Almost 1!

Welcoming Nate one year ago.

Nate had his one-year pediatrician appointment today. He weighed in at 24lb. 9oz. (only gaining less than a pound since his nine-month appointment) and measured 30.5 inches long -- in the 75th percentile for both and still perfectly proportioned. His head is still measuring on the big side. I think it was 19.5 inches and in the 97th percentile, but the doctor said that's a good thing because it's starting to curve back to the normal range.

It's hard to believe that in just five more days, my little baby will be a year old! I know every mom says it, but they're right - the year just flew by. And when I look at Nate now, I don't see a baby anymore but a little boy with a big personality. :)

A year ago, it was my due date ... and I wasn't surprised to know that I was going to deliver late. My mom was two weeks late with me (her first), and I suspected that the same would happen for me. Luckily, I only went five days past my due date, but unluckily, my length of labor was about the same: 23 hours. A year ago, I was so apprehensive about childbirth and taking care of a newborn. Would I know when to feed him, how to calm him? Would I ever sleep? I felt so unprepared for motherhood, but when the time came, I was ready. It's amazing to think of how much can change in a year.

The grandparents are all coming in on Thursday to celebrate Nate's birthday weekend. Nate has no idea what is in store for him. So much attention!

The boy's got skills ...

A few things Nate has learned in the past few weeks:
* turn the lights on and off
* play the piano
* zip my jacket up and down
* open and close the bathtub drain
* feed Wylie a biscuit AND throw her a toy (instead of putting them in his mouth)
* point at things he wants
* drive his truck and bug all over the house
* play "You Can't Find Me!" (hide and seek) with mommy and daddy
* drink well from a sippy cup (he only takes his one nighttime bottle now)
* press the button to turn his train on and off
* push a ball back and forth with his mommy and daddy
* stacking rings on his little elephant ring-stacker pull-around car. Seriously, this is the song it plays: "Stack up the rings and you can make a friend, and pull him all around with you. He has ears so big and a trunk so long, oh please, oh please come and play!"

BLAAHHH!!!

Nate's new favorite thing to do is stick out his tongue and say, "Blah!" He likes it even more than waving or giving us kisses -- probably because we reinforce it by laughing. But even when he's super cranky, all we have to do is go, "Blah!" and he smiles and sticks out his tongue for us.



After Nate's last pediatrician appointment (when he was sick), the doctor noticed that he wasn't using one of his arms very much. Babies shouldn't show a preference for being left- or right-handed until they're 2, so they were a little concerned. And of course, he was fine. It drives us a little nuts because we have no doubt that Nate is a perfectly healthy baby who's developing normally, but I suppose it's good that they are so cautious.

In other news, the Daley family sold its bachelor-friendly pickup truck in order to buy a family-friendly SUV. You might think we're sad that our truck is gone, but we actually sold it to our neighbor, Elizabeth, so we still get to see it every day! Nate was just so cramped in both of our cars, we had to make the change, and we were able to get a great deal on the new car.

Also, we attended a baptism preparation class over the weekend to get ready for Nate's baptism on April 12, his 1st birthday. We're excited for all the relatives to come and see how much Nate has changed in the past few months!

Sick ... yuck!

It's amazing that Nate has managed to live 10 months with only one illness - a minor cold. Since he's not in daycare, he isn't exposed to many germs, and he's always been very healthy. However, last week we got a big wake-up call when Nate was spewing out of both ends. That's right. It started with puking that evolved into diarrhea, and a whole lot of misery in between.

But even though he felt so bad, Nate kept his sense of humor, sticking out his tongue and saying, "Blahhhh!" with a little smirk on his face. We took him to the doctor, who told us it was just a virus and to feed him B.R.A.T. - bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. We were a little concerned about him getting dehydrated, but since he only threw up twice, our doctor told us he should be OK.

On Thursday morning, I went to change his diaper, which felt like it had a lot of pee in it. But then this crystallized gel-like stuff fell out of his diaper. It was like tiny bits of clear Jello, and there was a lot of it. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it couldn't be good. I really thought there was something seriously wrong, that it must be worse than a virus. But luckily, it is relatively normal - just a symptom of dehydration. So we loaded him up on Pedialyte and haven't seen the crystallized pee since then. He's much better now and we're glad to have our happy baby back again!

Cruisin' for a Bruisin'

OK, OK. So I've heard plenty of complaints about how the blog hasn't been updated in a month, blah, blah, blah. We didn't realize we had so many fans!

So, Nate has become an expert cruiser, going from standing to squatting to sitting and back up again with no problem -- usually one-handed. We've noticed that if he's tired, however, he tends to lose his balance and may end up bonking his head on the floor. We've seen him stand on his own for just a second, but it's entirely accidental, and now that he's so fast at crawling, he seems reluctant to try walking. But we know that a lot can change in a month, and we think he will be walking by his 1st birthday if he wants to. He's also been quite the babbler with a vocabulary all his own. He says "dad" a lot, and we've also heard "mama mama mama" endless times over too but we're not sure if he really knows that it means anything. One thing is for sure, though: he can understand us. He knows who Wylie, Yeats, and Truman are, and he definitely knows what his ba-ba is. About a month ago, he started waving hi and bye, and this week started giving us high-fives.

Hmmm ... what's in here? Anything dangerous?

Delicious! (Contrary to what it looks like, this is not dog food.)

We decided to take Nate in for an ultrasound of his head, since it's been so large (>97th percentile). It was just precautionary. Because babies' soft spots close generally between 12-18 months, we could do an ultrasound, but after the soft spot closes, we would have to do a CAT scan, which involves radiation. So we decided to just get the ultrasound so we could put our minds at ease and not have to discuss this every time we go into the pediatrician's office. But, surprise, surprise, Nate's soft spot already closed and the techs couldn't see anything. It was frustrating, but they did tell us that the tiny bit they could see looked perfectly fine and that we shouldn't be concerned about his head size at the 97th percentile when his body is in the 90-95th percentile. We'll just continue to monitor him and see how he measures at his next appointment in April.

It's hard to believe he'll be 10 months old this week -- and his 1st birthday is right around the corner. Coincidentally, Nate's birthday will be on Easter Sunday this year, and since both sets of grandparents will be down to celebrate, we've decided to also have him baptized that weekend and we've asked Mary and Adam to be his godparents. It will be an exciting weekend!

The Holidays

So, as you may have noticed, the Daley family has been VERY busy jet-setting across the country (OK, just Minnesota) to celebrate our first Christmas as a three-some. Although Nate was much squirmier on this plane ride than he was when he was two months, we managed to keep him entertained with toys, singing, making funny faces, the Baby Mozart video and -- as a last resort -- stuffing his face with Graduate Puffs, his favorite food. I was stuck with the unfortunate duty of changing Nate's poopy diaper in the airplane bathroom ... something I hope to never experience again.

Nate had a blast in Minnesota, in spite of the cold weather. We even took him sledding outside and although his face was frozen (literally) into a blank stare, we think he enjoyed every minute of it. He made out like a bandit with all the new toys, but the most fun was all the attention! Nate loved being rocked and snuggled by his Grandma, and he thought Grandpa was the funniest man in the world (besides his daddy, of course). But his favorite of all was his 22-month-old cousin Brody, who was so cool that he didn't even mind that he kept plucking the pacifier out of Nate's mouth. Grandma even bought them matching outfits and everyone said they look like brothers.



After spending eight days in Minnesota, it was time to fly back to Charlotte for the Daley family Christmas over New Year's. We all stayed over at Auntie Mary's house on New Year's Eve, but after all the day's traveling, Nate and Mommy couldn't hang and didn't even make it until midnight. Times have certainly changed. Nate loved having more attention from his Mamma and Grampy Daley, who gave him the opportunity to expand his culinary acumen by giving him tastes of molasses cookies, pickles, and soft garlic cheeses.



Now, we're getting back to the daily grind (ha!) and Nate has become a master crawler and cruiser. Some of his favorite targets: the dog dish, toilet, power cords, the Roomba, and pretty much any other dangerous object in the house. He'll be 9 months old on Monday. Our little baby is growing up!

It's official ...

Nate started crawling on Thursday morning. His incentive: a truck. No more creeping, scooting, or sliding across the floor - it was a real crawl that went from one end of our rug to the other. And since then, he's crawled all over our living and dining rooms. He's discovering just how powerful this new little skill can be. In fact, his favorite new target is our fireplace, which has earned him the nickname "Danger Daley."

On the verge

I feel that we are days away from having a mobile Nate. He is getting quite agile going from sitting to all fours and back again, and he managed to crawl up our coffee table yesterday in order to destroy the magazines lying on top of it. Which makes me very happy that we chose a leather coffee table because I foresee many falls.

We've also been getting the sloppiest yet sweetest kisses ever from Nate. About a month ago, I started making a smoochie sound with my mouth. Nate would play coy for a while, looking from side to side, but he eventually smiled and pulled my hair and face toward his open mouth. I showed Chuck and he was jealous and tried to get Nate to kiss him, but Nate didn't seem to like his daddy's scruffy beard and avoided it altogether. Then, about a week ago, he started to reluctantly yank on Chuck's beard to get a scratchy kiss. It is so cute - you can tell he doesn't like how it feels, but he loves his daddy so much, it's totally worth it.

We spent Thanksgiving in Charleston with Charlie, Sue and the boys, which was a blast. Nate even had some potatoes, peas and carrots -- real ones, not pureed -- just like the Pilgrims did!

Chuck's version of an invoice ...

Fall in Carolina

The weather is getting cooler and the leaves are falling -- making it a perfect time for Nate to get out and play in the backyard with his favorite buddy, Wylie.



After spending the first seven months of his life without a single illness, Nate came down with a cold over the weekend. Actually, the whole family got sick, so we were all miserable together. But Nate got over it pretty quickly. Our happy baby is back and healthy again.

It only took a couple nights of crying it out before Nate learned that he can just sleep through the night. Of course, when he got sick, he woke up several times during the night, but we just picked him up and helped him cough, wiped his nose, and put him back to sleep. But for the long term, he is sleeping through the night without a feeding from about 7pm to 6am.

Happy Halloween!

Nate enjoyed his first Halloween and dressed up as a lobster, in honor of his Maine roots. Rather than going trick-or-treating, we went over to our friends Mike and Holly's, whose 18-month-old daughter Camille was dressed up as a butterfly. Nate was a trooper and wore his costume for a good hour, munching on his tentacles before getting completely annoyed with it. He loved playing with Camille, even though she is a much older woman.

Last night we finally let Nate cry it out, as our pediatrician told us to do. After six months, babies no longer need a middle-of-the-night feeding. If they still wake up, it's out of habit. Nate has slept through the night a handful of times, but he's still waking up sometime between 3-5 am to eat. He always went back to sleep, so it never really bothered us, but we realize it's time for him to break the habit. He's such a great baby going to bed at night. We put him down around 7:30 and he never cries or fusses - if anything, he'll just babble himself to sleep. I think this is because months ago, we let him cry for a while (never longer than five minutes) before going in to comfort him. So he learned to soothe himself. Now it's time for him to soothe himself during the night. Over the past several nights, we've been giving him less and less milk (from six ounces to four, then to two), and started just feeding him in his crib rather than taking him out to feed him.

One of the problems in doing this now is that his tooth is still coming in, and it seems to irritate him sometimes. So, he woke up at midnight. I popped his paci back in and he went to sleep. Then, he woke up at 2am. Again, gave him the paci and he went to sleep, only to wake up a half-hour later. This time, we let him cry. We shut our door, popped in earplugs, turned on the fan, and tried to sleep. I don't know how long it went on, but I remember looking at the clock at 3:15 and thinking that it's been 45 minutes. I'm pretty sure he fell asleep soon after that because I slept soundly until 4:45, when it started again. This time, it only lasted 15 minutes or so, and then Nate slept until 7:30, like usual. He was hungry when he woke up, but he was just as smiley and sweet as he always is - it was nice to know that he still loves me. We'll see how tonight goes ...

Pacifier tricks

Nate had his six-month pediatrician appointment this week and weighed in at 21 lbs. and is 27.5 inches long -- still in the 90-95th percentile and perfectly healthy. He also had his opthamologist appointment today and the doctor said that the spot on Nate's iris is completely harmless. In fact, it's genetic -- Mamma and Chuck also have a spot on their irises (which was news to Chuck). I think it'll just contribute to Nate's bad-ass look.

Last weekend, Nate spent the night at his Auntie Mary and Uncle Adam's house so we could co-host a baby shower. We were a little nervous that he might keep them up all night, but he was totally on schedule and had a great time. I thought I would really love having a night I could sleep through for the first time in more than six months -- and I definitely enjoyed sleeping in -- but we really missed our baby and were happy to have him home.

We have a tooth!

FINALLY, after three months of fist-gnawing and pools of drool, a tooth popped through Nate's lower gums. I don't know how long it will take to fully come in (please not another three months!) but it's nice to see some progress after months of pain and crankiness. You can barely see it, but you can definitely feel it -- like a razor when he chomps down on your finger. I'm hoping it will come in time to compliment his Halloween costume -- a lobster!



Mamma and Grampy Daley came to visit last weekend and Nate got lots of attention. He showed them how he can sit up by himself, eat yummy vegetables, and creep a little bit.

Blabawabaoyoywabadabamamablabladad

So, Nate officially said both "Mama" and "Dad" during his extensive babbling yesterday. Of course, he had no idea that those words had any connection to me or Chuck, but we think that if we praise him enough, he'll figure it out. When babbling, he looks much like a toothless, gummy old man -- it's pretty entertaining.

Raging with Joe and Rachel

Nate enjoyed having his Uncle Joe and Aunt Rachel in town last weekend. They came with us to the Great Grill Off VI, where Chuck tied for third place with his Anazasi "We're All Human Beans" Burgers. Yet again, Nate played the role of social butterfly, flirting with the ladies and giggling with his daddy. He seemed to adore Joe while he was visiting, which was really cute because I think that Nate looks a lot like Joe did as a baby.


At his five-month doctor's appointment, Nate's head is still in the 97th percentile, which is OK because it remained stable. Just as I suspected: giant brain = giant head, duh. However, we've been noticing a dark spot in Nate's iris since he was about a month old. We always assumed that it was simply because his eyes were turning from blue to brown, and that is likely the case, but our pediatrician said we should see a pediatric opthamologist just to confirm. His appointment isn't until the end of October, and we're not too concerned because as his eyes get browner, the spot is less noticeable.



Nate can pretty much sit up on his own now, though we have to watch him closely because he has no qualms about falling over. In fact, he thinks it's funny ... until he bonks his head.

My own personal comedian

Nate has really taken to his father's humor. In fact, all he has to do is look at Chuck and he starts to laugh. I suspect they just entertain each other all day long while I'm at work. Nate especially likes the songs we make up for him, and for some reason, he thinks that "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music is the funniest thing he's ever heard. One day in the car I had to sing that eight times in a row to keep him from crying.



In the past few weeks, Nate has become a pro at solids. He's had rice cereal, oatmeal, peas, green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, squash and bananas. We're trying to hold him off on fruit until he has a good variety of veggies so he doesn't get a sweet tooth. He likes everything except the carrots -- which prompted lots of funny faces and even a little bit of gagging -- but we'll keep trying! As fun as it's been, solids have begun to yield some pretty stinky poos.

We weighed Nate today and he is almost 20 lbs! That makes him the size of an average eight month old. It is amazing to think that he was just 8lb. 11oz. and 20.5 inches when he was born -- so tiny. Now I understand when mothers say they miss their little newborn babies when they grow up. But I must say, this little personality that is developing is so much fun. And I don't miss waking up every two hours. In fact, Nate has been a great sleeper over the past week, sleeping 7-8 hours for the first stretch almost every night.

He loves to stand up holding onto something and he can sit unsupported for a minute or more. And he's starting to creep -- he can squirm around enough to spin himself in a circle ... though there's been little forward progress. I heard they tend to go backwards before they go forwards, and I'm a little nervous to have my bold little man on the move anyway.

The happiest baby on the block

Me hungry!

Nate's four-month appointment was on Tuesday and he weighed in at 17lb. 12oz. and measured 26.5 inches long, again putting him in the 90th percentile for height and weight. However, his head measured in the 97th percentile, so our doctor wants us to come back in a month so that she can check it again and make sure everything is OK. We just think it's his giant brain that's growing so fast.

Because he's been taking in 40oz./day and has doubled his birth weight, our doctor said he was ready to start solid foods. Here is a video of Nate's first experience with rice cereal:



Nate's hair has grown back mostly along the center of his head, so he is now sporting a mohawk, making him the coolest baby on the block. This week, we bought him the Rainforest Jumperoo, an exersaucer that makes jungle noises every time he jumps.

Stand up! Stand up!

Nate turned four months on Tuesday and he's definitely starting to be a little boy more than a baby. He can sit up unsupported for almost a minute and can stand up very easily when we're holding his hands. When he does that, we sing, "Stand up, stand up, stand up and tell us you're Nate, you're Nate!" Just like Grandpa would sing.



His new favorite thing to do is to take his pacifier out of his mouth and chew on it. He thinks he's hilarious. That is, until he can't quite get it back in. He's still waking up twice in the middle of the night -- around 1 and then around 5:30 -- and we're exhausted. He's always very hungry when he awakes, so I guess we need to start feeding him more during the day. We'll see what the doctor says on Tuesday.

Swimming and rolling over!

At 3.5 months, Nate rolled over for the first time. It was a huge surprise because he didn't seem to be close at all, but I had him propped on his tummy and I could just tell by the way he was moving his legs that he was getting ready to roll onto his back. Since then, he hasn't done a true roll, but if he has one arm tucked, he can roll from his tummy to his back pretty easily. He also had his first swim last weekend when we went to the Harris YMCA. He really seemed to like it, though he really hates the sun in his eyes. I think we'll try the indoor pool next time.

Nate's sleep patterns are no longer rocking my world. We're not sure if it's due to teething, or just the fact that he's always hungry, but he's back to waking up every three hours during the night. Of course, he always goes back to sleep, but I really thought we were all set on sleeping through the night.

His four-month doctor's appointment is in two weeks. I weighed him this morning and he was 17lb. even. I think he'll still be in the 75-90th percentile for height and weight and I really think he's ready for solids. I wanted to wait until closer to six months but I don't think breastmilk is satisfying his appetite anymore. We'll see what they say. He'll also have his second round of shots, ugh!