How quickly they change! As of this week, Lydia is officially seven months. And the separation anxiety has calmed way down to the point where I’d say she’s back to baseline. Assuming it makes any sense at all to talk about baseline behavior for babies, which maybe it doesn’t.
She did get a bit of a cold, mostly as evidence by a snotty nose. I can feel a tickle in my throat, but I think there’s a good chance it won’t turn into more than that on my end, since I’ve been getting enough sleep.
I can feel my brain wanting to take credit for the reduction in separation anxiety, but I think it has very little to do with me. It was just a phase.
Sleep
Sleep was a bit weird this week. Once time this past week, she went to sleep for the night at 7:30. I’m pretty sure this is the earliest she’d ever gone to sleep for the night by almost an hour. She was tired anyway, from not having napped much that day. And then Will was out and I was lying on the bed with her in the dark watching Mad Men on my computer with headphones. So everything was just how she liked it: quiet, dark, me lying next to her not moving much.
Since then, she’s been back to waking up somewhere in the 8:00-9:00 hour, which I may not love as much, but is totally fine.
Another time this week, she got early, maybe 7? And she seemed to be up for the day, but I was just so tired that I decided to just hang out in bed with her and try my best to get her to go back to sleep. It worked. I mostly just lay there and did my best to be boring, nursing her or picking her up a little when she started fussing. We both got at least an hour more of sleep, which made a huge difference.
Lydia seems to be sleeping a bit more because of the cold, which is normal. A friend of ours helped us by delivering a rocking chair that another friend had offered us ages ago, so that was in play this week. Me walking around in the wrap is higher on Lydia’s preference ordering, but she does seem to like the motion of the rocking chair pretty well too, and it’s a bit easier on my end.
Her sleep last night seemed pretty fitful, likely because her nose was all stuffed up.
Nursing
If I had to guess, I’d say Lydia might be nursing a tiny bit less because she’s more into solid food these days. Very low confidence though. She also has a cold and recently finished a growth spurt, so I imagine those factors matter more.
Solids
Lydia continues to eat purposefully and in somewhat significant quantity. I give her what I eat, and she appears to like most of it just fine. I’ve been doing lots of peas with her recently, partly because I want her to practice picking up small things. She’s moving towards more of a pincer grip, but can pick them up fine with her first.
When I was at a party with her on Saturday, I was feeding her avocado, and she just kept eating and eating! It definitely surprised me.
One of the funnier food moments happened this morning. I was eating mashed potatoes with peas, and she had her own pile of them in front of her. But she was pulling at my arm and seemingly indicating that she wanted something of mine. She happily ate some of my food off my fork. She kept wanting to do that instead of eating the same food off the table in front of her. The dog I grew up with was sometimes the same way, wanting food from us even if it was the same as his food.
I did try the thing where I let her play with the cup in the bath, but no luck. She wasn’t even trying to drink it, maybe because it was outside the context of a meal? I’ll try again another time.
Elimination Communication
We had a bit of a potty pause this week, but it’s mostly calmed down. Lydia had been in a groove where she’d usually pee if she had to go at all, and then she switched to arching her back and getting angry quite often when I took her. I think one issue was that she wanted me to get the timing just right. She might have been dong the thing where they like to experiment with how long they can hold it.
Once this week she seemed to be signaling while she was in the high chair (she often pees in the high chair, maybe because she’s sitting, like on the potty). So I took her out, took her to pee, and she got mad and didn’t do it. So I took her back downstairs to the high chair, and she peed before she even got in it.
I’ve read that potty pauses can be a request for more independence too, so another thing that seems to have helped is putting her to sit on the little potty and then backing off instead of hovering over her. That and just prompting less often, relying on my intuition, and making peace with frequent misses.
I’ve been sort of itching to do a whole day where she’s just naked or in training pants, so I can get better feedback about what’s going on. We did some diaper-free time this week, but less than I would have liked. We have a houseguest whose stuff is out, which makes it a bit harder.
I don’t remember her peeing at nap transitions again.
Nighttime is going well. One night when I was particularly tired, I pottied her much less than usual at night, and it ended up being fine. I think I just did her once at six or so, and she woke up dry anyway, which was good information for me.
Babywearing
Not much to say on the babywearing front this week. I wasn’t wearing her for separation anxiety reasons much, but I did wear her more because of the cold she’s had.
Motor Skills
Lydia is yet better at standing. She’s had a bunch of long stretches, maybe as long as eight seconds or so, and she just seems more stable. I’ve also seen her pushing up with her feet proportionally more than she pulls up with her hands.
She’s also basically cruising! She doesn’t do it all that much, and this isn’t the first week I’ve seen her do little cruise steps, but sometimes she very distinctly does it. Often, she’ll want something on the table and cruise around it to see if she can reach it better from somewhere else.
In the fine motor department, her eating movements are getting more coordinated. She’s eating more from a right-side up fist instead of an upside down fist.
We’ve noticed her getting down from edges more skillfully lately. She’ll sort of turn sideways, which is safer. But this morning, she crawled over to the shoe area, but was completely stuck at the little step down. It’s less high than the bed, which she gets off all the time, but she may have (rightly!) been worried, because it was a hard tile floor. Definitely a good sign that she’s more cautious about edges. Eventually, I just took her down myself. She had no problem crawling back up the step.
Communication
New phonemes! Today especially, she’s all about saying “m” and “b” sounds. So cute to hear her going “mama mama”, even if she clearly doesn’t mean anything by it. I can increasingly imagine her producing words!
We still have these moments though, where she’s saying something very intentionally, and I have no idea what she’s trying to communicate. She’s finding ways to express herself though. She’ll sometimes tug on my arm and look at me in the high chair when she wants something.
Personality/Other
After an embarrassingly long period of only giving Lydia sponge baths after her last bath freakout, I tried again. She enjoyed it! I filled the bathtub up a lot, and she was very happy to move around. A few times she got water in her mouth and was totally startled, but it was a good experience. We will do more. With food and playgrounds both happening, she’s dirtier than she used to be.
Me
I’d say it was a good week. I got writing done. I ended up writing a long parenting rant on my private livejournal, and it both felt good to get it out and really good to hear supportive thoughts from friends. Will is going to be working full-time out of the house soon, so that’s be an adjustment. I expect it to go smoothly though!
Leave a Reply