Sorry we haven’t been blogging lately and you can see why. Our bundle of joy is taking up most of our time, but we enjoy it immensely. We took these pictures at the Aiea Heights hiking trail above where we live on February 16th. Eian made 7 months that day and we thought it would be fun to take some pictures. He seemed to like it, although we had to work sometimes at getting his attention him so that he would look at the camera.
He is growing so fast! I (Tam) took him to the doctor last week, (because I thought he had an ear infection, no ear infection) and he weight 18 pounds even. San measured him today and he’s about 29 inches long.
He’s changing so much, too. He’s starting to point at things and people or gestures with hands. . . just stick his arm(s) in the air in the direction of something. He’s started opening an closing his hands, like he’s making the sign for milk in sign language. I don’t know if that’s what he’s doing or if he’s just discovered he can move his fingers like that. 
I’ve been teaching him that sign when I nurse him, so maybe someday soon he can ask me to nurse when he wants to. 
He’s really becoming mobile these days, too. He is soooo active and busy!! We know he will be an athletic person. He’s been pulling himself up to anything and everything. He’s cruising along the edge of he couch. He climbs up on the couch if there’s a big cushion up against it. If he could, we can tell that he would be climbing up on things that would be very dangerous. He stands up at things and pulls himself up onto his tippy toes. Sheesh! He stands at the shoe rack and pulls all the shoes off the rack. We have a metal rack in the entryway with 4 shelves for shoes, and bags/purses on top. He ventures all around the condo now. It’s so fun to see him exploring all over the place. He’s so fast, too. I love it when he comes to find me if I go to another room. Our place is small enough that I’m only a couple steps away from any of the rooms. No worries, I’m not leaving him unattended.
He started saying “da da da” I think last month, now he’s added “ma ma ma” to his verbal repertoire. Someday he’ll associate those verbalizations to HIS da da and mama. Oh! And San and I will be useless, melt your heart! He’s saying a lot of other consonants and vowels, but no hard vowel sounds yet. For consonants, he says the b, d, g, m, n, s, t?, v?, and w sounds. It’ so fun to hear him use his voice!
As you can see, he’s got four teeth now, and he knows how to use ‘em! I’ve been trying to get him to understand what it means when we say “no, no”. We usually exclaim pretty loudly when he bites our fingers or shoulder or arm or some other body part. It really hurts! He doesn’t use much control, he just lets her rip! But, he still hasn’t gotten the picture yet. He usually smiles at me yet when I say no, no. I’ve started giving him some little swats on the leg for some things, but not much yet. He’s not using his teeth very much to eat yet, except paper. We’ve tried introducing new foods and he’s no too interested yet You’d think we were feeding him mud or soap or something else really horrible by his facial expressions. So, I’ve taken a break for a little bit. We’ve tried poi, rice cereal (which he enjoys), carrots w/ rice cereal (he liked that more), and potatoes (he really didn’t like). Next I’m going to steam or bake some butternut squash for him and see what he thinks of that.
He’s expressing so many different emotions. It’s so wonderful to watch his emotions, not so much the not so nice ones , but we love him through it : joy, surprise, excitement, relief, questioning/pensive, satisfaction, and then there is frustration, sadness, pain, uncertainty. I love watching his reaction when we come home after a long day. When we set him down on the floor or on the bed, he just squirms around with so much excitement, as if to say, “Yeah, we’re home! It feels so good!” He’s such a happy boy. He loves to be around people and it’s so fun to watch his reaction to children that walk by. Sometimes he calls out to them or reaches toward them. If a stranger doesn’t give him their attention or notice him, he calls out to them until they notice him and start talking to him. . . then he pretends he’s shy and drops his head or buries his face him my shirt. It’s so cute! I think he serves as a huge distraction in church sometimes for the people sitting behind us. I can tell people are smiling and playing with him, because he’s looking over my shoulder, sporting a huge grin and bouncing in my lap.
We have an evening routine that we hold to loosely, depending on what is happening on a given evening. It consists of playtime after dinner, a bath, a story, prayer and nursing (or I pray while I nurse him). We rarely fit all of those things in, but occasionally, it just works out. Usually by the time we get him out of the bathtub, he’s simply too tired and ready to call it a night. We don’t wash him with soap everyday. Most evenings we just put him in there to play and wind down in the warm water. He sleeps in a crib in our room. He’s not sleeping through the night yet, though. After I lay him down, he usually wakes up a couple times crying before I go to bed. After I go bed, if. . . no, I mean, WHEN he wakes up, I bring him to bed with me (I just coaxed him back to sleep for the 3rd time. I’m taking too long to write this .
Well, I think I’ve covered all of the developmental changes that I can think of. We feel so blessed to have this little man in our lives. He is awesome. He has such a pleasant personality and people enjoy him so much! Oh! One last thing, I left him in the nursery for the very first time the other night!! San and I went to a meeting at the church and there was child care provided. I knew and trusted the Auntie that was watching him. It was nice to leave him that night because he was close by, just a couple doors down, so when he got a little fussy, she brought him straight over. It was nice to be by ourselves for a little while, too. San had met me there and brought us some dinner. It was so nice to eat together.
So, anyway, I’d better close. We really enjoy parenting and look forward to bringing our next child into the world. No, not yet. But before he makes.
Oops. My battery is dying. Thanks for reading. If you think I’m too wordy, well, I am. I want him to be able to look back and read about what we thought about him and what he was like as a baby!
Aloha!
