A few weeks ago I posted that we thought Nathan was going to pop out a tooth because he was chewing more, sucking on his lower lip and he was a little fussier than usual. Well, no teeth have shown up yet, but right around that time Nathan’s clothes all got snugger and shorter so I think it was actually a growth spurt. It’s weird how it seems like overnight a lot of his clothes stopped fitting!
And our adventure begins!
Our trip to Dallas was great. Nathan did really well on the plane. He had no ear problems (thank goodness!), and he flirted with some of the other passengers so they helped keep him entertained (thank you nice strangers!) There was a 16 month old boy sitting near us on the way home and Nathan was SO excited about him, jumping all over the place to look at him, and the little boy kept coming over to say Hi to Nathan. It was very cute. Toward the end of the three hour flights Nathan got a little fidgity so we had to provide a lot of distraction, but all in all, he did great. We were very proud 
The visit itself was also really good. My grandmother was just thrilled to see Nathan and it made me so happy to see her so happy. We saw lots of family and friends at the open house my grandmother had on Sunday. It was a good sized crowd, with Nathan as the guest of honor, so he was spoiled with warm Texas-mom (and dad) love. What is it about those Texan women (or is it southern women in general)? They just fawned over Nathan and gave him so much love. He was perfectly happy to visit with everyone and be held and carried around, no complaining, no stranger anxiety. It was great!
Besides the open house, we visited some cousins, listened to Uncle Allen play guitar and sing us songs, and just hung out at my grandmothers.
Listening to Uncle Allen sing
Using mom’s hair as a harness
He loved this big bear
Nathan didn’t sleep very well at night, but we managed by switching him between the pack-n-play, the carseat and in bed with us. Strangely, he napped great during the whole trip. And even with the time change and weird sleep schedule, he remained happy and charming.
Monday, Nathan woke up with some seriously gunked up eyes and didn’t seem to feel too well. It was the only time during the trip that he was kind of fussy. We had our pediatrician’s office fax a prescription to a local pharmacy and gave him drops before the plane ride, and they helped immediately. He was still pretty gooky on the plane, but it was an improvement at least.
Nathan started clapping while were there, and as mentioned in a previous post, got to try his first sippy cup. He also got to take his first shower and seemed to have a lot of fun with it.
Thank you to everyone in Dallas that lent us things for my grandmother’s house…the pack-n-play, the highchairs, the crib sound machine and the exersaucer were so so helpful.
Goopy-eyed baby on the flight home
And as usual, there are more pictures in the photo albums section. Check out the album titled Dallas January 2008.
Among many other “firsts” on Nathan’s trip to Dallas (which we’ll post about later), he used a sippy cup for the first time. He loved it and knew just what to do with it.
Several morning a week, Nathan will wake up while Im in the shower and Gary is still in bed. These mornings he gets to snuggle under the covers with some toys, and daddy, and watch the news. I love walking in and finding him there all sleepy-eyed and smiley.
Who’d have thought that Nathan moving up from the Infant I class to the Infant II class at daycare would be a big deal? But it is! I guess it’s not a surprise that I’d get all emotional about it (I’m his mom, I’m allowed to get emotional about everything he does!), but I think even Gary sees it as a big step. On January 21, Nathan is scheduled to move to the new room. Usually this happens after the babies become mobile. Don’t get excited, Nathan isn’t crawling yet, but he is the oldest kid in his current room and spends time several days a week in the Infant II class anyway. He’s scooting on his butt, and pivoting himself, and has just started scooting backwards when he’s on his tummy. I think once he gets around the mobile kids he’ll be very motivated to get moving too.
Nathan is also officially finger feeding now. We started off giving him broken pieces of Gerber Puffs, then gave him whole pieces and then let him try to pick them up himself. At first he could grab them, but didn’t quite get that they should go into his mouth. Last Friday was the first time he figured it out. We put a few down on the table for him and he pushed them around for a bit and got them into his fist, where they’d get kind of stuck. Eventually I picked one up while he watched and put it in his mouth, and then he managed to pick one up himself and pop it right in! How cool to watch him figuring it all out. Check out the most recent video to see him eating puffs the other night.
Nathan has also started banging toys together and he’s really getting into story time before bed. He seems to have picked out some favorite books and will often let me know that he wants to hear one again (and again). He still loves the one with animal noises and anything with rhymes and fun noises makes him happy too. Baby Cakes seems to be a favorite of both of ours.
We have a ton of new videos of Nathan online. They start back in late September and go through tonight. Yeah… we’ve been pretty bad at putting them up online. Rather than put them all in a post here and make this page painfully slow to open, we’ve created two new “Video” pages. One is for videos from Birth through six months and the other for six months to current. You can find the links on the left.
Hard to believe it, but Nathan just turned 8 months old!
This is a big food milestone for me because for some reason I have become more comfortable with letting him try certain foods I was not comfortable with before. We’ve broken up Gerber puffs for him to try (though he hasn’t figured out how to pick them up himself yet), and he’s getting oatmeal. We also just started yogurt today, which surprisingly he was unphased by and didn’t even make the usual face he makes with the first taste of new food.
We thought he might be getting ready to pop his first tooth since he started chewing on things even more than usual and sucking on his lower lip, but nothing so far. He’s still pulling up all the time and loves to stand, but he’s also started tolerating more time on his tummy and he’s pushing with his feet a little and rocking, so maybe he’ll crawl afterall!
In a previous post I mentioned how he doesn’t roll, but the latest development is that Nathan is rolling over in his crib. He goes from back to tummy, and most times he wakes up now we find him on his stomach, pushing up with his hands. I’ve caught him sleeping on his tummy once, and last night I found him sleeping perpendicular at the end of the crib on his back, so I think he finally rolled from back to tummy, and back to his back again. Right now the rolling in the crib seems to be interrupting his sleep a little, but I think ultimately it will be good if he figures out how to comfortably sleep on his belly and roll in both directions.
Nathan recently started getting his baths in the big tub since he outgrew the infant tub we had. Its actually made bathing him a lot easier, and he LOVES getting a bath. Its part of our bedtime routine so he knows its coming when I start to get him undressed before bed and he gets really excited. He’ll start squealing and kicking his legs around. In the bath he usually just chews on a little crab toy we have, and he likes to put his hands under the running water. He hasn’t started splashing yet.
The best part of Nathan getting older is how we are seeing his personality develop. He’s still a sweet, happy kid and for the most part he’s not too fussy (knocking on wood!), but now he is also expressing himself when we take something away from him that he wasn’t done with, or when he sees something he wants. And I just love seeing all the things that make him happy and excited.