobile baby) but most of his friends at playgroup are crawling now and he looks so sad when they all crawl away and he's left sitting there with his toys - or worse they crawl away with his toys. So I've been working to get more tummy time in each day. He's still no closer to crawling but today he was a rolling fool!

We were playing on the bed and suddenly he rolled away from me.  A complete roll - front to back to front. He smiled at me and then did it again. I had to hurry up and get up and stop him from banging his head into the footboard. I picked him up and put him by the pillows again and he rolled all the way to the footboard again. He did this for about 10 minutes, he was just having a ball.  I tried putting him on his play mat and he just laid there.  Maybe a couple more days on the bed and he'll be ready for his play mat.

Sleep Update: He slept from 7pm to 4:15am last night. He made a fuss around 11pm but when I was finally ready to go in he fell back asleep. After a quick feed at 4:15, he slept in until 7:50.  And while 9 hours is great hopefully he'll continue to stretch it out to 7 or 8am.

Baby Foodie

Today GV got to have acorn squash for the first time today. He loved it! For the first time as soon as he was done he had his mouth wide open ready for the next mouthful. Normally I have to seize mouth openings to get food into him.

So far he's tried avocado, sweet potato, brown rice cereal, oatmeal, green beans, carrots, pears, bananas and apples. Avocado was his first food. It was during Thanksgiving. He was ambivalent about it but would eat it. Then sweet potatoes (that were really white!) over Christmas. He wasn't too fond of them and his guts went off so we stopped. Then when we got home we tried normal colored sweet potatoes again and he liked it more than avocado. Then brown rice cereal and I couldn't get more than the first spoonful in. Then oatmeal and that was better.

I tried banana but he hated the mashed up texture. He loved helping me eat my banana so I bought these and while they worked in theory, he'd get banana all over himself, then the banana would disappear in the holder bit and cleaning it was a pain in the a$$ because the mesh doesn't come clean. So now that he's 8 months I smash it between my fingers before giving it to him and he eagerly eats it now. Pears and apples he didn't seem too fond of but I mix them with oatmeal and he'll usually eat them all up.

Green beans were a horrible fail. Carrots were by far his favorite though. If I mix carrots with something I can get him to eat anything (like green beans). A mixture of green beans, carrots and sweet potatoes were his favorite though. BTW in case you can't tell I make all of his food (besides the rice cereal and oatmeal) using this machine. I love it! I got it for my birthday and it rocks! I got these from IKE.A (the pink ones) and they are the perfect size and shape for freezing food.

So today was acorn squash. Personally I hate squash so I was fully prepared for him to hate it too but he didn't. I did mix it with a bit of carrot though so I'll have to see if tomorrow he'll eat it when it's just squash. Next up is yogurt and then I'm hoping to find some peaches. I've been trying to buy organic. The popular grocery store here has a horrible organic section but Swee.tbay rocks. I've found nearly everything there. According to WholesomeBabyFoods.com other fruits we should be trying are apricots, mango, nectarines, papaya, plums/prunes and pumpkin. We'll see though. I do want to try these though as food seems to be the only thing he doesn't instinctively put in his mouth right now.

Sleep training update: GV woke up at 3am the other night and needed a 10 minute feed to go back to bed. He then woke early at 6:30am (he's normally up at 8am) but since I had a dinner last night at 7pm I just adjusted his schedule.  He was in bed for the night by 6:50pm (feeding started 30 minutes early) then woke up at 9 and Kevin had to give him a 4oz bottle to get him back to sleep. He slept till 1 and then another 10 minute feed but then he slept till 7:40am. Tonight he went to bed at 7pm and other than a few fusses has been sleeping quietly. Also his naps are now tummy naps. He finally likes them.

Sleep Training

So my parenting style would not ever be called AP. Some people might think it is. I cloth diaper, I babywear and I even slipped up and co-slept. But still if you consider AP to be on one side and Ba.bywise to be on the other I will admit that I'm closer to the Babyw.ise side of the scale.

To me cloth (and hybrid) diapers make sense. You're doing laundry anyways so why not diapers. Plus Kevin was on board with the whole thing from the beginning so it made it so much easier. That's not to say that GV hasn't ever been in disposables. He has. But only because of extenuating circumstance.

I have a Babyh.awk Mei Tai that I love using with GV. Well when he likes it. Again, it just made sense. Sometimes GV would not be put down and I had stuff that needed to get done (like his laundry) and it was so much easier when I could "wear" him. It was like being pregnant again. Everything was a little more awkward but I could get around and get stuff done.

I guess where I really differ from AP is sleeping. At one of the first ped appts for GV Dr. G (the ped not the RE) told us not to let GV go longer than 3 hours w/o feeding. If he was asleep then to wake him up and feed. Even at night. Then it was no longer than 4 hours at night, then 5, then 6. And so we kind of stumbled into sleep training. I read Babywi.se and this blog and the whole eat-play-sleep cycle made sense to me so we implemented it. Tried to do that whole dreamfeed thing (which didn't really work for us, I couldn't really ever wake him up enough for it and disrupted his night time sleep even more). At 10 weeks I stopped trying to do a dreamfeed and GV started sleeping from 8pm to 7am. We didn't because we'd become use to waking twice a night, but he was "sleeping like a baby". Sometimes he would wake but would settle himself back to sleep.

Then we went to England for Christmas. And stayed with the in-laws. In the same room as GV, across the hall from Mum & Dad and SIL and her boyfriend. Maybe we could tune-out GV fussing but we didn't think they could (they are seriously the lightest sleepers in the world!!) so anytime GV woke up I nursed him back to sleep. We even co-slept most nights because it was the quickest way to get him quiet again. I'm not a fan of co-sleeping because I am a deep sleeper. I was always worried that I would roll over him. Once after nursing he actually rolled forward into me (he was asleep and I had fallen asleep and then woke up with a start and then panic). So anyways our nights started with GV going to bed around 7pm, then being woken up by Kevin and I going to bed at 11 and being nursed back to sleep and then he'd wake up again around 3 or 4 to fuss (like he normally does) but I'd nurse him back to sleep.

And once we got back from England GV wanted to continue with the nursing twice a night again. Kevin and I tried everything I could think of. I'm not a fan of CIO but I was seriously at wits end (I should mention that me minus sleep is a horrible horrible version of me). So we tried once. We let him CIO for five minutes before we went in. And then it took us an hour to calm him down. Then I fed him and he went back to sleep within a couple of minutes. So that went out the window. Then GV got really good at rolling onto his tummy. Which he didn't want to sleep on. And he discovered sleeping on his side. Which he loves. But he hasn't mastered that perfect balance yet so the crying bouts were getting worse and more frequent. Then naps started to slip and finally bedtime became nonexistent. And then nursing was only lasting for a couple of minutes before he fell asleep. But he would wake up as soon as I put him in his bed. And I became desperate. Kevin and I would reach different breaking points. When he was ready to re-try CIO I would go in and feed GV and when I was ready for CIO he would go play with GV.

But then last night GV woke up at 9:30. And after reading a few sleep training blog entries I decided this was it. So I went and patted him on the chest and gave him a couple of kisses and then I walked back out. And sat in the kitchen for 7 minutes listening to him cry. When time was up I went back in and flipped him back onto his back and walked out again. I folded his clothes for 9 minutes listening to him cry. Then I went in and flipped him back onto his back, fixed his blanket and walked out. Eleven minutes later Kevin went into his room, flipped him back over and walked out. For the next 13 minutes we sat in the living room listening to his crying turn to fussing and sometimes 30-45 seconds of silence. Then we both went in and I fed him. Two minutes later he was asleep again. And he slept until 8:15 this morning. I woke up twice to go check on him and he was sleeping on his tummy (shocking!).

Tonight GV went to bed at 7 and then woke up at 9pm. Kevin and I went in right away and I was able to get him to quiet down rather quickly and so I tried putting him back in his crib (the normal point he starts to cry) and he fussed a bit but then once he had his blanket he went back to sleep. This is the first time in a long while he's gone back to sleep w/o nursing. Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll be posting that he slept through the night again.