Thanks for the sweet comments on Arthur's answers to the questionnaire yesterday! They were very encouraging and kind! :)
I took a few photos of Benjamin today, at first just to play about with depth of field for my next photography assignment at my photography blog, and ended up getting a couple of really sweet ones of my lovely baby boy! He will be 7 months old on Tuesday! Where is the time going?! I can't believe he'll be 7 months old. Six months was like a big milestone that I was looking ahead to, but never beyond for some reason. Now it is passing by, I am only just starting to realise that my tiny boy will be an "older baby" pretty soon!
Benjamin is such a darling! He is easy-going and happy, calm and placid. He is beginning to show me a new side of his personality, that of asserting himself, and making a few demands in a rather angry way on occasion! He's soft and squidgy and cuddly, and I have no idea what on earth he weighs or measures (not since he was about 6 weeks old, I think!) but I think he's likely keeping close to the curve he was originally on - big! ;) He was at the 91st percentile or something before. That would put him around 20lbs now? I'll have to check the chart. But I don't actually know. He seems so big lately! He comfortably fits (length, girth, foot-size, etc) 9-12 month clothing, and his larger 6-9 month items are now too small (the smaller items in that size have been put away for a while!). He is outgrowing size 3 disposable nappies and we are using the last few up to move him into size 4 this weekend! Nathan and Matthew wear size 5, though I'm actually starting to potty train Matthew at the moment - hopefully successfully this time! ;)
When Benjamin turned 6 months old, he was doing a lot of lying on his tummy and pushing up high with his arms (like this!):
He didn't do anything much with his legs, but a week later he started getting up onto all fours on the living room floor. I took a photo (okay, ten!) the first time he got onto his hands and knees at 6 months and 1 week old, while his brothers and Daddy were out at the park (a little space to try new things, perhaps?!):
He is now practising his all-fours thing constantly. He started rocking in that position a week or so ago, and today he moved his knee and hand forwards on one side, one after the other, but then seemed stuck and couldn't figure out how to coordinate the other side! :) He's eager to be more mobile, although he can get places pretty fast at the moment already. He rolls and swivels and rolls again to get where he needs to. He pivots 360 degrees on his tummy by "grabbing" himself round and round with his hands on the carpet. He can now do this in a matter of seconds! He reverses very nicely on all fours by pushing with his arms, but this frustrates him no end because it is not the intention! ;) While I popped upstairs to wipe somebody's bottom (a necessary part of motherhood but not exactly my favourite!), he reversed from the middle of the floor underneath the school table! He went under a chair and panicked when he tried to lift his head and it bonked on the underside of the little chair, poor baby! I couldn't even see him at first when I came running down! Nathan was all concerned, saying, "Benji stuck!"
This week Benjamin started army crawling! If he wants a toy that's a couple of feet ahead, he just gets on his tummy, digs his elbows determinedly into the ground and HAULS his body forwards to the object! His eyes never leave what he's aiming for and he gets such a determined look on his face! He has been doing that for maybe 4 or 5 days, and getting faster and better at it each day. He still mostly rolls to get places though. I think he will be so pleased to actually crawl around!
Benjamin is very interested in ALL toys lately. Very little seems to bore him, except perhaps he's starting to lose a bit of interest in the very early baby toys like teethers and rattles. He still likes anything bright or textured, and he loves books. He actually quivers with excitement when I sit him on my lap and open a book to read to him! We have lots of touchy-feely books and he really loves those. Instead of batting the pages vigorously as I read, he is now seeking out the textures frantically, and when he finds one, he stops and slows down, feeling carefully with his fingers. It's lovely to watch him explore and discover! He likes all of his brothers' toys, unsurprisingly! He especially likes any vehicles, the wooden railway track, and the cube with the wires on top that have beads strung on them (whatever that's called!). He'll play with the latter for a LONG time (15 minutes even) without stopping or losing focus. He's very intense about play when he's into something. He loves paper (chews it up! I have to watch that boy!) and the drawer knobs, especially if someone has loosened one and he can make it go round and round by batting at it. He loves crackly packets (like food packets) and will play with an empty biscuit wrapper or pasta packet for ages! Or a sealed ziploc bag with nothing in it! Fascinating stuff! ;) He likes Nathan's rainbow blocks too:
Benjamin started sitting properly unsupported (as compared with his "tripod" sit that he had been doing unsupported since 4 months old) at 5 months. At 6 months and 1 week, I sat him down on the floor, and instead of sitting behind him as I usually do, I needed to get some laundry from the kitchen to fold, so I put some soft padded stuff behind him and left him there for a minute. He sat there for the best part of 20 minutes!!!! He keeled backwards twice, and looked very stunned and confused, and I sat him back up again straight away. He looked around, played with toys in his hands, had his photo taken (zillions of times, lol!) and enjoyed interacting with Nathan from a sitting position. So he sits now. He prefers to sit I think, but once he's bored with that, he likes to do a bit of moving about. He's very happy spending all his awake times practising sitting and moving about at the moment! Here are a few photos of his first long unsupported sitting time:
Drinking in the wonder of the moment in meditative peace, haha! ;) Or maybe just blinking while I took the photo, but I couldn't resist posting this one anyway! He has Neil's long eyelashes like all of his brothers!
Nathan was so excited to see him sitting, and wanted to sit with him and bring him toys and pretty much anything he could think of that would involve being with his baby brother. Nathan is so precious, and shows such love for his brother, even though he's so tiny himself! Little love :)
Another new skill this past month for Benjamin - waving! :)
"Heeheeheeheeee, Nathan is so hilarious!!!" ;)
He has started doing all sorts of crazy babbling and vocalising. He's very noisy! He also likes to screech and scream as loud as he can! Matthew was a real screamer as a baby and I sometimes used to have ringing in my ears at night from it. It was a problem really! He still has a tendency to make shrill noises when excited or playing. Arthur and Nathan were not screaming babies. They were very noisy in their own ways, but never the types to screech and scream loudly for pleasure! Benjamin seems to be more like Matthew in that respect, but thankfully he's not as into screaming as Matthew was! ;) He does "shout" his babbling though, hehe! His favourite babble sound right now is "brah, brah, brah, brah" and "gwah, gwah, gwah, gwah", so we hear that a lot. He makes such a funny shape with his mouth when he says it, and it makes us giggle! :)
Benjamin is eating now and then. I don't push food at all, and some days he gets offered some and other days not. If he is napping when we eat, he doesn't usually get offered food. If he's awake then he gets offered something. He has now tried yoghurt (sour faces! But eager for more nonetheless!), bread (gagged till he threw up on a piece a week or so ago, but has had no further gagging on anything since! Yay!), chicken (not that impressed), sweet potato (absolute FAVOURITE food ever, hehe!), parsnip (likes this), mashed potato (likes), carrot (not overly impressed), banana (seems to like it well enough), rice (prefers playing with the texture but has also fed himself some happily), and broccoli. I gave him a little floret of broccoli to hold by the stalk, and he munched a few of the tiny bits off the top with his gums. He moved them to the back of his mouth, swallowed them, made a "urgh, what was that?!" face for a millisecond, and started to cry like he was really sad! I guess he doesn't like broccoli then! ;) I offered him a sippy cup of water but he won't take it yet. He just pushes it away and gives me a look that sort of says, "What are you trying to DO to me, woman?!" ;)
He nurses on demand around the clock and still wakes several times a night. On a bad night he wakes almost hourly and can stay awake for up to an hour once or twice (on a VERY bad night - most nights he goes right back to sleep after feeds). He starts out in his Amby hammock, and I put him back in there through the night until I am too tired and half-asleep to remember, and thus he is always (every single morning) in bed snuggled up next to me when I wake in the morning :) Which I like! I would LOVE more sleep than I get, and I am truly exhaustulated every single day at all times, but you know? I am changing. Each baby it is getting more noticeable. I am less stressed about these things, but it's a gradual thing - a bit less each time. Also, I am cherishing each baby that bit more, I think. I don't know why - and I wasn't ever aware of NOT cherishing my first and second babies to the absolute max! - but I just am. The combination of cherishing every second and not bothering with the stress of a baby at such-and-such an age not sleeping well at night, or me being tireder than a tired thing with tired stuff on top, or the once absolutely insanely difficult frustrations of nap-related issues - means that I am different now than I was with my first couple of babies. A nice different. I don't think I've done anything to bring it about. I think God has been incredibly gracious, but also I have just kept having babies, and really, many things in life take practise! ;) I think the intensity of it helps too - the not having any sort of gap or return-to-normal between babies. I haven't slept a solid night since Arthur was born 5 years ago, and once upon a time it was my biggest, all-consuming stress. I cried over it, ranted to my husband over it, spent endless uncountable hours searching the internet and forums for answers, poured much of what little energy I had left into trying to change the baby/toddler who was causing me such stress! Etc. Now I still feel too tired and still really really want to sleep and for little tiny persons to nap and sleep predictably, but only somewhere in the back of my head. Mostly I just enjoy holding and snuggling my baby boo-bean at night. I hear his Amby creak and clank gently as I rock it in a pitch-black room in the middle of the night, and feel a sort of peaceful calm. Like that is the familiar norm of my night, and what a precious place to be! Rocking a baby. What a gift! And I think about how I'll practically BLINK and it will be time to transition Benjamin out of his Amby and put it away. And then I'll blink again and he'll be like Arthur, up on the top bunk where I can't so easily watch him sleep and kiss his face, with only memories of his babyhood. All the inconvenience pales into insignificance, and I treasure everything with all my heart!
Well, it's very late (I'm up late on Saturday night baking a late batch of cinnamon rolls, and they're taking longer than I expected!), so I will finish for now. I'm sure there's so much more I could write about my tiny Benji-boy. But I will have to stop for now! I'll leave you with a couple more photos that I took this morning after Benjamin and I had a lie-in and the boys went out with Neil - me with my tiny boy (found a timer on my camera! Whaddya know?!):
I love this one! I almost thought to post it for my depth of field photography assignment (and maybe I still will?) but I am going to try to take some outdoor photos tomorrow for that, when we all go to the park (weather permitting!). Benjamin's expression looks so funny, and I love it! He's beaming a big huge smile here, but juuuust starting to change his mouth for a good old babbling session, so that's why his chin is sort of solid-looking, hehe! I love this one :)
2 comments:
Alice- Benji is just one of the most precious boys I have ever seen!! You are truely blessed, as are they to have such a wonderful mum!
Jenn (FF)
Aw, Jenn, that's so sweet of you! Thank you! Your comment made my day! :) xxx
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