30 Weeks old

Yesterday Adam was 30 weeks old. On Sunday he'll be 7 months old, and I feel like literally yesterday he was only 4 months. I'm not quite sure what happened to the time. As my sister says, he's a time-suck. You don't have any recollection of the normal passage of time when he's around. 15 minutes turns into an hour. 30 minutes turns into 3 hours...

On Tuesday I took him for his follow-up flu booster shot. Our pediatrician had run out of the immunization and recommended us to Passport Health, which does immunization shots for people who travel out of the country. It was a quick ordeal, so I picked him up from daycare at lunch and we ran over there. By the time we got there he had a dirty diaper, but no diaper bag. I had also forgotten his pacifier.

She gave him the shot and he cried for literally 5 seconds. I stroked his cheek, told him I was sorry, gave him a kiss on the forehead, and he was fine. Completely fine. Not fussy, not upset - just like nothing had happened. I am the luckiest mother alive.

For the last few weeks he has been showing signs of separation anxiety whenever Shannon or I leave the room, and he whines. But luckily this has not spilled over into the daily daycare drop off. Of the 3 teachers in the classroom, he likes two of them (the lead teacher, Amy, is awful. She has no social skills, no common sense, and I don't think I've EVER seen her just holding a baby. Luckily the other two (Miss Nia and Miss Christie) are the complete opposites of her in every way. Miss Christie is talking about leaving, and if she does, Adam will not be in that day care much longer. He will either go to a different day care, or depending on the circumstances, go to "in home" care with her.

As much as he realizes now when we're not there, he's equally as pleased to see us when we are there. He'll literally try to climb me when I'm holding him and he sees Shannon walk in the door after work, giggling and squealing. He does the same thing when I pick him up from daycare - he gets so excited he can't stand to sit still.

When he's being held by one person and wants to go to someone else (and he usually does, he is extremely social), he'll rock his whole upper body forward in their direction. He does this with Shannon and I, my parents, my brother and sister, the daycare "teachers" (the two that he likes), and my friends, even ones he's never met before. He works the room.

When he sitting on the floor and you walk near him, whether you're going toward him intentionally or just walking past him, he lifts his arms up in the air for you to pick him up.

When he gets excited or upset, he breathes really fast like he's hyperventilating. It doesn't last long but it's so frequent we can't decide if it's a habit now or if it's caused by his acid reflux.

When I try to put him in the car seat, he yells . . . literally. YELLS. (It's not crying). He stiffens every muscle in his body, arches his back and yells at me. It's nearly impossible to get him into it. This morning he was having a wonderful time eluding me and it was a 10 minute ordeal to try to strap him in. I picked him up just slightly over my head, took a deep breath and said, "Adam, you are going to get in your car seat today." He smiled, his whole face lit up, and then he looked around over my head at the driveway and yard just behind me. I know he was thinking, "HA HA! FREEDOM."

(I managed to strap him in while he was still thinking he'd outsmarted me).

When I take his picture with the iPhone, he gives me his normal pose, and then he likes to see the picture of himself. He studies it for a few seconds, likes what he sees, and smiles and talks. Some pictures he doesn't seem so impressed with, others he consistently approves of, like the one below. He thinks this one is GREAT:

My personal favorite over the last two days is this one, that I took this morning, but Adam isn't as impressed with it:

I promise you I'm not making this up. He's starting to showing a preference for the way he looks in pictures. I joke that I've created a monster, but I really don't think I take that many more pictures than typical mothers . . .

Or do I?

And if I do, is it because I'm teaching him to like pictures, or does he like pictures so much that it encourages me to do it more. Oh dear, the chicken and the egg conundrum.

Here are some more from this week.

This kid does not lack for personality, that's for sure.

 

Despite the photos, Adam does get upset or cranky sometimes, but it's usually because he's tired. And if he's tired, he goes to sleep. The fussiness is usually at night, after a long day.

He's still on two doses of Nexium per day, and it's helping with the spitting up, but there are some days when we can actually hear the acid reflux in his chest and there are nights like those where he's clearly not feeling well and the only thing that helps is a bottle. We know (well, NOW we know) to avoid peaches, mangos, and those sweet, meaty fruits. They make him feel horrible, despite the medication. We were able to start feeding him milk-based formula and he's doing okay with that. It's the "gentle" formula, but we're just happy we're not paying $30 for a small canister of the hypo-allergenic stuff anymore, and that it's working out okay.

Adam is still not sleeping through the night. We have been "lucky" when he falls asleep at 7 (sometimes after a long day at day care he just can't help it) and sleeps a whole 9 hours and wakes up at 4. We've had many nights where he wakes up twice - once at 11pm and then again around 5 am. We have tried to let him cry it out or self-soothe, but it's not like he's waking up to play or because he just wants to snack. There are times when he whimpers for 15 minutes and Shannon or I will finally go in, and he's lying in his crib, pacifier still in his mouth and eyes are still closed, curled up in his sleeping position . . . like he really doesn't want to be awake. Usually he's on his stomach and his knees are tucked up underneath him. It looks like he's in pain.

And quite honestly, sometimes we get more sleep by just getting up, giving him the bottle, burping him, changing him, and putting him back to bed. Strangely, he rarely ever wakes up at 7 or 8 am moaning or upset - it's all smiles when the sun comes up.

So despite his nighttime troubles, he can't stop smiling in the mornings...