Sleep update

The good and bad old days...


We've made some significant progress on the sleep front with Cash. He is pretty much sleeping through the night consistently - 7pm to about 5:30 or 6am. There is still an occasional wake up once a night due to hunger, but after 7 months of multiple nightly wake ups, once a night is a slice of heaven.

There has been one other twist in the sleep saga though, and it makes this mommy kind of sad. Cash has started to squirm and wiggle so much when I attempt to rock him and sing him his lullabyes (since day 1 a trio of Indigo Girls songs which would make Ross groan about what kind of music I was exposing him to) that I have to put him in the bed and let him wrestle himself to sleep with me patting his back. He cries a bit, sometimes gets up on all fours but inevitably puts himself down much faster than me holding and rocking him. And it makes me sad. I was enjoying our time together in the evenings and I always enjoy singing some Indigo Girls. However, I guess it is progress from the time when he wouldn't let you put him down to sleep at all.

Mike's Farm

This Saturday, Ross, Cash and I went with family and friends out to Mike's Farm in Beaulaville, NC. Mike's Farm is a country restaurant and store that serves southern country cooking family style. I started to realize recently that I've probably eaten more "country cooking" in the past month than I have in my life. My pants have started to realize it too.

There was an hour wait for dinner so we took Cash around to look at the animals on the farm. There were chickens, goats, bunnies and even a donkey. Cash seemed more interested in the other kids feeding the animals than the animals themselves.

An Epic 8 Month Birthday

Cash turned 8 months old this past Saturday and it was a day for the record books. Not only did he decide to crawl forward for the first time (he has been crawling backwards for awhile now) but this was also the first day that I came into his room after a nap and found him standing up in his crib, holding on to the rails. Luckily, Ross and I had decided to lower his crib the previous weekend and after a little debate, went down 2 levels as opposed to 1...I guess we had some sort of premonition. Cash hasn't crawled forward since Saturday but he loves to be held in standing position and frequently tries to get up himself though he has been most successful in the crib.

As for other 8 month milestones, he now has 2 bottom teeth and I believe a couple more on the way soon with the amount of drool and fuss that has occurred in the past couple of weeks. His hair is pretty thick now and the cowlick has abated for the time-being. He's getting fatter in general and eats really well now - three meals a day along with 4 bottles. He's getting better at thicker foods and we are right on schedule to start table foods in the next couple of months. We are still waking up once per night but it's pretty much for eating purposes, not because he's having sleeping trouble.

He's still the happiest baby around, frequently commented upon by friends, day care teachers, random strangers who see him giggling and babbling everywhere we go. His favorite things are banana baby mum-mums, hearing someone sneeze or blow their nose, being outside and rubbing his feet in the grass, Baby Einstein, Scholastic Touch and Feel books, blocks, watching mommy try to juggle the blocks, and listening to daddy sing silly songs. He also has started to like slapping at daddy's face in the morning and pulling mommy's hair but we are trying to stop those habits before they become ingrained.

Bulldog battle

Sometimes we call Cash "Bulldog Cheeks". Like most of his monikers, it's one we came up with on a whim, this particular one because sometimes his chubby cheeks remind us of Ross's favorite type of dog, the English Bulldog.

Some time ago when we were visiting Ikea to find a changing table for Cash, we purchased this stuffed bulldog that we named Winston. Cash has only recently began playing with stuffed animals and by playing I mean that he usually attempts to either climb them or eat them. With Winston, he seemed to be doing both at the same time.