I’ve already sent blog posts about the wonderful trip to California, so I’ll focus on his achievements and the fun since then.
Right after we came home, Logan was a sitting champion. It is still his favorite thing to do. He loves to sit up and play with toys. His favorite activities are anything where he can sit and bang his hands around. He likes to hold a toy and bang away, usually with his right hand, but sometimes with his left. He gets really focused and it is fun to see.
We started loan on solid foods on July 20th (we waited until after he had adjusted from the trip and recovered from his shots). He had sweet potato first and was not a big fan at all. However, the next day he ate a bit more and by day 3 and 4 he was really enjoying it and packing it away (it is now one of his favorite foods). We then tried him on rice cereal, which he hated and didn’t do great things for his bowels. We have suspended the grains for a bit later. We just added summer squash on july 31, but he wasn’t the biggest fan. We mixed it with breast milk and sweet potato. I think the next food will be avocado. I like the idea of him being able to eat it as a finger food eventually, though we’ll start with it mashed.
At about 6.5 months Logan finally mastered and remembered how to roll from back to front. Although I’m glad he has figured this out, it has really mixed up everything. He was sleeping through the night again (after we did a little cry-it-out to recover from our California trip) and now when he wakes at night, instead of quietly putting himself back to sleep, he’ll roll over and then get annoyed because he doesn’t want to sleep on his stomach. We have been intervening a lot in naps and nighttime to roll him back over. Although I am all for cry-it-out, seems a little cruel to force him to cry until he learns to sleep, so we’ll play the game for a bit and see if he can accustom himself to it. Additionally, he has started sleeping more on his side and peeing on his side so all the pee comes out of the diaper and we are changing his outfit and sheets about 4 times per day including at least once at night. We are hoping overnight diapers will help with this.
His favorite toy is his star stacker and anything else that makes music, like his monkey or his keyboard. He grew tired of his favorite book, Brown Bear at the end of the month. Since we first started reading to him, he has loved this book. Strangely, leading up to him hating it, he seemed more into it than ever – getting the biggest grin when we open it and batting at all the pages. But then he was suddenly bored. We have moved on to some other books now.
It was a lot of fun seeing him with the cousins. Logan isn’t super interactive yet, but he seemed very interested in what they were doing. However, I could tell how used to a quiet house he is because the noise and activity would rattle him, especially if he was a tiny bit tired. I was looking forward to seeing all 3 kids lined up for Andrew’s bday picture but Logan quickly lost his marbles and cried the entire time. One of Tara’s friends, commented on facebook that Logan had mastered screaming his face off (her term, and a good one), while keeping his pacifier in his mouth. I hadn’t realized he had mastered this skill, but she was right! It gave me a good chuckle.
I really enjoyed getting to spend more time with Luke and Andrew as well. I feel like now that I am a mom, I just find it easier to interact with kids, even ones that are older than Logan. I think I am better able to ignore being an adult and just engage with the kid on whatever level they want to. I had some great conversations with Luke and got to play with Andrew quite a bit. I hadn’t really been able to bond with Andrew before so it was really special to me. I am really looking forward to watching Logan follow closely in Andrew’s footsteps (probably literally) as they grow up together. If only we were all closer….
Lastly, he has really improved his hand eye coordination. He can now pick up exactly the toy he wants, rotate it and put it in his mouth, pass it to another hand, or band it on anything he wants. He even once used his caterpillar to make his piano play (he couldn’t reach the piano from where he was). He has extended this to his pacifier, which he will take out and put back in.
Because I am so far behind, you will see the 8 month blog shortly, but man is this kid the apple of our eyes. What fun we have had with him!
