Chase at 7 months!

This past month flew by--Chase is now closer to 1 than to 0! He certainly seems more like a toddler than a newborn and he's getting closer to toddling every day. He's curious and learns quickly. His personality is becoming more pronounced, as are his preferences which he's starting to vocalize.

At 7 month Chase is:

-Sitting up unassisted. Once in a while he'll randomly fall over, but for the most part he can sit up on his own. When he wants something that's out of reach, he lunges for it from sitting position and winds up on his stomach.

-Getting up on his knees and rocking back and forth. But when he tries to move forward, he falls onto his stomach. Still, crawling is not far off. Chase is ready to move!

The two above skills have made for a pretty ideal situation: We can sit Chase up so he can play, but we don't have to worry about him going anywhere yet. I'm not sure we appreciate what a great thing this is.

-Pulling himself up to standing, but only by pulling on one of us. He hangs on my (or Stephen's) shirt and pulls himself up to standing, but has yet to do it in his crib (or anywhere else). Again, I don't think this is a skill that's far off.

-Tranferring toys from one hand to the other. (Not that exciting, but an important developmental milestone).

-Teething. Still. With nothing to show for it, except it feels like his bottom canines are coming in. He will look hilarious if they come in before any of his other teeth.

-Vocalizing: He's not repeating syllables yet, but he is making a lot of noise. He's testing out different sounds that he can make an it's quite hilarious to hear him. Unfortunately, he likes to practice making these noises from 3:45am-4:45am...

-Speaking of 3:45am, Chase is NOT sleeping through the night. Quite the opposite. During our weeks of travel around Thanksgiving, he was waking up 3 or more times per night and sometimes staying awake for up to an hour. He's finally gotten back into a better pattern (sleeping for a longer initial stretch and then waking up only 2x per night), but he's still waking up a lot. Add to that his nightly talking and rocking/crawling practice and you've got a very tired mommy and a tired Chase. We are currently trying out some ways to improve his sleep and will report on that progress (when there is some).

-In order to facilitate his sleep, we've finally upgraded his bottle nipples to Medium flow. What a HUGE difference that has made. He's eating much more than he used to--guess the poor guy used to get bored of just sucking and wasn't eating as much as he wanted. It's a change we should have made at 4 months!
We are also giving him something to help him "self-soothe" at night. We were primarily trying loveys, but he absolutely loves this French stuffed cat that we have (Tom Le Chat). It's the perfect size for him to hold and to stuff in his mouth when his teeth hurt. Hey, whatever it takes!

-Showing a strong preference for Mommy and Daddy.

-Playing Peek-a-Boo: If we put a blanket (like his taggies blanket in the pictures below) over our head or his, he'll pull it off an laugh.

And now some pictures! (don't worry, Grandmas! We had fire in the fireplace while taking these pictures so Chase was plenty warm enough in his onesie)



 Getting ready to move!

 Happy 7 months, sweet boy!