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.

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.

Time goes by too quickly. Elias has a 4th tooth coming through, on top. His 6 month check up was today and he’s 19 lbs, 9 oz and 26.5 inches. It’s really time for us to think about getting new carseats! No shots because, as usual, he’s sick. Seriously spring, you can get here any time!

We ordered a few new toys for Elias today. They should be here this week or next:

• Baby Einstein Octoplush: It’s musical and speaks colors in 3 languages!
• 100 ball pit balls: Mark said we needed some balls!
• Trispinner Switcharoo: For his exersaucer. Mark says he likes one like this one at an exersaucer at daycare.
• Crinkle Bee Switcharoo: Also for his exersaucer. He loves crinkly stuff, so I can’t wait to see him with this.

I would love to be able to buy an unlimited amount of toys and books (gotta get my library fees taken care of…) but we don’t have the money or the room for them all.

A few days after finding the first tooth, Mark found another tooth breaking through the gums right next to it. They’re his bottom two middle teeth and I can’t even begin to describe how adorable he is when he’s babbling away, chewing on a toy or sometimes even crying because of those two little white buds just barely peaking out through his gums.

He’s still not sitting up yet unsupported, but we’ve decided regardless we’ll go ahead and start solid foods at six months, which is April 1. He’s meeting all the other developmental milestones suggested when starting solids. We’re going to try starting with avocado. We’re not doing rice cereal or pureed baby food, so we’ll see how it goes. We both really like the idea of baby led weaning.

We will be sure to take videos of Elias’ first experience with food. I think it will probably be hilarious.

Update: While examining his mouth tonight, we found yet another tooth just barely breaking through up in the top left portion of his mouth. My son is a hard core teether.

On Thursday or Friday, Mark noticed something hard, sharp and white poking just a tiny bit out of Elias’ gums. His first tooth! It seems to be coming in rapidly as it already seems so much bigger than it did at the start of the weekend.

Elias was incredibly cranky this weekend. He’s still hanging onto a cold, however he’s had a cold for almost three months now, so I think his crankiness is due to the teething and not his health.

I can’t believe my baby is getting a tooth!