Oliver update: 8 months

Within just a week of his eight month birthday, Oliver revealed a string of subtle changes. He's gone from cooing to distinctive baby babbling. Right now he says a lot of ah ba, ba, ba....translation still inconclusive. I thought the cooing was cute, but I really enjoy listening to him "talk" more and need to set up the camcorder so I'll be ready when a talkative spell comes on, which is often when he's playing quietly with his toys. He's been able to giggle for awhile now, and has even "laughed" - a deep, bark-like laugh - but yesterday when he laughed, he sounded like a little boy. It was like I had gotten a glimpse into the future with his big boy laugh and I wanted to hear it again, but all I got was a big smile and a squeal.

Oliver now easily and routinely rolls over on his tummy, but just in his crib - when he's supposed to be sleeping. Only once, in the first day or two, did he roll and wedge himself against the side of the crib, oblivious to the fact that he could roll back the other way onto his back. He shrieked and I knew to get up to his room pronto. But every other time I've gone to his room to save him from distress, I've found him on his stomach in the middle of his crib, arms pushing him up - not an uncomfortable position - and crying. Not shrieking, just crying. And every other time I reach into his crib, he rolls over by himself. Frustrating! In the past two or three days, I've found him on his tummy smiling sometimes, but that first week, I routinely spent the first hour or so of his nap or bedtime in a pattern of letting him cry a little, going in to flip him back over, letting him cry a little, going in to flip him back over until he eventually finally fell asleep. His rolling onto his tummy and crying was frustrating and mind-boggling at the same time, but still left me feeling a little relieved that his new abilities are at least a precursor to crawling.

Because he is not crawling, nor is he showing any interest in crawling. Each week that we show up at our ECFE class, another baby is crawling. The Chesla side of the family has been saying that Oliver is going to take after his father by trying to skip crawling and go straight to walking. Sometimes I think he realizes that he's not mobile and that that's a problem for him. When he wants to reach a toy out of his reach, he leans as far forward as he can, supports himself with his hands planted on the floor in front of him and extends one hand out. I've tried giving him a lift, literally, by hoisting his bottom into the air to help him into a crawling position, but that only results in a face plant and a wail. I wait for him to cry out in frustration, but instead the look on his face just says, there's gotta be another way. Have you ever seen a cat fall, regain its footing and then proceed to intently groom itself, as if it were embarrassed it fell and is trying to divert attention away? Eventually Oliver gives up and scans for a closer toy and acts as if he never wanted to play with that other toy anyway.

The warm weather is finally here to stay. Even though it was a warm spring, any Minnesotan knows glorious weather any time through May can be snatched from you overnight. But summer is here for good and those winter days I wrote about in my post about seasonal amnesia really are a distant memory. But shorts and short-sleeve weather brings its own challenges I discovered. I don't know what is worse, bundling you kid up before heading outdoors or having to slather him in sunscreen. In the spring, Oliver wore pants, socks, long sleeves and sometimes a jacket with a hood and I didn't have to worry about much of his delicate baby skin being exposed to otherwise weak rays of spring sun. But applying sunscreen to a squirmy, snotty baby delays our departure time enough to cancel out the time gained by not having to put four layers of outwear on him. Despite the hassle of applying sunscreen, as fair-skinned as I am, I know it's important and meticulously applied as much as was needed for every outing. Then I started noticing the rashes. I thought I had let my son get burned and I was horrified at my irresponsibility. After learning about the difference between sunscreen and sunblock, and a process of elimination, I just recently concluded some (yet unidentified) chemical in sunscreen is the culprit and have resigned myself to buying an expensive sunblock that isn't causing an adverse reaction. I've also been careful about what I put on my own skin that could rub off on him. I've been searching for a good sunhat - one with a wide brim and a flat back so he can wear it in the stroller when his head is leaning against the back - so I can avoid application of the face area.

Wellness checks are now every three months instead of two, so we won't be back to the doctor's until the end of June for his nine-month check-up to learn how much Oliver has grown. I don't think he's in danger of growing out of his 22-lb.-limit infant car seat, but he feels heavier than the just-shy-of-16-pounds he weighed at his 6-month appointment. The pace of his weight gain seems to be outpacing the pace of my increased (I hope) muscle strength from lugging around a baby in my arms every day.

Everyone asks about sleep and I've finally stopped feeling guilty about reporting that he was and still is sleeping through the night. Unfortunately, it's from 6:30 p.m. - 6:30 a.m., which leaves little time for Chris to spend with Oliver in the evening and leaves me continually sleep-deprived even though I have a baby who is sleeping through the night.I believe I had more energy when Oliver was down to one night feeding, because then he'd sleep until 8:30 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. and I had a chance to sleep, and maybe even get a shower and eat breakfast before he woke. But a few weeks ago he his wake up time was creeping earlier and earlier and all the sleep advice I was getting was saying that it's impossible to get a baby to sleep later than his or her biological wake up time. Having already resigned myself to accepting that 6:30 a.m. was his natural wake up time, I was determined to make him stick to it and not 5:40 a.m. Maybe that period of the really early wake-up calls was just a fluke, or he was suddenly really sensitive to sound as Chris was getting ready for work, but eventually I managed to get him back to post-6:00 a.m. wakings.

But he is a good sleeper and I know I'm lucky. I attribute any minor sleep issues to his parents' cluelessness about babies rather than a problem on his part. We've had some struggles with naps and depending upon what week you catch me, I'll either have declared Oliver to be on a predictable nap schedule, or insisted I don't care anymore and am just going to let him sleep when he needs to despite what any book says about babies needing and liking routine and consistency. Since babies consolidate their nighttime sleep first and then their naps, starting with the morning nap, it was that late-afternoon nap, or lack thereof, that was leaving me almost as cranky as the baby every afternoon around 4:00 p.m. He was exhibiting the classic overtired symptoms and I simply couldn't get him to nap. I was exhausted myself by that point of the day, and often hungry and desperate to get dinner started. Oliver would cry, even when I held him, he was so tired and that was the happy family life Chris would arrive home just in time for. Thankfully it was warmer out and we went for a two-week period with no rain, so our saving grace became late-afternoon walks. I was persistent with giving him the opportunity to sleep in the late afternoon, even if he wouldn't let himself sleep, and eventually he was able to fall asleep. At eight months old, I think I can finally say that he does have a nap routine, even if he's not on a predictable schedule. I shoot for 7:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., while trying to account for when he's tired and wants to nap earlier, or when where out on a walk or at a playdate, and a nap gets pushed back. He can easily get 4-5 hours worth of naps and day and I've concluded, like his dad, this kid needs to sleep a lot.

For those who read my post on baby-led weaning, you'll know that Oliver has started solids. We're letting him feed himself finger foods instead of spoon-feeding him purees and it wasn't until well into his seventh month when I felt like he "got it." Now that Oliver is taking an afternoon nap and we don't need a walk just to save our sanity and kill time before bedtime, Oliver now sits down with us for dinner. We also don't have to wait anymore for that small window of opportunity - when he's well-rested and has been nursed - to try and feed him solids. He now loves sitting in his booster seat and knows he's getting food. He'll try almost anything we put in front of him, even if one night he'll eat all the zucchini slices he can get his hands on, while the next night he cries as he eats it. (But with baby-led weaning, it's his choice whether to eat the zucchini or not, so we don't understand why he keeps trying to eat it if he's not happy with it.) I know he doesn't need solid food yet in his diet, but I do believe that he wants it and it is helping to fill him up even, whether or not he's made the connection yet between food and feeling full. He still makes a huge mess and the majority of his meal eventually ends up on the floor, but when you eat with him every day like I do, I can see how his dexterity has improved and he can do things like transfer a piece of food from one hand to the other so he can get a better grip or eat the other end of the stick of toast that had previously been covered by the fist of his other hand.