Lopsided smile

This is how I finish typing things and keep little hands away.

Levi has been teething for what seems like forever. I always though the actual process of teeth coming in was maybe four days for each tooth. I knew it would be a pain - not enough sleep for baby or parents, baby upset a lot of the time, etc. But I think his top teeth have been coming in for close to six weeks now. Some days/nights are worse than others, and we've definitely gone through a whole bottle of pediatric tylenol since he was born, and a whole tube or orajel (numbing gel) as well. We've gotten pretty structured on how we function at night when he wakes up screaming - at first, we'd try rocking him, cuddling him, maybe give him some Orajel, then go back to our room. ten minutes later he'd be awake again. Other methods include nursing him (which has never once actually made him go back to sleep, so glad I was so adamant early on that nursing would never be done for a reason other than hunger), giving him some Tylenol or ibuprofen for infants, or a frozen rubber pacifier (genius idea, let me tell you) most of the time, using only one method alone doesn't work. Now if he wakes up screaming, we pull out all the stops - Tylenol, Orajel, frozen paci and cuddling, and this works just about every time to get him back to sleep for the rest of the night. It's only about once a week that the pain is bad enough to wake him up anyway, so don't worry, we're not medicating our child on a daily basis.

Anyway, all that to say, he's now got two top teeth broken through, both on his left side. He's got the two top right teeth right at the gumline, but they haven't broken through yet, which makes him look lopsided. Kind of like a little monster :) A monster in ducky jammies. 

The crawling continues, and though he does get around to his various toys usually on the living room rug, he still doesn't quite get that he could, in fact, get to other places/things as well if we wanted to. Yes, I can hear every parent reading this thinking "enjoy it while you can, soon he'll be pulling everything out of cabinets and climbing up the steps." It's just funny, I didn't realize how much thought has to go into the crawling process - I figured most babies, once they started crawling, just went everywhere. The only time Levi seems to sort of move off his rug turf is if I've left the room for a minute, he'll start to whine and sometimes get a couple of crawling steps off the rug before lying down in defeat in tears because mommy left for four minutes to make her coffee (OK, perhaps that happened this morning). I'm sure he'll get there, I've already got the tupperware lids in the lowest drawer and bottles in the one cabinet that will be open-able.

Though Levi doesn't move too far, he does seem to have a knack for climbing things already. And by "things" I mean me. Climbing on me. This morning after he nursed in bed, he dozed for a bit.Then I woke up as he was trying to climb over me to get to Tim, and he ended his crusade by licking my face and head-butting me. The same is true if I'm sitting on the carpet - he'll mosey on over to me and start climbing up by leg to my ribcage in an effort to reach...what? my hair? my nose? my eyebrow?I don't know what is so appealing about climbing up a person.

Levi's had some fun experiences the past couple of weeks via his stroller. We went to a chili cookoff last weekend (only two of the 20 chilis got a solid two thumbs up from us, good you didn't waste your time Eric). No, we didn't let him eat any chili. We did let him play with one of our spoons after we used it though. Hm, I may have also cut up some pieces of pasta this week for him that had a dressing made with habanero mustard on them. ah well, he's been ingesting some high-intensity spices since conception anyway.

Today we also went to one of Lancaster County's famous mud sales. I thought it was sort of like a big yard sale - they're often run by the Amish community, and I figured we might find some good deals or some cool stuff. Turns out it was a giant auction, with about a half-dozen auctioneers selling things from horses to buggies to hand-made furniture to lawn equipment to plants. It was also barely 40 degrees outside with crazy gusts of winds that made Tim's hair look pretty funny :) Sooo....we didn't buy anything because it was way too cold to stand around waiting for an auctioneer to hold up some item we actually wanted (no lists or organization appeared to be in place, other than an announcer sometimes popping up to say the horse auction would start in ten minutes). Also, I couldn't understand a word the auctioneers were saying, so who knows how much we might have ended up paying for anything :)

So Levi's adventures have been confined to the stroller, but exciting places and people to see.

On the move...we think

Levi is on the move...sort of.

(I know it's sideways... I'll fix it later)

He regularly gets all four limbs under him in crawl-ready position. He usually backs up a couple of steps, maybe moves forward one, and then flops on his tummy. He doesn't seem to understand that this crawling thing can actually get him somewhere. But who wants to crawl when they can be carried around by mommy, right?

Along with the crawling, Levi can get from sitting up to laying down and vice versa. He sometimes also grabs onto things to try to stand - he's only ever gotten to his knees, but it's the thought that counts.

All this predicated moving his crib mattress down, we've not done so since he moved into his crib around 10 weeks old. He's never sat up or tried to get out...until now. This week he was supposed to be napping around dinner time, and we heard a banging coming from his room. He was sitting up, wrapped in blankets, kicking the crib  slats and laughing about it :)

I think I mentioned last post that Levi's been a bit of a teething monster - he has three teeth now, and at least three others right at the surface of his gums. We've almost used up one little tube of Orajel, which numbs his gums. We've also been rotating pacifiers in and out of the freezer, because the rubber freezes nicely for chewing and relief on his little swollen mouth.

He's also been waking up at about 5:45 every day. This could partly be from our neighbor's car that is obnoxiously loud, which he turns on and lets idle every morning around that time. Either way, 5:45 is not time for breakfast or time to be awake yet. Some mornings he'll wail for a few minutes and then go back to sleep. Other mornings we have to convince him to go back to sleep with a frozen paci to soothe him. And still other mornings we've found that if his gums seem to hurt a dose of Tylenol will put him back down until it's a reasonable hour.



Levi has been acclimating to some table foods. He's tried some carrots, sweet potatoes, avocados, pasta... I think that's it so far. He also tried his first hard food today -- cheerios. He made a funny face because unlike all the other foods he's tried, it's not very mushy and doesn't dissolve like the puffs cereal we give him.

For those wondering, his hair is looking less reddish than when he was smaller, now it's straight tow-headed blonde. His eyes are a bright blue and he looks more and more like Tim every day - though a few people here and there have told us he looks like me, which I don't see.

The boy is also making more noise than ever- no definitive meaningful words yet, but he's getting there. I call him a baby dinosaur, because that's what he sounds like with all of his squeaks and squeals.