Milestones

It seems like his milestones always happen in bursts. For days he’s just going through life being a cute baby and nothing changes and then BAM! All of a sudden it’s like there’s a new baby in the house. My little guy is growing so fast. In the last week we’ve had three milestones. Talking, standing and teething.

I’ve been saying Luke is going to have a tooth pop out any day for, oh about the last 5 months. I’ve gotten so used to the drooling and the putting everything in his mouth that I’ve stopped thinking it would happen. But now, here I am, back on the Luke is teething train. My only new evidence is his unexplained crying and fussiness last night. When the baby who always sleeps through the night wakes up an hour after he went to sleep and is screaming/crying/really pissed off I assumed he had another ear infection. Or maybe he had a nightmare. He wouldn’t stop crying. I was having flashbacks to the night of no sleep when he had his ear infection. I rocked. I walked. I hovered. I tried to put him down again. I gave him to Pete to try all the same things and nothing was working. While I tried to console Luke again, Pete searched the tubes for research. Hmmm… several parents write about how their perfect little sleepers suddenly stopped being able to sleep through the night because all of a sudden they were teething and quite miserable. They say it’s worse at night and to try the usual remedies for teething. We took out the teething ring from the freezer and he went to town on it. He took it out and screamed again. Put it back in and silence. It was a crazy experiment and it worked. But then the teether wasn’t cold anymore. We used a bit of baby orajel and I rocked him and he fell asleep. I felt guilty for being happy that he fell asleep in my arms and I held him there for awhile looking down at that angelic (non-screaming) face. I finally put him back in his crib and he slept the rest of the night with no more crying episodes. I hope he doesn’t repeat tonight. Not because it’s annoying – I think we know what to do but I just hate seeing him upset and in pain.

For about two weeks now Luke has been babbling more than normal. But now instead of pure gibberish he seemed to be making the sounds he wanted to. That is if he wanted to keep saying “ba ba ba” Or maybe he was saying “Bob” or maybe he really likes the group “Abba.” Whatever it was, he was saying it a lot. And then on Wednesday Pete said he heard him say “Mama” but since I didn’t hear it, it didn’t count (my rule – not Pete’s) and then I heard it. But since Pete didn’t hear it, I still didn’t think it counted. So on Sunday we both heard it – together – more than once. Yup, he’s saying “Mama” and even though I logically know he isn’t saying Mama to mean Me, it’s still sweet to hear. I read that he won’t say Mama thinking he’s calling/talking to me for about another month. And I thought his first word would be “poop.”

A few weeks ago Pete told me that his mom had mentioned we should lower the crib. I was ambivalent about it. Luke seemed nowhere close to being able to stand on his own or pull himself up – plus I had no idea on how to lower the dang mattress anyway. So if Pete lowered it, fine. And if he didn’t lower it, that was fine with me too. Until last night. I was in the kitchen making dinner when I heard Pete shriek (hee hee). I ran into his room and I saw Pete in the hallway holding Luke and he told me that Luke was standing in his crib and all he would have had to do was lean over and he would have been flat on the floor. So Pete lowered the crib mattress last night. And unless Luke is an acrobat, he can’t fling himself out of the crib now.

This isn’t really a milestone but it is a fight to get him to drink his bottle. It happened a little over a week ago and all the charts say he should be drinking a minimum of 24 ounces a day at this age but I battle to get him to drink 20. Some days he maybe gets 24. He seems to be eating ok but it’s so hard to get him to drink his bottle. I hope this is a phase and that it passes soon.