Freedom, Tags, Cranky-Butt, Hair, and Pacifier

I feel like there are too many things that I could write about this time (which is partially because it's been more than a week since I last posted). I had made some notes of topics to write about since the last post and now some of those are no longer true, so I will not write about them in detail. If I wanted to lie and pretend they were true, I would have said that Jonah doesn't fall asleep breastfeeding any more and that it might be becoming normal for him to only eat once during the night.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been letting Jonah play in his room while I get ready in the mornings, instead of putting him in his crib. I only get slightly nervous about leaving him "free" in there. There aren't too many things that he could get into in his room, although there are probably things we haven't thought of yet. I can usually leave him alone for 20 minutes before he crawls down the hallway looking for me. He typically just sits and looks through his books. Three times this week, when he decides he's done being alone, he has pushed his block-building table down the hallway and into Peter's and my room. The first time he did this it took about five minutes because he kept getting stuck, but he managed to do it all on his own. He has gotten better at it since then. I love that he comes to find me. When he's not pushing the table, he just crawls into our room and usually peeks his head around the closet doorway to see me standing in the bathroom. It's really cute.

Jonah has two "Taggies" books that are soft and have tags around the edges. He has been falling asleep with these for a long time, laying in his crib and feeling the tags. Recently he discovered that the tags are loops and he can put his fingers through them. It's like a new experience again! I often find him (awake or asleep) with one finger from each hand through a tag. Also cute.

This has been a rough week. I have probably said "cranky-butt" more times this week than ever before. Jonah is teething and has one more of his 12-month molars to come in. These molars have been awful, especially compared with the rest of his teeth, which didn't seem to bother him much at all. He has been cranky and clingy all week, to the point that it became normal (although hopefully not a permanent normal). He has not wanted to sleep and has not eaten well. Almost every nap/nighttime he screamed for an hour before finally falling asleep (either breastfeeding or with lots of rocking/singing). One day he only napped for 20 minutes in the car and refused to nap the rest of the day, and then went to bed an hour late (because of the screaming) and woke up two hours early at 5:30 the next morning. I have spent countless hours trying to get him to sleep this week. He actually did better today, but then got a fever tonight. It was 103, so I called the doctor and they had us come in. They don't know what's wrong though. At least we know that he doesn't have an ear infection, which I thought he might have because he has been smacking the right side of his head all week (that's also the side with the molar waiting to come in). Hopefully he will be back to his old normal soon.

A new normal that I anticipate will be a lot of fun is that Jonah is learning so much, namely body parts. He has recently started being able to touch different body parts when we say them. So far it had just been "feet" and "belly." Today I said something about the hair on a person in one of his books and he touched his hair purposefully. He did it again and again when I said "hair." This is exciting because being able to say "where's your [insert body part here]?" and have him point to it is a classic toddler game. The more exciting part is that I have never tried to teach him "hair" (or belly or feet). I have never pointed to anyone's hair and said "this is hair." He just figured it out! It seems so simple and yet I am so proud of him.

Lastly, it is becoming normal for him to sleep without his pacifier. He has never been overly attached to his pacifier. We mostly just gave it to him when it's time to sleep. Sometimes he would find it on the floor or somewhere within his reach and he would put it in his mouth, but he has never "needed" the pacifier. Lately he has been rejecting it when we give it to him, so I've mostly just stopped offering it. For a while he would hold the soft part of it and shake it around, instead of sucking on it, but he seems to have grown out of that too. I know that getting rid of a pacifier can be a big ordeal for some babies, so I am grateful that this appears to be an easy transition for Jonah and for us.

Food, Pride, and Poop

It is finally becoming more normal for me to feel comfortable giving Jonah food that we're eating. I think it started a couple of weeks ago when he and I were at IHOP having free pancakes with my mom. He really seemed to want some of mine, so I gave him some plain pancake. He touched it to his lips and threw it on the ground. He refused to try it. Since then I have offered him a pickle and grapefruit with the same result (both times because he seemed to want them). He tried an orange tonight and seemed to like it though. One night last week we were having lasagna for dinner and so did he. He didn't seem to like it very much (possibly because I gave it to him cold), but he tried some of it. This is still the area where I feel least competent, so I'm afraid he's probably behind what other kids his age are eating, but we're getting there. He does seem to be liking cow's milk though, which will allow us to start weaning him from breastfeeding any day now (more on that later).

I have been amazed at how proud I have become of Jonah in the past couple of weeks. There have been countless occasions when he does something and I am filled with pride that he is able to do it. It is truly a wonder to watch him make connections and learn about his world. I suppose that I am somewhat of a typical first-time mom in this regard, being proud of him for things that are probably not a big deal to any other adult. I do realize that these achievements do not make him a genius, they do not make him smarter than other babies, and they probably do not predict future greatness. They do however make him a normal one-year-old, and that makes me very happy. All along he seems to have done almost everything "on schedule." I could not ask for more. It reassures me to know that he is "normal." I get so proud of him because I have been with him every day of his life and watched him change so much over the past year. These surges of pride happen at moments when I can see him expressing what he has learned about his world. He has learned that cows say "moo" (or "mmmm" as he says), he has learned that when someone says "high five" it means they want you to hit your hand against theirs, he has learned that when people say "bye" you should wave your hand at them. When he hears the word "hippo" he will look around and point to his hippopotamus puppet and when I start to sing "I want to be your personal penguin" he will go find that book. He has learned that when there is music on, you sway back and forth. And tonight, when I was reading him Goodnight Moon (we have read this to him every night before bed since he was a couple of weeks old, and always replace "goodnight nobody" with "goodnight Jonah"), I said "goodnight Jonah" and he patted his belly and looked like he knew what he was doing. These are just some of the simple things Jonah has done recently that have brought me such pride. Simple things, with big implications. He is learning. We have not actively tried to teach him some of these concepts, but he has learned them anyway. Jonah has been soaking up this world for the past 13 months, and he is really starting to show us what he has learned. I hope this continues to be his normal, because I am so excited to watch him make more connections and more discoveries.

And now on to the poop. We use cloth diapers and I wash them every other day. Four times in a row, Jonah has pooped in the first diaper he wears after I start the load of laundry. I think he's doing it on purpose. (Not really.) We flush the actual poop, but the diaper still smells, and there is poop on the cloth wipes sitting in the pail for a full two days when he does this. It seems like it should be statistically impossible that this is just a coincidence, but I won't do the actual math. I told Peter about how many times Jonah had done this and he pointed out that it seems to have become normal, which is why that tidbit has made it here. On a different poop note, I wrote a couple of weeks ago about giving Jonah cow's milk and how we weren't sure if he was lactose intolerant. I stopped giving it to him for a week and let him get back to normal again. Then I gave it to him again, one cup a day for the past week. At first, his poop went right back to being weird, but now it seems to be back to normal, and I'm still giving him the milk. So I think we may be okay in the lactose department, and maybe the poop changes were related to his teething (this doesn't seem likely) or to the slight fever he kept running off and on during the past few weeks. Anyway, I am going to assume that it's not the milk upsetting him, and plan to officially begin the process of weaning him from breastfeeding him this week.

Books, Molars, Standing, and Cheese

Jonah has been showing an interest in books for months now, but lately he is very interested in them. He will pull all the books off of his shelf, and sit amongst them, flipping through the pages rather quickly (I think he's a speed reader). Sometimes he sits with one book for a while, other times he goes through a number of books in a matter of seconds. Occasionally it seems like he is looking for a particular book and is content once he finds it. He will sit like this for 15 or 20 minutes (although I haven't actually timed it) without moving much or making a lot of noise. There have been a couple of occasions where it seems like he would rather be left alone during this time. He just wants to read in peace. He "reads" like this at least once a day, sometimes more often.

We had two nights last week when Jonah screamed in the middle of the night (one night for almost 3 hours and the other night for 1 hour and 45 minutes). He was getting his first set of upper molars. Apparently these hurt a lot, because he has never screamed like this. We tried everything and nothing (even Tylenol) seemed to help. Those molars had poked through by the time I spotted them on Wednesday evening. I can see the bottom molars just below the surface of his gums though, so hopefully we're not in for another round of this.

Last week Jonah started standing on his own for a second or two. I would get him standing, let go, and wait to catch him. The falling was his favorite part. On Saturday, something clicked in his brain and he figured out what he was supposed to be doing. It was like I watched the light come on as he began to have a particular stance for this game, spreading his arms out and bending his knees. He was instantly much more stable and can stand for 10 or more seconds on his own now. The best part is how proud he seems each and every time. Once he is standing he gets a big grin on his face and kind of chuckles. This makes me happy. Eventually he will lose his balance or I think sometimes he falls over on purpose, because he enjoys this part of the game. So do I.

I think Jonah is a little bit in love with cheese. He has been eating cheese for a month or two, but he seems especially excited about it lately. I'm pretty sure he is saying a version of cheese when I say it or when he spots the cheese and wants it. It sounds similar to "shish," which is his word for most things, but his "cheese" sounds more like "sheesh," so I think he knows what he is saying.