Forest at 21, 22 & 23 Weeks

I think every update on here I could say “Forest is changing dramatically!”, because honestly that’s how things are going from week to week around here. Forest spent a lot of January trying to perfect rolling over, rolling on occassion and getting stuck on his arm. Then one morning about two weeks ago as I was pumping before work and before Chris had left with him for daycare, Forest just wiggled around on his back while on his playmat and then rolled over like it was no big deal. Then he did it again a few minutes later after I flipped him back over. He hasn’t looked back since! Now I find him snoozing on his belly in the pack and play at night though sometimes he wakes himself up because he’s rolled over. Give him long enough on his back and he’ll decide he wants to be on his belly! We’ve now entered the ‘watch him like a hawk’ phase on the changing table.

Now, once he’s on his belly it can go either a: happy he’s on his belly and want to play for a good awhile or b: upset he’s on his belly because, uh, how can I get anywhere, Mom? He’s definitely interested in moving and he’ll try to move himself forward to no avail. A couple of times I’ve seen him attempt to put his knees under his body but he’s not there yet. I think in the next month to six weeks, though, we might be finding ourself with a baby trying to crawl!

A few weeks ago he found his high pitched voice and started enjoying shrieking and squealing! We’re still on the dadadada phase of ‘words’ but sometimes I really do think he’s repeating what I say…I swear he said ‘Good morning’ back to me one morning. Forest is a talkative kid though he’s like his mom and after his initial wakeup conversation in the morning of ‘oohs and ahhh’s’, he likes to chill for about 30 minutes to an hour to just wake-up and relax.

He’s definitely turning into a monster in regards to sticking things in his mouth! If he can put it in there, it goes in. He’ll be chilling on the yoga mat (because it is sticky and won’t slide) watching Wonder Pets on his Boppy, and next thing you know he’s got his sock off and he’s gnawing on it. Sock out, insert pacifier. I’ve taken to calling him a lamprey because he’ll suck on your arm, suck on your face, whatever he can attach his mouth to! He is in a grabbing phase (and will reach out for items, too) and I’m finding myself even taking off my earrings at times, even just studs. He’s reached out for Leo a few times, luckily only when I’m holding him and Leo comes up for pets. One day Forest is going to find out the wrong way that you don’t grab Leo’s tail, but until then I’m trying to hold it off as long as possible.

In the last three weeks we’ve all gotten sick, again. I’m hoping this sickness phase is ending and we can go for many months without any illness yet again. Forest got sick with some vomitting right around the 5 month mark. He seemed to recover ok for a day only to get sick again. I took him into the pediatrician even though he wasn’t running a fever and she found he had another ear infection—maybe related to the barfing, maybe not related—his third ear infection since December. That’s a lot. I think the kid got my crappy ear canals. So, he got on the strong antibiotics. The week before I had gone back to dairy since he had seemed to be better but also got on some antibiotics for some other upper respiratory crap, and Forest started developing a diaper rash that week. But when he got on the new antibiotics the diaper rash just got worse and stayed bad, really until the last few days. The doc gave us an antifungal to use as she suspected it was a yeast infection from the wonderful combination of antibiotics and probably a bit of the dairy. I went back off dairy but I really didn’t think it was the main cause of the issue, it was just a perfect storm at that moment. I’m now easing back into the dairy again. I’m hoping he doesn’t have any more ear infections for awhile because the doc was acting like the next steps were tubes in his ears! Plus, he’s turning into Leo when we give him his medicine, shaking his head and trying to position his mouth in the least accessible way.

Only a few more weeks and we’re going to start working food into his diet. I’ve been reading up on Baby Led Weaning/Feeding again and getting excited but also a little nervous and sad. He’s not actually weaning yet, but I’m a little nervous that he’ll decide to wean himself earlier than my current goal of getting to a year of breastfeeding. As for his first food, I’m not sure what we’re going to try yet. I know most things I’ve read say to try one food for a few days and look for reactions and then try the next one and so on and so forth. I was thinking avocado because it is a good, fat rich food with a lot of nutrients and I see it highly recommended. My friend Cindy said she put it on toast for one of her daughter’s first foods. My other ideas were applesauce/baked apples, sweet potato fingers/puree, carrot fingers/puree. I’ve also seen broccoli listed. I joined a BLW group on Facebook and love looking at the photos people post of their kids eating straight-up food….messy, but very nice to see babies just enjoying what the adults are eating, but put into pieces they can handle. We’ll see. Leo may be eating a lot of food off the floor for awhile before Forest really digs into it. That’s another thing I’ve read, some babies just don’t eat all that much for a few months, they are just getting into learning about it at first.

What else? His personality is really shining through these days! Oh, that’s another thing, he’s laughing more these days. He would laugh intermittently prior to these last few weeks, but now he’ll do some good laughing on the changing table. Not every day, but a few times a week.

Well, I guess that’s about it. There’s a few videos at the bottom, including two rolling videos.