a sitting-up baby

Last night was an especially rough night, with an 11 p.m. bedtime and wakes at something like 1-1:30, 4-4:30, 7:30-8:15, and then up for the day at 10. He's still not yet what you would call a good or even average night sleeper. The other moms in our prenatal class told stories of their babies regularly sleeping 8 hours or more by 3 1/2 months. One of them then even had the nerve to complain that she was "so exhausted." She wasn't even breastfeeding any more at the time, so she wasn't implicitly required to get up in the night each time her son did. I was not amused. Jack has thus far slept more than 6 consecutive hours precisely once. It's been at least 7 months since I've slept more than 5 consecutive hours. This is what they do in Guantanamo.

Despite that, the morning started with a wonderful whole-family cuddle session when Ben brought Jack into our bed when he woke at 7:30. I've got to hand it to them that my boys know how to snuggle.

The big news of the day is that this afternoon Jack did his first solo, hands-free sitting up session that lasted more than 2 seconds. It was amazing. Then he repeated his feat, which was more amazing. Then he let me capture it on camera, which just goes to prove what a wonderful baby he is.

I was searching around for fun new activities to do with him and decided to look to Dr. Sears for suggestions. I was flipping through the six month old section (his half birthday is Saturday for those of you who don't regularly keep track) and came across pictures about the progression of sitting up poses. When I realized Jack was at an age where he really should be able to sit up by himself, I thought I'd give it a try. Since (1) we have hardwood floors, no rugs, and very unpadded carpet, and (2) this baby loves to stand up, I haven't done much sitting up work with Jack. The shorter the distance his head would have to fall to hit the ground, the happier I am.

So with The Baby Book in hand, we headed for Jack's crib. A few leg adjustments later and he was propping himself up with his hands. When I brought a toy out, he then reached for it without even realizing that he was balancing himself, and he managed to stay upright! Super adorable.

I'm assuming the frequent, ravenous wakes had something to do with Jack's unwillingness to eat solid foods the past few days. This morning he and I both got a little too excited that he wanted to eat, and he ended up going through the better part of three food cubes. About 2 hours later, as he was waking up from his afternoon nap, the contents of about one of those food cubes came back up again. Then again this evening, Jack took a page from my projectile vomiting days, and half a milk feed came up again, very unexpectedly. I'm assuming that these are isolated incidents of overeating-induced sickness, and since he was so giggly and playful immediately afterwards and didn't really look sick, I'm not very worried. Still, I'm glad he's now a tummy-sleeping baby so I don't have to worry about him getting sick again in the night and choking.

Tomorrow we're planning on a morning coffee date at Stacy and Kaia's before heading to an indoor play gym with Stacy, Kaia, and one of Kaia's grannies. With the goal of not being a walking zombie through all that, I'm now headed to bed, in hopes of getting more than 5 or so hours of sleep. Total.