Ozzidoc

Great to read your update. You are so lucky to have a parent giving the full-time care

(//on:Anally-retentive proud mummy alert!!)
Our little Millie (Sydney's cyber twin) is also eight months. She started crawling, cruising and signing intermittently "milk" and "more" when she was seven months. This weeks she's been saying "mum/mama" and dada. She said "stan" once two months ago. Stan is the name of our ceiling fan LOL.

I highly recommend baby sign language. We've been doing the freebies at the library, and have paid for a six-week program that's on the weekend so that daddy can come too.

WRT food/solids/eating, we are doing baby-lead-weaning. ie no purees, and and hardly a spoon. It's fab! Millie chooses how much she wants to eat. She has all kinds of vegetables which are cut-up into finger-food sizes. This includes steamed chicken. She grabs yogurt with her hands, or I load up a little spoon and then she grabs my hand or the spoon. There is no pressure to finish or "eat up". Although I do ask her to "taste this" or I take a bit and show her that I think it's yummy. Up to one year old, babies get all ->majority of their nutrition from milk. Before then, they eat in order to learn how to manipulate their tongue, to experience new tastes and sensations, to learn social skills. etc.

(//:Anally-retentive proud mummy alert!! off)

I can't believe how much fun little kids are.

O, and I forgot to mention. Our kid doesnt really know what sleep is. We are at our wits end with this. She wakes at least twice a night. She can be AWFUL to go down sometimes. Last night she didn't get to sleep til midnight, and then woke 4-4.45.


ETA - Once Millie was six months, we used a little gadget thing that has a handle and netting, and the netting can be opened to place soft fruit in it. So the kid can safely suck on banana, peach, pear etc. We have a couple of them in the freezer, with banana inside - these make FANTASTIC teething soothers

AZ_Alba

We sometimes have the same issue and were told by the child development Specialist that he was to tired so therefore did not sleep through also him clock would wake him up in the morning so we needed to set his routine. Now we try and get him to bed about 8:30 (sometimes easier said than done) and hopefully he will sleep through till 7:30. For some reason he will often go to sleep better for me than my wife, this may be that she plays with him in the morning before she goes to work in the afternoon.

However normally in practice he will wake at least once during the night as he sleep crawls into a corner of the crib, if we catch him in time we can just pull him back down the crib. If he wakes and stands up in the crib then it can be 30-45 minutes to get him back to sleep, which if I am the one to wake up means carrying him in my arms and sing Scottish Lullabies to him as sitting and rocking does not see to work unless you give him a bottle.

SultanOfSwing

Yay! Glad to hear Millie is doing so well. Sydney is trying some solids but we didn't bypass the pureed fruit/veg and the 'meals in a jar', although she much prefers to have a go at our food instead. She will try to grab stuff off our plates if we have her on one of our laps over dinner

How many teeth does Millie have now? Sydney has her two bottom middle incisors. I still can't get used to the idea of babies with teeth! She's as cute as all get out though, there should follow a pic if I got it right . . .

Ozzidoc

Adorable.

Aha - she is ready for baby-led weaning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby-led_weaning



Millie also has two bottom teeth. And she luuuurrrrrvvvvveeeesss to use them!

SultanOfSwing

Thanks, she is a cutie

On first inspection, I think she is already doing the baby-led weaning to an extent. Good to know we can continue and progress with it.

Oh, and Sydney likes to bite too. On Monday our son and I were playing some chess and we had the board set up on the floor. I brought Sydney over so she could work on her crawling and after a few minutes she had fallen onto my foot and was biting my big toe!

Jerseygirl

Funny you should mention Roombas. I had two for several years and thought they were the bees knees...then I decided to update them. I bought 2 new replacements from Costco about 2 years ago. For the last couple of months they've not worked...showing 'Err 5'...today I called Roomba and they said the batteries need replaceing...around $70 each. So I'm taking them back to Costco...I mentioned the problem to their customer services person a few weeks ago and she advised me to return them to the store for a full refund.

Bob

It's a pain in the arse that, but the heart breaking but firm approach does work, let them cry for 5 mins one night before coming in for a cuddle, then 10 mins the next time, and the following day, add another minute.

It hopefully brings a bit of a routine that they get used to going down on their own, can take a few weeks to work though and when teeth come through they can put a spanner in the works, but over all it does work.

The missus had a harder time sticking to it though.

Bob

It's amusing, those things are made just up the road from me...but they're only a token side business, the company makes $15B selling hardcore versions to the military for bomb disposal

SarahG

We did that with our 2 kids. It was hard but it worked. Eventually!

Ozzidoc

Yeah. I'm not a fan of "crying it out" but now that she's eight months she can probably cope with it to some extent. She cried for 2 hrs straight the other night...it didn't matter what either one of us did or didnt do.....

Bob

Aye, well the plan is, they'll get used to it by the time you have to give them a half hour break for the first visit...not easy though when they cry like that, but it's much better for you in the long run to get them used to it now and get it sorted than worry about them waking you up a couple times a night, every time till they're 5 years old

Our little bozo now will sleep in till 10:30 if we let her, but when we do get the chance to actually cash that in and sleep in, she then decides 7:30 is good enough for her

TracyTN

I feel bad I'm just now seeing all these posts! I'm a clod!!!

Yes, I feel very lucky to have 'daddy day care'. SO nice to be at work and just have to worry about work.

RE: cry it out. There is SO much debate about this, and I see both sides, I really do. We do this to an extent. We make sure she is dry, burped and all fed up PLUS showing signs of tiredness (she's a big eye wiper and yawner). If all these are true, and she's in her crib at bedtime with lights out, then we let her go at it for a bit. Normally, she isn't really crying but I call it 'protesting'. It's certainly not a wail of any sort (at least not for more than a few seconds at a time). I tend to do what Bob does which is let her go at first for, say, 10 minutes, then check on her. 8 minutes next time, check again, etc. Last night she went dead silent after about 8 minutes of protesting and I never heard another peep out of her.

I really think each parent has to determine what is best for their child. If mine is really BAWLING, I will definitely check her sooner rather than later. You start to pick up on their cues and go from there. Plus it probably won't work for every child either so you just have to do your best. My logic is if she is safe in their crib, and there's nothing more I can do for her, then she needs to learn to put herself to sleep. Her pediatrician told us the sooner she starts putting herself to sleep, the better off we'll be for her sleeping patterns in the long run.

MrEmjoy

We didn't try cry out it but it can work as long as the child doesn't need something.

We did the pick up put down approach. Now she goes to sleep when she's told (19 months) Sometimes I have to go back in and say "Go to sleep" then sometimes a third time I attach "Now" and that does the trick