First Swim

I took Noah swimming for the first time today. He loved the water, just like I thought he would. I held him at first, but he pushing away from me and trying to swim by himself. He even put his face in the water. He certainly is fearless!

He Finally Said It!

Noah finally said his first real word on Wednesday, just 3 days shy of his 10 month birthday. He was scooting across the living room floor, looked straight at me, and said "mom". It wasn't even a continuous stream of "mamamama" - it was definitely "mom". I thought maybe I was kind of imagining things, since I've been waiting so long to hear it but then he said it again. All of those months of brainwashing him to say "mom" before "dad" finally paid off!

First Steps

We had scheduled to have Noah's pictures taken yesterday. So, of course, on Wednesday one of the little girls at daycare hit him on the head with a toy car and left a mark on his forehead. Then on Friday he woke up with a pretty deep scratch on his left cheek. I had only managed to get the fingernails on one of his hands trimmed since he was squirming around so much. As a result, his fingernails on his left hand were rather long and jagged. Great - so now he's got a red mark on his forehead and a scratch on his face. We show up to get his pictures taken and it's taking FOREVER. I got Noah out of his stroller and let him "cruise" around the waiting room chairs. And that's when he does it - he lets go of a chair and takes 2 steps to get to a table with a toy on it. He just let go and walked over to it. It was such a proud moment!

After the pictures, which went pretty smoothly, we headed home. I had finally decided to hang up the curtain rod and the curtains in the living room so I moved the couch away from the window. Unbeknownst to me, there was a dead bumble bee underneath the couch - which Noah managed to find. He picked it up and the stinger got stuck in his index finger. He started crying and waving his hand around trying to get the bee dislodged. It wasn't stuck in his finger very far and I was able to pull it out by just tugging on the bee's wing. At first I wasn't sure that it had even done anything. Noah's finger's look like little sausages anyway, so it was hard to tell if there was any swelling. But after a couple of minutes it turned red and got pretty puffy. I called the pediatrician and she basically told me to do everything I was doing anyway (Tylenol, cold compress, Benadryl if it got itchy) and Noah didn't seem to be having any kind of reaction. He was a little cranky, which was understandable, but no shortness of breath or anything. I felt horrible, though. I'm terrified of bees and my baby gets stung by one.

Easter

Easter was a long day for Noah. We went to church in the morning and he managed to fall asleep half way through the sermon. Then we went to MaMa and PaPa's house for lunch and he took a short nap there. By the time we got to Mimi Peggy's house for dinner, he was pretty wiped out. We tried to get him hunt for Easter eggs while were there, but he was so tired that he wasn't very interested. We got a couple of cute pictures, though.

9 Months Old

Noah will be 9 months old tomorrow. Wow, how time has flown. Nathan took him to the pediatrician yesterday for his 9 month check up (no shots - yea!) and to make sure his ear infection was totally gone. While he waited for the doctor, Nathan said he flirted with all of the nurses.

He weighs 21 lbs. 13 ounces and is 28 inches. He's now dropped down to the 75th percentile in weight and is in the 50th to 75th percentile in height. Finally - the gap is narrowing between his weight and height. I was scared his weight was going to hover in the 90th percentile for the rest of his life. The pediatrician said everything was wonderful. She asked how he was sleeping, and Nathan told her that he hadn't slept through the night since he had his ear infection. She said that since he's healthy again that it's time for the "tough love" to start. Ugh! More Ferberizing!

Messy, Messy, Messy

On Jennifer's advice, I bought Noah some "biter biscuits". She told me that Laney loved them but that they were very messy. I'm glad I took off Noah's clothes before I gave one to him. The biscuit residue was everywhere - his hair, his ears, his legs. How can something that's essentially a cracker, be so messy?

Ear Infection

Well, now I know why Noah's been so "out of sorts" for the last week - he has an ear infection. It's the first time we've had to take him to the doctor for anything other than a check up. He wasn't displaying any symptoms of an ear infection, but I still feel horrible because it took about a week for me to decide to call the pediatrician to figure out if there was something wrong with him. The doctor asked him if he had been running a fever, had a runny nose or if he'd been tugging at his ears and Nathan said "no". The doctor looked in his left ear and said that she couldn't find anything wrong. Then she looked in his right ear and was like "ah ha!". Since he was laying on his ear at night, it was causing it to hurt and that's why he kept waking up crying. I guess that also explains why he kept wanting to take naps in his stroller, since his head was more elevated. We got some ear drops for the pain and some amoxicillin for the infection. Hopefully my baby will be back to his usual cheerful self in a couple of days.

What's Wrong With My Baby?

I had another bad night with Noah again. I tried for almost 2 hours to try and get him to fall asleep. Absolutely nothing would work. He didn't want to lay by himself but when I would hold him, he would struggle to get free. Then when I'd let him go, he would cry and climb all over me. When he finally did fall asleep and I put him in his crib he woke up ten minutes later. He ended up sleeping with me again.

It continued this morning when he wouldn't even let me put him down so that I could take a shower. I had to take him to the babysitter first, then come back home by myself so that I could get ready for work. I called the pediatrician and told her that he just wasn't acting like his normal happy self. A couple of weeks ago he was sleeping through the night and was happy almost all the time. Now he's waking up constantly and crying when there doesn't appear to be anything wrong. She said it was possible that he had some sort of virus or maybe an ear infection. Nathan is talking him today at 4:00 to see if they can determine what's wrong with him. I hope they come up with a solution. I'd like to be able to sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time again...

Time to Referberize

Noah had been doing so good sleeping until a couple of weeks ago. I'm not really sure what happened, but we're back into the same old routine. Overall, he's been pretty clingy and kind of crabby. I think he might be having a slight case of separation anxiety. Last night I tried to rock him to sleep with him laying in my arms, which is always kind of a struggle. He kept squirming around like he always does, but was clawing his way towards my shoulder. He ended up hugging me and putting his head on my shoulder and fell asleep this way, which is kind of unusual. After a while I laid down with him sleeping next to me. He woke up and looked around to make sure I was still there. When he realized I was, he crawled towards me until he was touching me. I kept waiting for him to fall asleep and then inch away from him. Every time he would wake up and move closer to me. He finally crawled over to me, knelt on his knees and draped his body over mine and fell asleep that way. After he did that, I just didn't have the heart to make him move. I let him sleep on top of me for quite a while before I put him in his crib. That only lasted for about 5 minutes. He woke up, stood up his crib, and proceeded to scream - not cry - but scream. If I thought the crying was bad, the screaming is ten times worse. That sound just goes straight through me. I know I shouldn't, but I let him sleep with me again. He hasn't slept by himself for almost a week now. I know I'm going to have to do something, but I just don't think I have it in me to let him scream all night - especially if he really is having separation anxiety.

He's Finally Mobile

Noah finally crawled today! His first "real" crawl, anyway. We were playing on the floor when he spotted Barkley's chew toy about six feet away. He got up on his hands and knees and took off towards it like he'd been crawling all along. He actually crawled over a small mountain of his own toys to get to it. I was so happy that I got to see one of his milestones firsthand, and not get to hear about it from a babysitter. With tears in my eyes I picked him up and hugged him and rushed to write it down in his baby book. I'm sure Noah was a little ticked off, though, that he had gone to all the trouble of crawling towards a toy (even if it was Barkley's) and then I took it away from him and picked him up.