Last weekend the grandparents Carscadden moved into their new house. Miles and I went over on Saturday to help unpack some boxes. Miles was not very good at staying on task. On Sunday we went over again and had a nice afternoon with some extended family. Everyone just loves our little guy.
Miles has gotten better and better at the new skills he attained last week. He sits for as long as he wants to sit, rarely falling off balance, unless it's on purpose because he's bored or tired. On his belly, he rotates like a champ moving with precision toward his intended target. More recently, he's working on getting his knees up underneath him and he can do little scooches forward when he has a solid base behind him, like the wall or my hand.
His schedule has been all over the place this week in terms of sleeping. One day he took four short naps (instead of his usual three) and yesterday he slept for a 2 hour and 15 minute nap, a feat that's totally unheard of in this house. The result of that long nap was that the little man was awake at 10pm, giggling and rolling around in bed with a blanket on his head. Hopefully we can regain some semblance of order in this coming week.
Friday night Lucas and I went to a halloween cover show that Dead Mechanical, Lucas' band, was playing. They did a cover set of the DC punk band Fugazi. (Here's an interesting fact for you: The midwife that I trained with in Alexandria, VA delivered all of Fugazi's drummer's babies at home!) Dan, Dead Mechanical's bassist and the effective leader of the band, bought the band costumes to wear. I was really hoping that Lucas was going to be an Ape with a yellow banana. Instead he was a referee with a yellow flag. Matt was a baseball player and Dan, well, Dan was sports legend Andre Agassi, pink spandex, jean shorts and all.
replacement ref
dan and lucas
dan and matt and lucas
Dead Mechanical as Fugazi as Andre Agassi, a ref,
and a baseball player
Miles has started to full on giggle. He really gets going when I laugh at him. He'll get a big smile, throw his head back and laugh. He's also getting a little stranger danger. He feels comfortable in Lucas' and my arms but gets a little fussy when unfamiliar people are holding him. After years of babysitting and caring for young relatives and other people's children, it feels really good that I'm his source of comfort, I'm the one he turns to be reassured that everything is right with the world.
Let me do it!
Let me do it, let me do it! It's not supposed to be on my head!
The pacifier is firmly in place for nighttime sleeping. Partly, this is a lack of good parenting on my part as I'm interested in getting a good night's sleep before delivering babies or doing pap smears. But Lucas is in charge of the day time sleeping and he has the patience of a saint (and usually a decent amount of sleep on board). The result: 100% pacifier free naps! Wow!
I'm working on Miles' latch because for the last three months I've had pain with breastfeeding. I have had two lactation consults (one with Miles, one without). It seems I may have a stubborn case of thrush (yeast). I've been treating it by taking an oral antifungal medication every day for the last two months. But I think the combination of the infection and Miles' poor latch made the pain this week almost unbearable. I almost decided to stop breastfeeding entirely and pump full time for the rest of Miles' first year. I've done a lot of reading on thrush and there are a few more things I can try to help kick the infection but it may just stick around until we're done breastfeeding. It's a bummer because I had looked forward to breastfeeding so much and it has turned out to be so uncomfortable for me. Lucas is working on Miles' latch at home with the bottle too:
While I worked on Miles' latch this week, Miles worked on sitting. He's practically a professional sitter now, a professional baby sitter. He's probably making big bucks with all the baby sitting time he's accrued.
Here are this week's pictures of Miles Kennedy Carscadden:
This ride is making me sick!
You would not believe the amount of cat hair under here!
What, sitting? No big deal. I'm not a little baby!
Miles had his one month follow up for his weight yesterday. Turns out he's a banana baby. What's a banana baby, you ask? Well, my friends, he's tall and thin. His height went back up to the 50th percentile while his weight stayed along the 10th percentile. All the extra calories he ate this month went into growing tall and none went into extra chub rolls. In honor of his being a banana baby, this morning we fed him banana!
We've been on the food train this week. Let's hear it for rice cereal, applesauce and bananas!
The little man has been a lot more mobile. He can easily skootch backwards:
I don't know how I got under this crib.
And I don't know how to get out.
He can roll both ways as a very inefficient method to get to things he wants, like toys or folded laundry:
He hasn't quite got the whole sitting thing mastered yet:
This week also marks the beginning of Operation: Get Rid of Pacifier. He has napped all week long WITHOUT. A. PACIFIER! He also slept a few nights without one. But the end of the week marks increasing exhaustion on my part both from work and nighttime parenting. So Wednesday through Friday night he had the pacifier for PART. OF. THE. NIGHT! Guys, we're doing it! We're getting rid of the pacifier! Here is photographic evidence:
This week Miles is sitting much much better. He still can't keep himself up for very long while on the floor but while perched on someone's legs his balance is much improved:
Miles also started eating solids this week. By solids, I mean mushy rice cereal and applesauce. There's really nothing solid about it. His facial expressions are great, his face consistently covered in slop by the end of the meal. He loves it though. He leans forward, opens his mouth wide and proceeds to spit out half of what makes it into his maw. There was photographic evidence of this phenomenon but it featured a prominent double chin of mine and I decided that it wasn't fit for the world to see. Maybe next week.
Lucas and I have been married for two years this week. We went out to dinner and got a nice "Happy Anniversary" sign from my sister Amy.
