Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Leaps and Bounds

Big changes are happening for Mia as she approaches her eight-monthiversary. She's still army crawling/dragging, refusing to roll from back to belly, taking a break from popping out new teeth, and struggling with working out how to sit herself up, but it's only because her focus has been on other things.

Like- praise God- learning how to sleep.

I've been hesitant to mention it because Mia is now famous (in my mind) for being completely unpredictable in her slumbering habits. Some nights she wakes once, some twice, some three times, and rarely, none at all. However, we've now had three consecutive nights with no midnight to 2am feeding, so I think it might be safe to call it a trend. Her schedule is shaping up to be a bedtime of 8pm and a wake-up of about 6:45am, which is earlier than I'd like but if it means no more sleep interruptions then- hey- I'll take it.

Of course, the sleep interruptions are continuing for now, while Michael takes up residence in our bedroom and spends some amount of time coughing through the night. Early wakings are also unavoidable in this arrangement; he seems to think that being in our bedroom gives him license to wake us up at 6:00am (or earlier).

Mia has also been showing a sudden, keen, interest in food, but only of the table variety. I've gotten braver about just letting her go ahead and try foods with multiple ingredients, since (as I found with Michael) skipping the purees makes it difficult to try to parse things out. I did give the purees one last shot the other day, however, and she seemed to take to it better that time than ever before.


The deep suspicion that she holds for mushy, unrecognizable food remains, however. (Paper and trash? Those are another matter entirely.)


Meh. I can't say I blame her. They don't look particularly appetizing to me, either.

Tangentially, all of this big-girl eating is making her feel pretty sure of herself, it seems. Today I caught her on her knees with her bum in the air, hands reaching for the seat of one of her siblings' little chairs. Much like Abby, she's prematurely attracted to the notion of pulling up and cruising, proper crawling technique and unassisted sitting milestones be darned.

I'll be interested to see if she actually pulls it all off out of order.

In the meantime, here's hoping Michael hurries up and gets well. I need a bedroom to myself again for the desperate, last-ditch attempt I've been planning to catch up on sleep now that Mia's cancelled her overnight room service requests. I'm not sure how much more time I have before she starts getting to her feet; my days will really be numbered, then.