I'm still here!

Hello bloggy buddies.

It's been a while since my last post (a little over 1 week). Just been plowing along with life.

Kaua has had a cold for over 4 weeks now! We took him to the doctors when he first had the cold (April 28) and again on Tuesday (May 18) and basically we've been told that its not serious, there's nothing we can really give him to help it pass, and to just let it run its course. It's been somewhat miserable at night when he wakes himself up coughing, but other than that, he seems to be a happy camper. His cough is pretty bad though. When his congestion was really bad, we'd have to prop him up in his car seat in his crib. Like so....

(Too funny his pose, he's actually sleeping like this. When we walked into the room and saw this, we had to snap a picture).

Luckily, the congestion is getting better, but that darn cough is still there. We've been rubbing Vi.cks on his chest and back in hopes that it'll help, but nope, not much luck there. Poor guy.

In eating news, nope, we still dont have the sprouts of any teeth yet, but we are expanding his food repetoire (sp?). We've went from rice cereal and poi, to squash, peas and today carrots. I had all these big designs to make his food myself, but right now, I just cant find the time to do it...so we're feeding him Earth's Best organic baby firsts from Whole Foods. So easy to just buy the jar and pop it open. He seems to like all the foods we've introduced so far. It's kinda cute when we introduce a new food to him, he shudders and it appears as if he doesn't like the food, but then he'll happily chomp away. He's finishing about 1/3 of a baby food jar in one sitting. He seems to be hungry fairly often (looking at my food when I eat it and showing interest in it), so we've just begun feeding him baby food or rice cereal 3x a day. He eats every time! I've also been feeding him small sips of water from a cup or glass and occassionally when we're on the go, a sippy cup. I read somewhere that getting a child used to a cup or glass now is better than a sippy cup, because at this age they're still maleable to anything. If we get him too accustomed to a nipple or sippy cup, he may not transition to a big boy cup as easily. Ah, whatever, I think I use a regular cup with him because i'm too lazy to go get a sippy cup for him and just give him sips from the water I'm drinking.

I've begun contemplating weaning him off breastmilk. On the one hand, it's just so time consuming and demanding to be pumping every 3 hours or to be present to breast feed him. I really do plan my life around pumping or breast feeding, and I'd love to have the luxury of not having it be that way. But on the other hand, I'm cheap and dont want to spend the money on formula and am worried I'd be taking away any additional health benefits that Kaua may get from my breast milk. DH wants me to continue breast feeding, but only because he read somewhere that its good for Kaua. I will at least do some research as to whether it really makes a difference to breast feed or formula feed your baby after he is six months old. For some reason, I feel as if I read that breast feeding for 6 months is ideal, and after that it doesn't really matter. (but I could just be making that up).

The little guy is about 18 lbs now (17 lbs, 9 oz) and wears size 6-9 month clothing exclusively and some 12 month clothing. He'll be 6 months old on May 27! Half a year away to his first birthday party!

In milestone news, we're working on having him sit by himself unsupported. He can sit pretty well on the couch:

But sitting on his own without any back support is still iffy. He can sit ok, but someone needs to be there to make sure he doesn't topple forward or backward or to the side. It's quite funny really. He's still not a crawler. He doesn't even get up on all fours when on his tummy and I'm not sure how to show him how to do it. He does roll from front to back and vice versa pretty regularly, and sometimes it drives me bananas because when he's sleeping with us, he ALWAYS rolls himself all the way over to me, crowding me on the bed, no matter how often I move him away, he somehow finds his way back to me. And usually, it's his feet or hands that are digging into me. He also loves to be held so that he can stand on his legs. I've heard of babies going directly from back/tummy to standing on their own (skipping the crawling stage) and I wonder if that will be Kaua. One thing is for sure, when he starts to move, we're going to have to baby proof the house. (Hopefully it'll be a house of DH and my own...we're in the market to buy again!)

His bed time is between 7pm and 8pm usually and he takes either two long naps during the day (approximately 1-2 hours) or if there's too much noise and his naps are disturbed, he'll take three cat naps throughout the day. He gets up at the God-awful hours of 5am-6am daily! On the rare occasion, when he gets up before 5am and wants to play, I can sometimes get him to fall back asleep in half an hour and he'll then sleep until about 7 am and that's what I call "sleeping in!" So as you can see, these kind of hours really take a toll on any night life I'd like to have (like I have any option of having a night life....at my new/old hometown, there is nil in the way of nightlife).

Well, that's all in the news of Kaua-chronicles. I hope everyone else is doing well out there!