This is Home: 7 Months Old

Curtis turned 7 months old this week. The actual day was a really busy one. I remembered all day long that he was turning 7 months old, but it wasn’t until bedtime that I realized I hadn’t had a chance to take any pictures of him. So excuse the diaper shots, but we were getting jammies on.

About Curtis:

Curtis has done a great job eating solids. He eats and eats, and I never know when to stop feeding him. He doesn’t have much of a signal for being done, and he’s so easy-going that he just keeps happily opening his mouth. If he spits up a lot after eating, I realize I probably fed him too much.
He has a really good army crawl going, and he can get places quickly. His new-found freedom has also brought on quite a few bumps and bonks, which can make him more fussy. He likes to have me right there watching him (maybe to keep him safe?), and if I try to walk away, he drops what he’s doing and comes crawling, crying, after me.
He’s still toothless, although he’s been drooling like crazy all month. I can’t feel any swollen spots in his mouth, so I wonder if the drooling has been from stuffy noses.
Curtis is the most spitty baby I’ve ever had. He spits up like crazy, but usually only in very small amounts—just little blurps here and there. The amount only gets bigger when I might have fed him too much. Now that he is on solid food, though, his spit-up has taken on colors like green and orange, which makes it a bit more inconvenient to clean up than when it was just a little milk.
He certainly has an eye for trouble. He’s only been crawling for about a week and a half, and he already has a fondness for charging cords, paper, and tiny toys like legos. He knows when he’s onto something good, too, because he laughs when I come after him.
He has been a very stubborn baby at night. To back up a little, he was a superb sleeper until about 4 months age. After that, he started waking up way too many times a night. I’ve gone through sleep training him quite a few times (he keeps getting sick so we backtrack). We’ve had some pretty rough crying spells. He’ll do fine putting himself back to sleep until he hits a certain point in the night when he wants to insist that I nurse him. I’m trying to get rid of night feedings, and he wakes fairly consistently around 3am and cries because I lay him back down without feeding him. I think he’s getting better, though. We’re working on it.
As of last night, he’s sleeping in his own room. He has been in our room in the port-a-crib next to our bed. I finally got the extra bedroom cleaned out so he could move in. It’s been collecting junk for the 3 years since we moved here, and I knew if I put him in there without cleaning it out, it would never get cleaned. He slept quite well last night, with only 2 brief wakings. Hopefully things will continue to improve without us being right there next to him all night.
He’s a really happy kid. I consider him my “take anywhere baby” because he adjusts so well to schedule changes, etc. If he gets tired while we’re out and about, he usually will just drift off to sleep in my arms without fussing. After the girls, this is an absolute wonder to me.
He loves his sisters. He gets excited for Eleanor, and he and Phaedra get along.
He smiles for almost anyone, and people are so drawn to all his hair.
He has already had his first hair cut (I’ll blog the pictures when I can.) His hair was hanging down into his eyes, and I was getting tired of people calling him “the comb over baby.”
He LOVES the water. He gets all excited when the bath tub water is running. Sometimes he looks so longingly at the bath when I give the girls a bath that I just put him in with them. Eleanor loves to hold him in the bath; she loves any responsibility we give her in taking care of her brother. When Curtis is in the bath, he happily kicks and splashes so much that I feel like I’m taking a second shower.
Curtis and I often play around when I put his jammies on. Whenever I pretend munch on his tummy, he grabs handfuls of my hair to get me to back off. Then he uses the hold he has on me to pull me in when he wants me to do it again. He has the sweetest laugh. His little voice is so young and little and yet so manly.

He is my sweet, snuggly baby boy, and we’re all so happy to have him in our family. He has been an excellent fit right from the start, making this baby phase so enjoyable for me.

Caught him in a sneeze.