Henry at 7 Months

Well hello there!  Another month has flown by, and now that Henry is 8 months old I am just getting around to updating the blog for his seventh month update.  I think I'm now going to call these posts the "month in review" because they truly are an overview of the previous month.

10.17.12

10.11.12

October was a good month for Henry.  As a seven month old Henry became even more fun (and funny!).  As I mentioned in his 6 month post Henry is very curious the enthralled with the world around him.  This became even more apparent once he was seven months, and he is even more determined to discover and explore the world around him.  Henry is not crawling yet, but he is getting close!  Henry uses rolling to get around these days and he is busy trying to pull up on objects and stand with minimal support.  Henry rocks back and forth on his knees in the crawling position, but up until recently he could not move anywhere.  Now he moves, but he can only scoot backwards so far!

Thinking about crawling...

Henry is very animated and continues to love to mimic faces and sounds that LJ and I make.  Henry's favorite face at seven months is what I like to call the "stinker face".  (And I like to think that I taught it to him.)  It's when he scrunches up his nose and kind of snorts.  It's pretty hilarious!

Doing the "stinker face"

As I mentioned in Henry's 6 month update, he did NOT like solid foods at all in the beginning.  It was really a struggle to get him to even open his mouth to take a taste!  However, the day before his 7 month birthday we went over to my parents house for dinner.  Our good friends, Morgan and Kyle, were in town visiting us from Boulder for the weekend.  My mom prepared a great meal and we were all sitting around the dinning room table, conversing, eating, and enjoying each other's company.  Henry was very excited to be a guest at this dinner party and at that moment he decided that he would try to eat solid foods, and since then there has been no looking back!  Now Henry eats 3 meals of solid foods a day and sometimes has snacks!  Henry loves butternut squash, sweet potatoes, apples and pears to name a few, and has now tried zucchini, broccoli, carrots, and acorn squash, in addition to avocados, peas, green beans, oatmeal and bananas.  The only draw back to his excitement for eating solid foods is that now Henry has an even harder time nursing.

I love butternut squash! 

What does all this food have in common?
It's all been pureed for Henry to eat! 

Henry has been a distracted nurser ever since he was 3 or 4 months old, but it was always very manageable.  When he was younger he used to latch on and eat a little bit, then come off and want to look around, but he would never refuse the breast.  About a month or so ago he started becoming very particular about his nursing.  Initially he would only nurse for 3-5 minutes at a time, unless he was very hungry.  Then he only wanted to nurse on the left breast, and would not accept the right breast unless he was very tired.  Then he started refusing to nurse on either breast all together unless he was VERY hungry, (meaning he had gone for 3.5 - 4.5 hours without nursing) or very tired.  Now Henry pretty much refuses to nurse unless we are in his bedroom and it is dark in there, and he is getting sleepy.  This has lead to Henry only really nursing during the day before he goes down for naps, (and sometimes nursing himself to sleep for naps, a habit that I am chagrined he has formed, as we are working on trying to teach him to fall asleep by himself for naps).

His favorite way to eat his oatmeal!  Mr. Independent - I want to do it myself! 

YUM

I have been worried that Henry is going through a "nursing strike" (when the baby refuses the breast), which I guess is very common around 8 months old.  What I've read according to Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding and  Dr Jack Newman's book, most nursing strikes resolve on their own and get better within a matter of weeks, especially when they happen when the baby is older.  In Henry's case his particularity about nursing has not seemed to get better over the past month, in fact, it may have gotten worse.  I've come to the conclusion that this is just they way he is now.  He is too interested in the world around him to tune it out and focus on nursing during the day (this is perhaps why he nurses so much at night?).  For him nursing has become something that he does for comfort, when he is sleepy, but it's no longer the main way he gets his food.  While I guess this is a good thing, it makes me feel kind of sad that my baby is growing up and becoming more independent, and not as dependent upon me for his nourishment.

I've given up on trying to get a picture of Henry next to the bear... its just not going to happen!

Cracking up

Silly guy! 

While Henry is certainly nursing less than he did when he was younger, he still nurses about 5-6 times in a 24 hour period, which seems to be enough.  The only time that Henry nurses for more than 5-10 minutes at a time is when he wakes in the middle of the night (usually some time between 1-4 am) and even though I am exhausted, I have come to cherish those middle of the night feedings, because I know they are numbered.  It's our special time of the day when we get to have our close snugly time, cuddled up in bed, and we both usually end up falling asleep.  =) 

Morgan and Kyle came to visit!
Ready for a night on the town...
Henry stayed home with Grandma and Grandpa

Hiking in Hixon with Morgs and Kyle

 At the beginning of October we had the pleasure of hosting two of our very close friends from Boulder, Morgan and Kyle!  Morgan and I actually go way back, before Boulder, before teaching, even before LJ!  Morgan and I met in college while we were studying abroad in Costa Rica!  We have stayed in touch over the years and in 2010 Morgan moved to Boulder to start her masters!  The only bummer was that a few months before Morgan moved to Boulder, we moved to Denver because I was teaching at Good Shepherd, which is in the Cherry Creek neighborhood in Denver.  Boulder and Denver are not a far distance, so we got to see each other lots during that time.  It was hard to say good bye last December as we packed up for Wisconsin, but I knew we would see each other again soon.  I'm so glad they made the trek out to visit us!

The pumpkin man

Ready to go outside! 

Seven months has been one of my favorite months so far.  I know I always say this, but Henry keeps getting more fun, and our job as parents keeps getting more fun!  I know each stage has it's challenges, and this month we certainly had some, but its reassuring to see Henry's face light up when either LJ or I enter a room... it means we must be doing something right!