Bradley turned 9 months old yesterday. We celebrated by hanging out with our PEPS parenting group in the morning (nothing special, a regularly planned meeting) and spending time with my parents and my little brother and his girlfriend in the afternoon. Bradley had a very social day.
We had a nice day today, my little guy and I. He's hilarious now for naps, he just wanders around his crib and occasionally gets himself stuck in impossible positions and I have to go up and save him from being flat on his back with a leg lodged in the crib bars. His average wander time is 20 minutes. You wouldn't think a crib could be interesting for that long but Bradley keeps busy! It's very fun to have the video baby monitor so I can watch him as he wanders and turns in circles and gets himself tangled up in his blanket.
He also follows me around the house now. Literally. In the morning I'll be running back and forth between the kitchen and the living room straightening things and getting Bradley's breakfast ready and wherever I go, there's a baby crawling behind me trying to catch up. He's quite cheerful about the whole thing and to be honest it's pretty heartwarming. Nathan experienced this firsthand today when he came home from work and a delighted Bradley make excited noises as he crawled across the room and around the couch as fast as he could so he could grab at Daddy's feet. Nathan said that Bradley could do whatever he wanted tonight after that, it was spoil Bradley time.
Unfortunately for Nathan, I had decided that tonight was feed Bradley solid chunks of food night and had steamed some butternut squash, carrots, and peas for Nathan to try to get Bradley to eat with dinner. There were two problems with this plan. 1) Bradley is STARVING come dinnertime and just wants you to shovel food into his mouth as rapidly as possible. Finger foods are not conducive to this. Also 2) Bradley is not a huge fan of carrots or butternut squash and he hate hate hates peas. Tonight may have been the worst dinner Bradley has had to endure for some time. I tried to help at the end by holding up the steamed foods to Bradley's mouth and I have to say, not laughing at my child when he makes faces at foods is something I really have to work at. The faces are amazing. Also amazing is when I hold up a single pea to his mouth and he closes it firmly while pushing my hand away. I'm not supposed to laugh at this?
We're looking forward to Nathan's mom and stepdad coming to visit us for a few days at the end of this week. Bradley is looking forward to the spoiling he is sure to receive and I'm looking forward to lots of good family pictures!
In the meantime, here are some Bradley videos!
Daddy is just the funniest ever!
Dressed up for Christmas with his friend Brynn
And here are a few holiday photos! It was a great Christmas!
SO many presents for one small person. Fortunately he did not complain.
Yes, we are pregnant with baby #2! I hope this provides at least some excuse for the sorry state of this blog in the last month or so. The first trimester hit rather hard this time. But now I'm 14 weeks along and energy levels are going back up so hopefully I'll be able to catch up soon and Nathan may even get a home cooked meal again someday! (We've been living off of Costco meals and soup and sandwiches for quite some time now)
Nathan got a picture of my parents' reaction when they found out. It was pretty fun to surprise them!
We feel so fortunate that we have had such an easy time getting pregnant
whenever we've been in the market for a baby ... but it wouldn't have
been too terrible if it had taken just a little bit longer this time
around. I'm both excited and a little embarrassed that we seem to be repopulating the earth and Nathan - Nathan is
so proud of himself. Shocker.
I found out after feeling a little queasy most of a Saturday a couple months back. I took a pregnancy test while Nathan was out with a friend and I might have flipped out when it turned out to be positive. I couldn't keep the news to myself so I decided to call Nathan.
Me (too brightly) "Hi!"
Nathan "Hi ... what's up?"
Me "Oh, nothing. Everything is good. You should come home to watch your movie with Pat"
Nathan "Uh, why?"
Me "I just think it would be a really good idea. You'd get to see Bradley ... just come home."
Nathan "Anne, is everything okay? You're acting a little weird?"
Me: "No I'm not. Just come home. As soon as you can."
Nathan "Okay, I'm in a private place. What's up?"
Me: "Nothing nothing nothing. Okay, I want to tell you something. But you need to come home."
Nathan: "Why can't you tell me on the phone?"
Me: "Because I want to see your face ... it's not BAD. I just ... come home."
Nathan: "... are you pregnant?"
Darn him. It's funny, looking back there are some real indicators
that something was up. A couple of weeks earlier I had cried a little at
the Price is Right when a blind man won money on the show. Drew Carey was so NICE to him and he won a bonus and he had a dog and ... I shed tears. And I had tried to get out of some evening activities a couple days before finding out but Nathan was so mean to me and encouraged me to go out and spend time with friends even though the couch was so cozy. The jerk. I was obviously justified in being furious with him for his betrayal of my need to rest on the couch and watch Hulu shows. And then there was the time that I yelled at him because he went and got me a
couple Swedish fish when he OBVIOUSLY should be helping me get Bradley
ready for his solids meal instead. Let's just say that both of us were relieved to discover that this moodiness was likely linked to pregnancy. Ordinarily I am a delight!
Patrick has quite the fan club of nurses when we go into my OB appointments. Normally the older sibling is not still a baby when the mother is pregnant with #2 ...
In my defense, my body has been taking a beating with this pregnancy. It's not like I can rest whenever I like, Bradley doesn't allow that. Things have gotten a lot nicer now that he sleeps through the night. And if he wakes up, Nathan goes up and changes his diaper and I get to sleep. But I'm also still breastfeeding, despite the doctors telling me that is not a great idea. I would be delighted to give Bradley formula at this point but Bradley does not agree with me. So we continue to breastfeed.
Luckily, Bradley is growing more adorable and charming every day so we're hopeful that by the time baby #2 gets here we'll have a reasonable time of it. He had a blast over Christmas with his Grandma and Grandpa Redfern who spoiled him beyond measure. He was carried around as much as he liked and every grunt and whine was responded to quickly and cheerfully, which is just the way he likes it.
The kitties had a rougher time over the holidays. We drove up to my parents' house and had Layla and Meg in a carrier together so Layla would be happy and calm for the ride. It didn't work, we found out when we got there that she had thrown up. A lot. Including on Meg. The unhappy kitties were given a bath by Daniel and Nathan, which was not their favorite Christmas present ever. Sookie gets to be Layla's car buddy from now on.
And if things weren't rough enough on a kitty, Bradley has caught the kitty fever and there is nothing he loves so much as chasing down a kitty from across the room. He spies them, gives a squeal of glee, and then crawls over at a surprisingly rapid pace. The cats wait until he's about a foot away from them and then he generally pauses and gives a few more loud squeals which is when they make their escape. Poor kitties. I try to protect them by chasing them down and holding them for Bradley so he can get good and close to them. It sounds cruel but I make sure that Bradley is gentle with them.
The other day we couldn't find Layla anywhere ...
She was so so warm and happy.
Bradley has encountered a few dogs in the past few weeks and he isn't as sure about them. We went to my friend Cerra's house over Christmas and he cried a little after the two family dogs barked quite loudly when we walked in. But then he tried to chase after the frightened dog half an hour later, so he recovered. He giggled a lot when another friend's dog licked his hand but he wasn't as much of a fan of his face getting licked. But then, neither was I. I just have to tell myself that he's getting exposed to the good germs. Not that there isn't enough of that at home. Pregnancy has taken a toll on my housecleaning and now he crawls all over ... I just have to keep telling myself that those are the good germs. If this kid has any allergies it's not my doing.
And he continues to eat like a crazy person. Meals with Bradley are an experience, he wolfs down food as fast as you can give it to him and makes frantic whiny noises if there is any slight delay. And he'll cry when we cut him off - after 12-14 ice cubes of food. For comparison, his little friends in our parenting group are eating a max of 5-6 ice cubes of food for a meal. We have a pediatrician appointment in about a week, I'm very interested to hear what he has to say about this. Thank goodness for my mom's help making baby food, we go through it at an astounding rate.
We are having a blast with this kid, it's probably good that #2 is coming along sooner rather than later so he doesn't get more of a complex from being the center of attention all the time.
Bradley is becoming a menace. This kid can motor around pretty efficiently these days and his favorite things are eating pieces of his foam mat (acceptable), trying to grab and eat Christmas decorations off the tree (unacceptable), and trying to eat any power cords he can find (HIGHLY unacceptable). Nathan took a video today of me moving the vacuum cleaner and Nathan's slippers away from Bradley as the child scoots after them with great determination. What a stinker. We don't have any baby gates as of yet so it's a little thrilling whenever I try to leave him alone in the living room for 30 seconds in order to use the bathroom or get food or any other silly thing I like to do. He'll be happily playing with his little people cars one minute and the next minute he's moved on to trying to take down the Christmas tree. I have a video of him getting upset at the tree when the branches touch his head while he's trying to get his grubby little hands on a shiny ornament. This is my kid all right.
He's getting moderately better at being left alone to play. I've learned that he doesn't like to be totally abandoned, he prefers it when I come and check in on him and say hi every few minutes. That way you know that if you need Mommy she will be available to you in a timely manner. These things are important to a little boy.
And in AMAZING MARVELOUS news, Bradley now sleeps through the night! At least, he doesn't require any milk during the night anymore. On the night that he turned 8 months old Nathan and I had grand plans of trying to wean him off his night feed and have Nathan go in to do the "pick up put down" method of handling a crying baby in order to get him to sleep despite only getting half of a meal from Mommy. Which was going to work down to a quarter meal and then nothing at all over subsequent nights. Bradley must have heard what was in store for him because he slept through the entire night and didn't even bother waking for what was certain to be an unpleasant experience. Smart baby! Since then he's done a moderately good job of sleeping through the night. He'll wake up if he has a poo and generally go right back to sleep. After 8 months of disrupted sleep this is miraculously amazingly wonderful for his poor parents.
A problem has been the number of poos he's had during the night though ... there were two or even three per night for a while. It turned out the issue was that our little tank of a child was eating too much. You know how they say to feed your child as long as they seem interested in the food and aren't turning it away? That doesn't work with Bradley. He LOVES food so much and doesn't seem to realize that he has an option not to eat what is held up in a spoon in front of him. One day I fed him 14 or 15 ice cubes of food for lunch - that's an entire ice cube tray of food. For a 22 lb baby. That's crazy. So now we cut him off at 10 or 11 ice cubes and it seems to be working. Maybe if we only fed him peas and zucchini we wouldn't have a problem since he actively hates both of these foods and might not eat them even if he was starving.
Among the things Bradley likes to eat these days are my hair and my shoulder. I don't really mind him chewing on my hair, he seems to especially like it when it's wet, I just think it's a little odd. But I am not cool with the shoulder chewing, especially now that he likes to get his teeth into the action. Bradley definitely knows the word "no" now and cries whenever I use it.
We've been working on baby signs ... sort of. The issue may be that I really don't care if he learns how to sign and I only want to teach him a few signs anyway. We've been doing a lot of "more" during meals and he just makes excited anxious noises whenever I pause to do so, mostly because I think he's upset that the progression of food to his mouth has been slowed. The only baby sign that I'm sure I could teach him almost instantly is "I want that forbidden thing over there." If he made a sign and immediately got the forbidden thing he'd be doing it all day.
He is getting rather verbal, it's rather shocking that a child left with me all day would like to talk! He somehow learned how to roll his r's and likes to practice this skill a lot. One's chin gets covered in a good amount of drool when one does this properly, luckily Bradley doesn't seem to mind.
We just had another meeting with our parenting group a couple nights ago and had a blast with all the babies rolling around excitedly playing with toys and trying to grab at each other. We are loving this stage with Bradley, it's so fun to see him so interested in everything and getting to be so aware of the world around him. It's also such a sweet stage, he adores his mommy and daddy and all he needs to be happy is to have one of us spending time with him. And I know I'm going to regret saying this when he's older and truly getting into some trouble - but I love that I'm getting to see his impish side. What a fun kid!
