Betsy Bailey » milestone

Mr. Adventure

Betsy — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 16:51:20 +0000

Can you believe this boy? Here is Jake’s latest trick, just starting today. I about had a heart attack the first time he attempted it, because he’s been faking me out with pretend nosedives off the side. He sure is an adventuresome little sprig. If he could figure out how to get atop the highest point of the couch, no doubt he’d be dropping over the side from THAT height. I think he needs a rappelling set for his birthday…

Baby milestone: Maybe walking is fun?

Betsy — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:07:11 +0000

Since he was mobile at 4 months and crawling by the time he was five months old, we thought for sure Jake would be walking by 9 months. But, nope – until very recently he hasn’t been all that interested. He’s quite a fast and efficient crawler. He’ll cruise around furniture, of course, but as soon as he needs to move away from the furniture, he drops to his knees and scrambles off.

But Jake hit a new milestone last night… just as recently as the weekend he would resist when I’d try to “walk” with him by holding his hands. He’d always want on his knees so he could crawl at high speed.

Something clicked last night though and he couldn’t get enough of walking around this way – he thought it was SO FUN and kept approaching me and grabbing my hands for more! more! In the past week he’s also started being more daring with his cruising – sometimes he’ll let go and stand unsupported for a few seconds. And we’ve all seen him take an unassisted step or two while cruising – tho it’s definitely a blink-and-you-miss-it moment and we wonder if we can even believe our eyes.

The milestones keep coming!

Betsy — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:16:25 +0000

Here’s Jake’s latest skill – one that really saves me from multiple daily heart attacks when he dares to lunge head first off beds and couches…

He has LOTS of opportunity for practice because my office is a half step higher than the master bedroom and he’s been constantly going up and down that step since he got mobile at 5 months old. It’s a very small, deeply carpeted step, but I guess he got tired of the endless face plants.

Hangin’ out…

Oh! Daddy showed me something interesting on the floor. I want it!

Mama thinks she needs to spot me…

But she’s crazy, because I have it under control!

Mission accomplished!

Baby gate land

Betsy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:34:51 +0000

Early last week, I was shut up with Jake in my MBR/office. The stupid door was shut, but it doesn’t completely latch. He managed to get it open, sneak out and crawl into HM/Mira’s room before I even noticed he was gone. (The door is around the corner from my office and I never thought for a second he’d get on the other side of the door!!!)

Thank goodness he didn’t head for the stairs instead.

There’s still more.

HM was having a snack and she came upstairs, went into her room to read on her bed. Suddenly, she shrieked! She heard baby sounds emerging from under her bed. She peeked below and sure enough, Jake had crawled under there and was playing with various choking objects.

He’s on the tail end of a cold, plus the dogs spend the night in the girls room. So when HM brought him to me, he was wiggling and gurgling with delight. And his face looked like it had been tarred and feathered, except with snot and dog hair. He was totally pleased with himself, though.

Isn’t he too young for these shenanigans??????

So if awards are being handed out today, I think I win for most neglectful, yet luckiest mommy. Wahhhhhh and PHEW that he was safe.

Ironically, I was researching baby gates when this went down.

And this weekend, my amazing husband solved some of these problems! We now have a master bedroom door that latches again AND we have gates. He also spent a significant amount of time in the attic yesterday dropping cable so he can rewire the network (the cables for which are currently snaking around Jake’s room, where he is never left to play unattended, but someday he will be).

This gate is on the landing hallway, blocking Jake from the balcony and stairs:

Gate #2 – this one traps Jake in the master bedroom/office when that’s where I am. By far the most childproofed and child friendly space in the house.

The bear represents Jake, who is taking a nap right now.

We’re putting this same gate (Kidco Configure) at the bottom of the staircase. Will post that photo when it’s installed!

Baby on the move

Betsy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 17:42:17 +0000

I still can’t get over how active this boy is! Here is is 7 months and cruising around his exersaucer. There are some speed crawling bits in here, too.

Snapshots of life

Betsy — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:55:01 +0000

Jake thinks squash is okay…

… but his patience with solid foods is limited

This girl is crazy! It may be warm here in February, but I can assure you that water is COLD – not even 70F. HM has always been really hot-blooded. Nevertheless, she didn’t last long lol:

Twin pillars of disapproval (Was it something I said? [In fact, it was.])

Pulling up

Betsy — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:10:10 +0000

He did it! He’s been able to manage to get to his knees for awhile., but lately he’s been obsessed with trying to pull himself up onto his feet. I found him standing up in his crib this afternoon. But he swung his head around to look at me when he heard me come in and lost his balance. No pix. Just now, I watched him pull himself up to his exersaucer, tho and grabbed a quick snap!

Caught in the act

Betsy — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:30:33 +0000

This boy is getting into everything. Not ready. SO not ready for this.

(Forgive the poor quality of the photo. Grabbed my phone and snapped this pic for Scott when I looked over my shoulder and saw what the boy was getting into.

Jake is almost 6 months old!

Betsy — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:36:16 +0000

Jake is almost 6 months old!!

He’s had a few tastes of banana and avocado, but it’s been so minimal there’s not even any evidence in the diaper yet.

He nurses quite a lot, still. Like, every 2-3 hours or so during waking hours. Sometimes he’ll split a feed so it seems even more frequent (nurse on one side, play for 30 minutes, demand the other side).

Jake is very active during nursing. How do I explain this? It’s like, when I’m holding him while he’s nursing, he’s sucking but simultaneously pulling his head back, plus wiggling and writhing. It’s very rare and he has to be very tired, but not over tired, for him to relax into me completely while nursing. I can tell that he is going to wear me OUT as a toddler.

Mercifully, at least he sleeps well, both during the day and at night.

In fact, Jake sleeps A LOT. He’s all go go go go go when he’s awake, but he sleeps about 12 hours at night (goes down around 9 or 10, with only one wakeup around 5 or 6 – and he’s up for about 1 hour before he goes back to bed to complete that 12 hour cycle. Then he sleeps another 5-6 hours during the day! (Usually in the form of 2 long naps.) The wake up times can vary (last night he woke up to nurse at 1 am), but he’s pretty reliable about mostly sleeping during that 12 hour span of 9pm – 9am.

He’s gotten so efficient (or efficient enough, as far as he’s concerned) with his commando crawling that he doesn’t even try to learn the classic crawl anymore. He seems to be more obsessed with figuring out how to sit up and stand up at the moment. Seems like he’s trying to pull himself up on everything these days.

Life has settled into a comfortable, although very busy, pattern. Seems I have time to read regularly again and I’m enjoying that. Might be time to revive and update my reading list – although there will be a large gap where I just didn’t keep track of my reading during Jake’s first months. It was enough to just BE reading. Actually, I think I might try this Shelfari site a friend sent me awhile back – looks like it could be an easy way to track my reading. And I can put a widget here on my vox. Coolio. Will get back to you on that.

Life with Jake: 8 weeks old

Betsy — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:27:06 +0000

Jake – 8 weeks old

Jake is starting to establish a pretty reliable pattern to our days, although the following times are VERY approximate…

- Up at roughly 6 am – he's SO smiley and cute when he wakes up, waving his arms around so happy and engaging. He gets a diaper change, nurses and plays until…

- Naptime (in the sling) at roughly 8 am. On a good day he naps uninterrupted until around 11 am. This isn't one of those days. On a day like this he catnaps for a bit, snack-nurses, then playtime, then catnap, etc.

- [If asleep, wakes up] wailing for lunch around 11ish. He nurses and has some playtime for an hour or two, then another nap for 2-3 hours.

Fussy little man

– Wakes up wailing for a snack around 3ish. He nurses and has some catnap/playtime for 2-3 hours, then it's time for the fussy spell. The fussy spell seems to be diminishing slightly, though. On a good day, he takes another nap from about 6-8 pm. Alternatively, it's a grumpy time of restless nursing and catnapping, a little play and lots of jiggling, pacing, slinging, soft music, rocking chair, etc. until he goes down for the night.

- He goes down in the sidecar crib pretty reliably every night usually sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 pm.

- On a good night, he sleeps until 6 am! He did that once, the night of Saturday, September 29, 2007. BLISS.

- On the typical night, he sleeps until around 3 am. I nurse him sitting up in bed and put him back in the sidecar where he sleeps until 6 am. Or if he won't settle, I nurse him lying down in bed and he spends the rest of the night (what little there is left ) in bed with us.

Now that I've written this down, I expect it will all change soon.

8 weeks

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