Ten months (a bit late)

Sam is definitely a baby on the move now. He loves getting into mischief... and if he disappears for a second a few of the places he might turn up include the bathroom (standing against the bath), Josh's room (the track wrecker) or standing up and looking into the fish tank.
Sam had some rough nights in the past week and we found a tooth coming through on the top. Finally some more teeth to even out his mouth! I was beginning to think that he would only ever have two teeth! And those two teeth are huge now. So we started doing the teething gel and pain relief thing to try and help him sleep a bit better. It didn't seem to be helping though. That is when I noticed last night that he has a tooth coming through on the bottom too! Poor bugger has two teeth coming at the same time... and we had only been putting the gel on the top gum.

Sam is being a very clever boy and sometimes stands for a couple of seconds without holding onto anything! Usually when he forgets and gets distracted by something. And he is finally getting the hang of crawling properly, but will still commando crawl when he wants to get somewhere fast!

The photo proof

I got into a black and white photo mood last night.

Gee it is hard getting Sam to sleep when he just wants to stand up all the time! He has hit his head so many times... but he is finally learning how to fall with grace!

It's started!

Sam has started pulling himself up on things... and I can see that it won't be long before he starts cruising.

I put him to bed tonight and a little bit later he started crying. I got his bottle ready and his crying was getting worse and worse. I finally got to his room and open the door to see my baby STANDING UP IN THE COT!!!

It was kind of funny... he was crying because he couldn't work out how to sit down again!

And he can wave now too!

Nine Months Old

Yesterday I was feeding Sam his Weetbix for breakfast and he must have had enough... the next thing I knew I was wearing his weetbix! He thought it was very funny, and Josh thought it was very funny and tried to copy!

I can't believe that in three months time Sam will be turning one! He still looks like such a baby because he still doesn't have much hair.

He still commando crawls, but today he did try to climb up on me and get into a standing position. So who knows, maybe he will just go straight to walking.

Eight Months

Sam is eight months old now. He has two teeth. The second tooth just appeared one day. I was using my finger to 'clean' his one tooth and thought 'hang on, that feels like more than one tooth to me'. I had a closer look and I was right!

He has been doing a really good job of sitting lately. We can place him on the floor in a sitting position and he will stay there for ages. He can even use his hand to stabilise himself.He has been heard saying a new word in the last few days 'dada'. And he makes a funny clicking noise with his tongue too.

He has started eating three meals a day now. We have made our way through a big list of fruits and veggies. He seems to like most foods that we give him. The only exception being rice cereal. If we try to add rice cereal to something to thicken it up he doesn't really like it as much.He loves chewing on rusks. He almost goes crazy when we give him one... like he is about to chew our hand off!

He has been seen rocking on his knees a few times but no proper crawling as yet. Though that doesn't stop him from getting around! Turn your back for a couple of minutes and you don't know where he could end up! Though most of the time he just tries to find where Josh is.

We had another zoo trip the other day (Sam's fourth trip to the zoo in 8 months!!). He liked watching the butterflies flutter around his head and the seals swimming back and forth in front of the viewing window.

Sam is fascinated with the Eddie and Rocky and Kitty too. The other day he crawled up to the sliding glass door while I was out hanging out the washing. The door was open and he crawled up to the door frame and reached up and grabbed Eddie's head. I think he nearly poked him in the eye. Eddie is just as fascinated with Sam too! He puts his head right up close and sniffs him. He is so gentle with him though. But he does stay out of the way when Sam is in his walker! He can get very fast in that thing and always tries to chase Eddie.We have had to reassess our childproofing with Sam in the walker. Suddenly he can reach Josh's chalks, playdoh, books and drawings.

We still haven't had regular sleeping through the night. We got lucky one night, but it was just a once off. Usually he has a bottle around 10-11pm, then another feed around 3-4 and then I feed him before I go to work at about 7 (well for a while it was regularly at 6:50am every morning!). He has his meals and bottles throughout the day and then I feed him again at about 7pm and he goes to bed.

I took Sam for his eight month check up today. Here are the stats:

Weight: 8710g
Length: 69cm

Head Circumference: 46cm

The Tooth Fairy has been!

Last week I had to go to the dentist and get a wisdom tooth removed. It was a pretty simple procedure, and I got to take the tooth home. The tooth fairy even came and took my tooth away and left me $10!!! (which doesn't quite cover the cost of having it removed!)

Anyway, this tooth fairy has been very busy lately, because not only did she take my tooth away, but a couple of days ago I spotted a little white dot in the bottom front of Sam's mouth!

Lets just hope that it isn't my wisdom tooth growing in there!

Six Months

Look how far you have come in six months! Boy the time has gone fast.

Here is a photo of Sam in his swing. He loves it!
Sam has started commando crawling now! He is a boy on a mission, especially when he sees Josh's toys lying around. But it has been a bit disgraceful to see how dirty his clothes can get after crawling around on our kitchen floor!

And the other big milestone I have to report is that Sam has started eating real food now. His first food was rice cereal, and he has had some pumpkin now too. He really likes pumpkin.

First Word!

My great news is that Sam has said his first word!!!
And I am VERY happy, because it is "Mumma"!!!!!!

I could just sit and stare at him saying mumma all day long!
It was almost a shame to put him to bed tonight!

Five Months

OK, we are a little bit late, considering it is the 10th March now....

But somewhere between the 28th February and the 1st March Sam hit the five month mark!

The biggest thing to happen in our lives lately is that I have returned to work. I survived the first week at work, Kel survived the first week of being home with the boys alone, Sam survived on the bottle while I was at work and Josh survived!

We did have a few hiccups along the way. At first Sam wouldn't take the bottle - but I think hunger got the better of him after a while! I had a bit of trouble expressing milk at work at first - but that got sorted out too. I could only get about 220mls for the whole day which is one full bottle, but it is better than nothing. We have ran out of frozen milk now, so Sam has had his first taste of formula milk too.

I am in the office on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I am home on Tuesday and Friday and do a total of 8 hours work spread across those two days. This means that I can still spend time with my boys, and get some work done without being on the computer all day. When I am home I feed Sam, and when I am at work he has a bottle of either breastmilk or formula (depending on what we have available). He doesn't seem to be getting confused about things - as long as his belly is getting full he doesn't seem to mind where it comes from!

We still have the rolly polly baby. He can even suck his toes now! And he has sat for a couple of seconds with a little bit of support behind him.

He is still waking through the night but the routine is something like this...

First feed at about 7am, then 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm. Then he sometimes wakes for a feed, or I will wake him at 10pm just before I go to bed. Then he can usually last until about 4am on a good night. On a bad night he wakes twice for a feed (the extra one at about 1am).

He has a cold at the moment though and has needed to have a few cuddles through the night. He is a bit rattley and sounds like he needs to cough... but how do you tell a 5 month old how to cough?

Not long now until Sam's half birthday! And of course we will have to have a party to celebrate! Can't have one for Josh and not have one for Sam now can we? ;)

So keep that weekend free (probably the 31st March) and start thinking about an item for Sam's time capsule... it could be a letter, poem, picture, song or any other idea that you can come up with to represent your hopes and dreams for Sam for the future. (Items can be emailed or sent by mail if you can't make it on the day)

The rolly polly baby

Well I think I did jinx it last post...
He has started waking up again a couple of times each night. With only two weeks til I go back to work I am really hoping that he will start sleeping through again.

I think the main reason is that he has started rolling from his back to his belly and then he gets stuck there and gets very frustrated and cries. He seems to have forgotten how to roll back onto his back! He has ended up in all sorts of positions too, with his legs sticking out of the bars, or one arm and one leg, and sometimes he completely flips around 180 degrees!

He has found his feet now too. That just makes him even more rolly... as soon as he puts his feet up and grabs them he ends up rolling onto his side.

His first night in the big cot!

We finally found the time to clean up Sam's room, find a place for all those stuffed toys which had been taking up residence in the cot and put all the new clothes away.

That means that Sam is now sleeping in his cot!!!

He had a day sleep in it, and is right now asleep and will hopefully stay that way until the morning.

I hope I don't jinx it, but the last few nights I have been letting him go a bit before I go into him. It has meant that when he woke at about 2 or 3 that he would go back to sleep until about 6am.

This morning I woke at 7:15 and had to actually go in there to check on him. He was just lying there awake!

Four Months

Weight: 6850g

Length: 64cm

Head Circumference: 42cm

These measurements all put Sam into the 50th percentile - meaning he is all in proportion and an average sized baby!

He can roll from front to back and half way over onto his side when on his back.

He can hold things in his hands, and puts things into his mouth.

He is a big time drooler! He has probably started teething.

He is a thumb sucker.

He always has big grins when he sees his Dad in the mornings.

He still wakes up through the night for a feed. Sometimes it is only once, sometimes it is twice, and on a bad day it is three times!

He goes in the big bath now so he can streth out and kick and splash about.

And just quietly... he had his first taste of real food the other day... a lick of chicken gravy off Dad's finger - umah! But he did love it!

A belated Christmas post

Sam was only three months old for his first Christmas, so he didn't really know what was going on! Santa had a lot of trouble filling his Christmas stocking.

We thought we would get a good Santa photo this year because Sam is too young to be scared of Santa. The problem was that we had to wait so long in line to see Santa, that we had to wake him up when we got to the front of the line, and of course, once he was awake he wanted MILK! So he really wasn't very happy at all! He actually ended up grabbing handfuls of Santa's beard!

Sam got an Elmo play gym from us (which Josh likes to play with more at the moment), a toy dog that plays songs and games (a bit like Josh's Tad), a bib and rattle, some dummies and teats for his bottle, Other presents he got were a mobile, clothes, a vibrating bouncer chair (which magically put him to sleep in the middle of a very noisy room), stacking rings and a book.

A Good News Day!

Today we got the results of the followup ultrasound... and you can probably guess from the title that it was good news and everything is normal! Yay!

Last night Sam slept through the night from 8pm to 8am. Another Yay!

It has been really great seeing Josh and Sam play games together already... I can't wait til Sam is a bit older and they can really play together. Josh plays a hide and seek game with Sam where he hides behind my chair and pops up on different sides. Sam always looks around for Josh and smiles when he see him. He really loves his big brother :)

A New World Record!

Last night Sam set a new world record... he was the current record holder and now he has made another personal best!

Now you may be wondering what he did that is so fantastic? Well I wouldn't say fantastic... but it sure was an achievement!

I never thought I would see anything like it again, but Sam is a boy who is full of surprises!

It all hapened at about5am. It had been a bit of a restless night, Sam hadn't been feeling great. I was changing his nappy and when I lifted his legs to take off the old nappy it relieved a bit of gas for him. So I thought I would help him out a bit and hold up his legs again. Another noise! And a little bit of poo, nothing to worry about though. Third time lucky though.... and this enormous rumble and loud squishing noise and I looked and he had shooted the poo all the way across to the wall! It was like a splattering of paint all down the wall and all over the carpet.

I was truly amazed! How can so much come out of such a small baby? And at such force and speed!

If it wasn't at such an ungodly hour I might have even taken a photo (you are probably counting yourselves lucky now!).

3 Months

Wow! That last month went so fast! To me it seems like Sam has been around forever, so it seems strange to say that he is only three months old. Also, I have been telling everyone that he is "nearly three months" for so long that it seems like he should be four months old by now!

Our big news is that Sam rolled for the first time today!!! The first time I only saw out the corner of my eye, then he did it one more time, then we grabbed the cameras and waited and waited, but of course he didn't do it then!

Well he has just woken up so I will have to do a Christmas update later.
Happy New Year everyone!

Two Months!

Here are the photos of Sam taken on the 30th November - two months old!

Smile :)

Sam has started smiling now :)
He gives us really big grins, and sometimes he even lets out a little laugh!

He likes being tickled up his arm and under his chin.

I don't remember if I mentioned this on the blog or not, but just after Sam was born they checked his hips (as part of the normal routine) and they said there was a 'slight click'. They gave us a referal for an ultrasound at 6 weeks. We had the ultrasound on the 15th November and have just gotten the results. This is what it says (so you will have exactly the same information that I have)...

"Both hips are demonstrated. There is a lateral placement of the hips. The acetabular angles at 61 degrees are within the normal range. The appearances suggest slight physiological immaturity. A repeat examination in six weeks may be appropriate".

So we will be booking in a follow up ultrasound in 6 weeks time. I am not too worried about this. I have a friend who has been through this before with her daughter and everything is fine now. One of her hips corrected itself by the followup scan, the other one still had problems so she had to wear a brace for a few months. To see her now you wouldn't even know it.

Last night Sam had a feed at 10pm and then not again until about 4am, then breakfast at about 9am. I think that is great! Though he has had a few hungry nights when I have had to get up three times - and because I am not used to that anymore it really takes a lot out of me!

Josh went to give Sam a kiss yesterday, and instead of kissing him on the head like he normally does, he kissed him on the lips. Well Sam chose that exact moment to spew up some milk! It went all over Josh's face and into his mouth!!!

Keeping our fans happy :)

Oooh I have had some requests for more updates on Sam (well one request anyway!)

Here is a picture of Sam having a bath. He has started to really enjoy his baths now, and they smell so nice when I use the Jurlique bath oil that my friends bought us. It does seem a bit too nice to use on a baby, but it is very nice on my hands too - so that is a bonus! I could really tell that Sam had grown today when I gave him a bath and his head was touching the top and his toes were nearly touching the end of the bath. Looks like it won't be long til he has to go in the big bath!

Sam gave me a very nice birthday present last week... he slept from 11pm until 5:30am.
We spent the day in the city and I took him to work for show and tell. I managed to get a lot of people to give him cuddles who don't normally hold babies... he he he!

Now that my birthday is out of the way it is time to start thinking about Christmas!!! We will have to take the boys to see Santa and get a photo taken.

5 Weeks old - the stats

We went to the health centre today for a weigh in. My little booby monster has put on 600g in two weeks. He has now passed the 5kg mark.

Everything is going great.
He still spends most of his time either asleep or feeding.

Weight: 5280g
Length: 55.5cm

Here is a photo of Josh and Sam... it is really hard to get a photo where they are both looking good at the same time!