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.

St. Patrick's Day

Mimi Peggy babysat Noah, Laney and Steven today. Noah looks a little dazed. His hair is always a little wild, but it looks especially crazy here!

You can't see them in this picture, but he's wearing green pants for St. Patrick's Day.

8 Months Old

Yesterday Noah turned 8 months old. I know it's a cliche, but he's growing up so fast! I really don't know where the last 8 months have gone. It's hard for me to even imagine what my life was like before he came along. I look at him and I realize that he's getting so big. It's all just a little sad.

He's almost to the point where he's ready to crawl. He hasn't seemed very interested in it up until now. He was so focused on trying to walk that he totally skipped crawling. I think he's realizing now that if he learns how to crawl, he doesn't have to be dependent on us to hold his hands to walk him where he wants to go. Last night he got up on his hands and knees and I thought he was going to take off. Instead, he kind of shuffled to the left and crawled sideways. He looked like a little crab! I guess he needs to start somewhere. He's also getting a lot braver about letting go when he's standing and holding onto something. Last night he let go of my fingers and stood for about 5 seconds with his arms held out to his side for balance. He sure doesn't get his motor skills from me - I'm about the clumsiest person on the face of the planet.

I'm still waiting for him to say the majic words - "mama". He kind of stopped babbling for a while. I think he was focusing all of his energy towards standing and trying to walk. Now that he's been doing that for a while, he's starting to babble a lot more. He said something yesterday that kind of sounded like "dad" but for the most part, nothing he says really sounds like words.

Something New to Eat

It's time for Noah to graduate from fruits and veggies to meat! However, that gelatinous meat stuff that they sell in the baby food aisle just can't be very tasty and I reminds me of dog food. So I tried to be a good mom last week and I cooked some homemade chicken and pork for Noah. I baked it, ground it up in the blender, added some water and froze it in ice cube trays. The meat looked so gross that I had a hard time thinking that I was actually going to be feeding it to my child. On Saturday I thawed out a one ounce "chicken cube" along with some sweet potatoes and pears. I gave him a spoonful of the chicken and watched his reaction. He always gets a strange look on his face whenever I give him something new so I had to wait until the second spoonful to see if he would actually eat it. He made a gagging noise and opened up his mouth. The chicken was just sitting in the middle of his tongue. Then he stuck out his tongue and waited until the chicken fell out of his mouth. I decided to mix the chicken in with the sweet potatoes. He took another bite and gagged again. So I added some water to it. At this point there was so much chicken and water mixed in with the sweet potatoes that it looked like chunky orange sherbet. I gave him another bite and he gagged again. I decided to give up at this point. He wouldn't even eat his pears after that. I think he thought that I was going to try and trick him into taking another bite of chicken.

I didn't try any meat on Sunday but I thought I would give him half an ounce of chicken mixed in with two ounces of carrots on Monday. That didn't go over so well either. I thought maybe the carrots and sweet potatoes were too thick so I decided to mix the chicken in with zucchini since it's a lot runnier. I left the chicken and zucchini in the refrigerator to thaw overnight. I was running late getting home the following night so Nathan decided to feed him before I got home. He didn't know about my plan, so he gave Noah all of the chicken with the zucchini. When I walked in the door Nathan said that Noah had thrown up and that he wasn't feeding him anymore meat. I tried to get him to eat some chicken and broccoli from a jar, thinking that the texture might be a little different and maybe he would eat that. I was wrong.

After a couple of days I decided to revisit the meat again. This time I decided to try the pork. I was hesitant but I mixed the pork in with apples ("pork chops and applesauce"!). I fed Noah a couple of spoonfuls and waiting for the gagging to start. Then I noticed that he was actually chewing up the little chunks of pork - he wasn't spitting them out. I gave him a couple of more bites and he kept opening up his mouth for more. I gave him some more pork over the next couple of days mixed in with different vegetables and he seems to be doing ok with it. I can't say he especially likes the pork, but at least he's eating it. I'm not sure why he wouldn't eat the chicken. I don't know if it's a little drier than the pork and he's having a problem with the texture or if he just doesn't like the taste. I guess I'll try the chicken again in a couple of weeks. Man can't live on pork alone!