Our little vampire now has two teeth that just poked their little heads out within these past couple of days. The bottom right, as expected, popped out slowly, but he’s also got the one to the right of where his middle teeth belong. There’s no sign of those yet, but the one on the left hand side of the middle teeth seems to be next.

Of course, we’ve had a very cranky little baby on our hands, but there are things we can do to make him feel better. Either because of the teething or because he’s just growing, he’s becoming somewhat resistant to sleep. We have a sort of guideline schedule – we know when to expect him to be sleepy, hungry, etc. based on the last time he slept, ate, etc. When it’s time for him to be sleepy, he displays his sleepiness with the fists rubbing the eyes and some yawning. But lately, when he tells us he’s sleepy and we put him in his bed, he plays for a bit, fusses for a bit, screams a bit, and then passes out about 45 minutes later. Putting him down for naps now takes 3 hours instead of the pre-teething 2 hours and a little bit of change for him to settle down.

However, he’s becoming better at independent play and entertaining himself. Either in the jumper or on the floor, he can amuse himself for a good hour before he gets sleepy/hungry/etc. It’s fun to come over and hang out with him, as opposed to not being able to go out of his sight. He’s got plenty of little toys and lots of household clutter to play with.

Tristan used to like having his diaper changed, but he screams nearly every time he’s put on the changing table these days. Most of the time he will cheer up by the time we get into it if he’s not hungry. However, teethy babies are cranky babies so we expect this. When he’s not being cranky on the changing table, he’s busy being a punkass. Last night he grabbed my elbow and put it in his mouth while on the table and appeared to keep doing it because I giggled. I’m not sure if I should reinforce the condoned gnawing on my arm, but it was really cute and hopefully a fun game for him.

New design!

We’re well into the second half of the first year now! We have the following going on:

Teething – Tristan’s starting to grow that other bottom tooth. He’s a bit crankypawed because of it, but is otherwise in good spirits. It hasn’t popped out yet, but we’re expecting that soon.

Bath time – Tristan learned how to splash yesterday, and that splashing is interesting. I think we might have to start bathing him in the big tub soon. His tub shares a bathroom with kitty litter, and that doesn’t like to be splashed. The kitties usually come visit and watch curiously. He’s also, as of the past couple of baths, realized that bath toys are interesting; that may be our fault that it’s just happening now, as we bathed him in the bathroom sinks until he got too grabby and big. We’ve bathed him in the big tub with me a few times, but that thusfar has required two people. Now that kiddo knows how to have fun, it might require just a person in the tub to have a splash fight with.

Food – We’re continuing to add to Tristan’s food repertoire. We’re still using baby foods instead of the stuff from the table, but we figure that he’ll get a better balanced diet that way (we are dieting). I also like the jars of baby food for the quick and dirty isolation of ingredients. He tried his first meat (beef) on 3/21 and he didn’t seem to care much for it. Then again, it smelled like dog food so it may just not have been pleasant for him. He ate it mixed with vegetables later on just fine. But we were thinking that he might become a hippie like me (I do eat meat, but I eat a lot of fake meat and whine about meat a lot). Anyway, the advice on when to feed baby how much of what is all contradictory so we’re trying to use the wing-it and decent common sense methods of queuing up new foods for him. He still drinks a lot of formula and prefers the bottle before his solids. Also, he technically can hold his bottle but doesn’t choose to until he’s done drinking from it, at which point he matter-of-factly removes it from my hands and acts like he’s going to drink it.

Travel – We’re still using the infant travel set, even though lifting the carrier portion to get it into the car while it contains a baby is damn hard. He still seems excited about being worn in a carrier, and usually wear him facing outward so he can see the world. We’ve been doing at least one walk daily around the park for the past few weeks, since the weather’s been getting nicer. I’m grateful that he doesn’t object to facing backward in the car seat.

Play – He’s first and foremost trying to crawl. He can sort of move backwards now. He’s taken a step forward a time or two. He can roll toward his target, and he can reach toward it, but the crawling is just not ready to happen yet. However, he can lie on the floor and relax now, entertaining himself with whatever’s around. It’s really neat to lie down next to the baby and just sprawl out! Otherwise, he’s been grabbing everything in sight, jumping for long periods of time in his jumper, and sitting with us on the couch. He’s fascinated with Samurai and giggles when the dog is near. He tries to pet all of the critters but he’s sort of inept at it.

And that’s how our baby is doing.

Tristan has several different sleep schedules, depending on circumstances. He’s currently asleep, and for him to be on his second nap at 4:30ish is sort of weird.

After a long practice of snuggling Tristan to sleep on our bed or in some other manner, we have finally taught him to fall asleep in his crib. A few afternoons ago, I stuck him in his crib when he was very obviously sleepy but I had spent half an hour trying to get him to sleep using various methods including the snuggle shoulder technique (though I admit, I am a novice with that!), putting him in the bed, and later wearing him out for a walk to get him to fall asleep, I just gave up and stuck him in the crib. He passed out within 5 minutes. I took that as an opportunity to train that and so far (knock on wood and all of that) now when put in his crib while obviously sleepy – rubbing his eyes, being crankypawed for no good reason – he now falls asleep after just a little bit of fussing, and far less than while trying to get him to sleep using any other method lately.

Anyway, about the weird schedules. He wakes up at either 9 or 11. If he wakes up at 9, he pretty much wants a bottle and a change and then to sleep again until noon. He did that today, and that was because his diaper indicated that he needed a bath immediately. Ah, one thing I miss about when he lived on breast milk is that his poo was far easier to clean up and smelled sort of neutral. If he wakes up at 11, he just stays up for a bit after his feeding. Either way, he usually wants a nap somewhere from 2 to 5, depending on which way the wind is blowing or something. After James comes home, Tristan will usually get really sleepy around 8 or 9, go to sleep, get woken up for a bottle about an hour before our bedtime, and then we all sleep through the night and repeat as necessary.

I’m watching him sleep on the monitor and it looks like he may be waking up. He’s indecisive about that, though.

Added 10 new pictures to 6-7 month section.

We gave Tristan some stage 2 sweet potatoes today… his very first! I’m not sure if he notices. We also think he’s teething again; we shall see in a couple of days, perhaps.

We went out and got a whole assload of food for him, both stuff he’d tried before and stuff with something new in it. We got yogurt, some meat product, and assorted fruit and vegetable bundles. There’s probably enough new food to last a month and a half!

Tristan and I went to the local mall via train. This was his second trip, and the first one since the one we had to leave due to his screaminess. We walked around to the train station, about half a mile away from here. We rarely do this even still, but he was in his front-facing stroller and I packed the sling (in this case, the Mei Tai – all baby carriers are collectively referred to as “the sling” here) in the diaper bag.

The trip to the mall was fairly uneventful – we slathered on baby sunblock, got strapped into the stroller with an attached toy, got to the station, bought the ticket, got on and had to sit in the bike section because assholes felt the need to sit in the facing-out seats, cursed the stroller, baby was asleep by the time we got there, and the main elevator from the station was out so we had to walk a block out of the way, complete with obnoxious pedestrian signals. I took the sleepyhead through Sports Authority, where I looked at baby bike seats and trailers. I looked for cheap baby stuff at Burlington Coat Factory (we need a couple pair of cheapo dark pants; I will find them in the next couple of days, most likely), and when Tristan woke up I took him out of the stroller and sat with him in a rocking chair (we are considering getting one after all, but most likely once we move). After finding nothing in BCF, I took him out to the main mall hallway and put him in the sling. We met a 3-month-old in a stroller who looked almost as big as Tristan (and Tristan’s no slacker, even though he’s levelled off quite a bit) in another baby store. We walked for a while, got to Gamestop, picked up Wii remote rechargey thingies, and headed out.. me walking with a baby in a carrier and pushing a stroller.

I tried to get to another store, but then Tristan started screaming his little head off, which in the carrier means only one thing: “Feed. Me. NOW!” I tried to plead with him to let me wait until we were closer to the train station, and we ended up compromising and stopping at the bus station that was a good 5 minute walk from the train station. I’d packed a mixable bottle since he ate sort of scantily this morning, and when we were sitting down I mixed it up and he ate about 2/3 of it. Punkass. If you’re hungry enough to scream in the carrier, why are you only taking a snack? After he decided he was done, we tied up the carrier and worked our way toward the correct station. Sleepy baby wanted to fall asleep on me but saw too many interesting things.

After a 20 minute wait in deceptively chilly weather (I swear, it LOOKS like summer out there, and it occasionally FEELS like summer.. but it’s chilly and windy) the train came, I managed to get a side-facing seat this time, Tristan enjoyed watching scenery go by and then finally started passing out on me. Half a mile of walking after we got off the train, we were home, and I actually managed to get him from the Mei Tai to the crib without incident. And he’s still asleep two hours later.

Initially, we got an inexpensive over-the-door jumper for Tristan, which he loved. However, it scared the shit out of us. I returned it and bought one that is frame-based and rests on the floor. He still enjoys it but doesn’t derive the “must jump NOW” jumpiness that he got from the other one. That being said, I now have somewhere to put him that doesn’t involve tears! Pictures of the new one will eventually surface in the gallery.

Thankfully, Tristan has been in better spirits for the past day than he had been since the tooth started getting ready to pop.

We moved the crib into his room on Sunday night and so far it’s going well. He’s no longer waking up half an hour before me – now I get to eat breakfast! Getting him to go to sleep is getting challenging again but the most important thing is that he still sleeps through the night (except for Saturday night, where he guzzled a bottle at 6am).

He’s started to guzzle down solids – about half a jar of Stage 1 baby food in a sitting. I think he’s up for a new food today.

Last night, Tristan did the following –
* giggled when we said “go to sleep” among other really punkass things to laugh at
* bounced on his butt while sitting