A week or so ago, "M" sounds (maaaa... mmmm..... ma... ma..... mmmmma.) Nope - that's not an official "ma-ma" yet!
He has been doing the da....da... dddda.......da sounds for quite some time. He has not had an official "da-da" yet either. (for the record - no official words spoken yet!)
I wanted to share this photo with you. Don't fret - he's only crying because he's being burped. He always cries / fusses when we take the bottle away to burp him. You think he'd learn to TRUST us by now. I guess he just wants to voice his unhappiness for taking the bottle when he's in the middle of eating. I suppose we would do the same if someone took our food away in the middle of eating! (I won't mention who's holding him while he's crying. It's not me though.) Isn't he cute even when he cries?! : - )Speaking of trust: something interesting has been going on this week. We've been putting Mercer down to sleep in his crib and encouraging him to go to sleep himself. Normally, we (well, Todd as of late) would feed him around 10 or 10:30, read him a story, rock him to sleep in our arms. Todd mentioned that as Mercer gets bigger that we won't physically be able to do this (he's probably about 23 - 24 lbs right now). It's true, but so sad -- as it's WONDERFUL rocking him to sleep. But - I suppose Todd saw this window of opportunity as I'm out of commission for awhile to alter the routine!
Now, we feed him a bottle around 9 or 9:30 (see below how we did that)... brush his two little teeth (good habits start early!)... read him two books... tell him we love him... lay him in his crib... and I rub his belly while singing a little lullaby. We've done it each night this week. And - he did fuss and cry the first few nights a little bit, but last night - he played a little bit and went to sleep without crying. We were both amazed!
Todd read up on how to put a baby to sleep on his own (what initiative!). Lay him down. If he cries - only let him do it for 2 minutes. Go in and soothe him for 2 minutes. Come out. If he cries - only let him do it for 4 minutes. Go in a soothe him for 2. Come out. If he cries... 6 minutes. Soothe him for 2. If he cries... 8 minutes. You see the pattern? We only had to go up to 8 minutes the first night. We went down to 4 the next (we had him completely tired out, though - no nap at all after daycare!). And last night, he didn't even fuss. whew! We're not counting on things being this smooth each night, but it's interesting to see the progression.
Not only have we changed his sleeping routine, we've also changed his feeding schedule this week. We've added an extra solid food feeding in the morning at daycare -- he now gets both fruits and veggies every day (we're making sure he has one of each for his daily intake). We did this so that we could take his bottle feedings down from 5 a day to 4 a day. A neighbor of mine with an 8 month old asked about his feedings at a play-date last month and hinted that we may be feeding him too much. I looked into it / found an article on bottle feeding schedules - and yes - he was a little bit over the top of the range by a few ounces... by eliminating the one bottle, we're back in range. We're meeting with the pediatrician on Monday of next week and will discuss this with her.)
Also - I'm finally starting to feel human this week. Wednesday I started to feel less pain (down to 1/4 of a pain pill now). So, that's good. (I felt pretty rotten Sunday, Monday, Tuesday as I was trying to scale back on the meds / but was miserable in doing so. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to be off of them at that point - which was silly. The oncologist said it would take 1 - 1 1/2 weeks to feel better. Today is 1 1/2 weeks. I'm still taking it easy - working from home in bed or on the couch mostly. I have a doctor's appt on Oct 1st for follow-up to the surgery and find out what I'm allowed to do / add back to my activities.
Have a good day and a great weekend! It's fall and the temps actually have dipped into the 50's here in the morning. Great time of year!!
ps - we had to finally succumb to the gas craze here in Atlanta (it's not really a problem from what we understand in the rest of the country or the rest of the state - even). We went for almost 2 weeks in the Prius (with Todd driving downtown each day for work -- taking my car b/c of the fuel economy). The gas station near our house has been getting shipments and has had long lines of 10 - 20 - 30 cars to even get into the gas station, but Todd went late one night after Mercer went to bed / went in through a back entrance of the station (through a driveway for a neighboring restaurant) and had to wait for only 2 cars in front of him. I wish we didn't even have to get gas / give into all of this craze. It's silly! oh well.
But now with a full tank of gas -- we have a good day Saturday planned. We're going on a drive north of where we live to run a couple of errands: 1) - to pick up an item I bought off of Craig's List for Mercer and 2) - to pick up some plants for the pond. But - we may check out to see if any of the leaves are changing color / I may talk Todd into one other fun thing to do while we're north of our house (I don't want to blog about it yet b/c I want to see if we can get some good pics for the blog later).
I think my only restriction to "long" drives is that I have to get out and walk every 45 minutes so that I don't get blood clots. At this point, I'm still I'm instructed to do this -- guess it's still a hazard?! Looking forward to the drive and getting out. I've been home-bound so much lately, that I'm not stir crazy yet, but could become so very soon!
Candice
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