Fall walk

Last Sunday was a beautiful fall day. It stopped raining and the sun peeked out a bit, so Boyd and I geared up for a long walk around our neighborhood. All in all we were out for 3 hours and managed to cover 4 miles during our leisurely stroll.

A beautiful tree along our route. Love the color.

This is a new subdivision going in near our home - one street over. There are two short cul-de-sacs and both roads are paved, curbs/gutters done, street lights in, and utilities done. The builder will be back in the spring to start work on the homes, which will start in the low $330,000's.

A view of the new subdivision from the main road.

A nice sized birch tree that blew over during the first windstorm.

Nice day for a walk!

My favorite little man! It took 30 minutes of strolling before he conked out. The day was super warm (low 60's) so he just needed a light cap and blanket.

This is the Chariot I bought used off of Craigslist. Boyd is still a little young to be pulled in it while we ride our bikes and we can't try the skis yet, so I got some stroller wheels and they work great! Here you can see the mesh screen - there is also a plastic rain cover that I have rolled up.

Rainbow!

Fall leaves are everywhere - winter is coming.

There is an equestrian center down the road from our house - many people in our area (lower hillside) have horses on their property. It's fun to see them walking down the sidewalks and onto the wooded trails.

Well it's difficult to see here, but these two trees have CD's hanging from the branches. I'm not sure what that's all about.

Video: Puppy dog tails - 7 months

Boyd sure does love his pets. In this video he is fascinated by Drift's sweeping tail...

Mealtime

Boyd is still nursing, but we have eliminated the middle of the night feeding for the most part. It was surprisingly easy. He slept through the night a couple times and didn't eat, so the next few nights I would put him back to bed after waking without a nursing session. He was fine and boom, just like that we had night weaned!

He still eats 4 times during the day. During the workweek I nurse him in the morning and after work, and he get a bottle 2x per day, plus 2-3 solid meals (pureed foods).

Boyd - 7 months

7 months!

• Boyd was sick for the first time at 5.75 months and I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier. He started sneezing a ton with some fussiness, and then was super stuffy and with a runny nose. He was miserable and I felt so bad for him. It didn't last too long - but then he passed the virus on to me! I was sick for less than a week. I think breastfeeding has been really great for his immune system and general health.
• No crawling yet but we're not stressing out about it. Bigger babies tend to move through the physical milestones a little slower than smaller kids, so he'll get around to it eventually. This just means we won't have to baby-proof the house as early as I thought!
• The sleep update: we had a couple amazing nights where Boyd slept 9 to 11 hours at a time. IT. WAS. HEAVEN. Then he went back to waking up once or twice, and now he's up all night and staying up for hours. I'm exhausted. D is exhausted. It's every parent's worst nightmare.Out of 7.5 months I can count on one hand the number of nights he's slept longer than 7 hours. I haven't slept longer than 5 hours at a time for 215 days.
• Lately he has been digging into the big rubber basket which holds all of his toys and picking the ones he wants to play with. Super cute.
• More sounds - especially the "bbbbb" one he is so fond of.
• EVERYTHING goes into his mouth. He'll grab something, give it a little look and then POP, in the mouth it goes!
• Really enjoys grabbing that left foot and putting that into his mouth too. Babies are so flexible!
• He gets SO distracted during the the daytime nursing sessions. I usually nurse him upstairs in his room but sometimes on the weekends I like to watch a little TV (since I never get to do so anymore) and I have to have the volume on low so he doesn't whip his little head around to look at the screen.
• It's weird, but Boyd loves hair - especially mine. He likes to grab it and put it in his mouth, but lately I've really tried to wean him off of this behavior.
• Every time I put music on he gets a huge smile on his face. We've been dancing and singing a lot.
• Still waiting for the top two teeth to make an appearance. He seems to go through a horrible teething stage but the teeth don't show up until months later.