Toddler (backdated November 22, 2012)

My baby is a toddler. He's been taking steps for a while now but on Thanksgiving day he seemed to put it all together and was walking everywhere he went. On the 20th we noticed that he was able to stand up without pulling himself up on anything and I guess that was the missing link to some degree.

These days he walks across the room to greet us, grabs my purse and slings it over his shoulder before walking around the house with it, and has even tried walking instead of crawling on the stairs! I guess we're ready for a whole new round of baby proofing.

I'm definitely sad to see his crawling stage go. I love that when I lay down on the ground, he stops what he's doing and crawls hard and fast straight to me and then proceeds to laugh his ass off while draping himself across my body and burying his face in my stomach or rolling around on top of me. I love when he wants to go back through a doorway he came in from, he goes into a reverse scoot on his hands and knees. I love that to get down a single stair, he turns around and backward crawls down that step, he even does the same to get across a threshold where the flooring changes from one room to the next. I'm looking forward to the next stage and I'm enjoying where he is today, but I'm going to miss my little baby when he's gone.

November 19, 2012

Micah and I had a wonderful day today. He has been very mom-centric lately. Michael seems to be fairly understanding but I would imagine it might make him a little bit jealous. Every time Micah comes down with Michael after taking a nap, he immediately looks for me in the room. When I go to get him from a nap, we always spend a few minutes snuggling in the rocking chair while he rests his head on my shoulder and sucks his thumb. And it seems like every time I decide to do something like cook or straighten up, Micah decides that is the time that he wants me to hold him and he won't take any substitutes.

There wasn't anything particularly eventful about today but I got up with Micah at 8:15 (he slept late!) and we played in the living room together. We did a lot of tickling and wrestling today and I laid on the floor with him while he climbed on me and rested on my a whole bunch. There was also one moment this afternoon when I was checking email on the computer while he did his thing pulling everything in the kitchen of the shelves, and then he crawled around the corner from the kitchen, sat down in a half sitting and half crawling position, cocked his head to the side, and very intentionally batted his eyes at me. I just broke down laughing and he just kept doing it and then kept crawling around the room while occasionally pausing to throw his head back and bat his eyes. It was very strange and very adorable.

And then tonight, Michael was playing some music with a friend and I decided to take a bedtime bath with Micah. It was so nice. He seemed to enjoy the bath more than usual. I'm sure it didn't hurt that the water was deeper and warmer than usual, but he also spent a lot more time exploring the properties of the water: splashing and playing with cups that we have for the bath, kind of crawling around. It was just really fun. And after his bath, he wasn't cranky like usual. He happily let me put lotion on him and put his pajamas on, he wasn't chomping at the bit to breastfeed, and yet he went down to bed wide awake and still went to sleep right away when I left the room. I can't imagine a more pleasant bedtime routine and it was highly unusual.

Glorious Sleep.

Micah was sick all last week which lead to terrible terrible sleep patterns suddenly appearing. So we decided to get him on a good sleep schedule once and for all as soon as he was healthy again.

On Monday night, we set up camp in the guest bedroom for the week. We put him to bed at 8pm, he woke up around 2am and Michael went in to soothe him and put him back down in the crib, he woke up again around 4am and I fed him, and then he woke up around 6am and Michael again put him back to sleep. On Tuesday night, he woke up at 4am and Michael put him back to sleep and I fed him when he woke up at 6am. On Wednesday, he woke up at 4am again and when Michael put him back down, he cried for at least a full hour before falling back asleep. Again, he woke up at 6am and I fed him.

Last night he slept straight through until 6am at which time I fed him, and he slept until 7:30 this morning. It was really stunning. By far the longest he has ever slept in his life and the longest uninterrupted sleep I've had in the precisely 14 months since he was born. (If only I wasn't sick and waking up regularly all on my own last night).

Hopefully this is a new pattern! I could get used to this.

November 13, 2012

Micah is doing new things every day. Last week he had a tough cold and got into some really horrible sleeping patterns. It didn't help that the time changed early last week as well, so he was ready to go to bed an hour before we were ready to put him there and he was ready to get up at 6am. I think that as much as it had to do with the cold, it was also because he seems to be hitting some kind of physical and developmental growth spurt.

He is regularly asking for "more please," using the hand sign, as of the last two days. One day it just seemed to click for him and now he wants "more" beans and rice, "more" apple, or "more" cheerios. But he is also just as likely to want "more" potato chips that one of us are eating, "more" oyster crackers that no one at all is eating, or "more" egg shaker that is sitting out of reach on a table.

He's also been picking up verbal words like crazy. "Buh" for bye. "Wah-dh" for water. "Bah" for ball. And today when I gave Kaya the command to play dead, he pointed his finger at her and said "Bang" clear as can be.

I am told that the Frankenstein walking phase will not last for long which is a shame because it is so adorable. He is still mostly interested in controlled falling. He'll take five steps toward me while mostly just letting himself fall off balance in my direction. But he can also take several choppy steps from one place to another when he concentrates on it. He can also stand up from the floor without pushing up on a piece of furniture on occasion.

I cannot express how much we love this little baby. We all took a shower together today and both Michael and I had a moment, the same moment, when we just could not stop staring at Micah's beautiful eyes. Another wonderful thing about Micah's current stage of life is that he loves me so much. We spend at least thirty minutes every day with him just sucking his thumb, resting his head on my chest, and wrapping his free hand around my neck while I hold him and rub his back. It is the most wonderful feeling and I try not to do anything but enjoy it while it happens because I know he won't be wanting to do that for long.