First Tooth!

It's official, Dargan has his first tooth! After months of excessive drooling and gnawing on everything in sight, a little chomper finally broke through on the lower left side. I haven't been able to get a good photo of it yet, but maybe he'll let me soon.

You can almost barely see it in the shadow under his tongue... 

Food

We're getting better at the table food this week. We made a batch of steamed vegetables (carrots and broccoli) for him to eat at dinner each night, then we try to get one protein (frequently greek yogurt) and another item - starch or fruit. In addition to that, we'll give him small bites of whatever we have on our plate. This way we know he's getting a good enough meal, plus we're able to expand his horizons with different tastes but we aren't sunk if he hates it.

Dargan's dinner: steamed veggies, greek yogurt, and apple sauce

Yum, veggies!

In addition to table foods, he's still nursing about 5x per day. Early morning (right after wake-up), breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and post-dinner / pre-bedtime. I've slightly reduced his bottle volumes at daycare from a heavy 5 oz. down to about 4.5 oz. I'm going to start doing 4 oz. bottles this week just because at home he's seemed less and less interested in nursing after meals. Overnight feeds are still a bit unpredictable (more on that later).

His other big achievement is drinking from a straw sippy cup! It took him a couple of weeks to figure it out, but now he takes good sips from the straw when we hold it up for him. He also knows how to blow bubbles into the cup with the straw. :-P

Playtime

I have to say, Dargan is really good at independent play. I often wonder what he's thinking about when he's playing by himself. I credit daycare for getting him good at this! He will just sit and play with his toys for a good long while.

At daycare, Ms. Sandy has Dargan doing what she calls "tummy bootcamp" - he's not crawling yet, so they're trying to encourage it as much as possible. He's getting better at tummy time, pushes up on his arms really well, but still not making any moves towards getting his hind end up or moving. I'm not worried! I kind of enjoy being able to set him down and come back to find him where I left him. :)

Sleeping

We're still making good progress here, and actually had three days in a row of zero feedings overnight. He still woke up a few times during the night, but either was able to be rocked back to sleep or fussed for a bit and went back to sleep on his own. Friday night was phenomenal - he only briefly woke up and fussed around 3 am, but neither Scott nor I had to get out of bed at all overnight. AND he slept until almost 6:30am! 

Napping is also a challenge but we're getting better. We really only see this on the weekends since he's at daycare the rest of the week. He's great at his morning nap - both days this weekend he has napped 2+ hours. Afternoon naps are another story. Saturday we were out and about, so that messed up his schedule, and he only ended up napping in the car. Sunday I could tell he was getting tired and fussy, so I went up and put him in the crib. He fussed on and off for almost 30 minutes but finally fell asleep and napped about an hour.

The stages of Dargan sleep:

1) Refusal; 2) Play with hands; 3) Sleep.

Other Fun with Dargan:

Just a happy guy at home!

At Upstate Craft Beer Co. to celebrate Mom's birthday :)

Early morning smiles before work/daycare

Weekend mornings at home!

Outdoor fun - hanging out while mom & dad take turns mountain biking

Helping with laundry

Oh, and this weekend we've also gone through his clothing drawers and removed all of the 6 month onesies. He's too long for them and they strain to snap! His short little legs are still fine in 6 month pants, but the onesies and shirts? Nope. Where did my tiny preterm baby go?!

Baby's First Snow!

Snowpocalypse 2016 was certainly interesting for us!

It all started Thursday night - everything was cancelled/closed for Friday, including our daycare and work. Dargan did not understand the concept of "no work" or "sleeping in" so we were up at 5:30am per usual.





We made plans to hunker down at home, get a bit of work done, and possibly play in the snow. Most of what came down was ice - about an inch total.



Things got really interesting at about 10:30am on Friday when our power flickered and then went out! Yikes! Thankfully our fireplace is gas and can be lit with battery power, so we got that going right away. The house stayed comfortable throughout the day, and we set up camp in the living room in front of the fire.



Pretty much spent the day playing and napping (yes, all of us!).

In the evening, we had dinner with the neighbors (their gas stove was able to light without electricity) and then had some trouble sleeping at night due to the cooler temperatures.

Side Note: We had a really good night Thursday night, he only woke up once at 1:30!

Friday morning we woke up to about 5-6" of snow that had fallen overnight, which made a beautiful white winter scene outside. Without power still, we didn't want to venture out to play without a warm house to come back to, so we stayed in and admired the beauty from the house.




I also was worried about my milk stash - both refrigerated and frozen. Google told me that a freezer can hold its temperature for ~48 hours without power, so we were ok so far, but Duke Energy estimated our power wouldn't be back until 3pm on Sunday (about 53 hours from first outage). The refrigerator was rapidly warming to room temperature by this point, so we packed everything into a cooler and set it outside on the back porch. Turned out to be a good opportunity to thoroughly clean the fridge!



Then, miraculously at 11am the heat hummed and all the lights came on! HOOORAY!!! We took the next opportunity to go out in the snow for a few minutes. Dargan was largely unimpressed.





In other news, Dargan is getting the hang of feeding himself and mastering the pincer grab for smaller foods (Cheerios, puffs, Goldfish crackers).



He's supposed to be 100% on "table foods" now, so we're trying to give him bits of whatever we're eating (within reason). He loves banana slices and yogurt, but everything else is pretty hit-or-miss. He'll eat a bit of most things and then make faces when we try to give him more. They're feeding him table foods at daycare, too, so it's always interesting to get the report of all the things he tried during the day. Interesting adventure for sure!

Other Milestones:

Still just sitting, no crawling yet here. He can stand ok if we set him up, but he isn't pulling himself up at all. He still hates tummy time after a few minutes, and we have yet to witness any rolling over. We know he can, but have just never seen it happen (only the end result a couple of times).

Napping is another big challenge, but we've made great progress. He'll usually take two 1-2hr naps (~9am and ~noonish) and then maybe a third shorter nap late afternoon. He will still usually nurse to sleep for naps, but that's really just because of how the timing works out more than anything else.

Sleep at night is getting better. He's still good at putting himself to bed - we put him in the crib awake and he'll usually only fuss <5 mins, if any, and then will play with his hands for awhile before drifting off. Night wake-ups are still all over the map, but I think we're getting better.

8 months old

It's been a while - we've not been well at the Trenor household!

It all started last weekend when D had a bit of a cough, but we didn't think much of it. Then Monday we got the call from daycare that he had a fever and was vomiting, so we picked him up and took him in to the pediatrician's to get checked out.

Dargan was in OK spirits and enjoyed looking at himself in the mirror, but the doc could tell pretty quickly that he had a case of RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus). She said his lungs sounded good so we didn't need breathing treatments, but did tell us we were in for a rough few days ahead since the virus tends to get worse on days 4 & 5 before starting to get better.

She was right! D had an awful fever, coughing, and more vomiting over the next couple of days. I took him back in to the pedi's on Wednesday because he was breathing really fast and shallow. Thankfully it wasn't anything more than his reaction to the fever, so once we had that controlled, he was able to calm down. Unfortunately we also discovered he'd developed an ear infection, so we got a skript for antibiotics to take care of that.

Ring sling helps get stuff done with clingy sick baby 

By Wednesday evening he seemed to be feeling much better, and acting more like himself!

New favorite: playing with utensils on the kitchen counter while we do dishes after dinner.

Over the weekend he pretty much was his old self. Unfortunately, now I'm sick - likely with whatever RSV turns into for adults (seems like a cold / sinus infection). BLEH.

Dargan joined me at part of chorus rehearsal over the weekend - even got to do some choreography in the front row! Thank goodness for wraps. :)

Frost helped us out a lot!

The one bad thing about the sickness is that it has somewhat derailed the good progress we'd made on sleeping. He still goes to bed ok, but we're back to waking up every 2-3 hours through the night. I'd relaxed on the sleep training while he was sick, but I think it's time to get back to it.

Napping has been improving, though... pack 'n' play, carseat, and crib - he's getting better and will usually nap for about an hour at a time.




We went to a friend's house on Sunday afternoon for an oyster roast, and Dargan was of course a very happy guest! He takes after his dad...

"See this bottle? MY bottle."

Monday was a day off from work for MLK day, so Dargan and I got to spend some quality time together after I'd been out most of the weekend for chorus. We started the day at 5:30am (Dargan's favorite!) and just generally enjoyed relaxing and playing around the house.




Also finally got his 8 month photos - only about a week late.