Bedtime Ritual

Every night I take James upstairs to put his jammies on and feed him. When we are finished we sit at the top of the stairs and call for Daddy to come up and read the bedtime story with us. Sometimes it takes Lee a while to get to the stairs to come up and James gets impatient and starts leaning forward and trying to look around the corner. When he sees Daddy at the bottom of the stairs this is what Daddy sees:

...big grin, and about to catapult himself down the stairs.

Finally

Well I think James has finally figured out and embraced this sitting thing. I am still not quite confident enough in his skills to leave him without a pillow behind him to spot him but he can stay sitting up for quite a while now.

Also, you can really see his two little teeth in this picture!

Monitor

Before having a baby I thought video monitors were unnecessary. "Only really anxious parents needed them." When James was about 5 months old he started rolling onto his tummy while he slept, then he would cry. The first few times he did this it scared him and if you would just roll him back onto his back before he got too upset he would just go right back to sleep. When that started happening I thought "man it would be great if I had a video monitor so I could see why he is crying". If I went into his room to check it was harder for me to just leave him alone if he didn't really need me.

Well, this weekend I got a cheap, old-school video monitor and I love it! Last night for some reason James woke up at 4:45. I didn't have to lay in bed and wonder if somehow his bed or the monsters in his room (ok maybe I am a BIT of an anxious mom) were killing him. I just turned on the video, could see that he was fine and then turned it back off. He cried for 45 minutes and I laid in bed peacefully because every 15 minutes or so I would turn the monitor on and reassure myself that he was fine and he just needed to be left alone so he could figure out how to get himself back to sleep. It however did not make me any less tired this morning...

New Game

Since most of our house is carpeted, when James is on the floor he is usually on carpet. Tonight I had some things I wanted to do in the kitchen (which isn't carpeted) so I decided to take a blanket in the kitchen and lay him on it. Right now there are no blankets that are big enough to contain all his rolling but I figured once he went off it onto the cold hard floor maybe he would decide it was better on the blanket and stay there. Once I laid him down he immediately rolled off and the first thing he did was blow a raspberry on the floor. I kept putting him back on the blanket, he kept rolling off and blowing raspberries.

It's probably my fault because I laughed pretty hard the first time he did it!

7 months-the downward spiral

(it's a snow globe)

I can't believe James is already 7 months old! We are on the downward spiral to 1 year old. It is unbelievable.

James eats 3 meals a day of solid foods now. He eats avocado, bananas, apples, pears, mango, carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnips, squash, green beans, peas, oatmeal, rice cereal and multi-grain cereal. He loves it...except when he is teething which brings me to the next subject.

James got 2 teeth this month. He seems to handle teething pretty well. I can definitely tell something is going on when a tooth is coming but he doesn't turn into a monster or anything. He seems to fight me on eating solid foods for about a week before a tooth erupts. 2 days before the tooth breaks through he struggles to take his naps. I think the teeth have been making him wake up once in the night and need me but I'm not really sure if that is due to some other issue.

James can now roll all the way across a room and around in circles. He is starting to get into things...we will soon be in A LOT of trouble! I am trying to work on child proofing but I think it will probably be an ongoing project as James shows us what needs to be childproofed.

(Daddy caught him picking his nose)

James also likes to giggle with (at) his daddy. Daddy is REALLY funny. He also likes the patterns on his burp cloths which makes it hard for him to concentrate on burping. He especially likes to look at the burp cloth with little cars all over it.

Caged

There can be only one cord in the whole room...

These boys don't even crawl yet...

I can leave for just 2 minutes and I come back and they are snacking on that one cord. They are sneaky and mischievous.

Sitting

So, basically James should be able to sit up on his own now. However, James seems to be very content lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling or rolling all around the floor chasing after his toys. We practice sitting up often but James likes to kick back and lounge. Our best attempts are when he is sitting in front of the TV. He will sit up for a little longer then.

Today I put the boppy around James and left him with a toy in front of him to practice sitting a little. When I looked back over at him this is what I saw...

...lounging again!