Week 27...How I Loathed You

Carter is almost 6 1/2 months old…at the end of his 27th week of life to be exact.  Week 27 was AWFUL.  I purchased a book a while back called The Wonder Weeks.  This book talks about the stages (weeks in specific) that babies go through developmental leaps where they have figured something out or are in the process of figuring something out and can be extremely fussy until they feel comfortable again.  Carter has been through many of these developmental leaps so far and none of them ever really affected him.  Until week 27.

Week 26 is actually the developmental week according to the book, but some babies experience the effects of the leap before or after the week mentioned in the book.  It’s just an estimate of when most babies experience them.  Week 26’s leap was development of relationships.  According to the book, this is the age where babies understand the relationship of one object to another.  For example, distance.  This is where I noticed Carter was having a hard time.  I think he finally understood distance from himself to me (or Gigi or Nana or whoever had him at the time).  He finally realized that when mommy leaves the room, she’s left the room.  He has no idea when I’m coming back or if I’ll come back at all.  A side affect of this leap is separation anxiety.  I found this to be TOTALLY true.  Carter all of a sudden wanted to be held all the time and if you left the room, he would scream.  On top of all of this, his naps were MUCH shorter than usual and he was waking up for the day significantly earlier than normal.  I was at my wits end for sure!!!

Even when he was playing and you were down on the floor with him, he wasn’t happy.  It was almost as if he was frustrated with himself more than me.  When I read about week 26 in The Wonder Weeks, it all made sense.  He was on the verge of discovering how to do something and at the time, I didn’t know what it was, I just knew that his fussiness and frustration was with himself because his brain was developing the ability to learn a new skill.  A mere day or so after turning 27 weeks, Carter mastered a new activity.  He figured out how to get from laying on his stomach to being on all fours.  As soon as he figured out how to do this, my angel baby returned.  He was no longer fussy and screaming all the time.  He went back to all smiles and giggles.  His naps returned to the normal 2-3 hours and he was waking up at the normal time again (today I had to wake him up at 8:15am after 13 hours of sleep).

**Picture was taken on my phone, sorry for bad quality**

Now that he has learned this new thing, he does it ALL THE TIME!!!!  I’ve blogged before about how I’ve heard moms say that when babies learn a new skill they want to do it over and over and over again.  I experienced this first hand once Carter learned to roll from tummy to back and then again when he learned to roll from back to tummy.  For the two days after learning how to get on all fours, Carter would wake up in the middle of the night and instead of falling back asleep, he thought it was a good idea to practice this new skill.  I would look at the monitor at 3am because he was making noise (not crying at all, just coo-ing) and when I turned on the video, he would sure enough be on all fours in the crib rocking back and forth, testing his balance.

I’m so glad he finally figured this out.  Now that he has learned this, he is SO close to crawling.  Justin and I were in the floor with him yesterday and he was on all fours and rocked back and forth several times and then finally plunged forward towards a toy.  He then squirmed (I say squirmed because I wouldn’t call it a crawl…if anything, it was an army crawl) towards the toy until he could touch it.  He is so close.  I feel like once he gets more practice on balancing when he’s up on all fours, he’ll become more comfortable reaching his hands out while moving his knees at the same time.  We will then officially have a crawler on our hands!!!

Nothing else major going on right now, just wanted to document this because I want to remember it.  Like I said, Carter is never fussy and the whole week of 4th of July was like I had someone else’s baby and not mine.  He’s never been like that in his life and I was so glad that he finally figured out what he was trying to and is now back to being my sweet ball of preciousness :)
Quick update for the past week:

• Carter is loving being on solids.  So far we’ve introduced rice cereal (which he was eating 3 times a day, but  now that we’ve introduced veggies, he only gets cereal in the morning), carrots, squash and sweet potatoes.  Next up is peas and green beans and once we’ve introduced all the vegetables, we’ll start up with fruits (bananas, peaches, apples, pears and prunes).  Biggest change I’ve noticed since being on solids….poop.  With solid foods comes solid poop.  Gross.  Also, his spit-up is now colored instead of just white….which means when he spits up, we must wash clothes ASAP or it will stain. 
• The only solid food that I don’t think Carter likes so far is squash.  He’ll eat it, but I can tell he doesn’t like it.  He loves carrots and sweet potatoes though.  I don’t mind him not liking squash.  I’ll still probably make him eat it every now and again, but since Justin and I don’t eat squash, it won’t be the end of the world if he doesn’t like it.
• Justin just got back from his climb of Mount Rainier.  He didn’t summit unfortunately, but he had a blast. The guides turned everyone around when they got to 12,800 feet because the avalanche danger was too high.  No team summited that day.  That was the longest he has been away from Carter and he was so excited to see him again when he got back in town.  He isn’t traveling at all in July so he will actually be keeping Carter the next two weeks while I’m at work instead of my mother-in-law.  Lots of Carter/Daddy time coming up!!
• On the 4th of July, Carter and I went over to the Lobdell’s to enjoy hamburgers and ribs and some FABULOUS deserts made by some friends.  I loved seeing Harper.  He’s over a month old now and just so stinkin adorable.  I have such a hard time remembering when Carter was that small!  Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures because Justin had my camera with him in Washington.  But we do finally have a picture of the boys together:

Another picture from my phone, sorry for the quality.  Is it weird if I’m excited to see what kind of trouble these two are going to get into together in the future??

• My mom has finally moved to our side of town!!!  She used to live in Chelsea, AL which was a good 45 minutes one way from our house.  She bought, and essentially re-modeled, a house on Hwy 150 in Hoover and is now a mere 10 minutes away from our house!  AND, it’s on the way to my work.  That came in handy when she kept Carter for two days last week since my mother-in-law was out of town.  I love her being so close.  I know she’s going to be so excited to see Carter all the time.  She’s already seen him so much and she’s only been moved into that house for less than two months.
• Carter has now cut a second tooth, so he now has his two bottom teeth.  I’ve heard that you should see a dentist as soon as the first tooth pops through.  I’m not sure that’s right though….at least most of my friends with babies waited longer than that, so I’m not really sure.  I have a dentist appointment in July so I’m going to ask my dentist if he does kids or if he can suggest someone who does.  If you have a little one, when did they go to the dentist for the first time?

Ok that’s about all I got.  Hopefully one of these days all of my blogposts won’t be about my son or parenting in general.  Kinda hard when you don’t have time for anything else ;)