The Seversons

They tell you that babies grow up fast and I don’t think anyone can really argue with that common knowledge.  In the last couple of weeks Graham has suddenly made some huge advances and it’s kind of hard to realize he’s the same baby he was not so long ago.

Perhaps the biggest change is that he can now play.  This was particularly lovely because a baby who cannot amuse himself is a baby who must be constantly held and walked around because this is the only form of amusement available.  It gets a little old.  For a while he’d been able to grab toys and then he started to be able to occasionally get them into his mouth.  But most of the time when we’d put him in his little yellow chair and put a toy on the tray in front of him he would try desperately to eat it only to have one hand try to pull it one direction while the other hand pulled it the other direction and in a moment it would be on the floor.  It also got him frustrated very quickly.  I didn’t realize that frustration was something babies could feel, but Graham feels it regularly.

Now he can not only grab a toy and pull it into his mouth, but continue to play with it and put it back in his mouth over and over again.  That means he can now play with a toy for more than five seconds.  In a matter of days he went from spending 2 minutes in the exersaucer to more than 10.  He can now sit there and amuse himself for a surprisingly long time.  (And when guests are in town, he quite enjoys showing off just how impressive he is.)

The other significant change is that Graham has “Ferberized” himself.  In layman’s terms, he has learned to put himself to sleep.  November was insane.  Eric was constantly traveling for interviews and I was often left alone with the baby for days on end.  Managing a baby for a few hours is fine as long as you know your relief is coming.  When no relief is coming, it can be exhausting, especially with the constant battles we had over every single nap.  When you’ve spent 45 minutes trying to get a baby to nap, only to have the baby wake up from that nap 20 minutes later, you start to go a little bit crazy.  We decided to save the sleep training for December, when Eric would be in town every night and we could both manage the potentially sleepless nights while we went in to check on him every few minutes.

Every now and then, I started attempting to lay Graham down in his crib without all the effort.  I figured out that if he went down without much of a fight and lay there relatively contented, I could leave and he would eventually fall asleep, even if he cried some.  Soon I started trying it even when he wasn’t particularly happy and most of the time it worked, too.  Now we do it for every nap and when he goes down for the night, and that’s it.  Every once in a while he will need to be held for just a minute or two, but it has been shockingly easy.

Now that Graham has passed the 4-month mark (and the 5-month mark is fast approaching…) we have been given the okay from the pediatrician to start him on solid foods.  We were planning to wait a while, it isn’t really necessary and it may be both difficult and messy.  But it looks like we may start him pretty soon.  He stares open-mouthed whenever one of us eats or drinks something and I feel bad.  So we may ease into it since we’re both around this month.

We just hosted our first Thanksgiving and I have to say it went off swimmingly.  I made my own batch of our family’s Wild Rice Dressing, I made the most beautiful turkey every pulled out of the oven (though it was a smidge dry because someone wouldn’t let me brine it), and we were all surprised by the incredibly tasty sweet potato and butternut squash gratin that I tried for the first time.  I must say, though, these big affairs would be much easier if you actually have a little bit of room.  With the tiny kitchen and table that technically only seated 6 when we had 8, everyone had to serve themselves from the dishes set out on the coffee table.  Ah, apartment life.

(Here you can see Julie setting the table and Elycia and Graham checking out the spread)

Since Eric’s family was here, we were able to take a 4-generation picture (4 of the 4 are firstborn sons).

We also got to celebrate a new milestone: Graham’s first tummy-to-back roll.  The second one is caught on tape here.  I think he did it mostly because he hates tummy time so much.  He probably would have done it a month ago if I ever actually gave him any tummy time.

Graham also got a new toy and promptly freaked out.  He’s really mastered the exersaucer, but give him a cute elephant that has all these things to pull and cram in your mouth and he doesn’t know what to do, so he ends up flailing his limbs around aimlessly.  But it is cute.