9 Months Old!

Sometimes I wonder if I'm giving Lucas too many kisses. I try not to get to sappy on this blog, but I have to say at least once that I'm crazy in love with Lucas. Everything he does is amazing to us. It's just normal stuff like stand alone for 3 seconds, but if you were at our house when he does something new like this you'd think he'd just done something that had never been done before.

The past nine months have been an experience like no other. It's hard to describe how you can love something so much and love being something (a mom) so much, but at the same time you're exhausted, your back hurts, you're behind on everything, you have time to do nothing completely and you feel sometimes like your life is out of control. But that's how the past nine months have been for us...the greatest but quite possibly the hardest. I heard that before Lucas was born, but didn't relate until recently. Anyway, I think we are now moving into the next phase of "I think I have this under control and things are getting easier". (I'll probably regret saying that).

The biggest contributor to this is sleep. It took all of 9 months, but we are finally into a routine and Lucas has learned how to soothe himself, most of the time. At 8 months old we started a new thing with Lucas where we'd put him into the crib awake and sit by the crib until he went to sleep. The first couple of days he cried a lot, but now we're to the point where we can lay him in the crib and walk out of the room. About half the time he goes right to sleep and the other half he screams for about 10 seconds and then goes to sleep. We still have a ways to go. He will only sleep for 3-4 hours at a stretch. When he wakes up we go in to comfort him immediately and he usually goes right back to sleep. He usually goes down at 7pm, wakes up at 11pm (Jeff comforts him right back to sleep), nurses at 1am, nurses at 5am and up at 7am. We're going to start working on eliminating that 5am feeding this week. His record of consecutive sleep is 6 hours. We're making progress.

Lucas's strong personality continues to surprise, entertain, and amaze us. We read about Lucas's personality in a book by Dr. Sears a few months ago and the term "High Needs Baby" describes Lucas to a tee - "..these babies crave physical contact. They like to be held constantly and will protest loudly when put down. They are supersensitive, intense, have difficulty self-soothing, and can be very demanding and draining on parents. These babies, however, are generally very happy when their needs are met. They are blessed with persistent personalities that encourage parents to keep working at a caregiving style until they find one that works."
I love this description. Lucas challenges us to get to know him and understand him. He has a lot of energy and our job is to teach him how to put it to good use.

We can tell from Lucas's play group friends that he is on track developmentally. He can crawl like a pro now, climb stairs, stand for a few seconds, slowly walk behind a toy with wheels, say da-da and ba and ma occasionally, communicate when he wants down, when he wants to be picked up, and when he is sleepy. He gets a huge kick out of peek-a-boo and when we take his binky out of his mouth and put it in ours. He's shown signs of kindness by putting some of his food in our mouths or sharing his toy with Tyson. Our latest "trick" is that he gives Tyson his cookies...although yesterday I looked down and he had taken the cookie back and was about to eat it himself.

I hope that it shows through this blog that we love Lucas and love being his parents. Lucas, if you are reading this when you are older, we love you so much!!!!