Lydia and I had a pretty happy week this week. The weather has been warm and beautiful, so we’ve gotten out to playgrounds multiple days, and that worked well enough that I want to make it a very regular habit, at least when it’s nice outside. I still haven’t been to the playgrounds closest to where we live, so that’s a goal for this week.
The progress in her physical skills is the easiest thing to notice a difference in, week to week, but she’s growing into a person in other ways too. I’m thinking that I’m going to phase out attending the new parents group at Rites of Passage that we’ve been going to for a few months now. She’s not such a baby anymore!
And so far, my prediction that I would enjoy her more and more as she got older has been proven true. Her mobility is cool, and not actually much more work for me yet.
Sleep
Lydia’s schedule drifted pretty late this week. She slept past 10:00am more than once, and I don’t think she was ever up before around 8:30. I love this. To clarify, she stirs and nurses plenty of times before that, but I don’t count her as up for the day until she really opens her eyes and starts moving around. Usually, before she’s up for the day she has at least about an hour of light sleep where she’d probably wake up if I got up to go to the bathroom.
She’s mostly been going to bed late at night as well, and will rarely take more than two naps unless they get cut short, in which case it really depends.
I was interested to see what would happen on Monday, because she got up quite late (I think 10:20 or so), had one long nap, and then was still up at 8:00 when we go outside and sit around the fire. Lately, Monday has been her day to reset to an earlier schedule, since she’s out in the dark. But it didn’t go that way. She fell asleep at 8:30, but didn’t sleep that long, got up once more, and then went back to sleep maybe around 10. Lydia to bed at night, so we weren’t sure what would happen, but I agreed to come home if it seemed like a good idea.
Getting to sleep in is the best. I very rarely actually go to sleep with Lydia when she’s out at 8:30, so having flexibility at the other end is just awesome. Depending on how tired I am in the morning, I’ll get up and read next to her until she wakes up, or drift off myself multiple times until she’s ready.
I didn’t notice morning naps being disrupted because of roommates this week, I think because they weren’t around as much.
Nursing
Nursing is pretty much the same. I think she’s been nursing more at night the past few days. Often she’ll wake up and just nurse a bit to get herself back to sleep, but recently she’s been having longer nursing sessions where I think she’s actually been hungry more often at night. Makes sense, since her calorie needs are increasing. She’s bigger, more active, and not getting all that many calories from solids most of the time.
Solids
A few times this week, it seemed as though Lydia actually swallowed a bunch of food!
Sometimes she’s willing to be in the high chair, and sometimes not. While I was at a party with Lydia this weekend, I had her in the wrap while I was eating a banana, and she clearly wanted some, so I shared it with her. I think she ate more banana than she ever had, possibly because she felt safer and happier in the wrap with me.
She still freaks herself out a little when she actually swallows, I think. She sort of shivers and vocalizes with her mouth closed, which is very different from how she usually expresses distress, which makes me think it’s related to food.
Meat is still the favorite, and the little pieces of shredded beef from the nearby taco place are an easy way to give her what she wants when we aren’t cooking steaks. She hasn’t taken to ground beef as much that I’ve noticed. I think she may have swallowed a pea or two as well last night, and her poop will probably confirm this one way or the other before long.
The poop is getting smellier, but isn’t full-fledged solid food poop yet by any means.
I’m definitely pretty sold on the whole baby-led weaning thing, because the times I’ve tried to put food in her mouth (mostly feeding her outside the house and trying to minimize mess), she’s almost always pushed my hand away and grabbed the food with her hand so she could self feed.
I’m grateful that she doesn’t have teeth yet though, because parents whose kids do have teeth seem more worried about their babies choking on pieces of food that they’ve bit off.
I really do love watching her get better at doing stuff, eating included.
And if I ever doubt that she’s actually capable of swallowing food, I will remember that I found a whole leaf in her poop this week. She can do it.
Elimination Communication
I got a bunch of new things for her this week.
She has three new diaper covers that will fit her as long as we’ll need diapers. I haven’t gotten the next size up in prefolds, mostly because I actually anticipate us moving away from full-time diapering soonish. I could see moving to training pants by nine months, at least most of the time, and since we always change her immediately, it’s also okay with me if the prefolds get to be on the small side.
And I got training pants for her! I’ve tried three brands so far, and one more brand is coming in the mail. We still have some tiny underwear for her too. So far, Green Sprouts fit her the best of the training pants. The Under the Nile ones are too big. The Imse Vimse one works, and is the most protective, but it also takes forever to dry. I may do a full gear update at some point.
So far, I’ve tried some diaper free time in training pants, and I’ve liked it. I can see that I’ll learn her signals much better if I do it more consistently, and if I consistently move her when she’s about to go, I think she’ll learn too. She currently does a kind of squatting thing for peeing that I’m learning to recognize.
I know EC completion is a long way off, but it’s felt good to be a little more forward-looking this week. Today, Lydia wouldn’t potty, and then went on her own only a few minutes later. I’ve read that this sort of thing can mean that she needs more control of the process.
Poop is easy these days, since she’s mostly just going in the morning when she gets up. I love not having to clean it off diapers.
Babywearing
Not much to say here. Will hasn’t worn her in the Ergo for wraps as often as he used to. Maybe because she’s been taking fewer naps? That’s always the easiest way to get her to nap for a really long time, but she’s been wanting longer naps anyway. It happened at least once this week that she woke up mid-nap, I thought she was done, but she complained until I had her go back to sleep.
Lydia is much more attentive when she’s in the wrap these days, and very deliberate about turning her head and whole body to check out what she’s interested in. This morning, she was drifting off sitting down in the wrap, but I had to get some food. In the past, the motion would have soothed her back to sleep, but this time she got all interested in what I was up to.
Motor Skills
Lydia is getting really good at crawling. This week, she started crawling after me very long distances when she wanted me. She can go all the way from the living room to the kitchen. For some reason, she used to get hung up about not going from the wood to the tile, but she’s over that.
I love seeing her greater agency come out, now that she can crawl around. In addition to coming over to get me, she found the downstairs bathroom and started exploring that.
She’s quite fast at crawling now.
She sometimes does this weird thing where she kind of bangs her wrists together, which I’ve so far online noticed when she had things in both her hands. A friend speculated that maybe it was about her bib, and we did first notice it when she was eating, but I’ve seen her do it without the bib on, so it can’t be that.
Lydia’s balance is improving really quickly. She barely needs to balance at all when she pulls up on stuff a lot of the time, and she will often hang on with one hand. She’ll easily pull up on walls now too, not just coffee tables and things like that.
And she’s started balancing for real when she lets go! The longest I’ve seen her do it for was this morning. It was at least three seconds, and she was clearly really excited to have gone that long. She wasn’t touching the door she had been supporting herself with at all. So cool!
So I guess she’s already where we said she might be by seven months. She can’t do it consistently or anything, but she’s balanced on two legs for multiple seconds a few times. Time for a new prediction?
I know some kids who crawl early take their time with walking, since they already have a good mode of transportation, but I predict that Lydia won’t be like that. She just seem so intent on standing up. Time will tell…
I guess my new prediction is that she’ll be able to stand, if not indefinitely, for at least a minute or so by the time she’s 7.5 months. I’m guessing based on how I saw her sitting balance develop.
Pretty much everyone we’ve talked to who’s had an early walker has said that it can be challenging because they’re typically pretty fearless. We may well have that situation to look forward to.
Lydia likes playing with long, somewhat heavy objects these days. The pole that her stacking rings go on is a favorite, as is my hairbrush. She likes to wave them around and figure out how they balance.
Another minor point is that sometimes Lydia does pretty good splits.
Communication
A new category this week. There isn’t terribly much to report yet, but I’m adding it because I know there will be development here in the coming months.
I’m not 100% sure it’s happening, but I’m mostly sure that Lydia is occasionally trying to imitate what I say. I think she’s made attempts at “car”, “all done”, and “buoy”. They’re very rudimentary, and I don’t think she means anything by it, but I do think she’s at least attempting to copy my vocalizations.
I’m also not 100% sure that she isn’t making some sort of intentional “all done” gesture at the potty sometimes. Probably not, but if I choose to interpret it as such, maybe I can encourage it to happen for real?
She’s also been keeping her hands in fists a bunch the past few days, sometimes waving them around, which looks like the potty sign but almost certainly isn’t.
If she ever makes eye contact with me and repeats what she’s doing, word or sign, I’ll be more confident it’s happening on purpose.
Personality/Other
Lydia is increasingly interested in everything. The other day, when she was eating, she kept turning all around in the high chair to see my friend who was in the living room. And she’s sometimes complained when I didn’t take her over to the door to watch people leaving the house.
As I said, she’ll come find me when she wants me now. This is also nice because if she’s making a complaining-type noise and I can’t tell whether to intervene, I can more often rest assured that she’d crawl in my direction if she wanted my help. When Lydia was out on the deck with Will and I briefly checked in on them and then left, she very intentionally crawled over to find me. So cute!
Lydia tried to crawl after a pigeon at the playground the other day, which I found adorable. Obviously it didn’t work very well, since the pigeon flew away.
In addition to sometimes crying when we take way things that she’s playing with, Lydia once cried when she was trying to crawl out the bedroom door when the cleaner was here to play with a bunch of cleaning supplies and bathroom items and Will closed the door. She’s a baby, so she will move on the next thing pretty quickly, but she also wants what she wants.
When I’m in the back seat with Lydia, I can almost always entertain her in the car seat, even when she’s cranky. When I’m the one driving, we still sometimes pull over when she gets upset.
Me
I’m not getting as much writing done as I would like, but I’ve been in a good mood these past few weeks, for the most part. Even feeling a little nostalgic about my little baby growing up. Funny how that works.
Will and I had a long talk about how, just as we finally felt like we had this baby thing mostly figured out, she’s starting to become a toddler with a will of her own. It’s awesome, it’s different, and we have less of a handle on what to do. We ended up having a long call with a parent friend of ours which made us both feel better. I want to have more calls like that. Books say very different things from each other, and I often don’t trust them. I imagine I’ll flesh out more of what I’ve been thinking about toddlers on the blog soon, but for now I’ll just say that it’s on my mind, and Will’s too.
