Noahlogy

• Army crawl - Noah has taken a step up from his usual mode of transportation, rolling everywhere, and has begun to army crawl all around the house. Well, I guess you could call it that, although technically it's more like a propel your body forward with your legs while pushing your face across the ground type maneuver. But it's getting closer to crawling, although he doesn't seem to be showing much interest in actually getting up on his hands and knees yet.
  

• Dinner and a show - I'm a very firm believer in nursing. My goal with each of the kids has been to nurse at least a full year. Bree nursed until she was 16 months and so far things are going well well with Noah. There's lots of reasons why nursing has been a good choice for me, it's a healthy food source for baby, it's an economical way to go, it provides built in bonding and snuggle time, and even helps Mom drop the baby weight, etc. Those are all the pros. But there are cons as well. Especially once your little one starts getting a little older and more aware of their surroundings. When they're young it's all business, nurse because you're hungry and keep going until you're full. But at Noah's current age it's a much more leisurely affair, with him stopping quite often to crane his neck and look around. Which, I gotta tell you, makes it pretty difficult to nurse discreetly, esp. in public places. When he's not peeking around the room then he's trying to play his new favorite game, stick your fingers in Mom's mouth. My usual response to this is to flash him my teeth and pretend like I'm going to chew on his fingers, which inevitably gets a giggle. Over the past few days Noah's also decided to do a "study" of the source of his milk. He'll suddenly stop nursing, pull his head back to take a look and practically go cross-eyed. Then he'll start poking at me and usually he'll start laughing, as if to say, "Seriously, THIS is where milk comes from? How weird!" And you have to admit, I mean, while it's perfectly natural and normal and all this, it's still kind of weird. As Murphy Brown said, the ability to produce food for another human being "is like discovering one day that you can get bacon out of your elbow!" :) (And I'm not even going to get into how fun nursing gets once the kid starts to sprout teeth!)

• Still not sleeping through the night - And I really need to start getting longer stretches of sleep at night or I might be in danger of having a psychotic break. At 8 months old now, Noah's officially old enough that he really should be able to make it through a whole night without NEEDING to eat, but try convincing him of that. If anything he's been waking up more often lately, although I'm pretty sure that has a lot to do with teething. Bree was about this same age when I finally decided she would sleep through the night come hell or high water, and I'm about to that point with Noah as well.

• Mr. Mischievous - I guess it's official, because there have been several instances of it, that Noah is now old enough to act the rogue. The last episode happened when, as happens so often lately, I noticed him gumming happily on something I was pretty sure he shouldn't be. As I walked up to him I said "Noah! What've you got in your mouth?!" His response? To shove whatever it was farther in his mouth as fast as he could!