Turtle Monkey

I am grateful that my son takes teething in stride. He takes everything in stride, really. Even when he’s sick, you can tell his spirits are up and he’s eager to play. Elias’ teeth started breaking through at five months. Now that we have 7 confirmed and 9 suspected teeth in the collection, I realize there are definite signs and clues that he is actively teething.

Since five months, every few weeks his teeth start growing again. I find the way they break through and grow in so interesting! When he’s teething, Elias drools in ridiculous amounts. It will come from absolutely nowhere. His mouth will be dry, then he’ll smile and a deluge of water descends upon his chin and chest. Naturally, he’s more interested in putting things in his mouth and gnawing on them when he’s teething. He’ll bite down on something and it’ll hurt, so he’ll cry for a second and then get over it. He’s more whiny in general, probably because his mouth is constantly aching. He doesn’t whine or cry very much period and it’s usually only mildly different when teething. If he’s constantly uncomfortable, I’ll give him some Tylenol which almost always helps.

Other than that, he’s himself while teething. Thankfully, his sleep isn’t usually disrupted. (This boy loves his sleep. I’m very interested to see how naps and nighttime will go down while we’re in Texas. The last time we were there, he refused sleep toward the end of our trip. His sleep routine is so much better now though.)

He started with two breaking through at once in the middle, on bottom. Then two on top in positions on either side of where the top two would be. Before long, the top two started breaking through. The final confirmed tooth is the one on the right side of the bottom two. We’ve also suspected that his bottom molars are making their way up. He focuses a lot on that area and his past couple teething spurts have been crankier than usual. His room teacher at daycare brought up to us separately that she thinks those teeth have started breaking through as well. Mark hasn’t been able to feel them and it’s hard to get a good look back there to see what may be just under the gums.

Dental health is very important to us, so we’re trying to be diligent about brushing his teeth. It’s really easy to get distracted and forget. At night he starts to melt down very quickly. He’ll be active and playing one minute and the next minute it is clear that he needs to be put to bed ASAP! He doesn’t mind having his teeth brushed and gums massaged, but he has other ideas for our fingers when the little finger brush is in his mouth. He prefers to bite down and gnaw just as hard as he possibly can. The little finger brush offers a bit of protection against his sharp little teeth.

Elias has definitely perfected his pincer grasp to pick up bits of food and put them in his mouth. He knows exactly what his teeth are for. Every morning I see him place Cheerios very deliberately into his mouth so he can bite them in half. I find it funny that most guidelines for finger feeding site both crawling and the pincer grasp as milestones needed before this should be accomplished. I don’t know what mobility has to do with eating. I really don’t think he’s anywhere near starting to crawl.

He still can’t stand being on his tummy. He refuses to roll himself over, though he is perfectly capable. He has started rolling onto his belly to sleep. If he wakes up even a little bit, he’ll get angry about being in that position and I’ll need to roll him over. Usually, he’ll sleep on his side. Unless it was a dream, I am almost positive I woke up this morning to find him flipped around entirely, with his feet pointing at the head of the bed. I have no idea what was up with that. We’re still cosleeping and hoping to get a crib as soon as we get the study cleared out so there’s room for it. We just got a bed rail to fit our king sized bed which we love because it gives us all a lot of extra room in the bed. Before, we were using a pillow between him and the edge of the bed, plus pillows on the floor. He didn’t move around much in his sleep and this was never even remotely a problem. Now he’s starting to move around more in his sleep, so I’m thankful for the bedrail. It really is time for him to move into a crib, though. He likes sleep a LOT and I know he’ll appreciate a space to sleep all of his own.

To make a little bit of sense out of my last post, we are trying to follow recommended guidelines to introduce foods that cause allergies or digestive problems, which is why we delayed solids all together until Elias was 6 months old. Additionally, both Mark and I are overweight and I’ve read a lot that what you are offered as a baby can have a significant impact over your eating habits as an adult. This is why I don’t want him getting rice cereal at every “meal” - it has no nutritional value and isn’t good for much more than practice as a solid food.

Dairy: There are a lot of different recommendations here, but all of them are pretty consistent about no whole milk as a drink until after 1 year. As they are really different beasts, dairy products like yogurt and cheese are okay before then. We are going to start introducing yogurts and cheeses at around 9 months.

Meat: The guideline I’ve read most often about meat is that it’s okay to start introducing around 7 months. We just haven’t introduced it yet, but when we do, I want to restrict it to at-home for a little while. I don’t think Elias’ daycare offers meat to infants anyway.

Eggs: Egg whites are allergens that shouldn’t be introduced before 1 year. Egg yolks are okay and most of the guidelines I’ve read say that’s okay around 9-10 months.

Additionally, most fruits and vegetables are okay, but not acidic foods like oranges or tomatoes until 1 year. There’s a list of other baby no-no foods such as honey, peanut butter, wheat, strawberries and shellfish due to allergies.

So far, Elias has had: bananas, apples, pears, peaches, raspberries, peas, squash, sweet potato, carrot, potato and cheerios. There may be some more in there that I forgot.

Elias now has 6 teeth growing in - 4 on top and 2 on bottom. It’s interesting to see how he uses them when he eats.

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 mentioned a couple of times that Mark and I wanted to try baby led weaning with Elias. While I like the idea, I’m not really sure it’s going to work for us because of our own eating habits and schedule. I certainly hope this changes a bit before baby number two comes around, but Mark and I don’t usually eat dinner until after Elias goes to sleep and we don’t eat breakfast and lunch together at all. I feel baby led works best when your child is sitting with you every time you eat a meal and if every meal includes food you can share with your child. Mark and I don’t eat a lot of plain vegetables, though. We eat a lot of spicy foods which aren’t suitable for babies.

I’d also wanted to make my own baby food, but time and my complete inability to do anything domestic prevents me from that. I actually think it would probably be more expensive in the long run. So I broke down and bought some pre-made baby food. For the amount Elias is eating, it’s not very expensive and by the time he’s eating complete meals, he’ll be moved over to “real” food.

I guess all that was a disclaimer for what you’re about to see: me spoon feeding Elias some squash. There’s a part of me that feels a little guilty about putting a spoonful of food in my son’s mouth instead of letting him feed himself, but I really don’t know why. We waited until he was 6 months old to start solids and we didn’t go with rice cereal first (or at all. I still don’t understand the point of it) and those were the two things that were most important to me.

That being said, Elias makes the same faces no matter what we offer to him. I think it’s the texture that disgusts him and not the taste of the food. Here’s a video of his first experience with squash. There are three other videos of this which can be seen over here on Flickr. At one point he decides he’s finished with the squash and starts blowing it back at me with raspberries. The videos also feature some of his babbling and a high pitched squealing thing he started doing a couple of weeks ago.