Part Three: Liam's First Birthday, Walking, 7 teeth, Weaning, Poor Sleep, Lead

Liam and Grandma V

This is a much needed update and I am sorry to all my readers for it being SO late. A LOT has happened in the past couple of weeks, with both myself and my little toddler.

First Birthday: At the end of this post I will have more birthday photos. He had a great first birthday at his Grandma Vs, considering the circumstances. We were going to throw another at my moms but I was just too sick and wiped out. His first taste of cake was Strawberry Short Cake (my favorite!) and he LOVED it. He didn't want to let go of the spoon the entire time (we kept the spoon). He did get his hands dirty in cake but it wasn't an all-out mess. Next year will be different.

He received some great presents, including a singing toucan flashlight, bedroom glowing sea-horse, Legos, clothes, and stacking cups (to name a few). He got to spend time with his Great Aunt and Great Grandma and had a really great day. Later, during our trip to see family, my mom (Grandma S) got him his first pair of shoes (Nike sandals), his first chair (see pic below) and tons of clothes. All in all, I think he had a great first birthday.


Milestones: We have a walker! Liam took his first steps for Daddy on July 3rd and more on July 4th. He still prefers to crawl but will walk from one stationary object to the next. He becomes very proud of himself when he does walk and very upset when he falls but he's doing such a great job.

He is "talking" up a storm, mostly saying "yaya", "dada", "momma", "baba" and baby gibberish. He points, sings, and just is such an animated little boy. His personality really is starting to shine through. We taught him to share but he is still getting used to the idea of giving something up. He will hand an object to me but will still want it and take it back. It's pretty cute. He is also understanding more phrases. He knows the word no (and will yell "YA" back), he know "Give it to me" or "Let me see" and he will pass something to me. He is also getting into shows a bit more. His favorite are Veggie Tales and the Despicable Me 2 Trailer Banana Song. He could watch them over and over and over.

I noticed last night (a bit late) that he has his 7th tooth (probably about 1 week old) and the doctor says that his back right molar is coming in as well.

Weaning: I am going to right a separate post on weaning but here is a breakdown of how it is going. As of June 25th, Liam was weaned cold turkey off the breast. I would NOT recommend this to anyone unless you have a great support team AND it was medically necessary.  I am still very emotional over it and so is he. There are days where he will take the sippy cup with no problem, and there are days where he will throw it at me and pull up my shirt. Things are slowly getting better but those first few days were rough. He doesn't like the taste of cows milk and so I am mixing in my frozen stash. I currently have about 130 oz that I am going to try and space out. I haven't pumped in about 1 week and its still pretty uncomfortable (I will spare you all details).

Naps and Bedtime: Naps are a daily battle. Some days are great and he will sleep for 2 hours in the morning, an hour in the afternoon. Other days, he won't nap. Bedtime, however, has become a bear. He goes down relatively well but his night wakings are wearing me thin. The next couple of weeks, we are going to have to come up with something new. I am still in the process of figuring that one out.

Doctor's Visit: Well he had a great visit minus a couple of issues. Good news first: he is just under 25lbs (90 percentile), 32" long (98 percentile) and on cue for all his milestones. Bad news: He is anemic and has elevated lead levels. His finger prick test came back at 9.9 for hemoglobin and 5.5 for lead levels. We have searched the house and have discovered door nobs that are positive for lead, as well as hinges and a lamp. We are planing on hiring an expert to walk through our home to access our options and look to see if there was anything else that we may have missed. We are pretty sure that the water is lead free but we are testing that next. 

So that is the update thus far. I am sure I have missed something here or there but I will be trying to make more frequent updates as things calm down.

 

 

Liam's First Steps for Daddy!

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11 months! (and 4 days): Up and Down, Daddy, new food, crawling (finally!)

Today my William is 4 days past his 11 month birthday! He is on the move constantly and really has built up his confidence. He can get up onto the sides of things (wall, couch, legs, dresser etc.) and then down just as easily. He can effortlessly travel from one side of the room to the other by army crawling, cruising and semi-crawling.

1 day shy of this 11 month birthday he, very softly, said Dada. Excitedly I told Steve but I know it wasn't the same as actually hearing him. That very next day, both Dada and Daddy were being said and Steve got to hear them. That same day he (Liam) got to see his very first parade! We all went down to the town historical society and watched the Memorial Day parade.

In the title of this post, I mention crawling (finally). Liam IS crawling but only in short spurts. This shows me that he knows HOW to crawl, but chooses not to. He will crawl to an object if he is planing on shortly pulling up on it. If the object is across the room, he much prefers to drag his little body across the floor. Maybe its because we have wood floors.

Food has become easier to fix for him. I can give him a nutrigrain blueberry waffle for breakfast, some cheese and fruit for lunch, and veggies and fruit (or egg) for dinner. He loves fruit and will eat strawberry slices off my plate, apricot slices, pears, bananas etc. He doesn't care too much for watermelon but I may try that again today. Also the quantity of food has increased.

He is still nursing well despite some recent challenges. I just got over a slight bout of Thrush which made it almost unbearable to nurse. It felt like pins were being driven into my breast and then it would burn. After some prescription cream and lanolin, I am 90% healed. I have one tender area that is slow to heal but it is miles better.  Another nursing challenge are the awkward positions that he tends to put himself in. Upside down, sideways, right side up. He will latch on, nurse, unlatch, move to another position, latch on, nurse and so forth. The only time he is quiet is late at night.

Am I ready to wean? No, not really. Just yesterday he was nursing and hitting me in the head. I decided to playfully tap him back. He thought this was hilarious and started giggling, making milk dribble down his chin. This made me laugh and he laughed harder. But I know with my overload next year that I will not have time to pump so I have to get him on a sippy cup this summer. As mentioned previously, I have a ton of frozen milk that needs to be used up. Today is day one.

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5 Months! Teeth, rolling, sleep training and Mama!

Tummy time with Mr. Cow

Today our little one is 5 months (and 3 days) old. He has had so many milestones in the past couple of days.

5 months on the dot, we noticed that two front bottom teeth had popped through (those little buggers are SHARP). Then a day later I heard what I thought was Mama... then my husband heard it too. We grabbed my phone and recorded him saying it! Now it seems to be part of his vocabulary of baby jargon.

All dressed up for picture day at daycare.

Within the same video, he also rolled over! This was the first time my husband had seen him roll and my third time seeing him do it.  Now, we thought, we are going to sleep train him. He is 5 months and at the age that he should be putting himself to sleep. Tonight didn't go so well. He cried for 90 mins. He was sweating, he had spat up and he was a mess. We decided to read up on it a little more and try again tomorrow. We put him in his swing... two minutes later, he was out cold. I know that putting him in his swing was against sleep training but baby steps... right?

Two days ago was a sad day at daycare. My favorite person at daycare decided to quit and go back to college full time. Now our son has to deal with the crabby woman who doesn't believe in breastfeeding nor does she believe in cloth diapers. I had brought up the fact that we will be cloth diapering after the new year and asked what we needed to bring in. She looked at me and said "What are you trying to do, save the world?". The nerve of some people. I just smiled and said that I was going to give it a go and that I was pretty optimistic. I was not going to give in to her negativity.

So as you read we ARE doing cloth diapering. Well, at least we will be shortly. On black friday/cyber monday I went and bought 14 cloth diapers (giving me a total of 16 diapers). The first sale was buy 4 fuzzibuns, get 2 free plus 1 free bumgenius. I then bought 7 more bumgenius and a wetbag. Once my fluffy mail comes in, I will post all the colors and styles (velco vs. snaps).

Something else that we have also decided is that we are going to wait till he is 6 months (at least) to try solid food. There has been a lot of research on waiting and I want to make sure his digestive system is all developed. Waiting till at least 6 months is recommended by the wold health organization as well as the american academy of pediatrics (and many others). Some (ok.. not just some.. many) say that giving him solids (i.e. cereal) will help him sleep through the night. There is no proof.  Plus, we have also decided NOT to give him rice cereal for two main reasons: arsenic and its not healthy. When we do decide to start him on solids, it will be veggies and fruit. Can't wait! I plan to make my own baby food and freeze them in ice cube trays.

That's all for now. Hopefully my next post will be on his successful sleep training :)

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