The Most Wonderful Sound: Luke Laughing

J was playing with Luke just a little bit ago and Luke was just laughing and laughing so I had to sneak in a quick video to capture the sound. It's so much fun to hear. He's been doing this more and more lately. He did it today while we were in Kohl's when I was making a stuffed kangaroo dance. And he does it whenever J tickles him. I love listening to it! And he even snorts sometimes!

First Swing in the Park

This afternoon, J and I decided to take a walk to the park near us and see how Luke liked the swings. So I put Luke in the Ergo (taking the stroller over the horrible sidewalks seemed like a bad idea) and away we went. There were lots of kids in the park, but the baby swings were pretty open, so we were able to get to one right away. We put Luke in and gave him a gentle push. He had one arm up, either as a casual cruising type of arm or as a holding on for dear life arm; I'm not sure which one it was.

 
We let him swing for about 10 minutes. He was really quiet the whole time, so I'm not sure if he enjoyed it and was just taking it all in or if he was just resigned to staying in the swing until we took him out. Either way, I'm sure we'll be making many more trips to the park in the future. It's so nice to be able to have one within walking distance.

I did take a video of the first minute in the swing:

First Swim

Today we went to the YMCA and Luke got into a swimming pool for the first time. The event was a free swim organized by my local moms' group so it was a nice event and not crowded at all. It looks like they'll be doing this every other Saturday and I think we'll try to go as often as we can.

Luke didn't cry at all in the water, but he also didn't smile very much for a little while. I think he was just quietly taking it all in. There was a yellow ring floating in the water and he reached for it and after he got hold of it, he kept it for the entire time we were there, rarely letting go of it.

J and I took turns either swishing him through the water, floating him on his back, or lifting him up out of the water. He did smile a few times and seemed to be having fun, so that was a good sign.

He started getting tired after about half an hour in the pool, so we went ahead and got out and changed and came home. Luke fell asleep in the car just as we pulled onto our street (and the Y isn't very far away) and instead of immediately giving him a bath like we had planned (to wash off the chlorine), he conked out and slept quite solidly for about 30 minutes. He woke up briefly and nursed and slept again for another 45 minutes or so. Then he got his bath.

All in all, I think swimming was a success. He didn't get his face in the water (we'll work on that sometime in the future; I didn't want to overwhelm him for his first swim), but he did have some smiles. We forgot to bring a camera (left my phone at home and J left his in the car), so we didn't get any pictures. I'll make sure not to forget a camera the next time.

Seven Months Old Today

Luke is seven months old today. So what's been happening lately?

Sleeping at Night: We're averaging 3 wakeups per night. He does seem to actually eat (I can hear him swallowing) rather than just comfort nurse almost every time so if he's really hungry, then I'm not going to worry about trying to cut down on the wakeups. I do try to feed him as much as possible (or at least offer) during the day in the hope that he'll get enough and won't need to wake up at night.

We did have a bad episode last night. He went to bed just fine but woke up about 2 hours later (usually he's a bit later than that). He was very unhappy. I nursed him and he calmed down and went back to sleep. I rocked him for a little while longer (catching up on my blog reading) then went to put him in the crib. He immediately woke up and started crying, and not just crying but almost to the point of hysterical crying. So I picked him up again and sat back down and rocked him. He fell back asleep, I tried putting him in his crib and he woke screaming again. I tried a few more times before I called J to come back and see if he could get him back to sleep. When J took him, I started to walk out of the room and Luke just absolutely lost it at that point and was hysterically crying. He calmed down as soon as he saw me again. So I rocked him for a lot longer and he eventually stayed asleep and went back into his crib without a problem and had a fairly normal night after that. I'm thinking that we're hitting that separation anxiety phase.

Napping: Some days Luke has great naps and other days he has very short naps. In the past 10 days or so, almost every morning nap has been only 20-30 minutes. He occasionally takes a second morning nap of about the same length. His afternoon nap ranges from 45 minutes to over 2 hours. I've tried different things for the morning nap--earlier nap, later nap, specific routine, different places (crib, swing, pack-n-play), etc. But he really seems to just not want to take a longer morning nap. Of course, this morning he took a nap for just over an hour, so once again, as soon as I get used to something, he changes it.

Growth: Because I see him every day it doesn't feel like he's growing super fast, but the way I can tell how much he's grown is by his clothing. I think that the biggest example is his yellow ducky sleeper. Right after he was born, my MIL came to visit and brought gifts, including some from J's aunt and uncle. One of the gifts was a sleeper with ducks on it in size 9 months. I vividly remember holding that up and remarking to my MIL that I couldn't imagine him ever being big enough to fit into that sleeper. And now? Not only does the sleeper fit, I can tell that he'll outgrow it fairly soon. Eek! How did that happen??

Eating: We're still just experimenting with different foods and mostly it's just lunch, but I have added in breakfast a few times. Now that he's 7 months, I'm going to try to be more conscious of doing two meals a day instead of just one. For some foods, I'm making them (so he's had things like banana, sweet potato, zucchini, squash, apple, pear, etc. that I've made) and for other foods, I'm using baby food (but picking ones that don't have extra ingredients). So he's tried several other things like oatmeal, chicken (puree), green beans, mango (which he seemed to like), and carrot (which he really seemed to like a lot). Now that he's had quite a few single ingredient foods, I'm going to start doing some combinations. Some days he seems really happy with food and other days, he couldn't seem to care less about it. He's still nursing just as frequently, so I'm not concerned since I know he's still getting everything he needs from breastmilk.

Eating a Baby Mum Mum

Yum!

"I want to feed myself, Mommy!"

Tummy Time: Luke has enjoyed tummy time for quite a while, but he seems to like it even more now. I put him down on the floor and spread toys around him in a circle. He spins around and around on his tummy to reach each toy, eventually pushing them all out of his reach and getting upset. So he's not moving forward or backward at all, but he's moving all over in that circle on his tummy. I think that he'll start to crawl (perhaps an army crawl first) just to reach those toys, or perhaps one of the cats.


Cats: Luke hadn't really paid a lot of attention to the cats until recently. Now he gets super excited when one of the cats walks by him and he tries to reach for the cat. And if a cat comes close enough, he squeals and "pets" the cat. Right now petting consists of him grabbing at the fur, so I'm trying to teach him to keep his hand open and pet the cat. I'm also making sure to keep a close eye on the cats to be sure they don't snap at him if he pulls too hard. So far the cats have been very patient and actually come over to him rather than run away. I'm sure that will change once Luke is able to chase after them!

Window: One of Luke's favorite activities is just looking out the window. We live on a fairly busy street, so there's lots of traffic coming by. He usually does this with J, who just holds him by the window with the curtain pulled back and Luke just watches and watches. When it is sunny out, we make sure he has his sunglasses on.

There are just so many things that Luke is doing now. He's really exploring his world (what he can reach) and that does mean putting everything in his mouth, so I have to be extra careful now about what is within his reach. Of course, this includes things like my chin (he got both my chin as well as J's chin today!). It's so much fun to watch him learn and explore.

I'll end this post with a few recent pictures:

Future Aggie

"What? I like frog legs!"

When we decided on his name, I bought this shirt and had it personalized.

Today at 7 months!

Photo session in rocking chair was a bust. Luke either wanted to eat the chair arm or lunge for the camera. I got three pictures and this is the best one.

His feet can now touch the ground without anything underneath. And he's really playing with all the toys on the jumperoo now (he used to just ignore them).

When he's on his back now, he's almost always playing with his feet. It makes changing his diaper extremely challenging.

"Daddy is being silly and put this thing on my head."

"Who is this Batman that they keep dressing me up as?"

Sleeping and Eating Update

We've had some big highs and lows this week on the sleep front. Wednesday night was horrible. There was a point where he woke up several times just 30 minutes after I put him back to bed. Nothing but nursing would console him (no pacifier, no rocking without nursing, no singing, no patting tummy or back), so I felt really rotten much of Thursday. On top of that, his naps were only 45 minutes long that day. It was a bad day.

But then Thursday night, something happened. Luke went to bed around 7:00 and didn't wake up until 11:00. Usually he has at least one wakeup between those times. Then he woke back up around 1:30. I was a little dumb at that point and thought I'd try getting him back to sleep without nursing. After trying, and failing, for almost an hour, I finally nursed him and he went back to sleep. And slept until 7:00 am. That means that he had only two wakeups. Amazing! I think that's the best we've ever done.

He then had some good naps on Friday. I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to jinx it. Surely it wasn't just a one-night event, was it? Off to sleep on Friday. Once again, he woke up at 11:00 pm for the first time and then around 1:30 am. He did have a 5:00 am wakeup but then he slept until around 7:00 am again. So three wakeups, which is still far better than we had been doing.

He had a good morning nap on Saturday but the afternoon nap was short. I had hopes that he would sleep well again, especially after his first wakeup again didn't happen until 11:00 pm. And like the previous nights, he woke again around 1:30 am. Then it started. He woke up every hour after that and was wide awake at 6 am and wanting to get up (I put on his mobile and left him in the crib but sat in the glider for 45 minutes while he was happily chattering away to himself to make him at least try to stay in the crib until closer to 7 am). I then drug myself out of the glider and got my coffee. Less than 45 minutes later, he was already asleep for his morning nap. Argh! Now I had had coffee and couldn't get back to sleep myself. He did take a decent morning nap, so we'll see what the rest of today brings.

At least I know that he is able to sleep longer chunks at night, so there is hope. There are two things that we changed: first I put up room darkening curtains in his room and second I put him in a warmer sleeper and did not use the sleep sack (wondering if since he was now rolling and moving all over the crib if the sleep sack got in his way). I'm not sure if either of those things helped (especially since it didn't make a huge difference last night).

On the eating front, he had zucchini this past week. It's very watery so it was a different texture from the foods he's tried before. It wasn't until yesterday that he seemed really interested in eating it. And yesterday he gobbled it up and a little serving of pear right afterwards. Today we'll be trying squash. It does seem like most days he's just not at all interested in food but there have been a few days where he opens wide and leans toward the spoon. So we'll just keep moving forward slowly like we have been doing.