Blake's 7th month

Blake at 7 months, originally uploaded by Robin's Nest3.

To Blake:

OK. I'm just a little bit late on this blog for your 7th month. My only excuse is that the month has been crazy as we've tried to pack every last morsel of summertime fun into the last four weeks before school starts again for Faith. But, enough of excuses. What has been happening?

Where do I start? This month has brought so many changes in you. Every day you're more and more of a person who can thrill us with new and exciting skills.

Of course, the most exciting skill for me was the first night you slept through the night! This occurred on June 25th and lasted for exactly three nights. What heavenly nights they were, but unfortunately fleeting. Alas, you are now back to getting up a couple of times a night again. I'm sure this will stop once you've become a teenager.

For some vital statistics, we went to your 6 month appointment (actually about a week late) and found out you were 15 lbs 6 oz and 23 3/4 inches long. Oh...and you have big head. You're in the 25th percentile for height and weight (pretty typical since they're comparing you to non-preemies), but for head circumference, you're in the 75th percentile! According to Daddy, this means you have big brains. All of your eating is going directly to gray matter.

And speaking of eating, we have broadened your horizons with fruits (bananas is the fruit of choice) and meat. Chicken was not a big hit unless mixed with something. You continue to love cheerios and I think you would just eat these all day if you could. A lovely discovery that comes in handy during dinner time. You like to sit at the table with us, but get pissed when you don't have anything of your own to eat. (Actually, I'm pretty sure you're saying, "Screw the purees! Give me steak!") So, Daddy and I take turns feeding you Cheerios and giving you your bedtime bottle one-handed.

Of course, we do all of this with you in your highchair now. If you sit on our laps, we spend the entire meal moving objects out of your reach as you try to pull out the placemats from beneath our plates, cups and utensils. And, when we take everything off the placemats so you can have it without inflicting any damage, you lose interest. Apparently it's all in the thrill of the chase for you.

Faith has discovered this the hard way. If you pass within three feet of her head, you always manage to grab her hair. At this point, I'm thinking this is just an unconscious reflex for you as you're so good at it. Luckily, she's pretty good natured about it now. I suspect as you age, she may clock you one.

Daytimes are a little crazy with you now as you DEMAND someone's full attention pretty much all the time. You have a great way of saying "PLAY WITH ME NOW!" without ever using any words. Who needs baby sign language when you've got your killer combination of screaming and whining at the same time. You follow this up with the knock-out punch of a huge grin when you do get the attention you so desire.

At night, you've become a mover and a shaker, or I should say a roller. You're never in the same place that I put you to sleep in the crib. You move from one end to the other, you get your feet stuck in the side of the crib, you hit your head--you're doing a dance in your sleep. And, you've started rolling over to your tummy in your sleep too. The first couple of times you did this, you woke up screaming your head off and completely disoriented (hence we only had three nights of sleeping through). Now, you just like to sleep on your side or your stomach and don't wake up quite as surprised, thank goodness.

You've also been doing some traveling with us to the cottage with Aunt Karen and Uncle Rob's family and camping. While you loved being outside at the cottage and swimming for the first time in the lake, you hated actually sleeping there. :)

Your favourite trip this month was the camping week with Uncle Paul and Aunt Kim's family, and Nana and Papa. You were outside every day almost all day and showered with attention from everyone. Nirvana. You also found out that you could MOVE to what you want by rolling. And what you wanted more than anything was to eat the grass. If I looked away for a few seconds and you had invariably rolled to the edge of the old quilt we had thrown down and had a handful of grass heading towards your open mouth. More fibre I guess.

You are definitely a lot of work and it's worth every minute.

Love,
Mommy