Turtle Monkey

Elias is turning into such a little boy right in front of my eyes. I haven’t found the opportunity to take a lot of pictures because every fourteen seconds I have to pry him off of something he shouldn’t be touching. I am not sure there’s a way to fully baby proof an apartment with as many electronics in it as we have. The bedroom is the safest place, but he keeps going for the diaper genie, the standing fan and his changing table drawers. I know I can get locks for the drawers, but I don’t know what to do about the other two.

He’s starting to pull himself up to stand on everything. He will walk with our help and readjust his legs somewhat when he’s standing, but he still doesn’t get the concept of cruising or walking. It seems like it’s going to happen soon though.

Elias loves to offer us things. He’ll hold up a toy, his pacifier, some food, whatever and reach it out toward us. Sometimes he says, “Da!” at the same time. He absolutely loves to feed me Cheerios.

He’s really into playing games. Right now his favorite game is to turn himself over when I’m trying to change him and crawl over to the light switch to turn the light on and off. He has this toy with three buttons on it that play a variety of sounds and songs. Usually he’ll mash the buttons over and over again without regard to what is playing. Last night though, every time the “itsy bitsy spider” started to play, he’d whip the trunk of his body around to look expectedly at me and Mark, waiting for us to sing and do the song’s hand movements.

Mark and I have really been blessed to have such an easy-going boy. He sleeps well, eats well and is as independent as an infant could be expected to be. He’s a happy baby who loves to explore and loves other people. There are two other boys at his daycare around the same age and I cannot tell you how adorable they all are playing together.

Elias’ daycare is confusing me, to say the least. Every other month or so, they have me fill out a sheet that goes over his normal schedule, behavior and diet. They never had a conversation with me to explain how meals and snacks are handled at the daycare, so I wrote that we were primarily feeding him at home, but I found it acceptable for him to be given fruits, vegetables and grains.

Several weeks later, the room teachers in the morning talked to me about giving him snacks in the afternoon and I reiterated what he could be given and specified NO MEAT, NO DAIRY, NO EGG. His take-home sheets started including some food they gave him, such as rice cereal (we don’t use it at home, but I’m not highly opposed to it for practice) and mashed veggies. All was great.

Then they fed him yogurt. I am not sure what the afternoon teacher was thinking as it seems the daycare center does not have a habit of feeding yogurt before 9 months. So maybe the room teacher thought Elias was older than he is. He does have a “baby buddy” there who was born a month before him and they’re around the same size, so maybe she legitimately was confused about his age. I don’t know, but I’m pretty confident the yogurt mix-up is not going to happen again.

Last week, the early morning room teacher (who is actually the morning room teacher for the toddler group so she’s only in the infant room for 2 hours) asked me, “Did they talk to you about jarred food when you picked him up yesterday?” No. Apparently the morning room teacher felt he wasn’t taking the rice cereal very well, so she wanted to know if I could bring in jarred food for his afternoon snack. Uh, sure…. I guess. So I brought in jarred food this week.

Yesterday, the morning room teacher went on and on about how much Elias loves rice cereal mixed with the jarred food and asked me if I could bring in some rice cereal.

Okay, look now… I don’t feed him rice cereal at home. You started feeding it to him, I find that acceptable for practice, but now I’m the one who needs to provide it? I was flabbergasted and a little dazed (being in a room full of infants will do that to you) so I didn’t really think to discuss it with her. This morning I see the morning snack bowls prepared on the counter. They contained rice krispies and cut up bananas. Elias can have this! Why am I bringing food in for him when the center is providing foods that are perfectly acceptable for him to eat? So I asked the early morning room teacher which foods the center provided and which foods I needed to bring in. She told me I could get a menu from the front desk, but no one was there when I left and again, I was in a hurry.

So. All of this was brought about because I can’t stand talking to people, so I never bothered to figure out how the daycare usually handles introducing solids and how to handle them with Elias. I guess I figured their questionnaire and follow up questions were enough, but obviously not. Mark’s going with me to pick him up tonight so I’ll feel a little more confident talking to them about it. I know that sometimes the prepared morning meal contains hard boiled eggs, but otherwise, the prepared meals I know of are perfectly acceptable for him. I would prefer him to get their mashed up vegetables than providing babyfood vegetables for obvious reasons. At the same time, I want to be sure they’re not feeding him foods I don’t want him to have.

I don’t blame them for all the confusion because I am sure my wishy-washiness with regard to food did not help. At the same time though, I would expect someone to initiate a conversation with me since it was clear (and I made it clear to the early morning room teacher) that I don’t know their practices in that regard. Something similar, but completely unrelated happened with regard to poor communication when one day I was told that I could not park under the carport to drop off Elias because the lane was reserved for a bus. What? How am I supposed to know that? Is it always, or just during certain hours? I see parents parking under the carport ALL the time for pickup and drop off. So now I never use the carport under any circumstance. I know I should probably ask, but if the carport is reserved during certain hours or during certain parts of the year, this should be common knowledge.

Anyway, enough of my daycare babble.

Last night we got a fruit pack at the store, so I offered Elias some apple wedges and grapes. We cut the grapes in half and smooshed them a little, but after researching it a bit today, I realize I should have cut the grapes into quarters so they wouldn’t be a choking hazard. I knew there was a reason I felt a bit paranoid with his grape offering last night. I was watching him very closely when he was chewing on a grape to make sure he swallowed it. Anyway, this video shows him gnawing on an apple wedge. He went to pick up a piece of grape, but it never made it into his mouth anyway. There are also a couple other videos on flickr showing him eating Cheerios. He’s gotten a lot better at it since then.

Elias is doing really well. He has a runny nose and a mild cough, but otherwise he’s healthy for a change. He’s teething something awful. We got a fish teether toy switcharoo for his exersaucer and he’s been going to town on it. Last night, there were streams of drool pouring out of his mouth and the front of his shirt was sopping wet. We haven’t been able to feel any additional teeth poking through and the four he has don’t appear to be growing in any more, so I’m not sure what’s going on. Elias is more fussy than usual, though he’s just not a very fussy baby at all unless he’s tired.

The boy LOVES to sleep. Unless he’s sick, he almost always sleeps through the night. We put him down to bed usually between 7-8pm. I usually join him around 11-12. Before he started teething, he was starting to stay asleep during this time, or waking once between 10-11. Since he started teething he’ll usually wake up at least once an hour for some extra comfort. I haven’t been giving him pain reliever because he doesn’t seem so bothered by it that he can’t do without.

A lot of baby references mention that babies around this age go through some intense mood swings and can get cranky if you take a toy away from them or they otherwise don’t get what they want and not need. I’ve noticed this with Elias. He loves our cell phones and will try to grab them at every opportunity. We let him play with them sometimes, as long as he doesn’t try to put it in his mouth. Sometimes he plays and plays without putting an object in his mouth, sometimes he can’t even think of playing with an object unless it’s in his mouth and usually it’s a mixture of the two. If he’s not in the mood to play without putting the phone in his mouth, we’ll eventually have to take it away from him. Usually we can then distract him with another object (have I mentioned he loves red cups? Red specifically) or activity.

But when he’s tired, the corners of his lips curl under and quiver, tears come to his eyes and he responds as if his whole entire world is crushed. There is nothing, nothing on this planet that will replace the hole left behind by the phone, which he can no longer have. You know, a mother never likes it when her baby is crying, but seeing this sort of crankiness, it is hard not to laugh. This isn’t an entirely bad thing; he sends very clear signals such as this when he’s tired, so I know exactly when it’s the right time to put him to sleep. I know that when something like this happens, the moment I put him in bed and tuck a blanket around him he’s going to start drifting off.

I love watching him fall asleep. Sometimes he’s obviously tired, but still has some pent up energy. We’ll lay in bed as he plays with his hands, my hands, my face, reaches out for his stuffed Yertle the Turtle; plays with his pacifier by taking it out, examining it, turning it upside down and popping it back in. I’ll stroke his hair and the side of his face and rub his tummy or hold his hands and he’ll gradually succumb to sleep. His eyes roll around as his lids grow heavy despite his best efforts at keeping them open. They’ll close for several seconds, pop back open and repeat the process several times until they finally keep closed. It is rare for him to be so overstimulated that he just can’t get to sleep. That usually happens when friends are over; I guess he wants to stay up and observe them.

I really feel lucky with how well Elias has slept since birth. I keep waiting for his sleep patterns to change, but they only improve. I feel like I’m on borrowed time and any day now he’s going to decide that sleeping is for losers and it’d be better to stay awake even if the world is a lot more annoying for him if he’s tired. It’s like a ticking time bomb.

I gave permission for Elias’ daycare to start offering him some food during the day. Any vegetable, fruit or grain should be okay. One of the teachers started listing some foods asking if they were okay. Bananas, applesauce, carrots, crackers, etc. Yes. Then another teacher asked, “How about cheese?” I thought it was kind of funny. Is cheese a vegetable, fruit or grain or even contain any of those things? I was polite with her (why wouldn’t I be?) and asked for nothing with milk, eggs or sugar. We’re still not very consistent about offering him food at home, but we’re getting better. He still doesn’t seem to love anything we feed him. Last night I got some Cheerios and placed a couple handfuls on his highchair tray this morning. He batted at them and picked up a few (he has a clumsy pincer grasp, but it’s getting more refined), but didn’t seem to want to put any in his mouth. I turned my head for a moment, and when I looked at him again he had a “food face” with his mouth half open and I could see a Cheerio sitting on his tongue. He started chewing and moving the Cheerio around in his mouth. After about five minutes, the entire Cheerio was finally dissolved and swallowed.

Elias is getting very coordinated with his hands. He easily passes objects between hands and as I mentioned, he’s starting to work on his pincer (thumb and index finger) grip. He just recently started lifting his hands up in the air (halfway) if he wants to be picked up, which we find incredibly adorable. In fact, we find everything he does to be incredibly adorable. I’m in constant amazement. Seeing his brain work and solve little baby life-puzzles is fantastic. It’s hard to look at him and not be incredibly excited about the life ahead of him. I try not to because I know it’ll all come too soon. He is just an absolutely perfect baby.

I don’t know how often they do this, but we received this evaluation with Elias’ daily daycare sheet today (which records his bottles, diapers and nap times.) This is how he behaves at home as well, but we got a chuckle out of some of the answers.

Child’s Relationships:

A. Child’s response to being left at center: He smiles and continues playing.

B. Child plays best when: He is full and well rested.

C. Choice of companions: Connor. They are around the same age. [My note: Connor is a few weeks older than Elias.]

D. Relationship to adults: He loves all the adults. He likes to be picked up.

E. Degree of participation: He wants to participate in all activities. I can tell because his eyes brighten up when he notices certain things going on.

F. Acceptance of group routine: When we are outside or during circle time he looks up at teacher and laughs and wiggles his feet.

Child’s Activity Preferences: He absolutely loves his bottle time, but also he loves to chew on the toys around the exersaucer.

Child’s Emotional Status: Very stable and calm until he’s hungry.

Child’s Behavior at Meal Time: He finishes all of his bottle most of the time.

Child’s Toilet Behavior: He urinates a lot and has a BM just about every day.

Child’s Physical Abilities: He can sit up well with support.

Child’s Problem-Solving Behavior: He will cry if something is not right.

I owe y’all some photos and I’m going to try to get them up soon. For now you’ll have to do with only my written update.

We started offering Elias banana on Saturday. To give him a taste, we mashed some up and fed it to him and the look on his face was priceless. Since then, we’ve just offered him various sized chunks of banana to play with, but he has little interest in putting any in his mouth yet. I think we’re going to try offering him sweet potato sticks next. Avocado intimidates me because it’s expensive and hard to keep fresh… I don’t really fancy wasting half an avocado every day to let him experiment with it.

On Friday when I put Elias in his carseat, he reached up to bat at the toy hanging from the handlebar for the first time. He’s been reaching for toys for a while now, but his hands never went very far from his body. All of a sudden, he’s stretching his arms all the way out to reach for things. He’s finally reaching up to grab at hanging toys and it’s like a whole new world opened up for him. He loves the hanging toys on the bar of his exersaucer. Speaking of his exersaucer, he’s a pro at it now. He can turn himself all the way around, plays with all the toys and jumps all over the place in it.

All the teachers at daycare comment about what a happy baby he is. They all comment about how he only fusses when he’s hungry or needs a diaper change and how he smiles all the time. I know every baby’s temperament is different, but it still makes me feel good to hear these things. Like I’m doing something right. I love how social he is and how much he loves people and animals. He smiles at every person who smiles at him. The older, mobile babies at his daycare all seem to like him as well. They’ll travel over to him and pat him on the head and they’ll exchange smiles or giggles. Although I do not like all the colds Elias catches at daycare and passes along to us, I do like the fact that he gets to play all day with other babies. There are a couple of spoiled brats at his daycare, but for the most part, all the babies there are sweetie pies and it’s been fun watching them develop along with him.

Elias absolutely adores Teyla and Leah, though he definitely likes Leah more. He watches them whenever they’re on the move and smiles at them when they look at him. He loves to pet both of them although it’s a bit more like grabbing at their fur than petting at this point. Both Teyla and Leah are very gentle with him. Teyla’s gentle with everyone, but I’m surprised by how tolerant Leah is with him. Sometimes she even seems to enjoy his fur grabbing. I’m not sure why he prefers Leah so much. Maybe it’s because she’s softer and her edges are more clearly defined. Teyla’s looking a bit like a mop lately because we haven’t gotten her groomed in a while. Leah also makes softer and funnier noises than Teyla. It will be very interesting to see how their relationships develop with Elias over the next few years.

He’s still not sitting unsupported for long periods of time. He’ll go 30-45 seconds. He understands the concept of using his arms to keep himself upright, but it’s like he just doesn’t care. Same thing with rolling over. He’ll do it from time to time, but it’s not a big concern to him. Mobility is definitely not high on his set of priorities for now and I’m thankful for that. I ordered this shopping cart cover from Amazon which should be here today. I can’t wait to try it out. A lot of the babies in my due date communities are able to sit up in a shopping cart seat even though they’re not quite sitting unsupported yet, so I’m hoping Elias is the same way. Elias likes going grocery shopping with us, but I’m growing tired of using his carseat while shopping. It keeps him very reclined and he tries to sit up to look at the people and objects around him.

I think that’s about it for the updates. I’ll try to get more photos up by the end of the weekend.

Edited to add photos.