Journey with You

Cyrus was nine months old on Thursday. OMG, he is only 3 months away from one year old. He changes so quickly and grows up so fast.

Just about when I started to worry about his tooth coming in late, I finally saw it coming out to say hello. It hasn’t come in completely but I was relieved. The teething probably is bothering him because he’s been quite cranky recently, screaming a lot. Sometime when I took his toy away or walk away from him, he almost acted like throwing a tandem tantrum.

Talking about making sounds, other than dada, didi, and occasional nana, mama, he also started to make sounds like “aarrch”, “aarrk”, “baba”, “wawa”, and “vava.” It’s so cool to see him trying to communicate. I can tell he is going to be quite social, like his dad.

His motor skill has improved greatly throughout the last couple weeks. It took him only about a week from crawling very slowly, and tumbling here and there, to, now, crawling to wherever very quickly. I’ve been chasing after him to stop him from getting into troubles. He hates to be confined in the “green zone” we created. Though there were toys in the green zone, he was way more interested in what we hide behind the door and what’s in the kitchen or bathroom. Our baby-proofing speed has never beat his exploring speed. Now that he is good at crawling, he started to try to pull himself up to standing position. He would hang on to a box, the changing table, my piano bench, our coffee table, and many other things to pull himself up. He is getting better and better at it EVERYDAY. It’s really amazed me how fast they learn from mistakes.

Last Monday, for the first time, I took Cyrus out with another mom and her baby girl. Ruby is only 4 days younger than Cyrus so they definitely are doing mostly the same thing: crawling and learning to stand up. Ruby seemed to be able to stand better and I’m wondering if it’s because they have a jolly jumper. We went to a park and sit ourselves on grass. As soon as I put Cyrus down, he crawled away from us without looking back. Ruby’s mother went after him to make sure there was nothing dangerous around. I was quite pleased to see Cyrus being so adventurous. When Ruby was nursing, Cyrus kept getting closer and closer to her. I was wondering why.

I ordered some cloth diapers earlier in the week and they arrived a couple days later. We’ve wanted to use cloth diapers the whole time but didn’t get round to it until now. We are hoping to save some money this way and believe using cloth diapers is more environmental friendly. It does take me more time to wash them. After trying for a few days, I pretty much need to do at least a load every another day. Lots of running up and downstairs but I guess it’s a good exercise anyway.

Cyrus had his 9 months checkup Saturday. He weighed 19 pounds and 4 ounces, 27 5/8 inches tall/long, and his head circumference measured 46.5 cm. Although his weight gain was not as much as I was imagining, we probably don’t need to buy a new car seat until his one-year-old birthday which is not a bad thing. His weight and height were both at around 25th percentile, dropping from 50th percentile three months ago. Interestingly, his head size was at 75th percentile. DH was fairly happy to hear that since he himself has a big head and he thinks it’s good to have bigger head.

Doctor was quite pleased with Cyrus growth as well. He answered some of our “food” related questions and gave me a couple of possible options of baby swimming lesson. He thought that’s a great idea to let him learn/try swimming. We also addressed our concern on lead poisoning. He comforted us by stating that it was actually quite rare to see children with serious lead poisoning and its actual effect on intelligence is neither as dramatically as we are imagining. However, in order to give a peace of mind, he wrote a script for us to have him tested, along with the scheduled anemia screening.

I asked him about night feeding since Cyrus’ got his first tooth. He said it’s not necessary to clean his tooth every night. We simply clean it when we bath him. He also said that we usually don’t need to worry about his teeth decay problem until his back molars start to come in. Nevertheless, he said it’s probably a good time to think about training Cyrus to sleep for 6-7 hours without feeding. We usually put Cyrus to bed at around 9:30pm. Between then and 7:30am the next morning, he gets up two to three times. He would look for the breast but only suck a few times before he falls right back to sleep. He didn’t seem hungry to me.

Doctor suggested us to let Cyrus nap for half an hour to 45 minutes in the evening and put him to bed later, at around 10:30pm or 11pm. Feed him before putting him to sleep and don’t nurse him again until 5:30am or 6am. If he wakes up during the night, we can either use “cold turkey” method-let him cry to sleep, or have dad get up to pat his back, comfort him a little, (no picking up), and leave. The key is someone, other than mom, should do this. Seeing me may simply make him cry even longer and make it harder for him to settle down again.

We tried letting his dad get up to comfort him when he woke up last night. It worked. He would cry for a while, which was quite hard for me, but he fell asleep eventually. I didn’t nurse him for 6 hours last night. I think it’s the longest stretch of sleep I’ve got since he was born. The problem we have now is that DH needs a good rest for his job so it’s too difficult for him to get up a couple of time every night to do this. We may try during weekends but may not be able to completely execute it until DH’s summer break.

Here are some photos to share.