The Harvey Family: Blake

Next week will be the one year birthday of this blog. Has it really only been a year?! It has been quite an eventful one, that's for sure. =)

We got a new carseat for Blake so that when Chris drops Blake off at daycare and I pick him up, we'll both have a way to carry him around in our car since they can't keep the carseat at daycare with him. We stepped it up to the real big boy carseat, the Britax Marathon 70 so he can sit in this until he's 70lb... or at least for a long time to come.

My separation anxiety is getting worse in the middle of the day. It doesn't help that I have a collage of pictures on my tack board at work and they just make me want to snuggle those adorable cheeks of his. =) I miss the smell of spit-up as gross as that sounds (hopefully I'm not the only Mommy to say that, haha). The smell of breastmilk spit up is much better than formula though.

We're back to cutting everything out of my diet again. A few days last week were good so we decided to add things back in. I guess we did too many things at once because something about adding back in the Similac Sensitive, chocolate chip muffins, and soybean oil went wrong and Blake's tummy is causing him to screech in pain again. It breaks my heart but I wish it didn't require cutting all possibilities out of my diet to figure it out since it takes a lot of planning to eat things without soybean oil. Now that he's back on the Alimentum and I'm eating a really bland diet, he seems to be doing better again, although we are still leaning towards GERD as the real culprit. It's just so hard to figure out what is going on and why he has his moments of extreme crying and fussiness. He's already on Zantac, which doesn't seem to be doing enough, so we're looking into other options. We're also wondering if the beginning phase of teething is upon us. He drools a ton, wants to be licking or chewing on something most of the time, and has been unusually irritable at random times... poor boy.

This week, Blake:

wanted to sit up on his own. When I have him sitting in my lap facing out and leaning back on me, he'll use those abs to sit up so he's no longer resting back on me.
figured out how to play differently with each toy on his gymini. He knows to swing his arms and hit the soft toys, to pull on the handle of the panda, and to hit the spinning toys on the froggy bar so they spin around. Maybe he swings at the toys on the froggy bar and just gets lucky but he's pretty good at it. We're slightly worried he's going to hurt his hands if he keeps hitting the hard plastic with such velocity.
started spending a little more time rolling onto his side from his back.
can stand for a longer period of time with my hands around him for when he gets too tired to hold himself anymore.
still loves his stroller rides. There are so many things to look at and keep him entertained... as long as he isn't hungry.
wore his sunglasses for the first time since his head has been big enough to actually keep them on. We tried them a couple months ago but his head was too small for the velcro to reach. Now he can keep them on pretty well, but they're so dark it's hard to know if his eyes are even open.
went to visit his daycare for the first time. He got to meet one of his two teachers and he smiled at her and didn't fuss when she held him. There are a lot of fun toys for him to play with and I think he'll do well there... although it is going to be really hard to leave him there, especially for the first week I'm sure.
didn't like to play on him gymini much toward the end of the week. Most times when we set him down his content face turns to a sour cry face in a matter of seconds. We thought it must have something to do with his acid reflux, so I tried putting a foam wedge under it so his head would be elevated but his face is too close to the toys that way. We also had him sitting up to play with the toys and he didn't like that either, so who knows.
is a licking machine. His favorite things to lick are his hands and my hands if I'll let him. He's even started "sucking" his thumb. He doesn't really suck on it, but rather just licks and mouths it. He's also funny when I hold him and his face gets a little too close to mine, he'll try and lick my nose or anything else he can touch.
has gotten an even stronger grip and will hold onto his blue ball and shake it to make it rattle but wants it in his mouth at the same time so he'll bring it up to his face and actually hit himself over and over.At least it's super light weight rubbery plastic and doesn't seem to hurt him. We had to buy him a new soft ring toy because he has been hitting himself hard enough to make him cry with some of the other ones.
fought his blanket wrap that he sleeps with so we started putting him in the crib without it. For a little while, I just wrapped it around him with his feet hanging out since he would always find a way to kick his feet out anyway, but even with it just wrapped around him he'd find a way to end up with it being a belt so we decided it wasn't even worth messing with.
did surprisingly well sleeping with the 4th of July fireworks in the background. We kept him in the living room sleeping until the fireworks died down outside since they were ridiculously loud outside his bedroom window.
woke up at a 90 degree angle from where he started at the beginning of the night quite a few times. He always seems to rotate at least 45 degrees counterclockwise and gets his head right up against the rails.
continues to show an inclination for using his left hand over his right. It may be too early to tell but he masters skills, like grabbing, with his left hand first.
played on his Jumperoo for the first time. He wasn't sure what to think of it at first but then he started to kinda like it. His feet barely touch the ground so hopefully his upper body will get a little stronger before he grows tall enough to really get bouncing.