Life gets busy

I keep meaning to post. Throughout the day I'll think, "I need to write about this tonight." And then tonight will come and I don't have time to post. By the time I can, I've forgotten what I was going to write. Boo.

Yesterday Handsome got almost hysterical with his crying. He doesn't even cry this much when he falls and hits his head. Any time I set him down he would just start screaming. At times even when I was holding him it didn't make him stop crying. That rarely happens, so I was afraid he was sick or had some stick in his socks since we went out to the park to take pictures. When I was cooking I asked DH to change his diaper just to see if there was a diaper rash or dirt somewhere. Of course there was nothing. He must have been tired, but it was around 6pm when this happens and the past few nights he has been going to bed at 9pm, so I still don't really know what it was. When I went to put him to bed he only stopped crying to nurse and then continued crying when he finished. Typically I just lay him down in his crib and he will fall asleep on his own. Last night that was not happening. He returned to hysterical crying as soon as I laid him down. I can't handle hysterical crying, so I held him until he calmed down and fell asleep in my arms. Of course he woke up as soon as I put him down and started crying again. This time I decided to give him a few minutes to see if he would quiet down and he fell asleep in less than a minute.

I hate when he is so upset and I don't know why he is so upset. If I knew why he was crying then I would know how to handle it, or at least have more of an idea. If I knew he was just tired then I could have let him put himself to sleep the first time and not worried about it, but what if he was sick?

Off to a happier topic, Handsome's new favorite thing to do is climb. He's climbed at least the bottom stair, and would probably continue to climb higher, but we don't let him get beyond the first step. If I am sitting next to the coffee table, he will step up on my legs and hold onto the table. He also purposefully chooses the most difficult path to whatever he is trying to get to. If he could crawl slightly to the right on a clear carpet path to get to the toy he wants to get to, or he could crawl to the left and go over the leg, over the stuffed animal, and over the coke bottle, he will choose the more complicated path.

He looks like he has two more teeth on the top that are starting to come in. Once those come in, he'll have six teeth.

He's starting to know when things are being taken away from him and when DH or I are leaving him. He cries in both instances. Boo. I was enjoying the happy go lucky personality. Hopefully that will return soon.

I took pics yesterday in manual. The majority turned out well. I think I got the exposure right, but the color is kinda blah. I think part of that is the fact that all the plants are still dead, so they just don't have vibrant colors right now, and another part of that should be the white balance. I want to buy a gray card to see if that would fix it, but we got to the camera store at 6:05pm and learned they closed at 6pm. Boo.

Bathtime

Do you know what Handsome was doing during his bath time last night? Crawling. He refused to lay still for his bath, so I had to follow him with the soap to attempt to get him clean. This is definitely going to complicate bath time. Any ideas on how to keep him at least sitting still? I had a toy for him to hold, but that didn't seem to help anything.

Sleeping problems

For the past two days Handsome has been on a small sleeping strike. I think he caught my cold. He's been grumpy for two days straight. Whether you hold him or let him crawl he's going to be calm for a little while and then start fussing. Even all the tried and true methods of making him smile wouldn't work.

On Saturday Handsome was finally taking a nap around 6pm and of course he pooped all over the place. This woke him up earlier than he was naturally ready to wake up - again adding to the grumpiness. Then we had to wash the sheets (the extra was also waiting to be washed) and couldn't put him back to bed until they finished washing and drying. This means we couldn't put him to bed until 9pm.

I fed him and put him to bed. 20 minutes later he was screaming. I went to soothe him to sleep again and when I opened the door he was holding on the railing and standing on his knees. I walked him, patting his back, for a while and laid him back down. 30 minutes later he was screaming again. This time DH went to pick him up. He gave him a bottle and actually rocked him until he fell asleep at 11pm. That time he finally stayed asleep for a longer period.

Normally he wakes up in the morning around 9am. On Sunday he woke up at 7am. I got up to feed him and then he wouldn't go back to sleep again. As I also have the same cold he does, I was missing my sleep. I kinda cheated at this point to get more sleep. If I left his bedroom, Handsome would start crying, but he seemed to be ok with me just sitting on the extra bed in his room. So I left him in his crib with his little fabric blocks and climbing on the sides of his crib, and I laid down on the queen sized bed and nodded off to sleep. I did manage to wake up when he pulled the mobile of his bed off. I removed it completely from his crib and laid back down.

Screaming commenced two hours later, so I got up and faced the day. He managed to take one longish nap and did go to bed yesterday without much of a fuss. Hopefully we are over the hump and he will go back to his normal sleeping pattern.

I think I'm spoiled with how easily Handsome sleeps. On a typical day he goes to bed at 8pm after I've bathed a fed him. When I put him in his crib he's not actually asleep so he talks to himself for a little while until he falls asleep about 30min later. Then he's up around 5am when I feed him, and goes back to sleep immediately. He wakes up for the day around 9am, and then naps around 11am four about two hours and then again around 3pm for two or three hours. Now granted of all those hours, he's probably awake at least two or three of them just playing in his crib, but he's at least content and will actually start crying if you interrupt his "me" time.

Not so limited mobility

Well, Handsome is moving around even better these days. His crawl is now a bona fide crawl. His favorite spots seem to be the VCR, the small speaker wire on the bottom stair, and the coffee table with all its attractions. He will start crawling to the VCR and once he gets just within arms reach, he will lay down on his stomach, reach his hand out and simultaneously look back at me to see if I am watching. Sometimes I'll even get the smile when he sees that I am indeed watching him. When he's done smiling, his hand goes into the VCR so that he can hear the coveted noise that it will make when the door opens and shuts.

Then a couple days ago I heard him awaken from his nap, and went to get him from his crib and found his new talent. He had reached above the bumper and was holding onto the crib's railing - again laughing at me as I caught him in the act. Seeing as he is now starting to pull himself up - at least to his knees - on whatever he can climb on, I think it is now time to lower the crib mattress so that he doesn't climb out of the crib a little earlier than he can truly handle.

And with all this mobility, do you know what he STILL won't do? Sit. The boy refuses to sit. If you sit him in front of the TV and make no other noises, then he will remain seated and watch TV for a little while. Other than that, he refuses to sit still. I think he knows how to sit, he is just unwilling to do so. He would much rather be crawling and getting into something new. Now when you sit him on his little hiney, he will immediately lean forward, get onto his hands and knees and start crawling.

Gone are the days of yore

Yesterday two milestones happened.

Milestone #1: We took down Handsome's swing. He has grown out of it. He's too mobile and too heavy. Now there is nothing to contain him except his crib. I already miss the days of easy containment, and the second milestone will show why.

Milestone #2: As we were taking down Handsome's swing we had our backs turned to him for mere seconds. In those seconds, Handsome managed to crawl over to DH's coffee and pull the cup towards him spilling the coffee all over the carpet and Handsome. As soon as I saw it, I picked up Handsome as fast as I could and made sure that the coffee wasn't still hot. It was actually cold and I'm sure if it was still hot then cries would have let us know. We cleaned Handsome and the carpet knowing all the while that this was the first incident of many to come. I think Handsome was proud of himself for reaching the coffee. When I turned to see him at the coffee he was just looking at me with his hand still on the mug. I guess that's better than the days when he will hide his hand covered in permanent marker saying, "It wasn't me mommy!"

It's a scoot!

Last night I was sitting on the blanket with Handsome and he was doing his normal push-ups on hands and toes. I was shaking his little toy in front of him to see if he would be able to crawl forward. Usually he just falls backward when he wants to move forward. This time I noticed that he was able to reach the toy, but it didn't really click as to what had just happened yet. He did it a couple more times and then I started wondering, how is he reaching the toy every time? Am I putting it too close to him? So I started paying more attention and he was moving forward every time!!! Somehow he figured out how to kind of fall forward instead of falling backward. Then he would kinda scoot on the floor like an army man in training. I was so proud of him!!! He seemed so proud of himself every time he reached the toy. He'd grab it and then look up at me with a big grin on his face (well, the times when he didn't immediately eat the toy that is).

I ran to get the video camera to document the momentous occasion (even though DH said this was technically the second day Handsome had been doing this). I set up the camera, turned it on, moved away from the camera, and placed the toy in front of Handsome. And what did Handsome do? He looked at the camera. I shook the toy, and Handsome stared at the camera. I spoke in a very fun baby voice, and Handsome looked at the camera. For 30 minutes Handsome just looked at the camera as I tried my darnedest to get his attention. Stupid red flashing LED. I gave up, turned the camera off, and Handsome picked up the toy.

Again, Handsome thinks he's funny. Is this a bad sign?