Thursday, May 15, 2008

Maelstones


I just received one of the baby development bulletins that I subscribe to (this one from babycenter.com), and it warned me to be prepared for my baby to start making progress toward crawling.

Yeah, well, that ship has sailed. Or, more accurately, that baby has crawled. Mae is not exactly up on hands-and-knees, per se, but then some babies never do the "classic" crawl. She's doing something more like a boot camp belly crawl, but she does get those knees up under herself occasionally too, for a stroke or two, then it's back down on her tummy. The important thing to note is that she is majorly mobile now, and there is no expanse of floor that she cannot conquer.

In fact, she has also crawled over a cat, her brother, and my leg in the process of getting somewhere she wanted to go. There will be no stopping her now. Which reminds me, I really need to find that box of babyproofing stuff (cupboard latches, doorknob covers, and such) that we hid away when we felt like Arlo was out of the woods.

Other things you should know about Macy:

-She is now self-feeding. Cheerios, baked beans, and those Gerber banana puffs are among her favorite things to eat. As for those puffs, I like to call them "minutes in a plastic bottle." She can be kept busy for minutes on end by scattering small handfuls of these across the tray of her exersaucer. A person can actually put on makeup before work using this method!!!

-I am nearly convinced that she is using the sounds "ma ma" and "dad" appropriately. She isn't really using many other consonants yet--so she also uses these sounds inappropriately--but I swear to you, this morning she looked right at me and said, "Maaaaaaaaam." And then she looked at Ted and said, "Dada." If she's not assigning words to faces, she sure is fooling us.

-This week marks the beginning of her free-range bath time. We have done away with the little bath seat that we had been using to help keep her from falling over in the tub, and she is now bathing like a champ (no mishaps yet!) with her big brother on a nightly basis. (You can see more photos on my flickr site--but you have to be signed up as a friend to do so, on account of the kids being in their birthday suits.)

-The bad news is that we are still struggling with Mae's sleeping patterns. Last night, for example, she awakened every two hours to nurse, as if she was still a newborn. I think her wakings are natural and normal--just part of the sleep-wake-sleep-wake thing that all humans do at night... but she's got herself convinced that she can't possibly fall back to sleep without spending a few minutes at mom's warm breast. She can get herself to sleep at the beginning of the night, and she self-soothes during naps as well, but we have some work to do with her nighttime routine, and it ain't gonna be pretty.

Sigh.

1 comment:

AndreaLea said...

How fun! I miss the baby stage. My youngest slept in my bed and nursed throughout the night until 22 months. Still not sure if that was the best way to go or not. :)