I simply can’t believe that Nathan has been with us for half a year now! Geez, at this rate his first birthday is just around the corner! Tomorrow Nathan gets his 6 month vaccinations and will also have his 6 month check. Edited to add: Nathan’s weight was measured to be about 7 kg which isn’t much more than what he weighed at 4 months, so the GP wants to weigh him again in 2 weeks to make sure he is putting on weight. I think that Nathan is doing just fine, he is growing, looks slightly chubby and is happy.
A lot has been going on in the last two weeks. Nathan’s gunky eye has finally fixed itself, so there is no more green gunk to clean off his eyelids on a regular basis. In addition to his fingers, Nathan now sometimes sucks his thumb in that classic clenched fist style.
Nathan isn’t crawling properly yet, but he tries hard to get there. Regardless, he’s definitely on the move and we are now seriously considering how to baby-proof the flat. So far we’ve just blockaded off the areas we don’t want him in.
We have made progress with Andrew getting Nathan to sleep. I made Andrew a pouch to carry Nathan in, and yesterday Nathan slept in it twice. We are now hopeful that day sleeps won’t be the issue for Andrew that we thought they would be when he starts looking after Nathan full time. I am going to make another attempt at getting Nathan to go to sleep in the cot rather than
Our day has 4 cycles of roughly 2.5 – 3.5 hours where Nathan wakes, is fed, has a play on the floor, he has a grizzly period as he starts to get tired (during which time we play together on the floor, sing songs, or read books or just gets carried while I do other things) and then he is rocked to sleep for his half hour nap while listening to Clare de Lune on his sleep CD. He is then put down in his cot and some 25 minutes later he wakes up and the cycle starts again.
Nathan’s babble has started to sound more like words, and he often says ‘mum’. He seems to know it means me, though it is hard to say for sure.
Our dabbling in elimination communication is going well. In 3 weeks he’s done 2 huge poos, both of which have been caught in a bucket. We probably catch about 80-90% of his wees, and we try to keep it up when we’re out as well. I love that we have dramatically reduced the number of nappies we use daily which, in turn, reduces the amount of washing we have. And I used to put thick night nappies on at night, thick enough to absorb 12 hours worth of wee, but with one toilet opportunity during the night we’ve now had 7 dry nappies at night in a row! So far it’s all based on timing in that I just offer the toilet (bucket) when I think Nathan might need it. The next step is to get him to signal his need to go.
Foods that Nathan has tasted so far…
Apple (uncooked, sucks the juice where I take bites), banana, corn (on the cob, he does manage to chew off some kernels I leave on the cob for him), carrot, cantaloupe, pear (ripe), chicken (bone), pizza crust, a very small quantity of cous cous and an equally small quantity of rice, pumpkin soup, potato and garlic soup, and roast pumpkin soup (pumpkin, tomato, sweet potato, carrots and chicken stock).
