cat scan

today we went in to providence hospital to have the cat scan done on talan's dermoid cyst. he still had the slight cold that delayed the procedure by a week but he was good enough to have it done. wednesday evening hayden came down with a fever and all i could think was that talan would have it before we made it in today. but he didn't!
i woke talan up at about 11:45pm last nite in order to get him to fill his stomach up since he wouldn't be able to eat after midnite. he took pretty much the whole 8 ounce bottle and went right back to sleep. i actually don't think he really ever woke up in the first place. he woke up this morning at about 5am and cried until we got him out of bed at a little after 6am. my mom was able to hold him and play with him and make him stop crying which i didn't think would happen. i figured he'd be screaming until he was knocked out or he got a bottle in his mouth.
we left the house at about 6:40am and he ended up falling asleep on the car ride there. he woke up a bit after getting there but was still really good. we sat in the waiting area waiting to be taken in for "surgery" for awhile and eventually he fell back asleep.
the drug doctor's came in to get us and explained just what they were going to do. we were allowed to go down to the cat scan room with him and i was even allowed to hold him while they stuck his leg. i passed him over to the dr.'s and then they let us wait just outside the room. they didn't get him in there until about 8:50, so almost an hour late. but they were back out about 10 minutes later and he was already starting to wake up a bit. they said the last few shots he started moving a bit but the pictures came out clear so it was all good.
they had to put an iv in him because the dr. wanted the cat scan "with contrast" so they needed the dye in him. if he didn't need the iv, they said it would have been even quicker and easier.
they brought us up to the recovery room where a nurse sat with us while he was waking up. he was totally out of it, but after a while he started moving more and more. he very slowly ended up taking about 5 ounces of his bottle and the nurse released us probably a little after 10:30am.
the nurse told us we should call the plastic surgeon and see if maybe we could get a rush on things and try to get the cyst removed before the new year since our deductible has been met for 2007. she said they most likely would be able to do it. unfortunately, when i got home and made the call, i found out that his dr. is out of the office until january 3, so that's just not a possibility. it's ok since it would have been a major rush to have christmas, rainah's 1st birthday, hayden's 5th birthday and a surgery on top of it. but it would have been nice not to have to worry about it or the cost of it!
we left the hospital and headed to my parents to pick hayden up and then we headed home. i was expecting a "low key" day with talan being groggy and tired most of the day. not long after getting home, talan started crawling under the christmas tree and crawling towards all the things he shouldn't be touching. so much for a low key day.
he did end up finally going down for his afternoon nap and slept for quite awhile. he's now upstairs crawling around acting like every other day. i really breed tough boys.
of course, i couldn't leave my camera behind. so now poor talan has to live with photo's of himself in a half awake state. i'm sorry talan. that's what happens when you have a mom that blogs.
thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. they certainly helped! i was sure we'd go in there with a screaming baby, but instead, he charmed all of the dr.'s and nurses the way he charms people every other day of the week.
by the way, they weighed him when we first got there and was was 19 pounds 8 ounces. not too bad, but hayden still had him beat. at 9 months hayden was 21 pounds 3.5 ounces. i don't think talan will be gaining that much in the next couple of weeks! although, it is christmas.


waiting to be taken in. the next time he wakes up in the middle of the nite, no way am i getting him. look at how pleasant he is and he hadn't eaten in about 8 hours!:

talan just out of the cat scan:
dazed and confused:


waking up a bit more and finally able to eat a bit:


what are these things and how do i get them off?!:

surprise! he got sick

the other day i posted about how talan would be going in for a cat scan on wednesday, which would be tomorrow. so yesterday afternoon someone from providence calls me to ask me all of these questions and inform me that we need to be there by 7AM and he cannot eat anything past midnite. yeah, that's going to go well.
so she asks me if he's had a cold recently. well, no. but his brother has one and we're crossing our fingers he doesn't pick it up before tomorrow.
then i put him to bed and he suddenly couldn't breath. snot was pouring out of his nose and he couldn't get comfortable or get any kind of good sleep. wonderful. he needed to stay well just one more day and he couldn't even do that.
so i was making phone calls all morning trying to figure out if he was still allowed to go in with a cold. for whatever reason, nobody could really answer my questions. i was passed from department to department until i was finally told it would be best if i rescheduled because if he coughed or sneezed and moved we'd have to do it all over again anyway. then came the hundred and two phone calls in order to reschedule the appointment. another thing nobody could help me with.
i finally got to the right person and they rescheduled our appointment for next friday, the 21st at 8am. which again means no eating after midnite and be there by 7am. awesome. hopefully by then this cold will pretty much be gone and no new illnesses will attack.
this afternoon we went to the pediatrician for hayden's 5 year check up. so i asked her really quickly about the cyst. she said that looking at it she was sure it was just a dermoid cyst. so i told her the plastic surgeon said the same thing but that it could be attached to the tissue surrounding the brain. she told me that sometimes it can be attached to the bone, so in order to remove it, a neurosurgeon would be there as well. but then she went on to say that only about 90% of dermoid cysts are attached to the bone like that. she said that she has probably only seen 1 in the past 12 years and she would be pretty surprised if she had just seen another. however, it is talan, so neither of us would be THAT surprised.
so yeah. things were cleared up a little bit more with her explanation. it seems like the chances are pretty slim that it is attached to anything but they need the cat scan to make sure.
so there's the update. we'll let you know how things go next friday. if we make it there, that is.

8 months

i'm sure i say it in every month blog, but i honestly can't believe talan is 8 months old already.
talan has gone through all of his vegetables and fruits and has now made it on to turkey and chicken. no allergic reactions, just a distaste for fruits. he will usually take them, but only if you feed them to him first. he typically will eat about 2 jars for lunch and dinner. so you need to feed him a jar of fruit and then the jar of vegetables. if you do it the other way around, you'll never get him to eat the fruit. even then, there are still times he makes horrible faces and refuses to eat them. applesauce seems to be his favorite out of the fruits with bananas and peaches giving him the hardest time. the turkey and chicken have gone down no problem either.
we have recently tried giving him a few solid foods as well. i guess dave gave him an animal cracker one day WITHOUT TAKING PICTURES and i did the same about a week later, this time with a camera of course. he will gnaw at them until they pretty much fall apart. we tried giving him some fruit puffs but he made a face like "this is the worst thing in the world" so i bought him some vegetable puffs to try instead. he also didn't care for them. i tried one of the biter biscuits this evening and after gnawing on it for a few he then just decided to slam it on his highchair tray.
i actually am not even sure when you are supposed to give them solid food like that. but i realized this evening that he just isn't ready for solid food. then i read the biter biscuit box and saw that it said to give to a child 10+ months and that crawls with his belly up off the floor. yeah, we'll try again later i guess.
the one thing he does love to eat is paper. anytime he sees paper he heads straight for it. he's probably eaten at least 3 little pieces so far. i've turned coupons in with corners chewed off and had christmas cards with a little bite taken out of them. in hayden's room, he finds every little piece of paper anywhere on his floor. christmas could just be his favorite holiday if only for the fact that there will be paper EVERYWHERE!!!! yum. yum.
talan sits perfectly now and doesn't ever fall over unless he purposely does it. he now also scoots himself which is more or less crawling. he'll get up on his knees and rock but then just fall to his stomach and start crawling like a snake. this evening he made it from the living room all the way to the back of the house to hayden's bedroom. the gates need to be cleaned and brought upstairs right away! the pictures posted above? yeah, those were insanely impossible to get this evening. he can't sit still for a second. he just wanted to roll over and get to whatever else was going on. i can't imagine what the next few months pictures will turn out like!
his sleeping has gotten much better. he typically goes to bed around 8pm and still usually gets up around 11 or 11:30. sometimes you can just stick the binky back in his mouth and he'll fall back asleep, other times he must be fed. but then he typically won't get up until 5:30 or so. and after he eats then, he'll go back to sleep until well after 7...sometimes close to 9.
he doesn't need to be swaddled anymore at nite, but i still swaddle his legs during naps. he usually takes a morning nap for a couple of hours and then his afternoon nap from about 1-3. i would certainly like him to sleep from 8-7 at nite, but it's not as bad as it was.
he still loves his jumper in the basement and goes in it almost every day when dave comes home from work. hayden likes to entertain him by falling down or throwing things at himself to make talan crack up. they still really love each other, although hayden doesn't like the fact that talan can now get around and get to his stuff. he's not so big on sharing.
talan has rediscovered his tongue and loves to stick it out and do cute little baby tongue tricks with it. he also has been smacking his lips to make funny little noises. hayden thinks this is hilarious, and i can't really disagree.
he doesn't wave so much on command anymore, but he claps all the time. he'll also shake his head "no" at you when prompted. i'm trying to teach him "yes" but that's not working so well right now.
talan is still a super happy baby and doesn't have any problems leaving my sight or going to other people. i'm hoping this continues, as hayden was always the same way. it sure makes things easier.
he seems to be "turning the corner" as dave said, in the weight department. hayden was a super chunk and we think talan is starting to become that way. you can see in pictures that the two of them are just built differently, but talan's face is getting chunkier and his legs are super solid tree stumps as well. it'll be interesting to see where is weight is at the next time he goes in.
he's headed in for a cat scan to check out his cyst on wednesday so that's the biggest thing he has going on right now. they will be able to let us know if the cyst is connected to the brain tissues or not.
we visited santa on friday and as we figured, talan did great. he is a grabber though. the second i pick him up, he grabs my hair and won't let go. so i placed him in santa's lap, turn my back to walk over near the camera, and when i turn back around i notice santa desperately trying to get his beard free from talan's death grip. once he was freed everything went well. he wasn't in a very smiley mood, but he was ok to sit there (well, squirm there i guess you could say).
we're so excited for talan's first christmas. hayden was 5 days from being a year old for his first, as rainah will be this year. so it will be a little different having a slightly younger one. good thing we have hayden to help us open all of talan's presents!
happy 8 months, talan!

and yet another trip to providence southfield

as reported in an earlier blog, talan has a cyst in his eye socket. his dr. told us that he would need to have it removed at some point by plastics but due to his age, they usually wait. she told us we should make an appointment to see them so that they can take a look at it and know how quickly it may be growing from this appointment to the next.
because our deductible has been met this year, i got him in for an appointment right away as 2008 is almost here. the dr. came in and right away said what our dr. said. it's a dermoid cyst. he tried to explain what exactly a dermoid cyst is and told me that basically it is a "mistake" that forms during development. he then proceeded to say "i don't want to scare you. i mean, it isn't serious. well, no. it isn't DANGEROUS." he told me that the cyst could be connected to the tissues surrounding the brain. he would need a cat scan in order to determine if this is case or not. if it is not connected to the tissues, they would easily be able to remove it. if it is connected, they will have to come up with a slightly different approach to removing it.
he let me know that it is not cancer, nor will it ever be cancer. he also said that they don't really have a certain age that they wait for in order to remove it, but they aren't in any real rush either. he said we should have the cat scan done in order to find out just what we are up against. then we can sit down and come up with our plan of attack.
a cat scan for us is no big deal, but for a baby it is a slightly bigger deal. we needed to have several departments coordinate their schedules as talan is going to need to be put under. so once everyone coordinated, they called and told us he was set up for the cat scan on wednesday, december 12 at 8am in southfield.
yeah! that means we get to leave the house by about 7:15 unless they tell us that we need to be there even earlier. so on wednesday we'll be headed back to providence southfield. i guess he's been missing the place since he hasn't been there since he was 6 weeks old when he had pneumonia.
i'm not really worried right now. i understand it's not life threatening, but of course it's never fun to hear your 8 month old's cyst may be connected to brain tissue. right now it's most upsetting to think about our happy little baby having to be put under for the cat scan. this kid has had it all done to him!
so that's where we're at right now. we'll have the cat scan and then wait to hear what the dr. has to say. at this point, i'm guessing they won't be able to remove it before 2008, so that will just mean our deductible will most likely be met another year when that happens.
we'll keep you posted.

and so it begins

they say having a baby changes your life. and i guess it does, but when you have a second one, it doesn't seem to change as much since you're already used to not being able to go out much without dragging a kid around. of course when there is a larger age difference, you have to get used to someone depending on you for everything once again, but that doesn't even seem that bad.
now, almost 8 months later, is when my life is changing. talan is now getting around. i now not only have one child i have to say "no" to, i now have two.
talan discovered on monday that he could get himself from one end of the room to the other by scooting himself along using mostly his upper body strength. while i was washing bottles out yesterday morning i heard a crash. dave went out to see what it was and found that talan had scooted across the room and wound up by the tall candle stick holders with the big fat candles sitting on top of them. and he managed to pull the tallest one down. i think it must have barely missed him as he didn't make a sound. although, he could just be like his big brother and not really care about pain. so now, every time we put him down, he remembers how cool those candles are and he heads right for them.
i try not to "baby proof" my house too much because i like them to learn from their mistakes. like, realizing that EVERY TIME they stick their finger in an electrical outlet, they will be shocked. and, if you drink poison, we will have to call an ambulance every time. or maybe i just try to make them understand that every house isn't going to have a baby where they put everything away to keep them out of trouble. so they need to get used to the word "no" and the fact that certain things should not be touched. it can be a lot of work for me, but in the long run, it works. well, at least it did for hayden, and usually things like that don't work on that kid, so i'm swearing by it.
so yes. here is the video of him getting around. he's so determined that he doesn't even realize he crawled right out of his pants. does anyone make baby belts?! if not, i'm starting and i'm gonna make a fortune.

a vegetarian?!

it appears as though talan is a vegetarian in the truest sense of the word. we moved him on to eating fruits and he really doesn't like them. doctor's tell you to start babies on vegetables first so they don't get addicted to the sweet fruit and then won't take veggies. not this guy. he's had banana's, peaches and applesauce now and he turns his lip up at 2 of the 3. for whatever reason he has decided that applesauce is ok. i'll feed him a jar of veggies and he'll cry for more so i'll pull out a jar of fruit. suddenly his mouth closes up and you can't pry the thing open with a crowbar. i keep trying but it doesn't seem to get any better. this evening he ate about 5 spoonfuls of banana's, pretty much making a "this is the most disgusting thing i've ever had" face with every single bite. we really aren't sure where he came from cuz nobody in this house really likes vegetables at all. not sure where he's gonna eat when he gets older and the jarred food just won't cut it anymore.


banana's:
peaches:

the first attempt at applesauce when he thought he didn't like it:
so he decided to play with it instead:

the good news is, as you can tell by the applesauce photos, we finally got off our lazy butt's and cleaned the highchair off and brought it upstairs. so now there is no danger of him throwing himself backwards and out of his recalled bumbo seat. phew.

7 months

today talan turned 7 months old. last month was quite the busy month for him with many firsts including laying in a pile of leaves and standing inside a pumpkin for mommy's crazy photo ops. talan continues to be a happy, fun baby however, nite time has changed. for the past month and a half he has been waking up anywhere from 2-3 times every nite. pretty much every 3-4 hours. i took him in for his 6 month check up to find out he had an ear infection. so i blamed his restlessness on that. he was put on medication and was seen by the dr. 2 weeks later and we were told the ear infection was gone. once again, he wasn't able to get his flu shot because he was congested. ok. so he has a bad cold and is having a hard time breathing. that's why he's still waking up. well. the congestion is gone and the kid is still up several times a nite. it's possibly a tooth thing but it's also possible he's gotten used to the half asleep feedings and doesn't want to give them up. in any case, this better end soon cuz we're dyin' over here. he didn't do this when he was a month old.
he has moved his way through all of the vegetables that gerber has to offer and we are about ready to start him on either meats or fruits. possibly meat so that we save the sweet stuff for last. hayden ate the fruits after veggies and he still had no problem eating the nasty canned meat. years later he eats all of 4 things. so we're just trying to decide what might give us a better eater than our first. he's enjoying his food much more than before and it's not nearly the chore it used to be to feed him. he typically eats a jar at lunch and a jar at dinner. and happily. he still gets distracted easily and if hayden is in the room it's next to impossible to get talan to eat. or the cat. talan just loves that cat. this afternoon i was feeding him lunch and we were almost done when dante walked in. and that was it. talan was fixed on dante and wouldn't budge his head or open his mouth to finish the jar. dante finally left and talan finished up his lunch. i think mealtimes i'll start taking talan into a private room with a lock on it so he doesn't get distracted.
on thursday, november 1st we were watching hayden at his bowling league and i asked jessica to check and see if she felt any teeth in talan's mouth. i thought i might have seen a couple of bumps, but is it ever hard to get a kid to open their mouth and let you examine it. she felt and looked in and we discovered that his two front bottom teeth were starting to pop up. i can't believe it. a kid that got 2 teeth before 7 months! he's been shoving stuff in the back of his mouth as well so i'm wondering if there is something coming in back there as well.
just this week talan has more or less mastered the art of sitting. on monday he sat for a good amount of time on his own and each day after he has sat for long and longer stretches of time. today he was sitting in the living room on his own for well over 10 minutes. if he's too tired he'll just gently fall to the side or straight back, but i believe at this point i can say that talan is sitting by himself.
talan, like hayden, is still just fine with strangers and with me leaving him. he's never had one bit of worry when i've handed him over to someone and just walked out. i'm hoping for a good santa picture this year. i got the best one when hayden was just about a year. after year after that it's been downhill. we've talked a lot about it and we're now using the big brother card telling him he needs to show talan how to do it. so we'll see. talan may just have his picture taken alone with santa.
he still isn't crawling but he moves himself around in a circle anytime he needs to. he can roll across the floor to get him places or just somehow scoot himself there. either way, he usually gets to where he wants to be.
the only positive sleep thing we have to report on is that we've given up the nite time swaddling. we have put him to bed every nite this week without being swaddled and it really hasn't been too much different than getting him to sleep while swaddled. i still tend to swaddle him at naptime because it just seems a little different with it being light and all. he tends to fall right to sleep at naptimes so i kinda don't want to mess with that right now. so i'll wait a little bit longer. maybe he can get into some record books for being the oldest baby that has to be swaddled to go to sleep. he's usually gotten himself out of it by the time you go in to get him, but it's the fact that he has to be in it when you put him down. but at this point we're almost to a swaddle free baby.
while in for his 6 month check up we were sent home with a nebulizer to help with his 80 year old smokers cough that he's had since he was born. and it actually seems to have worked. at first i just noticed that the cough seemed looser. now, there have been full days where i've only heard him cough once...maybe not even at all. so hopefully that is passing.
talan claps and waves. he loves when you say "mama." he'll just sit there and stare at your mouth while you say it. he has excellent motor skills, says my dad, and i agree. he will take the string of a balloon and just grab at it with his fingers and then just play with it. he was putting shapes inside his shape sorter, moving them around with his hand in order to make noise, pull a couple out, bang them together and then put them back in. he still loves being in his jumper and will immediately stop fussing when put in there. he's even fallen asleep in it more than once. i took him to target yesterday and couldn't believe what a difference i felt with him and hayden. talan was awake the entire time and didn't even have a binky in his mouth, yet he was quite almost the whole time. with hayden i would freak out if he would wake up. i'd grab what i had to and run out of the store before the screaming began. i think i still do that with him. but yesterday was so pleasant just getting a little bit of christmas shopping done with talan.
so once again, another great month, except for the sleep thing. something he really must work on cuz we just can't keep living like this. i'll have to try some teething medications and see if that works. if not, there's always soundproofing the room like i always swore i'd do.
happy 7 months, talan!

corn and sweet poatoes together at last

we are finally picking up speed and moving quickly through the vegetable family. a few days ago talan was given sweet potatoes. he seemed to love them. i think he's finally getting the hang of eating normal food that doesn't come out of a bottle because for the past week he's eagerly eaten a jar at a sitting of vegetables. i was thinking it was just the sweet potatoes that he loved but then i found he's eaten the same way when given peas and carrots.
after no allergic outbreaks i decided this evening to move him on to the last vegetable we have. corn combined with sweet potatoes. for whatever reason they don't just have corn. it's corn and sweet potatoes. together. ok. whatever. we know he's not allergic to the sweet potatoes so if an outbreak happens, we know to blame it on the corn. he quickly went through yet another jar this evening. after a few days we'll finally be moving on to either fruits or meats. i can't decide. i want to do everything in my power to make sure he's a much better eater when he gets older than hayden is. but hayden loved his baby food. even the meat. so, who knows.
so here they are. more pictures of him trying foods for the first time that look like all the other pictures i've posted of him eating different foods for the first time.


so happy for the sweet potatoes:

moving on to corn with sweet potatoes:
i have no idea what's up with his hair this evening:
he got tired of me taking pictures and having to wait to be fed so he took it upon himself. too bad he had the wrong end in his mouth:

squash

talan moved on to the world of gourds on saturday. good thing too. it's just about time to carve pumpkins and you all know he'll be shoved inside a pumpkin for a photo op. lucky him.
he feels the same way about squash as he does about all the other vegetables. it's fine. but he'd rather have his bottle. and when being fed, there is usually a whole lot of other things that he'd rather be giving his attention to than eating.

6 month check up

today was talan's 6 month check up. i had a couple of things i wanted to ask the dr. about. things like, what drugs can i give him to make him stop waking us up in the middle of the nite?! he's had a cold for about 2 weeks now and i've figured that's what the problem is. but stupid parents that overdose their infants are now responsible for me not being able to buy infant cold medicine. other questions like, why does he still have this 80 year old smokers cough?! and what in the world is up with the bump on his nose by his eye?! so here's what happened.
he weighed in at 17 pounds 3 ounces which puts him in the 50th percentile. i believe he actually lost a few ounces but he's been eating all weird since this cold set in. nothing major. he is 26 7/8 inches which puts him in the 70th percentile. i looked back at hayden's 6 months stats and found that hayden was about 27 1/4 inches and weighed 18 pounds 3 ounces. so they're still close, but hayden was beating him out just a bit. it's interesting to see how similar they are in that regard. i forget his head size but it's in the 50-75 percentile range.
so the dr. comes in and asks how things are going. i mention the cold and she tells me i should give him some children's triaminic for the runny nose and stuff. she also said that she would send us home with a nebulizer since the cough still hasn't gone away, and in fact, is worse than ever. so we'll be giving him breathing treatments when he starts hacking a lung up now.
she starts looking at him and notices the bump on his nose before i could say anything about it. she felt it and said it was one of two things. 1-it was some kind of cyst that i forget the name of. i think it starts with a d. 2-it has something to do with the tear duct. but, usually that is a little lower, so she's pretty sure it's the cyst. it seems to be not too big of a deal, but it is something that will need to be removed. they don't do it now because he's so young, unless it really starts growing. but when it's time to have it removed i guess they'll have plastics do it because of it being on his face and all. so really, it shouldn't come as too big of a shock seeing as though talan has decided to always have some kind of medical thing going on.
right after she inspects his eyes she moves to his ears. oh. guess what?! he has yet another ear infection. surprise! cuz what would a talan check up be without an ear infection?! i'm guessing that when he had the fever several weeks back, that was the start of the ear infection but it wasn't showing up yet. so hopefully between the cold and the ear infection that's what's been waking him up. and once i get this medicine in him maybe he'll get back to sleeping through the nite again!
while laying on the table talan waved at the dr. i have been teaching him to wave and noticed on saturday that it appeared he would wave at us. i figured i was crazy and it was just a fluke thing. he's too young to wave. but that nite several other people saw it and we realized he was doing it on purpose. so today the dr. says "he just waved at me. does your mommy know that's a 9 month action?" so when she gave me all of the paperwork she skipped over the "what your 6 month old should be doing" because she said "i could have given him his 9 month check up. he's really far ahead for 6 months." after 2 shots she sent us home with our nebulizer, prescription for the nebulizer and prescription for the ear infection. we also had to make an appointment for 2 weeks to check the ear and get his flu shot as long as the ear looks good.
so i guess in two weeks we'll see what new medical condition he has. oh well. at least he's still always happy.


this has nothing to do with the dr. but he's so stinkin cute here:

green beans

we're a little slow at the feeding thing in this house. i said i was going to start feeding talan green beans almost a week ago but we just got around to it yesterday. no real reactions. he seemed to eat them up just the same as the carrots and peas. oh, and the scratches? no worries there. he just got into a fight with the cat. you should see what dante looks like.



seriously. this kid.
hayden wanted to take some pictures so here is his work:
and he had to show off what he was eating for dinner. hey, no comments here, he used to eat these waffles frozen. he's really growing up:

6 month photos

talan had his 6 month photo's taken yesterday. we got there when he was in a great mood and finished shortly before he started getting tired. here are the results:

6 months

talan has now been around for a half a year. that's insane to me. in many ways it seems like he's always been here, but it still seems like i just had him. he continues to be a great baby, although this may have been the most challenging month with him. now, i know what a tough child is, and i'm not about to say that talan is tough by any stretch. however, he was a bit crankier and a bit less content for part of this month. he has been sick, so i'm blaming it on that. and teething. you can always blame teething, even though there aren't any teeth to be seen.
talan has been tough to figure out a nap schedule for. he is a pretty good sleeper (aside from the fact that he STILL has to be swaddled to fall asleep), but i seem to remember hayden being very routine oriented. he took naps at the same time every day, even at this age. talan seems to need a nap early one morning but much later the next. now that hayden will be taking the bus, he should be able to at least get his naps when he needs them. most mornings he wakes up and will go right back down to sleep for another few hours. and lately he has been taking a great afternoon nap. night time has been another issue. he still goes down around 8 or 8:30, but for the past 2 weeks he has been getting up once, if not twice a night. something he hasn't done since his first weeks home. so, needless to say, we aren't too happy about this. again, he has been sick with quite the runny nose so i blame that. and again, teething. always teething.
talan can more or less sit on his own, but he doesn't quite know it yet. he typically will sit in between my legs, nothing propping him up, with just one hand resting on my leg. for whatever reason he thinks that is what is sitting him up. and as soon as he realizes he is actually doing it himself, he'll fall over.
the other nite he decided he wanted to travel around the living room so he rolled all the way around. then he decided that there had to be a slightly better way of getting around. that's when he got himself up on his knees and start to scoot, just a little, across the floor. he was really close to crawling and i can see that happening at any time.
he loves his jumper which is set up in the basement. dave will come downstairs after dinner every nite and bring the boys with him. talan will just sit and jump in that jumper for an hour. now, whenever you pick him up, he starts jumping.
he is doing really well at eating "solid" foods now. he finally opens his mouth without much prompting and it takes him far less time to eat than it did last month. he eats his oatmeal cereal, carrots and peas. as soon as he finishes the open jar of peas in the fridge he'll be moving on to green beans. i had forgotten just how stinky and thick baby food poop is. diaper changing is no fun.
he has lost much of his hair and looks like a chemo patient. hayden was born with a full head of thick hair that he kept. the only hair he lost was in the back of his head from where he rubbed it. talan has, what a neighbor pointed out, as mr. t hair. he has blonde hair covering his head but basically just a strip of long baby hair down the middle with some wisps on the sides as well. sometimes we try to spread it out so he doesn't look so sick. usually from straight on you can't tell just how sickly he looks.
he grabs EVERYTHING. something else we really don't remember hayden doing. at least not nearly as much as talan does. wherever you sit him, he finds something that he just has to have. weeks ago he grabbed my glass at the table. luckily hayden was there and caught it before he knocked it down. and he is a huge fan of the remote. if he sees it, he will do everything in his power to get it.
he has taken quite an interest in the cat lately. anytime he sees dante he'll just stare at him. and if talan is on the ground, he tries his best to get over to him to pet him. dante keeps a safe distance as i'm sure he remembers just what happened once hayden started moving. now he has to try to stay clear of TWO kids.
i took him to get his 6 month pictures taken today and everyone kept commenting on how long he was. he goes in for his 6 month check up on monday so i guess we'll see if they were right. most people comment on what a big baby he is. so we'll see what those stats are in about a week. as well as have them try to figure out why in the world he's waking us up in the middle of the nite!!!!
even with the middle of the night feedings again (where he typically only eats a couple of ounces anyway) and the couple crabby/non content days, we wouldn't trade him for the world. even super baby has a bad day once in a while.
happy 1/2 year talan!

in honor of hispanic heritage month

our mexican jumping bean.

peas

so after over a week of eating carrots we decided to graduate talan and move him on to peas. so this evening dave fed him while i took some photos. he took them down pretty well. they are much thicker than the carrots so i wasn't sure what kind of reaction to expect. but he ate them all and dave did a great job too. maybe better than i did. he just shoves them in there and doesn't let talan's tongue get in the way. made for a much easier, faster feeding. i should just let dave and hayden do this feeding thing from now on.


what is this?!:
seriously? when is this going to end:
i guess it's not so bad:


tonite there were no tongue tricks but he decided to stick his lips out in a "watchu talkin' 'bout willis" sort of way: