Crawling and other milestones

I guess I mentioned on my post about Seth's return that Benjamin started crawling a week and a half ago. But there have been many more changes over the past couple of weeks....

July 12-Gave Mama 1st "kisses." He's still sparing with them, but will occassionally lean over and plant a big wet open-mouthed "o" on your arm or chest. :)

July 13-2 new signs: "milk" and "eat." I've only seen him do "milk" once or twice, but he regularly tells us he wants to eat by patting the back of his hand over his open mouth and making an "ah" sound. The effect is something like the stereo-typical "indian whoop." The real sign is bringing your fingers, grouped together like you are operating a puppet, toward your mouth, but whatever!

We also had Benjamin's 9 month check-up this day. The doc was really pleased with how great his skin looks. It was the best he has ever seen him. That was really encouraging. On the other hand, he thought there may be more to the cough (resulting from the cold he caught in CA) Benjamin still had and put him on a nebulizer with Albuterol for 3 days and Pulmicort for an unspecified amount of time. He's not calling it asthma (it's too early for that--he said it is "reactive airway disease"), but we may be headed down the asthma road. Who knows. The first nebulizer treatment was awful. Benjamin screamed bloody murder the entire 10 minutes. I think the combination of the noise of the machine, the mask on his face, the smoke he was breathing, and being confined probably scared him. The treatments since then have been better. We've been letting him watch Baby Einstein during the treatments and he has been very compliant.

July 17-A tooth, that had been threatening to surface since a couple of days before we left CA finally errupted.

This same day Benjamin also said his first official word. We were watching the video Seth made for Benjamin. He was laying on his back, facing away from the TV so that he had to arch his back and tip his head in order to see. He kept looking back and saying "Da Da!" It was pretty clear to me that he knew exactly what he was saying! Actually, even a few days earlier than that he was "talking" to Seth on the phone and we both swore we heard him say "Hi Da Da!"

July 19-This was the day Seth returned home and Benjamin started crawling. But I don't think I've said yet that he also started pulling himself up to sit on his knees this same day. By the end of the day he could sit on his knees "free-standing" (not holding on to anything.) It's amazing to see him so mobile all of a sudden! He's a new baby.

July 21-A semi-sad milestone.... We finally took away the "paci." We had originally planned to do it at 6 months, but because of his eczema issues and some other difficulties we postponed the fateful day. By the time we felt it was time, our summer parting was immenent. Again, we decided to let him keep that little scrap of security for that time. But when he started to crawl and his sleep was disturbed anyway, we decided, "this is it!" He's still re-learning how to put himself to sleep, but he's adjusting fairly well. Sigh. He really loved that paci.

On a happier note, Benjamin also got his first haircut! This deserves it's own post complete with pictures....

July 22-The twin to the previously cut top tooth came through. These were tough ones!

July 26-Another semi-sad milestone: Benjamin is officially weaned. He started this process himself, partly as a result of being sick for 2-weeks and having a diminished appetite and partly due to the changes imposed by my pregnancy. It became clear that he was not getting enough to eat and was not interested enough anymore to work hard enough to make my body produce what he needed. Fortunately we had recently found a formula he could tolerate (which was a process). A happy result, though, has been much-needed weight gain. Another "plus" is that I don't have to strictly follow his allergy diet anymore! I was advised by our allergist not to over-do these foods during my pregnancy, though, as some, especially peanuts, have been suspected to pass through the placenta and could be one cause of peanut allergies in children.