You've Come A Long Way Baby!

My little man turned 1 yesterday. I still can't believe it. It really feels like yesterday that my water broke and we were driving to the hospital at 3am. I can still recall so vividly walking into the nursery to wake up my mom and tell her we were going to the hospital. I remember how antsy I was waiting to find out when they would do the c-section and that I must have asked my husband what time it was about 20 times in as many minutes. I remember how terrified I was of the spinal and how anxious I felt lying there waiting for them to start. And oddly I don't remember hearing the baby cry when they got him out, though my husband assures me that he did. What I recall most vividly is watching them carry him across the room and being so surprised at his full head of hair.

It's been quite a year. In some ways we are still adjusting to being a family of 4. Logistically speaking, having one child was not easy, but having two sometimes seems impossible. Just this morning, for the first time since I returned to work in November, my husband took both kids to school/daycare so that I could get to work early and therefore go home early. Our hope is to do this twice a week, so that at least twice a week our evenings will be a little less hurried and crazy. And even though we're all tired and Lucy is still adjusting to having to share her parents, we all love him to pieces!

He is walking a la Frankenstein these days. He's all boy too. I always hated hearing people say things like that, it seems like such a stereotype, but there's a reason stereotypes exist -- some people fit the bill. Lucy was a very active child and never fit the mold of the little girl playing quietly with her doll, but Ben is another level of active altogether. At a year he is already so much more physical. He loves to wrestle with pillows and his sister and is constantly pushing the furniture around the house. He gets into everything and just screams when we take anything away from him or move him away from the glass fronted bookcases, which he likes to bang on. Unlike his sister, who spoke early and often, Ben has no words yet. Not even mama, which of course kills me. The doctor said that he's definitely a couple months behind in that area, but that he's also a couple of months ahead on his gross motor. He added that it's not that unusual for a boy or a second child and Ben is both. So he didn't seem at all worried, but did mention that if Ben doesn't make some progress by 15 months we'll have his more formally assessed.

The daycare providers are pushing us to get him off the bottle, and I know that we should be trying harder, but he LOVES his bottles. He doesn't take a pacifier, but the bottle is his comfort, and I'm a little hesitant to push it too hard too fast. His height and weight percentiles finally flipped. At 6 months he was 95th percentile for weight and at 9 months he was 90th. Not sure what his height was at 6 months (I'm thinking about 70 or 75th %), but it was 80th at 9 months. I don't have the raw numbers with me but his weight was at the 75th percentile and his height is at the 85th percentile. He is still plenty chubby -- as you can see in the pictures below!

Thought things on the sleep front are much improved, I would mind a bit more improvement. As I suck at documenting such things, what I'm about to write is kind of a guess on my part. I'd say that 4 nights out of 7 he sleeps through the night -- meaning he goes to bed anywhere between 6:45 and 7:30 and sleeps until anywhere between 5:15 and 6:00. On the other 3 nights he will most often wake around 3:30 or 4, take a bottle and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours. We can't seem to figure out what, if anything, is causing him to wake up on the nights that he does. I'd love to get him on a regular 7 to 6 schedule, but it's probably too much to ask, since no other member of the family has a very regular sleep schedule either. We really do try though! But I do try to recall the nights when I was up several times and just be grateful for where we are now!

Now if we can just get him to stop biting, seriously! (That really is a post for another day.)


April 21, 2009

















April 21, 2010