{"id":16859,"date":"2019-04-09T06:27:16","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T10:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/?p=16859"},"modified":"2019-04-09T06:27:20","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T10:27:20","slug":"7-months-with-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/7-months-with-james\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Months with James"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I intended to share this update when James turned 6 months old but every time I sat down to write it, I\u2019d get three sentences in and end up a puddle of nostalgic tears. The truth is I can\u2019t even talk about James without beaming, getting weepy, rattling off a list of ways that he\u2019s the sweetest, nicest, cuddliest, best best best best best. I could explode just thinking of him. He\u2019s the light of my life, the happiest little sunbeam I\u2019ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They said motherhood would just keep getting better and better and they were right. Every day is more fun, the flow is more natural, and parenting is more fulfilling. I love him more and more, to a truly frightening point. And the older he grows, the more dramatic the changes we see in him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How He’s Changing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

He went from cooing at 3 months to screeching at 4, to making these purposeful consonant sounds now (ba ba ba is a favorite). He went from rolling all over at 4 months to a full-on army crawl at 6 months. He gets up on all fours and, though he can\u2019t quite get the hang of pulling one knee in front of the other, he sort of throws his arms out in front of him and pulls\/drags himself forward. We have a giant play mat taking up one half of our family room (goodbye beautiful home) and if I leave him for even 30 seconds, I\u2019ll come back and find he\u2019s inched his way across the room and into the hallway. He likes to chase his soccer ball around the most, and will crawl to his ring toy the moment he sees it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These days he picks up his pacifier and just pops it in his mouth when he wants. He has two teeth! And he laughs. Oh my gosh his laugh.<\/em> It\u2019s really, really fitting that my son has a big, funny, kinda weird laugh because I did too growing up. I remember people always commented on the way I laughed and it makes me sad in a way to say that it\u2019s gone now. I guess over time enough people pointed it out that it made me, I don\u2019t know, subconsciously? work on normalizing it. I hope he keeps his because it\u2019s the happiest sound I\u2019ve ever heard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He LOVES Dee and she’s meh about him.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What He’s Eating<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A couple of times a day, in between bottles, we\u2019ll sit him in his high chair<\/a> or his Ingenuity seat<\/a> on the counter and give him solids\u2014 mashed, roasted or steamed (we\u2019re doing a mix of baby-led weaning and homemade pur\u00e9es). He\u2019s tried avocado, sweet potato, broccoli, peas, carrots, banana, mango, egg yolks, oatmeal, and salmon. There hasn\u2019t been a food yet that he hasn\u2019t liked, although he does make a sour face when we give him anything cold.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sleep<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As for sleep, we\u2019re getting there. He sleeps on his own in his crib from 6:30pm to around 6am, which is great, and gets up twice in the night to eat\u2014around midnight and 4am. He used to get up three times during the night before daylight savings, so two is a nice improvement for all of us. We\u2019ve tried moving his bedtime to 7 to see if maybe he\u2019d sleep a little later in the morning (since he\u2019ll sometimes start fussing as early as 5:15), but it doesn\u2019t seem to affect his wake time at all. One good thing is that when your baby isn\u2019t the best<\/em> sleeper, the four-month sleep regression doesn\u2019t knock you sideways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for naps, I\u2019m still holding him for all of them (Daniel actually holds him for his last nap of the day, around 3), but I don\u2019t mind. If he isn’t held for his entire nap, he will sleep for less than 15 minutes and won’t go back down (and then be pretty upset while he’s awake). Our policy has been that sleep is so crucial to development that we just want to support him to maximize his sleep, even if it’s inconvenient to hold him for five hours a day. We\u2019ve considered some type of gentle sleep training, but ultimately decided against it, and that’s with zero judgment on those who sleep train because who knows what we’ll do with the next baby. We felt like since both of us have flexible schedules, we could tolerate the mild inconvenience more than people with traditional day jobs and we take comfort knowing that everyone grows up and learns to sleep on their own (nothing lasts forever). And truthfully, I don\u2019t mind holding him for those hours. I\u2019m still thinking to myself, I\u2019ll miss this time when it\u2019s over<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I intended to share this update when James turned 6 months old but every time I sat down to write …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[999],"tags":[1171,1180,1176],"class_list":["post-16859","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-baby","tag-james","tag-motherhood"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andiemitchell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}