Grant - 7 Months

*First School Picture*

Grant has his first "school picture" at daycare.  He smiled like a champ! I love, love, love his smile.

 *those cheeks! I love them!*

Age: 7 months

Weight:   18 lbs!

Eye Color: Some days they look brown, other days they look hazel.

Clothes: PJs: 6/9 months, Onesies:  6M and 9M. Pants: 9M

Diapers: Size 3
 
Milestones:  *Very good at holding toys now

*Doesn't fall over when sitting anymore
*Rolls onto side all of the time and can roll from tummy to back
*Can stand holding on to something
*grabbed a puff and put it in his mouth last night, hated the texture, but it's progress!

Best Moment(s) This Month:  I enjoyed having some time off from work to celebrate his first Christmas.  He loved all of the excitement and has enjoyed his new toys so far.

Loves: *The Jumperoo
*Chewing on his hands
*Playing Peek-a-Boo
*Standing up and bouncing
*Bath time (he sits like a big boy in the bathtub now!)
*food!

Hates: *Tummy time
*Being left to play by himself for too long

Food:   STILL pumping and giving him breastmilk.  We are giving him solids 2-3 times a day now.  Since he hated cereal, his ped said I could start feeding him the baby food meat meals.  So he's moved up to level 2 baby food and has tried chicken, turkey, and tons of yummy fruits and veggies! He def loves fruit the most, but he would just keep eating it all if you let him.  I always have to end the feeding session because he's eaten so much or he finishes the container!

Looking Forward To: Mobility, he has shown zero interest in moving from one place to another so far, but I am looking forward to when he does!

*First Ornament he made at school*

I cannot believe my sweet boy is 7 months.  Each month I know I say the same thing, but it really feels like time is FLYING! I know his first birthday is going to be here before I know it.  I'm trying so hard to soak up all of these moments and remember what it feels like to rock him to sleep and hold him when he's sick. He's been battling his first cold for weeks now, so there have been quite a few cuddles happening :)

Grant - 6 Months Photo Shoot

There were so many adorable pictures from our photo shoot the other day that I decided to just do a separate post instead of cramming 20 pictures all into his 6 month update.

We FINALLY managed to get a picture with him smiling while I was holding him.  He was in such a great mood that afternoon at the park and was fascinated by all of the people walking by. So fun!  And all of the photo cred goes to my handsome hubby :)

I know that I'm biased, but how adorable is this face?

I love how his eyes light up when he smiles.

Handsome like his daddy.

Grant - 6 Months!

 

 

Grant is 6 months old! Half a year. Wow.  Sometimes it still feels crazy that I am a mom, and it definitely feels crazy that I have a 6 month old! He's growing up so stinking fast and I just want to slow down time so I can enjoy these moments.

Age: 6 months

Weight:   17 lbs!

Eye Color: Looks like a mix of hazel and brown right now.

Clothes: PJs: 6/9 months, Onesies:  6M and 9M. Pants: 6M

Diapers:  Size 2, moving to size 3 as soon as we run out of 2s.

Milestones:  *Looks around at things
*Puts toys in mouth
*Rolls onto side all of the time
*Bounces on legs :)
*Sits unassisted!
*Holds the bottle by himself! (did this for the first time on Thanksgiving) 

Best Moment(s) This Month:  We finally have heard him laugh a few times.  We have to work HARD for it though! He is def not a giggly baby lol

Loves: *The Jumperoo
*Chewing on his hands
*Playing Peek-a-Boo
*Standing up and bouncing

Hates: *Tummy time
*Being left to play by himself for too long

Food:   STILL pumping and giving him breastmilk (I made it to my original goal of 6 months! Yay!) He's had some solids (green beans, apples, bananas), but not every day. He's really enjoying the foods we've tried, but he's fine if we skip it too.

Looking Forward To: His first Thanksgiving and Christmas!

 I am looking forward to all of our "firsts" with Grant this year.  First Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's.  Last Christmas we were imagining what it was going to be like with a baby, and now we are getting ready to experience it. :)

 

My Review of the Zipadee-Zip

My Zipadee-Zip finally came in the mail yesterday, and I was so excited to try it out.  Grant is 5 months old now and had been breaking out of his Halo Swaddle Sleep Sack for weeks.  Once he gets his right arm free, he flails it all over the place until he is wide awake.  I tried the Magic Sleepsuit, but he gets way too hot in it and seems uncomfortable.

Just for laughs, here is a picture of Grant in the Merlin's Magic Sleepsuit. Can you tell he loved it? haha

I kept going back and forth on what size to order.  I was scared he would grow out of the small in a week or two, but that the medium wouldn't have enough resistance to help him sleep.  I ended up going with the Small.  It's long enough, but it seems like the arm span isn't quite big enough for him.  I'm not too worried about that though since I am trying to keep him contained at night!

After throwing the zippy into the wash I tried it on Grant... and he loved it!  He just smiled and smiled and rolled around in the crib.  Usually when I lay him in the crib he immediately starts fussing, but for some reason he loved being in the zippy!

The very first thing he did in the zippy was put his hands in his mouth - lol

Grant was very comfortable in it, but unfortunately it didn't have magic sleep powers like some of the reviews that I read.  I didn't really expect any huge surprises, but I had a sliver of hope! He woke up at his usual times to eat and actually woke up an hour earlier and another time before midnight.  I do think that the Zipadee-Zip is a great transition from the swaddle.  I LOVED how thin the material was.  He was always drenched in sweat when he was swaddled or in the Magic Sleep Suit.

All in all, the Zipadee-Zip is a win in my book! It kept Grant cool, he slept comfortably, he didn't scream when I put him in it, and he didn't wake up any more than usual!  Although we didn't get a magical "slept through the night" story, I think it worked pretty well! I think I may go ahead and order a medium before they go out of stock again :)

Grant is sporting the Baby Baluga pattern.

UPDATES:

ETA: Pretty sure Grant was going through a sleep regression when I switched to the Zipadee-zip.  His sleep was pretty rough between 5-6.5 months, but now we are back to waking up just 1-2 times a night.  He does GREAT in the Zippy and I've already ordered a Medium so we can start transitioning him to more freedom.  He's 17lbs and 7 months and still fits in the small right now, so it was def worth every penny!

1/27/2015 - Update! Grant is now sleeping through the night in his Zippy (at 8 months).  He is in the Medium now and it allows a lot of movement.  He rolls over onto his belly each night and he's always doing "push ups" when I go in his room in the morning.  The Zippy really allows him to move around the crib while keeping him cozy and asleep during the night.  I also love that it's part of his bedtime routine each night.  He knows that as soon as I zip him up that he's about to get a bottle and go to bed. I cannot recommend this product enough! I just ordered a second medium (so now I've bought 4) and I seriously think they are worth it.  You can't put a price on a good night's sleep!


3/16/2015 - Grant is now almost 10 months old and is still in a Medium.  He's still sleeping through the night and I am about to transition him to the Large so that by his 1st birthday we can sleep in just PJs.  Right now I am loving the fact that his hands are covered so that he doesn't stand up in the crib!

 

Grant - 5 months!

 

 

He is almost half a year old! I cannot believe it.  My sweet tiny baby is turning into a little man before my eyes.  When I look at him now it's hard to believe he was ever the tiny, less than 6 lb baby that we brought home from the hospital. He's so healthy and full of life! His personality is just shining through and I can already tell that Grant has such a sweet, sweet soul.  His eyes are so kind and his smile is so precious.  When he smiles, his eyes light up his whole face and it warms my heart.

Can I just take a minute to reflect on much he has grown?  It's crazy!

This month he celebrated his first Halloween.  We decided we didn't want to go the traditional route with a baby costume (the thick, hot animal costumes).  Can I just say that they need to offer more costume options for babies?  And in Texas we don't have cold weather in October, so offer some thin material costumes while you're at it.  We decided to dress Grant up as Phelps, circa the Beijing Olympics.  We got quite a few laughs at the church fall festival :)

And the stats:

Age: 5 months

Weight:  17 lbs!

Eye Color: Looks like a mix of hazel and brown right now.

Clothes: PJs: 6/9 months, Onesies: Can still squeeze into 3M, but 6M are roomier.

Diapers:  Size 2

Milestones:  *Amuses himself by playing with hands and feet
*Turns towards sounds
*Will look for me when I'm talking in a room
*Can sit on his own for a few seconds
*Can stand in his jumperoo now!
*Discovered his toes
*Puts things in his mouth
*Bears his weight in standing position
*I think he laughed - it kind of turned into a cry so I'm not sure!
*Tries to grab bottle when he sees it and pull it into his mouth :)
*Sleeps with 1 arm out of the swaddle now! Working on getting both out.

Best Moment(s) This Month: His personality has really come out this month.  He reacts so much to us now and he smiles and plays.  He's at such a fun age!

Loves: *Bouncing around
*Standing up
*Chewing on his hands
*Playing with his feet

*Staring at his hand
*Eating
*Going outside

Hates: *Tummy time (he refuses to even roll over now, just lays there face down until I turn him over lol)
*Bumbo - he only lasts about 2 minutes in this thing.
*Being left to play by himself for too long (he lets you know when he's ready for you to play with him!)

Food:   I am still pumping and giving him 100% breastmilk. After his 4 month appointment we got the go ahead to start introducing solids.  I tried oatmeal cereal and he HATED it.  Absolutely hated it.  I gave him rice cereal and he was a little more receptive, but still not a huge fan.  I tried mixing it with a little apple or banana and he still wasn't very interested.  I tried apple and banana alone and he wasn't into it so I let it go for a couple of weeks.  Last night I gave him sweet potatoes, and he LOVED them! I included a snippet of the sweet potato love at the bottom of this post :) 

Looking Forward To: Hearing a good long belly laugh. Seeing him sit by himself.

 

Our Sleep Sense Journey - Nights 8 - 14

The finale to our "Sleep Sense" journey.

Night 8 (10/21/14):

6:00 pm - had a bottle and put him in the crib at 6:15, he was asleep by 6:30.

10:23 - woke up, went back to sleep at 10:30

10:45 - woke up, went back to sleep at 11:05

12:35 - woke up and ate, back to sleep by  1:00

4:12 - woke up and ate, back to sleep by 4:45.

5:45 - up for the day.

Night 9 (10/22/14):

7:30 - had a bottle and was very fussy when put in his crib. He fell asleep in his crib by 8.

12:30 - woke up to eat and back to sleep.

3:40 - woke up to eat and back to sleep.

7:15 - had to go WAKE him up so we could get ready for day care!

Thoughts: Wow, What a good night! His daddy came home and took over this night shift, so I'm wondering if that contributed to his stellar sleep.  I am blown away that he slept in so late this morning.  He started waking up at 6, but kept soothing himself back to sleep.  He actually fell back into a deep sleep by 6:45. When I went in his room, I turned on the lights to try and get him to wake up on his own and he was still sacked out. I ended up having to undo his swaddle blanket to wake him up.

Night 10 - 14:
He has been pretty consistent with waking up twice a night just to eat.  Sometimes he wakes up once more around 5:30 and I can pat him back to sleep and he will sleep another hour. 

Not sure what I can do to help him sleep through the night at this point because he still REALLY wants to eat twice each night.  I'm happy he's not waking up 5-6 times and that he's able to fall asleep on his own at night without any help from me.  I'm sure he will give up his night feedings when he's ready and it's not too bad getting up just twice.  He usually goes right back to sleep after he eats, so I'm only up 30 minutes max.

For teaching him to self soothe, trying to cut back on night feedings, AND weaning him from the swaddle, I'd say the past 2 weeks were a success!

Our Sleep Sense Journey - Nights 2 - 7

Night 2 (10/15/14):

6:30p - Last bottle

6:45p - Laid down and put pacifier in his mouth and he fell asleep almost immediately. I'm not sure if this is good or bad... He was very tired tonight though.

1:15a - He woke up and wasn't soothing himself after crying for about 15 minutes so I decided to give him a bottle.

1:40a - put him down awake after finishing a bottle, he talked to himself until 2:00a then started fussing a little. At 2:07 I decided to go comfort him and by the time I got to his door it was silent and he had soothed himself to sleep at 2:07a.

4:15a - woke up and fussed.  Tried to calm him down, but I'm pretty sure he was hungry. Decided to feed him again at 4:30.  Laid him down at 4:40 and he was asleep by 5:00a.

6:00a - up for the day! (Wish he'd move his wake up time to 7a!)

Thoughts on Night 2: On the plus side, he only woke up TWICE! On the negative side, he ate twice and I am trying to get him to only one night feed if at all possible.  He also took longer to soothe himself to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night.  I do want to point out that at no point during this process has he been upset and screaming.  I refuse to let him scream alone in his crib and I will break protocol and pick him up and comfort him if he is that upset.  So far he has only fussed a little and given me his tired cry before falling asleep on his own.

Night 3 (10/16/14):

6:30 - Last bottle

6:40 - put Grant in the crib and he fussed a little bit.  I went to wash bottles and planned on going back in afterwards to comfort him, but he fell asleep all by himself by 6:45.  He didn't even have his pacifier in so I was pretty surprised!

12:15a - woke up and fussed, I went in and comforted (without picking up) and he fell asleep at 12:30.  However... he woke up 4 minutes later and by 12:45 I decided to go ahead and feed him. I put him back in the crib at 12:53 and he was asleep by 12:57. (guess he was just hungry!)

4:30a - woke up and talked to himself for a while, I put his pacifier in and he went back to sleep by 4:45... only to be woken up at 4:50 by his one free arm. He falls asleep with it on his face and then when it starts to fall back on the bed it wakes him up.  I ended up feeding him at 5:15 after giving him a little while to try and soothe himself back to sleep.  Put him back in the crib and he was asleep on his own by 5:30 with no comforting by me at all.

6:30a - up for the day! He woke up in a great mood and didn't even cry.  Was just moving around and looking around the room.

Thoughts on Night 3: Only had 2 actual wake ups which is consistent with the night before. I wish he would have been able to stay asleep a few of the times that he woke up just 5 minutes after falling asleep, but I think that's part of getting used to being unswaddled.  I also know that I took on a big challenge by taking on unswaddling, sleep training, AND night weaning all at the same time.  So all in all I think he's doing great! I only fed him 3oz at 5am and I think I am going to start decreasing that feed until he drops it all together.  I think that would eliminate the waking up at 4:30a and then we would only have one wake up! I have been consistently blown away by how well Grant has done putting himself to sleep, especially right at bedtime.  It takes him almost no time at all!

Night 4 (10/17/14):
7:20pm - bottle and then put in bed at 7:27.  He was asleep by 7:31.

12:31a - woke up fussing, I gave him his pacifier and he went back to sleep by 12:40.

3:00a - woke up and I fed him and put him back in the crib. He was asleep by 3:15.

4:50a - woke up and talked to himself for a while.  I gave him his pacifier, but ended up caving and rocking him back to sleep at 5:30 so that I could go back to sleep before getting up for work.  He went to sleep at 5:32.

6:15 - up for the day!


 Thoughts on Night 4: Not the best night... I shouldn't have caved and picked him up, but I was so tired! He did only eat once which was great!


Night 5 (10/18/14):
Sadly I came down with a nasty stomach virus this night and my mom had to come take care of Grant for me.  I didn't have the heart to make her sit and listen to him and cry and I was so ill that I just wanted to know he was being taken care of. I figured it would be confusing to him anyway that someone other than me was feeding him all of a sudden at night, so I just wanted him to be comforted.  He woke up 4-5 times this night.


Night 6 (10/19/14):
I was still sick so my mom took the night shift again. He did slightly better and woke up only 3 times. An improvement, but not great.

Night 7 (10/20/14):
Mom was back in charge!
6:15 - bottle, put in bed at 6:20 and he was asleep at 6:37 with no fussing.

9:20 -woke up and had a really hard time going back to sleep.  I burped him and then put him back in the crib.  He has a lot of drainage right now and I think it's making him uncomfortable at night.  He finally fell asleep at 10.

12:35 - woke up and ate and was asleep by 12:46.

3:20 - woke up and ate and was asleep by 3:40.

5:30 - for some reason he woke up 30 minutes earlier than usual and was wide awake and talking in his crib.  I waited about 10 minutes before I went in his room to get him hoping he'd fall back asleep,  but he was ready to get up.

 Thoughts on Night 7:  He started waking up at 9pm all of a sudden when I got sick.  I'm hoping once we get back into the routine of things that he will drop this wake up again.


So that was our first week.  Sadly it was derailed by me getting very sick for 2 days, but now we are back on track and I'm hoping week 2 continues to show improvement! He is still falling asleep by himself like a champ, so I don't think those 2 days messed us up too much.

Our Sleep Sense Journey - Night 1

 

 

Grant went from waking up 1-2 times a night for a feeding, to waking up 5-6 times a night.  I'm not sure what exactly caused this change.  At 3 months he picked up an extra feed at night which I thought may have been from a growth spurt.  This didn't bother me too much because he would eat and go right back to sleep, and from start to finish only took about 30 minutes.  After he turned 4 months things just got crazy.  He used to sleep from 7p-1a without waking up, then wake up around 3 to eat again.  All of a sudden he was waking up at 10:30p, 1a, 3a, 5a and usually one or two other times in between there.  He would be crying and very upset and it was taking me up to 2 hours to get him back to sleep only to have him wake up again an hour later.

The peak of this nighttime disaster just happened to fall while David was working out of town for 2 weeks.  That meant to backup or break for me and I was going to work on about 4 hours of sleep broken up into 1-1.5 increments.  I was in a bad place. When you are exhausted at 3 am with a screaming baby and there is no one to give you a break you realize that something has to change.

The next day I started researching different sleep programs.  I'm not trying to get him to magically sleep through the night at only 5  months, but I did want to improve both of our sleep situations.  There was no way that he was waking up rested after waking up so many times and crying for so long.  I finally settled on the Sleep Sense program.  I'm going to try VERY hard to stick to the rules for 2 weeks and see how Grant does.  I plan on updating periodically with my results each night.

So with that being said...

Night 1 of the Sleep Sense Program:

6:40p - Bath

6:50p - PJs

6:55p - Bottle (only fed 2oz because he ate an hour earlier)

7:00p - Laid Grant in bed awake

7:00p-7:45p never cried, fussed a little and kicked his legs around a bit.  He would fall asleep then wake up for a little bit then fall asleep again.  By 7:45 he was completely asleep.

11:00p - woke up and started crying.  I went in the room and softly reassured him I was there and touched his face.  He cried for about 15 minutes and then calmed down and I put the pacifier back in and he went back to sleep.

1:00a-same thing as 11p, I think he may have cried 10-20 minutes, but eventually calmed down, took his paci and went back to sleep on his own.

3:00a - woke up and fussed for about 10 minutes and I decided to feed him.  He drank the bottle, burped and I laid him back down while still awake.  He never fussed or cried and fell asleep on his own in about 5-10 minutes.

6:15a - woke up for the day and was all smiles!

Now this may seem like a bad night because he still woke up 3 times, but let me just say that this is remarkable to me.  The previous 2 nights he woke up at least 5 times and it took me TWO HOURS to get him to fall back asleep after the 2a/3a wake up only for him to wake up again 1 hour later.  Last night was a complete success in my book! I am so surprised that he was able to soothe himself back to sleep so quickly after his bottle.  

Let's hope the following nights go just as smoothly! It felt amazing to get a 3 hour stretch of sleep again. :)

 I also need to note that he has still been sleeping swaddled and last night was also the first night I let him sleep with one arm out.  I thought that having a hand free would help him be able to self soothe.  He actually did really well  and didn't startle or thrash around.  Having that one arm out also seemed to please him enough that he didn't spend 15 minutes trying to break the other arm out of the swaddle. So success on both fronts! Maybe at the end of the two weeks he will be sleeping through the night swaddle free (too much to hope for?)