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.

Today's Normal 2/27/11

I find it hard to describe Jonah's current noises. He has started two new noises in the past week or two. One is almost a whiny noise, which he does often; especially, it seems, when he wants something. The other appears to be a noise of excitement, and Peter has called it a "titter." It's a quick, repetitive "heh," that is really funny. He seems to do it most often when he is eating, as we present him with foods that he likes. I'm sure these noises won't last, but I'm definitely enjoying the "titter" one for now (I could do without the whining). He's also making some more sounds like "nanana" and other incoherent ones that are new for him just the same.

He still wakes up twice in the middle of the night to eat. He has almost completely transitioned to one nap a day, with some exceptions. As a result of the one nap situation, he goes to bed a little earlier, typically sleeping from 7:30 - 7:30 (minus eating twice during that time). The one nap thing still has some kinks though. Some days he only naps for 40-45 minutes. Occasionally it is a longer, almost two-hour nap. A couple of times he has slept on the way to/from stores in the morning/midday and then not at all when we are home. On both Thursday last week and today, he took two naps, which he had not down in weeks. He was running a slight fever both days, so I'm pretty sure that's why he took an extra nap. He surprised me today, when I went to pick him up from the church nursery and he was asleep on the floor (with the nursery worker laying next to him). She said he just seemed so tired, so he went to sleep amongst the toys.

We started trying cow's milk one week ago. He has had a cup of it most days. He wasn't sure what to think of it at first, but will drink it now. However, I am questioning if he might have some sort of lactose intolerance because it seems to be affecting his poop. I am still breastfeeding him the same amount, and just adding the cow's milk in with an afternoon snack (usually Cheerios), so that he can get used to it. I will keep experimenting to see how it affects him, and then check with the pediatrician if necessary, before we doom him to the label of "lactose intolerant."

He has long been captivated by the screen saver on our laptop (just a standard-issue, Windows screen saver). He still is. He is also a little bit obsessed with balloons. When we go to Harris Teeter, they have free helium balloons for kids, so I get one and tie it to the shopping cart, and it keeps him entertained for a while. Now he starts pointing and saying "eh eh" every time he sees one. I think I've created a monster.

Jonah still doesn't seem to have much interest in walking by himself (and I'm still okay with this). While his "vocabulary" is expanding slowly (his favorite word is "shish"), Peter is anxious for him to start speaking for real. I know this will come soon enough.

Today's Normal 2/17/11

We had Jonah's first birthday party on Saturday and it went well. I wasn't sure how Jonah would do with so many people in a small space, but he did a good job. We made him take a nap that morning before the party, which I'm sure helped a lot. (This meant that he didn't take an afternoon nap and was awake for nine hours straight before bed.) He got a lot of presents and seemed to enjoy everyone's company.

I think we may be getting closer to the end of the transition to one nap a day. I decided to take more of an active approach to this transition, rather than just letting Jonah figure it out naturally. So I am not letting him nap in the morning, even if he seems sleepy. And then putting him down for a nap in the early afternoon. We have had a couple of successes with this so far, in which he took a long (almost two hour) nap in the afternoon. It would be so nice if this becomes normal and I could begin to count on that two hour block to get stuff done in the afternoons. I'm sure that as soon as it becomes a nice routine, something will change again.

Jonah has started playing more and entertaining himself with his toys more. He seems to be showing more initiative in trying to do things that he couldn't do before (like climb onto his caterpillar and riding toy). He's growing up!

He's not too interested in trying to walk on his own yet, which is fine with me. He can cruise along holding onto furniture just fine, but if there is a small gap between furniture, he will get down and crawl to the next one. He does not seem to want to try to make it there on his feet (although he has occasionally leaned for the next thing if it's really close and doesn't involve moving his feet).

Jonah has another tooth coming in - his 8th one. It's been a while since he's had any new ones. His hair is getting a little crazy in the back, and it may soon be time for his first haircut (if you don't count the one he had in the hospital).

He has started "sympathy crying" when other babies are upset. It doesn't matter if Jonah was as happy as a clam, if another baby is nearby and starts crying/screaming, he gets upset and will start crying too. It's really kind of cute and funny, but hopefully this phase doesn't last too long, because it just results in him being upset for no reason.

Today's Normal 2/10/11

Yesterday was not normal. This little baby that I gave birth to a year ago, became a toddler. It was an emotional day for me, as I remembered everything we went through last year to get him here (http://unit34.blogspot.com/2010/02/jonah-clark-ohlms.html). This past year has gone by so fast. I understand the value of a year much more than I did before. Just over a year ago, Jonah did not have a life outside my womb. And now, here he is, a one-year-old, with a will of his own.

Besides the big deal that is Jonah's 1st birthday, here is a summary of our current "normal." He seems to have developed a fear of elevators. Since at least October, he has been a little unsure about them, but now he is definitely scared. He gets visibly upset when the doors start to close and can be crying by the time we get to the next floor. I'm not sure where this came from, as he has never had any bad experiences with elevators. He's not usually in a lot of closed spaces, so I don't know whether it's limited to elevators.

Jonah has started being able to entertain himself for a while. When left in his crib/play yard with toys, he will play for 10-20 minutes before being bothered by the fact that he is alone. He will also sit and looks at books for a similar length of time. This has been a very useful development, as it allows me to brush my teeth, etc. in the mornings without him being underfoot. He has started to enjoy rolling wheeled toys across the floor. Jonah seems to be more ticklish than before. I don't want to overdo it on the tickling, because some people don't enjoy being tickled, but they laugh anyway. So I don't want to risk torturing him, simply because I think it's cute when I tickle him. But, for now, he does seem to be enjoying it.

For a few weeks now, Jonah has started to let us know when he is unhappy or doesn't want to do something by throwing his head backwards. Depending on how we are holding him, this can result in him bonking us in the head (which hurts), or almost dropping him on the floor. He doesn't usually give a lot of notice. Hopefully soon he'll find another method to exert control over his situation.

My least favorite part of our current normal is the transition to one nap a day. He started this about a week ago, and it has made for a long week. For most of the past week, he has only taken one nap each day, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. I think that once he is done transitioning, I will be happy with the new schedule. Assuming he takes a long-ish afternoon nap, it will allow us to run errands, etc. in the morning, and then be home for him to nap in the afternoon, while I get stuff done here. However, this transition period has probably been one of the most exhausting parts of my parenting journey since those early days. Jonah acts sleepy in the mornings when he used to take a morning nap, so I try to put him down for a nap. Sometimes he will take a nap, but then he refuses to do so in the afternoon. Other days he will fight the morning nap, and we end up battling for an hour before I give up. If he doesn't nap in the morning, he will take an afternoon nap, but they have not been particularly long and he still sometimes fights them. One day, we went shopping and he slept in the car on the way to the stores and then in the car on the way home a couple of hours later. No nap at home. For a long time, he would go to sleep easily, and I appreciated it because we used to work hard to get him to sleep. Now we're back to putting forth much effort in order to get him to sleep and it's wearing on me a little bit, so I'm hoping that does not become his new normal.

I realize that he's transitioning to one nap a day, not just being difficult, so it's comforting to know that this will not last forever, but it's hard to know what to do in the meantime. One nap does not seem to be quite enough for him, since he's still acting really tired. But he's refusing to take two naps. I struggle with how to approach it: do I not let him nap in the morning, so that he'll take an afternoon nap, or do I still put him down in the morning and hope that maybe he'll also take an afternoon nap? I think I should probably keep him up in the morning, but it's difficult when he acts so sleepy.

For now, I will be grateful that the end result of our week in the hospital last year was a healthy boy. I have been blessed to be able to stay home with Jonah since he was born, and I wouldn't trade that time for anything. I have a lot of cherished memories from these past twelve months.

Today's Normal 2/2/11

Jonah will be one-year-old in a week. This seems like anything but normal! I don't want him to stop growing and changing, I just want it to slow down.

Jonah has started eating more finger foods at his meals than "baby food." This is a nice change because it means he can feed himself a little more at meals, and I can buy fewer jars of baby food (I had originally figured I would make a lot of his baby food, but that didn't happen). His current favorite food seems to be peas. They are just the right size for him to pick up and feed himself. He also really likes bread, ham, and cheese.

He is still napping twice a day (mostly), but hasn't taken a long nap for me in a while. He has been maxing out at 45 minutes. He is also still consistently eating twice in the middle of the night. I made a deal with him tonight before I put him to sleep that if he would sleep all night without eating, I would feed him first thing in the morning, even before I change his soaked diaper. I don't think he was listening.

Jonah still loves bath time. He crawls into the bathroom if we leave the door open and heads straight for the tub. He usually stops right before he gets there and looks back to make sure Mommy is chasing him. As soon as we put him in the bath, he starts splashing around. He's funny with his bath toys: he likes to put them behind himself. He'll reach for a toy, obviously wanting it, and immediately put it behind himself. When he's out of toys, he looks a little confused. We put them back in front of him, and he starts over. As much as he loves the bath, he doesn't seem to mind too much when we take him out at the end.

One thing that has only been going on for a couple of weeks is Jonah's fascination with the "booger snatcher" (the bulb syringe used to suck boogers out of a baby's nose). We haven't actually needed to use it that often, and when we first did, he hated it and fought it. And then a couple of weeks ago, something changed. We were using it on him, and then he became curious about it. Then he started seeming like he wanted us to use it on him. Now he almost seems to be fussing for it when he sees it in the bathroom. When I get it close to his nose, he often grabs it and tries to put it in his mouth (he has never succeeded in this). He usually lets me use it a couple of times, and then is still interested in it, but won't actually let me stick it up his nostrils any more.

Jonah can't talk yet, besides babbling and your typical "mamama" and "dadada." I have started "teaching" him animal sounds though and he tries to moo. It's really cute when we say "moo" and he immediately says "mmmm," and he smiles like he knows he's copying us. He likes the other animal sounds, but hasn't imitated any of them yet.

He likes books and will look through them for a while as long as Peter or I am sitting nearby. One book that he seems like (and I like) is "Snoozers" by Sandra Boynton (I like many of her books). This is a book of 7 short stories. He has obviously learned one of them enough to anticipate what is coming next, because he gets excited for when we will say "SNORE" loudly. He gets this smile on his face (even behind a pacifier) and them gets really excited the closer it gets to that part.

Speaking of books, since Jonah was a couple of weeks old, we have read "Goodnight Moon" to him every night before bed. This isn't something that either of us grew up with, and we didn't put a whole lot of thought into it (although we had read that it was good to have a consistent bedtime routine), we just started doing it. And now we have done it for almost a year. Both of us have had it memorized since pretty early on. I usually read him "Go to Bed, Fred" before his naps. He likes that one too.

Jonah is somewhat mobile, crawling all over the place, and "cruising" along while holding onto furniture. He can climb the stairs like a pro, and pulls himself up using whatever he can. He is not entirely stable though, and he hasn't figured out that some things are not good for supporting himself. This has led to something that I wish was not normal: bumps on the head. Luckily, he seems to have become a little more stable in the past week or two, so he hasn't fallen quite as often. I always try to catch him, but rarely succeed. Luckily, he gets over these things quickly. He has become a little more brave, starting to lean against furniture, instead of holding on, so that he still has use of his hands, or only holding on with one hand. Tonight, he was standing in his crib and he even let go for a second, and did not lose his balance.

Some of these "normal things" will remain the same until the next time I post, and some of them will not. I wish I knew which things were going to change so that I could better cherish them while they are still normal.