Hellobee

I thought I’d do a combo one month update and seven month birthday update, as they fell only a few days apart. T turned seven months old three days before the one month anniversary of the day we picked him up. In some ways it seems like we just brought him home, and yet at the same time he has become such a big part of our lives, it’s hard to imagine what it was like before we had him. He has changed so much in the month we’ve known him. Everyone says they grow up so fast, but I’m just now learning how true that is.

Eating

Not knowing T’s past, we were very careful with starting solids. Other than sitting up unassisted, he was showing all the signs of readiness, most obvious being that he was fascinated with our food. It was almost impossible to eat in front of him. A few days after we picked him up we tried rice cereal. Big success. We moved quickly onto oatmeal because we didn’t want him to get constipated on the rice. He already seemed to be a gassy little guy so we didn’t want any other stomach problems. Oatmeal was also a big hit. T’s baby food is paid for, so we don’t have a lot of choice about how to feed him. If he were ours I would probably lean towards baby led weaning, at least part of the time, but we are trying to follow the rules as much as possible. So far he has eaten pureed carrots, pears, apples, bananas, strawberries, squash and sweet potato. We have yet to find something that he doesn’t absolutely go crazy for. He’s an incredible eater. The hardest part has been determining portion size. Everyone says you can’t overfeed a baby, that they will stop when they are full. So far we haven’t found the bottom of T’s appetite, so we are careful not to go overboard. I’m quite certain he would give himself a tummy ache if we let him.

T loves his spoons and often plays with them for 10 minutes on his own after he’s done eating.

Sleep

We’ve come a long way with T’s sleep. At first he was taking 25 minute naps many times per day, more like a younger baby. He has gradually started stringing sleep cycles together much more successfully, and we are on a pretty regular 3 nap per day schedule. Some days he sleeps as long as an hour and a half during the middle nap, so I think he’s on his way to consolidating to a 2 nap schedule in the next few months. At night he still wakes briefly numerous times, but it usually only takes replacing his pacifier to soothe him back to sleep. He normally wakes once between 1:00 and 2:00 am for a diaper change and a bottle. Again, he’s very easy to get back to sleep after this. He goes to sleep at about 7:00 every night and wakes up about 12 hours later for the day. All in all I’m thrilled with how well he is sleeping and how neither Missus Turtle or I have felt terribly sleep deprived over the month we’ve had him.

Socialization

Both Missus Turtle and I (and our social worker, actually) agreed that T was quite the extrovert at the beginning. He seemed to love interacting with people and crave lots of activity. Our feelings on this have changed as we have gotten to know him better. In foster care training they talk a lot about “fight, flight or freeze” where kids and babies resort to one of these defense mechanisms when they are stressed. T is definitely a “freeze” baby. He gets very quiet, smiles, and remains calm, at least externally. We’ve learned, though, that this isn’t really his personality and that over-stimulation with a lot of new people tends to be pretty stressful for him. We’ve developed a better strategy for dealing with our weekly home visits with our social worker, as he was fussy almost every time and seemed stressed afterwards. Our last visit we timed it so that he was having a bottle when she arrived. He stayed calm and we didn’t try to “show him off” in any way, although it’s tempting to show her everything new he’s doing. The visit went much better.

T isn’t sure what to think about his new extra-curricular activity. The goat, however, adores T and would let us do this all day.

Physical Progress

When we picked up T, he didn’t put any weight on his legs at all. So if you lowered him into a standing position on your lap, his legs just felt like noodles and he collapsed, more like a 3 month old than a 6 month old. He didn’t make any effort to sit on his own either. Within 24 hours we could see improvement. We all agreed it was more likely a lack of opportunity than a lack of ability. In the month we’ve had him, T has started sitting unassisted for 30+ seconds and standing with balance support, but bearing his own weight. He jumps like crazy in his exersaucer and we’ve already progressed to the most upright position of the high chair. He also is just dying to be mobile. He lifts into a “planking” position quite regularly when on the floor. He also scoots backwards (which frustrates him to no end), and is quite a pro at using pivoting (on his belly) and rolling to make his way around his room.

Thinking about crawling.

We know we will have T for at least another month, but more likely at least another 6 months. So we are really looking forward to watching him grow and learn during this exciting time.