William at 7 Months

William is 7 months old today! All of a sudden my baby is not such a baby anymore. He is growing so rapidly. As of this morning, he weighs 17.4lbs and is about 28" long with a head circumference of 17.13". His face is changing too, getting more elongated and looking more kid-like and less rounded like a baby. His thighs are getting chunky and his legs are really long. He wears mostly 9 month clothes these days, but due to his long legs, he will also often fit into 12 month outfits!

He is developing physically in other ways too. If I stand him on his feet and 'walk' him around the room, he now lifts his feet and places them forward as though he were really walking. He is also working on his pincer grasp and practices by pinching me while breastfeeding. Another favorite new skill is sticking his finger up my nose while nursing. Fun fact: baby fingers are just the right size to be able to stick an entire finger up an adult nostril. Not pleasant! The things we go through to nurse our babies!

His hand coordination in general is getting so much better. He can manipulate and play with toys, passing them from hand to hand. He turns them over, presses buttons and shuts lids. He has a particular teething toy that he turns from end to end, and spins it around in his hands. He is quite proficient at it! He can also throw toys. Often while I am cooking, I will put him in his high chair with some toys to occupy him. A few minutes later I will turn around and there will be a ring of toys on the ground, all in a two foot radius of the highchair.

Sometimes however, I get concerned that he is not mastering a particular skill, and I will work and work and work with him on it. All to no avail. This happened first with tummy time. In the beginning he hated it. Would cry within seconds of being put onto the ground and wouldn't even try to lift his head. I worked with him on it every day, cajoling, praising and singing to distract him. Nothing worked and he got no better at being able to lift his head while on his stomach. All of a sudden, one morning, I put him down of his tummy, and lo and behold, he could not only lift his head, but he could keep it lifted. He also no longer complained about doing it! It was an overnight miracle! Something very similar happened in regards to sitting. From about 5.5 months old, many of his peers could sit unassisted, and he could not. I began working with him every day on it. Just like with tummy time, he mastered it in his own time, and in a very sudden fashion. Just 4-5 days ago, he went from leaning back and falling over as soon as I sat him up, to suddenly being able to sit on his own. The first day he could sit for 2 minutes (two WHOLE minutes!), the second day it was 5 and now he can sit unassisted for at least 10-15 minutes before toppling over. It really is amazing how something just clicks in their brains, and suddenly their bodies work. Its also a good lesson for me, to relax and just let nature take its course. Don't worry so much about milestones and accomplishments and just enjoy the baby I have. The baby that is all too rapidly growing up!


Aside from physical development, his brain is clearly growing and changing as well. He is starting to understand the associations between thing as well as cause and effect. For example, we use a white noise machine at bedtime and nap time. Every night at bed time we also give him a bottle. He has come to expect that the noise machine at night, means he will get a bottle, and when I turn the machine on, he will automatically look for the bottle. Its funny to see him relax as soon as he sees it. Another change is that he is babbling multi-syllable 'words' now. Sometimes he will say something that sounds like an actual sentence in a different language. It sounds close enough to real words though that I have to turn around and look at him. Then he laughs. He has the silliest little personality. I think he and Michael are going to be quite a pair in a few years!

Finally, the latest development is that he got his first tooth last week! Its the bottom right incisor, and its a sharp little sucker! I've already gotten bit, but it wasn't too bad. I'll just avoid feeding him when he's pissed off, as he tends to clamp his jaws shut at that time. Its funny, he was extremely fussy last week. Nothing would help him calm down. All our usual tricks failed. We had a couple of really long, stressful days like this, and then suddenly he went back to normal. I thought it might be teething, but I kept checking his gums, and didn't see anything. Then the next day I was feeding him some sauce on my finger, and when I started to drag my finger back out of his mouth, my finger got scraped by a tooth! I looked in there and sure enough, it was visible. So he was teething after all, it just took a few days for the tooth to become visible.

The final change in just the past few days, is his nap schedule. He seems to have finally switched from 3 short naps, to two naps (one long and another shorter nap). For the last month, he was waking at 7am every morning. Recently though, hes started waking at 8:30am or 9am. This pushes his first nap to a later time. In addition, this first nap has lasted for up to 3 hours (where before it lasted about 40 minutes). Its pretty nice to get this kind of break in the morning/early afternoon, but at the same time, I feel a bit like I am trapped in the house while he sleeps. I suppose though, now that the weather is getting better, I can do things like gardening while he sleeps.

It feels like every day brings new changes to this kid and I am constantly trying to keep up with a growth and development schedule that seems permanently set on 'warp speed.' He is so funny and cute right now, that I want to enjoy every moment, soaking up his babyhood as long as I can. It won't be long before he is all grown up, and I don't want to look back and feel regret for not focusing on these all too fleeting moments. I just love being his mom!