the littlest carscadden: 8 months: Holding Steady

Our house is in upheaval right now. Tonight Lucas' friend Alex arrives to stay for a couple months. He'll be staying in our guest bedroom weeknights as he works on a TV series filming in Baltimore. He and his wife just moved to Pittsburgh but he wanted to work on this job so he'll be with us until sometime in March.

We also moved Miles to his room yesterday. Eight months old and he slept in his crib for the first time. It did not go well, to say the least. We were in there rocking him back to sleep four times from 1230am to 5:30am until we gave up and brought him back into our room. We're still trying to work it all out. We've been doing a lot of reading on sleep training and Miles is currently at the age that is worst for sleep training 7 1/2-11 months. He's currently focusing on relationships and making sure Lucas and I are working toward common goals with him. He's making sure we're on the same team. So it's not the time to delay going to him when he's crying (which is essentially a part of any sleep training regimen). At a year old, he's more independent, moving around his world and discovering the parts of his world more thoroughly. He's less concerned with mom and dad. We'll start sleep training him then. Putting him in his own room now is just providing a little breathing room and some solid sleep for me in the evening hours (as Lucas responds to him from 8pm to 12 or 1am; I get the second half of the night).

Miles and I had our first swim class yesterday morning. I liked it but it was more about making sure Miles gets used to water and eventually can survive if he falls into a pool. That means there was a little bit of crying on his part (his utter lack of a morning nap may have contributed to the crying). There was a lot of dunking him under water and trying to force him to use his upper body to pull himself out of the water. But there were songs and splashing and giggles too. Overall, I'm really glad we started with swim classes. I plan to continue after this initial 6 week class.

Miles had his 8 month weigh in this week. He's 15 pounds, 12 ounces. Still in the third percentile. But, he's not losing percentiles. We're allowed to start increasing other types of food into his diet, one a at a time now. And I have to limit breastfeeding to once daily (I was feeding three times a day). The rest of the time I'll be pumping and we'll continue to fortify the breastmilk with formula. Our pediatrician is still concerned so Miles had a bunch of blood tests taken on Friday to rule out any underlying problems.

Here's our favorite little 3rd percentile baby this week: