7 months? Already?

I cannot even begin to figure out where the last 7 months have gone.  I look at the pictures from 2 months and hardly remember when he was that small and cuddly.  I miss the days of him falling asleep on me and just wanting to cuddle (he rarely wants to just cuddle unless he's not feeling great) but I absolutely love the grins and belly laughs and the fact that I have to put him in the Exersaucer just to be able to go to the bathroom because he is moving around so much.

I couldn't have done better if I'd done it on purpose - the exact same picture 3 months apart!

Colin has finally taken to some solids.  He is quite a fan of purees but if you put any amount of texture in there, it's a no go.  Thankfully he is eating the peaches I made him;  I got all bummed because he wasn't interested in the sweet potatoes I had made after the first time or two and I thought he would never eat anything I made for him (yes, I know, dramatic all or nothing)... but when we ran out of peaches from the store, which appear to be his favorite along with pears and mango, I thawed out some of my own peaches and luckily he ate them.  He ate all the sweet potatoes from the store, too, so I'm going to try my own again to see what he thinks.  And there are studies showing that children have a taste for whatever mom ate while she was pregnant... maybe that's why Colin will eat yogurt all day every day given the chance.

I really have no idea when babies are supposed to start being mobile, but I feel like Colin is working on it a little early.  And it has seriously all started in just the last week.  He was rocking, then started scooting here and there, but he is on to full fledged combat crawling.  He can make it from one side of the living room to the opposite side of the dining room in no time flat (hmm... maybe I should time it).  I walked in to get him up from a nap last week and he was sitting up in his bed, a first for doing it without help from me (the next day he finally demonstrated his skills so I could see how he did it).  He proceeded to use the rails of the crib to start pulling himself up.  Luckily he didn't actually make it standing but I don't think it's long; he was doing pretty well.  One perk to the combat crawl - his belly does a great job of getting the dirt off the floors!

Sleep continues to be hit or miss.  I feel very thankful that Colin started putting himself to sleep in the crib from about 5 weeks old (that's not to say I always put him down when he was awake but he was capable of it at that point).  We fought with night time sleeping for quite a while and now we are fighting with naps.  Somewhere around 6 months and a week or so, after letting him fuss through his "habit times" of waking up, he started sleeping 10-12 hours at night.  He can only stay awake for 1.5-2 hours at a time during the day with maybe a little longer if we are out of the house.  I have gotten very good at his cues and put him down as soon as he seems sleepy and he will usually go right to sleep but it's the staying asleep that's a problem.  One a rare good day, he will nap 2-2.5 hours but many days it's anywhere from 45 minutes to just over an hour.

And in case you wondered - the best way to show love of something is to attempt to bite it with your toothless gums (or maybe he just can't go 5 seconds without shoving something in his mouth... even during a photo session).

Sleep - my new nemesis

When Colin was first born, he didn't cry.  While his Apgars were 8 and 9, Mike, the delivery nurse, and myself have no idea how he actually got such numbers because he wasn't much of a crier.  When we came home from the hospital, it was probably well in to his second week of life before he actually screamed - he was just always a mellow little boy.  He woke up every two hours to eat but I was okay with that because he would wake up, I would feed him, cuddle him, and have him back in bed in about 15 minutes.  I felt like his sleeping was going well because he was up for such a short amount of time at night and (after the first few weeks at least) I was feeling somewhat rested.  I knew how lucky I was and I wasn't counting any chickens before they hatched, but at the time I thought things were going along quite well.

Around 4 months, I realized that Colin was waking up more for habit than for hunger every 3-4 hours every night.  He'd want to eat around 10 PM (after falling asleep around 6:30 or 7:00), then again between 1 AM and 2 AM, again at 4 AM, then again between 5:30 and 7:30.  In talking to other friends with infants and doing a little bit of reading, I realized he wasn't necessarily hungry, just used to getting up at those times every night.

Napping was another struggle.  No matter what I seemed to do, he would only sleep for 40 minutes at the most.  It wasn't such a problem until he was between 3 and 4 months old so I just kind of went with the flow.

Just prior to going on vacation, I had gotten Colin sleeping 7 hours from when he went down until his first wake up - making it around 2 AM.  I had tried feeding him around 10 PM before I went to bed but he still woke up at around 2 AM so I just went with it.  That had him waking up at 2 AM and then again between 4 AM and 5 AM, but I was excited to be getting 7 hours of continuous sleep on his part (not for me of course because I wouldn't go to bed until 10ish).  Then we went on vacation - which is the downfall of all sleep schedules.

Upon returning home from vacation, Colin was getting up every 2-3 hours every night.  I was at my wit's end and had no idea what to do about it.  I tried calming him down with soothing but always seemed to give in and just feed him because I knew he would fall back asleep that way.  Nights I had to work the next day I would just give up around 12:30 or 1 AM because I knew I couldn't be getting up that much so I'd just bring him to bed with me because it's really easy to nurse a baby who is lying right next to you.  But after being in a complete brain fog all the time, I realized I had to do something.  I'm not one for sleep training, per se, and I really don't like the idea of cry it out, but I knew that somehow, Colin needed to relearn how to put himself to sleep (did I mention he started it for the first time around 5 weeks old so I knew he was capable of it).

I won't go in to all the books I read, all the websites I visited, all the Baby Center community boards I read, and all I personally processed here and now but I will add some thoughts through posts here and there as to what worked for us and the process I went through to get where we are.  As with everything, I know that all is evolving and just when I think I get it that he'll change it, but as of right now, Colin is putting himself to sleep at the beginning of the night and in the middle of the night if he wakes up (which for the past two nights has been around two times between 1 AM and 3 AM that he puts himself back to sleep from and another wake up at 4ish when I do feed him then since it's been usually at least 6 hours since he's eaten last).... all in time to go on vacation again.  Let's hope that somehow I keep his sleep moving in the right direction this time. . . yeah right.

And naps have been a whole other story that I definitely don't have time to tell right now because I'm going to bed.