Seven Months!

It is really hard for me to believe that Sam is already SEVEN months old.  It feels like just yesterday that he was born.  Heck, it seems like just yesterday that lil Max was born -- but he turned THREE this week also!  Time is FLYING by...and we are doing our best to enjoy EVERY minute of it!!

Sam's personality is really starting to blossom.  He is still extremely MELLOW, but he is starting to find his voice.  He protests lots of things -- toys being taken away, food not being shoveled in his mouth quickly enough, etc.  He will stop whatever he is doing when lil Max enters the room and gaze after him affectionately.  This week he has learned the art of the pincher grasp and has been insisting that he self feed himself EVERYTHING.  So, we went from pureed spoon fed foods last week to lots of finger foods this week -- crackers, mum-mums, puffs, banana chunks, yogurt melts, etc.  So far, the child has not showed any disapproval towards any foods that have gone into his little mouth. 

This week he has also learned the art of shaking his head no.  He likes to shake it at random times and it is always good for a laugh because he gets it shaking into such a rhythm that he knocks himself over!  He is also loving vocalizing -- and mamamammmma and dadadaaaaa are big words around the house right now. 

He is sitting completely unassisted now, pitching forward like he's getting ready to crawl.  He's got all the crawling motions down, he just needs to get up on his knees and put it all together.

He is sleeping like a champ at night; down around 7pm -- sometimes up around 4-5 am -- and then back down until around 6:30 -7am.  Ideally, I'd like him to stay asleep for the full twelve hours, but he has other ideas.  If it was Max, I'd probably have let him cry a bit more -- but I really don't need two children awake at 5am, so I usually don't let him fuss more than 5-10 mins.  He settles back down easily after I nurse him and goes back to sleep -- which buys me a few extra minutes also -- so I really can't complain too much.

He is still 100% breastfed, something I am very proud of.  By this time with lil Max, I had needed to start supplementing with formula.  That hasn't been needed at all this go-around, in fact I have 500+ oz of frozen breast milk stored up in our chest freezer -- another thing that I was never able to do with lil Max.  I attribute it to the fact that I am much more relaxed this time around.

We just graduated up from size 1-2 diapers to size 2.  I still am cloth diapering on the weekends, and it is going well.  He is just outgrowing his 3-6 month clothing (usually outgrowing the length of things) and fitting well into the 6-12 month clothing.  We got him a convertible car seat and I am looking forward to switching him into there completely and not lugging the carrier around anymore!

But enough of that, I think that provides a really good snapshot of where we are at this time in Sam's life.  He is such a joy to be around -- I can't imagine how my life was without these two wonderful boys in it...