Linnaeus 9.2

Sprout's teeth are coming fast & furious now, tooth #6 popped through Sunday night, after a few major drooling & gnawing episodes. He's used to his nightly tooth brushing now & opens his mouth to let me do it. He's also started sticking his tongue out of his mouth & feeling the top teeth all the time. The two upper central incisors are starting to come down enough that they show when he smiles, so he's starting to look less like a jack-o-lantern. They're also coming in enough that I feel them nearly every time he breastfeeds. Sometimes I end up with two tooth imprints in my nipple at the end of the feed.

My half-assed (pun intended) attempts at EC are going fairly well, when I bother. He hasn't been pooping in the middle of breakfast lately, so we managed to get one in the toilet Sunday. It's not something I do when we're away from home, but if I'm at home & he's obviously about to go, why not get it in the toilet straight from the source, rather than having to get it off his bum & the diaper?

What hasn't gone well is the new toilet seat we bought. It's a great idea: a smaller toilet seat nests inside the lid, attached by a magnet, so you can just flip it down, rather than having to use a separate potty seat thingie on there. But we haven't been able to get our old seat off. The bolts attaching it to the toilet are metal & completely rusted. The plastic nut will not budge & we've been unable to even cut it off. I think the only way to do it would be to go at it with a dremel, which we don't have.

Sprout is still poking everything in sight. If he drips a bit of food on his tray, he'll poke that. He pokes the buttons on his music-playing toys, as well as buttons on clothing. He pokes my little star tattoo whenever he can see it. If he notices a mole on my arm, he'll poke that.

Sprout has started to really move around a lot in our arms & when he's on his own. Sprout makes me realize how many things we, as adults, do during the day that we had to learn once. For example, moving your head & body to look at something. He leans over so he can see around things when in our arms or sitting elsewhere. He's gradually starting to realize that he can actually go places by rolling. Once in a while when he's on his tummy, he pushes himself backwards on the floor. He also lunges out of our arms when we're sitting on the couch/floor. No crawling yet. Most of the time he doesn't move more than a metre in ten minutes, so I can still leave him on the floor & leave the room for a moment. I'm trying to enjoy that while it lasts...

Diaper changes & face cleaning after meals is becoming difficult as he gets more mobile. He twists around on the change pad & shimmies upward so his head's on the dresser top. I still haven't figured out why there's a 'seat belt' attached to most change pads. If I relied on that to hold him, it would mean he'd just twist around with the pad on top of him, since it's not fixed to the top of his dresser. What's the point of that?

Here's a little video to show you where he's at with mobility.