Matthew: Seven Months!

 

Yes, that's his tongue sticking out. ALWAYS

Height/Weight: Nothing official, and hopefully it'll stay that way for the next few months, but he's certainly getting heavier to carry around (or I'm getting weaker!) and clothes are definitely getting too short, so suffice to say he's growing. 

Wearing: We moved in to size three diapers shortly after he turned six months old, and my only complaint about that is that he is STILL soaking through them at night if he nurses in the middle of the night, which means diaper changes are necessary after middle-of-the-night feedings. Not fun. Otherwise we are pretty much fully into 6-9 month clothes, although I've hung on to a few of my favorite "fall" 3-6 outfits in hopes that it will cool down soon enough for him to squeeze in to them at least one more time.

Eating: Well, even though he technically jumped the gun and started solid food a few days before six months, he's officially made the transition into solid food. And let me tell you, he is loving it. There hasn't been a thing we've introduced that he hasn't inhaled, and believe me when I say we're not just cherry-picking the best things to give to him. The big one that comes to mind is summer squash--William and Garrett both tried this in their sixth month and HATED it, but Matthew inhaled it. Granted, it was a fresh summer squash from Grandma's garden, instead of store-bought, so maybe that made the difference. Even though he's getting solid food at breakfast and dinner, he still has plenty of interest in Mama's milk--he nurses at least five times during the day and occasionally at night. He'd probably nurse more often if I let him, but I try to be pretty scheduled with our feedings.

Sleeping: So (knock on all the wood!) I think we've finally turned a corner with the whole sleep thing. He's started sleeping through the night (most of the time!), and even on the nights he wakes up I only end up feeding him about half the time. So that's a major win. Naps are slowly improving as well, although his morning nap is generally better than his afternoon nap, which means he doesn't overlap his nap with Connor as much as I'd like for him too. And I don't think we are anywhere close to dropping his third nap; honestly, there are some days where we almost need a four nap to get him to bedtime (which generally falls between seven and eight). 

New Stuff: He's officially mobile! He started army crawling mid-August, although prior to that he would (pretty effectively) maneuver himself around a room by rolling. He's also managed to pull himself up a few times, although he's still super wobbly. It's actually crazy for me to look back and see that both William and Garrett were walking (fully supported, of course) at this age when Matthew has very little ability to support his body weight on his legs for extended periods of time. The other main thing that comes to mind as being relatively new is that he HAS to be in sight of Mommy, and generally, if he can see Mommy, he needs to be held by Mommy. On the (rare) occasion he will sit and play on the floor by himself, he will IMMEDIATELY start to fuss if he sees me, and the ONLY way to calm him down is for me to go pick him up. Usually if I sit on the floor with him he'll be more than content to play with a variety of toys for a decent period of time, but if I get up and try to leave it's game over. So my productivity is basically limited to things I can do from the floor (without needing to worry about Matthew getting in to it) or things I can do while holding Matthew. Fortunately, Darrell is really understanding of this phase (especially since he's been on the negative side of it when Matthew--who was contentedly playing with him--immediately starts to cry when he sees me), so I'm trying to embrace the slow down because I know that this time will all too quickly pass.  

Photo Every Hour: August 21st

 

School starts in just under a week, so we're trying to get back on to our school schedule. Which means I'm supposed to be up and mostly ready for the day before I need to wake the boys up at 6:45. So far I'm struggling with the transition as much as the boys are....

7:00 And this stinker here is a big reason for it. He just can't decide if he wants to consistently sleep through the night or not, and the inconsistency of his schedule is killing my body. Even on the nights he does sleep through the night I don't necessarily wake up feeling refreshed because my body is more confused than anything

8:00 However, we have had success making daily cleaning a part of our back-to-school routine, and that has been awesome. They play downstairs WAAAAY more readily when it is actually clean than when it is a royal mess (and guess what--it's WAAAAY easier to clean as well when you do it every day)

9:00 Finally getting one of the display frames in Matthew's room updated with his birth date #betterlatethannever

10:00 When one of the best cupcake shops in town celebrates their birthday, you celebrate with them

11:00 Play time!

12:00 Messaging one of Darrell's cousins (whose husband is a pest-removal expert) on what to do with the (suspected) wasp nest under our gutter. I HATE WASPS

1:00 Productivity be damned--when this cutie wants me to color with him, I do everything in my power to oblige him

2:00 Back to the productive reality--I'm pretty sure EVERY time I do one of these posts I'm doing laundry #storyofmylife

3:00 You might think this is cute now, but just you wait... 

4:00 A rare moment of all four playing in the basement (although despite what you might assume, they are pretty much all playing something independently)

5:00 ....It's not so cute now. Okay. Fine. It is cute. And I love how he is looking at me (and I love Darrell working on dinner in the background). But I DO NOT love that he has gotten insanely clingy in the afternoon/evening hours and will ONLY be calm if Mommy is holding him or sitting and playing with him. I do like to pretend that I have a life beyond my children

6:00 The pokey dinner crew--Connor who has decided that he needs to be "helped" with every bite and Matthew, who legitimately does need to be helped with every bite (or at least have his Cheerios broken in half for him by his ever-doting big brother)

7:00 Pretty sure I'm the luckiest person in the world to call these five boys mine

8:00 We're pretty sure Connor can't actually read yet (because seriously, that would be insane), but this kid can memorize books like nobody's business and LOVES his story time before bed (or really, at any time of the day)

9:00 Lounging with a drink and a show... And paying bills because #momlife

 10:00 Trying to be responsible and starting to get ready for bed at a respectable time. And I was being so responsible, in fact, that I forgot to take a good night photo. So good night!

Matthew: Six Months!

Height/Weight: You'd think that after four kids I'd be better able to analyze the physical appearance of my kid. Apparently not, though, because my estimations about Matthew at five months could not have been more inaccurate. While it is maybe true that our scale put him at 16 pounds at five months, either our scale is off or his weight gain slowed drastically between five and six months because at his well visit he weighed in a 16 pounds, 7 ounces. Which puts him as the lightest of the three boys. However, Matthew came in at 26.7 inches tall, and only Garrett was taller at six months (and not by much!). So maybe I'm just imagining the fact that the has rolls? Because with a height in the 53rd percentile and a weight in the 28th percentile you'd think he'd look more like a bean pole than a roly poly chunk, but I swear he's the latter. 

Wearing: Well, I finally bought my first box of size three diapers for Matthew--but only because they were on sale and we still had a box and a half of size two diapers for him. We're finally down to the last couple dozen of size two diapers, and while they generally seem to be fitting just fine, he does wet them substantially overnight, so I'm hopeful that I won't need to change the size three diapers in the middle of the night like I do the size two ones (and honestly, I've considered putting him in different sizes for night and day, but keeping track of that just seems like too much work). A few weeks ago I did start to pull some 3-6 month outfits out of his closet because they were too small, but I haven't really needed to add 6-9 month clothes into the mix yet because he has plenty of 3-6 month stuff that still fits (#fourthboy #handmedowns). I'll probably go through the 6-9 month tote soon, though, if for no other reason than I want to get the "summer" stuff in his closest so he has a few opportunities to wear the pieces before fall gets here (how is it already August in a few days?!?)

Eating: Well, it was bound to happen. We made such an effort with all the boys to nurse exclusively for the first six months, but Matthew just refused to let that happen. A few days before we officially started solid foods with him, he was sitting on Darrell's lap while I was finishing getting dinner on the table and he stole the hoagie roll right off of Darrell's plate and immediately shoved it into his mouth. Darrell was able to salvage most of the roll, but we allowed him to keep the balled up drooled on piece that he was clutching in his hands, and he happily sucked on it the entire meal--which, for the record, is the most content he had been at the table in weeks. Suffice to say this kid is ready for something other than Momma's milk. He did continue to have a couple of rough stretches with nursing in the past month, mostly in that he only wanted to nurse for a minute or two and then refused any more--which then resulted in some not so great naps--but (knock on wood) I think we're past that.

Sleeping: So here's the thing. My other boys were pretty much consistently bad sleepers--at six months they were all getting up twice a night, and most nights, more than that. But because it was constant, my body must have gotten used to it or something. However, the nights that Matthew gets up twice are AWFUL. And honestly, twice is pretty much the max. Most nights it's only once, and we even occasionally get a night where he sleeps from 8 pm to 7 am. So really, comparatively, I should be doing fine... But I'm not. It's like my body can't figure out a "good" sleep cycle and as such I'm always getting interrupted in the deepest part of a cycle. And it sucks. Naps are improving slightly, which helps, but it's far from every day that he naps well and even then I maybe get one decent nap out of the whole day. I've complained to Darrell more than once that this whole thing isn't "fair"--with the older boys I hated letting them cry so I inevitably created bad sleep crutches which resulted in babies who weren't the best sleepers, and with Matthew I've been trying So.Hard to let him cry more and self soothe and he still isn't as good of a sleeper as I would hope, which makes me feel even worse when he cries because it seems like it isn't doing anything anyway. Which rationally, I know isn't really true, and rationally, he is consistently better than the other boys were, but ugh--the fact that he can be soooo inconsistent from one day/night to the next is brutal. My body never has any idea what is coming--and factor in the needs of three other boys and my brain is just crazy over-taxed. But, like everything, this too shall pass. So we'll get through it. 

New Stuff: Well, if I had to speak for Matthew, I'd say the biggest excitement of the past month is that he discovered his penis. The kid loves nothing more than to play with himself, and the minute his diaper is off (sometimes even before), he's got at least one hand grabbing on to it (which, as you can well imagine, makes changing poopy diapers incredibly difficult). Since he has pretty well mastered sitting he has joined Garrett and Connor in the bathtub, which basically just turns in to another opportunity for him to hold on to his penis (#boymomproblems). So that's been fun. We celebrated his first 4th of July (at least to the extent that we could being stuck at home and only allowed to be at the cabin for one day of the long weekend), but at least he was able to get in the lake for the first time on the day we were down there, so I suppose that redeemed the celebration a little bit. 

He's starting to develop an awareness for people and places--William can almost always get big smiles and giggles out of Matthew with little effort; Garrett can do the same thing as William but gets much less of a reaction, probably because Matthew knows there is a much greater chance of Garrett being too rough with him than William (to Garrett's defense, he just loves Matthew SOOOO much and can't not be playing with him/carrying him/repositioning him, but I definitely think it wears on Matthew). He is also very aware of his nursery and generally fusses when we take him in there because he knows that it means nap time. Unfortunately, he is also very loud (like seriously--always SO LOUD), which has resulted in him waking Connor up early from his nap a few times. So that's fun. 

All in all, it's been a pretty wonderful half a year with this kiddo. It's definitely not the way I expected the first six months of his life to go (#covidsucks), but we've made the best of it and he's definitely made the journey worth our while. And as much as I love his squishy baby rolls and sloppy wet baby kisses, I'm excited to see his personality continue to develop as he grows. Just not too fast, of course.