Crawling... ish

So Aiden is officially able to scoot himself across the floor in a forward direction. I don’t know if it can officially be called a crawl yet, or if it still would be labeled a scoot since most of the time his tummy is still on the ground. He does sometimes get himself up in a real crawling position, so we are somewhere in between. Of course he still wants to use anything he is able to in order to get himself into a standing position, so it probably won’t be terribly long before we go from scoot to crawl straight to toddle.

He’s really starting to enjoy his solid food meal times. We tried Green Beans and he wasn’t so keen on that, and today we tried Carrots, which he ate, but mostly let dribble right back out onto his bib. Bananas seem to be an early favorite, he ate those up. His second meal of the day consists of Oatmeal Cereal that has been mixed with Apple Juice, again he really likes this concoction. Unfortunately, the added calories do not seem to be converting into added sleep.

Part of that problem is that the itchiness is back on his scalp. He’s been going to town the last couple of nights trying to scratch the back of his head. His ankles and wrists are also breaking out once again. Mommy called the doctor today and they don’t want to put him back on the DermaSmooth since it is a Steroid, she said we basically have to douse him in moisturizer as often as we can. So we will work on that and see how it goes.

So we have a grumpy sleeper, last night was about as rough as it has been of late. Nothing was going to settle him down. He ended up eating a bottle at 1, 3:30 and 8am. Not what mommy and daddy had hoped for. But we’ll keep trying and see if we can get him settled. When he does sleep he is starting to get used to being in his crib without the bouncer, so that is a positive. Problem is that he is still not ready to self sooth and we have to get him to the point where he is ALMOST asleep before we can put him down otherwise he will start crying almost instantly upon hitting the mattress.

During the day when he is up and about, he is laughing, exploring and generally having a good time. Today he went all the way from one side of the room to the other to get to his toy dump truck, it was pretty impressive. So while there are still issues with his skin and with the teething probably causing some pain as well, he is doing well when we can keep his mind on other things.

Breaking the Bouncer Habit

Wow... doesn't seem like it has been a week since I posted. But then days tend to run together when you aren't getting a lot of sleep.

We're losing sleep here recently trying to break the "Bouncer Habit". Aiden has gotten used to sleeping in his bouncer at night, and he won't be able to stay in it a whole lot longer, as you can see from the picture in my last post, he squirms nearly out of it and could potentially get the whole thing turned over on him if we aren't watching. And he is about 4 pounds away from being too heavy for it.

So we are trying to get him sleeping in his crib, without the bouncer. He is not taking that too well. At this point I have to let him sleep in the bouncer for the first part of the night, then I can switch him to just the crib after his middle of the night bottle and he does okay. But Saturday night was just a mess... he wouldn't settle at all, bouncer or no bouncer. So it has been tough, but hopefully we are getting there.

Today we reached a landmark, or milestone, or what have you. Aiden has been able to sit on his own for awhile as long as you put him in a sitting position, but today, he actually pulled himself up into a sitting position on his own. He only did it once and I think he kind of pulled himself up with a cord he was grabbing at, but he had no assistance from me! I was soo proud.

I know I need to do better on these updates... I will do my best. ya'll hang in there and I will post when I can. :-)

PHOTOS!!!

Lots of pictures to share with everyone today. I'm going to put a little news up here, but then I will let the photos speak for themselves. Aiden is in the process of cutting tooth #2. He now has both of his bottom middle teeth breaking through the gums and working their way into place. This is probably part of the reason he has been grumpy the last couple of nights (including tonight).

He is working on standing up now, as you will see in one of the pictures below. Yeah, we've hardly mastered sitting upright, and already he is ready to be up on two feet. Bets on when this kid will walk are now being taken. :-)

Since I am having a hard time getting him to settle down tonight, that will be it for the typing, but the pictures speak volumes. Enjoy!

Sleep? Sometimes

So immediately after the last update Aiden had a night where he slept for us. Amazingly he had a bottle at about 10:30 fell asleep around midnight and stayed down until almost 7am. At 7am daddy woke him up to eat. That’s right, I woke him up. See, I woke up when mommy’s alarm went off at 6am. I had to get up and check on him and make sure he was okay… we’re talking almost 8 hours between bottles. Once I had checked on him I tried to go back to sleep, but I kept expecting him to wake up at any moment. So I lay in bed reading and trying to sleep to no avail. Finally at 6:45 I decided I was going to go ahead and wake him up and feed him in hopes he would eat and go right back to sleep.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. He got up and ate, and stayed up until a little after 8. He did finally go back to sleep and we had a nice morning nap.

Unfortunately, we have not had a repeat of that performance since. We have been back on the up every 4 hours schedule. And then last night he decided to be a very grumpy fellow. We don’t know how many times we were up last night with him crying, but it was more than it has been in a long while.

Part of the reason is probably that his eczema is coming back on his legs, and his legs were very itchy last night. He was rubbing so much that he gave himself a pretty good rug burn type of scrape on one ankle. So we’re trying to keep his skin coated with the moisturizer, and using what we have left of the DermaSmooth oil.

Hopefully tonight will go better. We know he is CAPABLE of going 8 hours without a bottle, we’ve seen it now. So next we just have to get him comfortable enough that he will do it on a regular basis.

Overdue Update

Well… An odd thing has happened since we stopped giving Aiden Honey in his oatmeal. No ill effects to report from the honey, which is good news. But Aiden has stopped sleeping those 6-7 hour stretches, and gone back to getting up every 4 hours pretty much like clock work. Now part of that is probably the result of us trying new solids with him. We have not been giving him the oatmeal cereal, instead introducing the banana baby food. It is supposed to be the same amount of calories, but who knows how baby’s system works through these things. We have certainly seen a change in the consistency of his poo. So maybe once we get up to twice a day solid food meals we will see the sleep pattern return to “normal”.

Of course the other explanation for the lost sleep could possibly have to do with the cutting teeth. His one tooth is coming in pretty good. We hope and expect to see a second tooth emerging any day now, but of course who can gage these things? When mommy and I have a chance to sit with Aiden together we will try to get him to open up his mouth so we can get a picture of that tooth.

Aiden is sitting up very well on his own now. He still needs help getting into a sitting position, but once he is up, he can stay up for several minutes without falling over. Only tipping when he decides he wants something that is down on the floor and he has to overbalance to get to it.

It shouldn’t be too long before he starts “creeping” as well. He is getting himself into an upright “crawling” position, and flexing his legs so his body moves… he just hasn’t figured out how to coordinate the moving of his arms to actually produce forward momentum. So we still see his main mode of transportation being rolling over, which he does effectively to get across the room. I still need to catch a video of that for you.

That’s about all I have for right now. Of course there is always more, but there hardly seems to be enough time anymore to type nice long updates, as aiden is constantly doing something that requires supervision.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. Thanks for reading, and I’ll type at you soon!

Peek A Boo

Aiden has started playing peek-a-boo. It is just about the cutest thing in the world. I'm adding a 1 minute video that we caught of this last night. The game probably went 15 minutes or so and may become a new pre-bedtime ritual.

Today, Aiden tried baby food for the first time. We had a little can of stage 1 bananas, and he went nuts with them. He really liked it and ate almost a whole can, with of course the usual spillage of about 1/3 of what went in his mouth ending up on his bib.

So two pretty big new things this weekend. Next we'll have to video him eating his bananas. We're going to also be introducing real bananas in the next few days cut up into little pieces he can try to pick up on his own. The feeding guide says that when he is reaching for the spoon he is ready to try feeding himself, so that is another upcoming adventure. Juice is coming up and baby cereal as well. We're following the guidelines of only introducing one new thing every 4 days or so so that we can eliminate any possible allergens without having to guess what he is allergic too.

Enjoy the video!

Aiden goes to work!

It has taken me a couple of days to get to writing the entry. I have THE FLU and it has been kicking my you know what. I started getting to feeling bad on Tuesday morning, and by Tuesday night I was not very pleasant to be around at all. Wednesday morning came and I could not pick Aiden up without getting really dizzy. Since I am the stay at home dad, this was going to be a problem.

Fortunately the wife has a lot of family in Nashville and she immediately got on the phone to try to find someone to take care of the little one for the day, since I was in no condition to do so. After several calls, and calling the daycare where we work, she got a call from her cousin, who said he could take Aiden in to work with him since he has a private office and was only going in for a half day. So Aiden went to work!

Apparently, midway through the morning Aiden's Grandfather who works in the same building as Raquel's cousin decided he needed to steal Aiden and parade him around and show off to all of his co-workers. After showing Aiden the sights, he took the little one into his office where he was about to have a meeting. Apparently Aiden took over the meeting, sitting with Grandpa and letting everyone know what he thought with his favorite new consonant, the letter B. So the meeting must have been very productive with chatter of Baa... boooo.. ba be baaaa. as background. But I am sure Aiden thought he got a lot accomplished.

Fortunately for yours truly, Aiden's grandmother was able to take Thursday off and take care of the little one for me to get another day of rest in. I'm getting better, but the flu sucks.... meanwhile Aiden had his first day at work, and he made a great impression.

But there is fun stuff

We did get some good video of Aiden this evening sitting up on his own and playing a little bit. He is getting pretty good at keeping himself upright. Mommy says that we can't write down that he sits up on his own yet because he does not push himself up into a sitting position. But when we put him in a sitting position he can stay there for at least a minute. Enjoy the video!

Something Every New Parent Should Know (But probably doesn't!)

We're suffering from a bit of trauma in our household this evening, as something I read struck fear into our hearts for our little one. I was reading about starting baby on solid foods (like dry cereals and the like, which apparently Aiden is just about ready for) and one of the things that came up mentioned never give a baby under one year old Honey.

Well this was a little odd, since we have been mixing honey into the oatmeal cereal we have been giving Aiden since Thanksgiving. He has probably eaten honey 6-7 times in the course of the last two months, including this evening. Very bad idea.

Although rare, Honey has been known to carry the bacteria that causes Botulism. Well okay... I wasn't all that concerned at first, what is Botulism?

Looking up Botulism is when it gets REALLY scary. Botulism attacks the nervous system, and if not caught in time causes paralysis and can even be fatal. Some sights even say the symptoms might not show up for up to 30 days after ingestion. Fortunately, most sites seem to agree that in most instances the symptoms show up within 18-36 hours with the outside window being about 10 days. So we only have to be on edge for the next ten days... well that's still pretty scary.

Symptoms include : Constipation followed by lethargy, "floppy" limbs, an inability to keep the head upright, and trouble breathing.

We will be calling out doctor in the morning to let them know that we have been giving Aiden Honey and find out what, if anything we need to do about it. The good news (I HOPE) is that the honey he has ingested has come from the same bottle from the first time we fed it to him to the last. So logic seems to say that if the bottle has botulism in it we would have seen something before now.

In reality, there are only about 70-90 cases of Botulism diagnosed in infants each year in the United States and not all of those are tied to Honey, and I am sure a lot more than 90 parents are accidently and unknowingly feeding their infants honey every day. Chances are pretty good Aiden will be just fine.

It just seems like somewhere along the line someone would have mentioned "Hey honey is bad".... So for all of the parents out there who didn't already know.... Honey is potentially very harmful for your child! Please make yourself aware!

Hopefully this scare will pass with nothing more that a learning experience for us. But until we have cleared the window of time symptoms should appear, we are going to be a little on edge and watching Aiden's every move just in case.

Tooth!!

Yup. Aiden errupted his first tooth today, or in the last couple of days. I saw something white in his mouth and decided to investigate. I had to pry his mouth open and prop his tongue up to see it, but sure enough there is the little white beginning of a tooth. His lower left incisor. He's been grumbly but not really whiny with it, so hopefully that boads well for the entire teething experience.

We're having a nice visit with mimi this weekend. We all went out to the mall this afternoon and wandered around... we don't take Aiden out a whole lot so he was just looking all over the place.

We're still getting at least one six hour stretch of no eating each night from him. Some nights he goes from 10-4 or 5 other nights he wakes up at 1 or 2 and then sleeps till 8. Either way it is a nice stretch of sleep for the parents.

And now for some photos!