Musings on Motherhood: My Baby is Seven Months Old!

 
For some reason seven months seems so old. Closer to one than to newborn. Yikes. 

This month has seen Ellis hit many big milestones. It has been a great month for him, but one of the hardest months for us as parents as months and months of sleep deprivation catches up on us and teething troubles means that he can be crying for hours at night. We're not used to this as he was never much a crier as a baby.

So a few days after his six month milestone he was off. I mentioned in the previous post that he has assumed crawling position so I guess it was only ever a matter of time. Sunday 2nd of February (this will help me remember at a later date!) I was putting my 'face on' for church and he was suddenly beside me. It took The Belgian to explain to me that he just crawled across the room. He looked incredibly pleased with himself and has spent the rest of the month perfecting his technique from a shuffle to full on bottom-in-the-air making serious speeds crawl. Now he is into EVERYTHING and makes a dash for cables, the remote control, my mobile phone, paper, boxes and it all goes straight into his mouth. Friends have said this is called the eyes-in-the-back-of your-head phase. 

However, always the overachiever, Ellis was not satisfied with just crawling and a week later I was sat checking emails on my laptop on the sofa when first two hands appeared clutching the edge and then a little face looking incredibly smug. He now pulls himself up to standing on any available surface or object - the toy box, chairs, his high chair, his baby walker, the pram, his car seat and the most dangerous of all the drawer on the television cabinet. If you leave the lounge door open he enjoys making a dash for freedom and if I pop into the kitchen and leave him for a minute he often crawls through to join me. I know that he is really advanced and strong for his age and this makes me the envy of a lot of the mums at baby groups, but its also very tiring and often ends in tears and bumps on the head. It has also led to sleep regression where he is wanting to practice his new skills at like two in the morning and we can hear his head hitting the headboard as he attempts to crawl round his cot!

He has become more vocal this month and loves babbling away to himself in the morning. Sometimes it sounds like he says words and so we try to chat back to him to encourage it. He had a week of shrieking too, which was a bit embarrassing in public, but he was just experimenting and seemed pretty impressed with the noises he could make.

He continues to be a real charmer and whilst we have been house hunting he has been charming all of the home owners and they always offer to look after him whilst we view their house. He has a million watt smile - my mom says he smiles and then some - and it just melts everyone and you can't fail to smile. Unless you are the grumpy man on the train to Glasgow, in which case you clearly can ignore it. Grump! He has a really sunny disposition and this makes the broken nights sleep and frustrating crying episodes easier to deal with. I think he will be a really cofident young man as he loves meeting new people and at baby sensory crawls around as though he owns the place.

As mentioned above we took our first solo train ride to Glasgow. Four hours on the train was LONG with a wriggly baby who just wants to crawl and lets just say the baby changing facilities were non-existent so that was fun. He is very adaptable thought and everyone commented how good he was on the journey. Of course he was charming them all with his big grin. 



The reason for our train journey? To visit his cute, little cousin Ella. So he also gained a cousin this month - his first one - very exciting. She is so tiny and I really cannot remember Ellis being that small - even though she was only a few ounces lighter than him. Plus she sleeps all the time and I cannot remember this phase with my little reluctant napper! Ellis was quite sweet with her and wanted to stroke her hair and test out all of her toys for her. They proved quite durable so this is good news!

Another first this month has been solids. At first he loved his purees but since we started baby led weaning its been more about chewing on and exploring the feel and texture of his food than actually digesting it. His current favourites are pear, petit filous, toast, Ella's Kitchen purees (especially the red one), sweet potatoe and omlette. We have enjoyed seeing his reactions to certain foods - he is a bit like me his face gives it all away in just one 'look.'  

  Life gets so busy and it feels now like he has always been with us. I have felt stretched at times this month as we had car problems, we've been house hunting and sorting out a mortgage which has meant lots of forms and getting hold of lots of elusive documents, we were trying to sleep train Ellis and that turned into one big nightmare and as maternity pay dwindles trying to cope on a much smaller budget than before (lots of bargain bin diving at Asda!) 

I don't want to forget these precious moments though and know how blessed we are to have such a lively and charasmatic young boy. We can always sleep later...

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Linking up with lovely Jane out at Ethan's Escapades for the milestones linky