And crawling...

So the last video I posted was from Wednesday and this is from this morning. He's learned to crawl just far enough to dive to his destination. He's starting to understand that he can get places also which means we're going to have to keep a close eye on this little troublemaker.

Almost Mobile

So Ben is very close to being mobile. Here's a video from the other night. I finally started babyproofing last night, but I'm sure we'll find things we missed once he has a better hang of it. He still won't go more than a few crawls before stopping, but pretty soon he'll be off and we'll never be able to catch him again. Ah, the joys of parenthood. On one hand I'll be very happy we don't have to carry him around and get things for him, but on the other I'll miss the days of being able to walk away and not have to worry about him for a few seconds.

Quick story - Brian dropped Ben off at daycare yesterday and put him down at which time he crawled a little ways across the room to steal a toy from another kid. I think we may have a trouble maker on our hands and guess we need to start working on sharing.

Feeding the Dog?

Well this morning Ben figured out that if you hold a puff in your hand near the dog that she will take it out of your hand and eat it if you won't. This basically meant that the dog got more food than he did. Oh well, I guess they are BFF anyway. I didn't get video of him actually feeding the dog, but this is close enough.

8 Months Old!

I'm a little late with this post, but we've not had a great week so I apologize in advance. It all started about a week and a half ago when I decided to take Ben to St. Louis with me and leave Brian here. For those of you that don't know - this is a big feat for me since Ben is not a fan of long carrides and proceeds to scream when he's awake after being in his carseat for a while. So in prep for my trip I got him a big boy carseat in the hopes that if he could see out the window then it wouldn't be so bad. Well, it was. He generally will take a nap, but it's 2 hours max in the carseat so the rest of the time was spent crying basically. I put on Yo Gabba Gabba after a while and that seemed to limit his crying a bit, but still not pleasant. We left on a Wednesday and were staying through the weekend, but on the second night we were there it all began. He didn't sleep well and just wanted to be held. At first I thought it was because he wasn't in his crib, but after a while I realized there was probably more. I also thought that maybe he was just getting spoiled by being held with my parents, but was wrong again. The rest of the weekend was long to say the least, but once he spiked a fever I knew there was more. We got back on sunday and took him to an urgent care place and they said that it was just a viral bug and sent us home. Then on monday night we went to Children's Mercy once his fever reached 104 and it was the 4th day of it. Turns out he had a double ear infection and bronchiolitis. After a few days on drugs he's doing much better. Let's just say it's not easy to give an 8 month old an inhaler through a mask or give an already energetic baby steroids (wish I would've got some video of it - it was ridiculous how much movement he had). Oh - and I guess this energy is possibly hereditary per the doc so at this point I blame Brian since he still can't sit still.

Besides the latest bought of disease that seems to be plaguing Ben through this winter season, he's generally a happy kid and getting close to crawling still. He can make his way around the room pretty well by rolling and crawling backwards, but still no forward motion beyond the lunging.

He's still gaining weight which is good considering the different illnesses he's had the past few weeks, but I'd guess when we get our 9 month check up that he's at most in the 50th percentile - Prove me wrong Ben!

I look forward to the next round of sickness he brings home in a week or two - Yippee!

Click on the pic for a slideshow

Moving Up

Well Ben was moved up to the 'crawling' room today at daycare. Now hopefully he learns from his friends and actually starts to crawl. He's getting close so here's a video of him today on the floor. His new thing is to get up on his tippie toes and he will lunge forward so he'll probably be mobile in the next few weeks......I think. (And I apologize for the Halloween bib.)



The dog is still his best friend of course and we can always count on her to put a smile on his face. So far she's still receptive of him, but I think it's because of the food and drool around is mouth/bib. Kind of gross, I know, but we try to keep her from actually licking him so she follows him around in the hopes that he drools on the floor.

Cousins

Stl style

Unhappy New Year

Yep, unfortunately the new year is not off to a good start. I really hope that's not a sign of how this year will be.

To start - Ben got blueberry's on tuesday and apparently those didn't go over well. He threw them up all night and then the next morning for his bottle he drank it all and then that came up also. Guess I should learn to monitor how quickly and how much he should drink on a really empty tummy that's upset. Since then he's not taken more than 3-4 oz a feeding with it mainly being only about 1-2 at most. Normally he's around 6 so it's quite a change. He's also not eating as much solids anymore which means he's probably losing weight. The only thing we can get him to take is watered down gatorade through a syringe. Fun times. That helped hydrate him enough yesterday to get the minimum wet diapers (yes there apparently is a minimum they should have, 5, or one every 4 hours). Oh - and he's refusing to nap now even though he used to take at least 2 decent naps before. At least he's still sleeping through the night, but I'm afraid that may not last either. It's like he's a different kid now. Crazy.

Then on Friday night I made a turkey with some bad oil which gave both Brian and I food poisoning so we were not feeling so hot come 2am Saturday. Brian got over it on Saturday afternoon, but I was not over it until late Saturday night. It was miserable on top of an unhappy kid. Luckily we were able to get Brian's mom to come over yesterday morning to help out so Brian and I could get some rest sort of. That was a major help and I'm not sure we would've been able to survive without her! Update - it appears that I did not try to poison Brian and I, instead it was the stomach bug which we must have got from Ben and then unfortunately handed off to his mom who in turn passed it around to a few other family members. Sorry!!!

So - if anyone has suggestions or ideas on how to jumpstart this new kid we have to get back the way he was I would love to hear it.

Happy New Year!