Dear Levi,

You are seven months old! Such a big boy! You look older, too. I love how your hair swoops across your forehead, and it appears as though your eyebrows are getting darker. Every three days or so I have to trim your nails (or “razor claws,” as daddy calls them) because they grow ridiculously fast.

From a developmental perspective, this past month was major. You started eating solid food and have loved nearly every spoonful of pureed fruits and vegetables we’ve fed you. Except for avocados. You weren’t crazy about them. And you seemed repulsed by the taste of ranch dressing, one of the condiments the pediatrician suggest we try to help you gain some weight. Instead, we’ve been melting a sliver of butter into your food twice a day. Since your diet has changed, so has your poop! Your daddy and I never know what we are going to find in your size 2 diaper, but whatever color or consistency it turns out to be, it always stinks.

On January 22nd you sat up unassisted for the first time. I think I may always remember that date; what a huge milestone! Now you can sit in a restaurant high chair rather than being strapped into your car seat. This month you also mastered your jumperoo and get a kick bouncing in it for an extended period of time. I love watching your little feet go up and down as if you are doing an Irish jig. You aren’t crawling yet, but I imagine you will be soon, as you have started pushing your tummy higher and higher off the ground, which sometimes causes you to slide backwards on our wood floor.

Sophie the Giraffe is one of your most beloved toys, and your new noisy trick is making clicking noises with your tongue. We can get you to laugh by making those same silly sounds back at you. Speaking of noise, you are one loud kiddo! You enjoy practicing your consonants at full volume, the best sound being “ma ma ma ma ma,” of course. Eventually, you’ll be addressing me when you say that!

You now sit upright in the toddler half of your blue plastic bathtub and kick and reach for floating bath toys. Naturally, they all go straight into your mouth! Since you like the water so much, we started taking swim lessons at the JCC, and you’ve even let me dunk you three times! We also go to music class as a family once a week, and although you are the youngest of the group, we think you enjoy the songs as much as the bigger kids.

But perhaps my favorite thing that you’ve started to do this month is look for and grab pacifiers to self-soothe when you are trying to fall asleep in your crib. Once, as I watched on the baby monitor, I was convinced you were going to start crawling because the pacifier you wanted was just slightly out of reach!

This month’s stats: You eat approximately 5-6 times a day. I nurse you around 3-4am and again between 7-7:30am. For lunch your nanny feeds you solid food and gives you a 3oz bottle, and in the afternoon you get a 7-8oz bottle. Daddy or I give you dinner, and I nurse you again before bed between 7-8pm. You go down easy at night but still aren’t crazy about napping. Your morning nap starts between 8-9am and (ideally) lasts until 10-11am. Your afternoon nap tends to be the shortest; sometimes you only sleep for 45 minutes around 2pm, which means you need a third mini-nap in the early evening. Your 3-6 month clothing is starting to get a little bit too short on you, but you aren’t quite wide enough to fill out your 6-9 month wardrobe yet. Maybe we need to buy you a baby-sized belt to help keep your pants up!

Stay silly and happy, baby guy!

xoxo

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I’ll be photographing Levi on the 12th of every month to document his growth this first year. He’ll be wearing a numbered white onesie corresponding to his age in months, sitting in a chair next to his blabla doll for continuity. See all of Levi’s monthly photos here.

{photo taken on Levi’s 7 month birthday, 02/12/12}

If you follow Bunny & Dolly on Facebook, you may have seen my post explaining my unexpected absence from the blog. Last week, my grandfather passed away at the age of 87 from Alzheimer’s, and JB, Levi and I quickly flew to the East Coast to be with my family. My grandpa’s health had been declining rapidly since the fall, but his quality of life began decreasing a couple of years ago.

The last time I saw my grandpa was in September. We brought Levi to meet his great-grandparents, but he only spent time with his great-grandma that afternoon. My grandfather slept through our entire visit; he was in the sleeping-all-the-time stage of the disease. I regret that he never got to meet his great-grandson. He always wanted a boy in the family, even going so far as to call my childhood Bichon Frise his “four-legged grandson.”

Sadly, I don’t remember the last time I interacted with my grandpa. Probably Thanksgiving of 2010. Living in Omaha, I don’t get to see my extended family much. (My immediate family flies out to visit often.) Over the years, as his cognitive impairment and then dementia set in, it became harder and harder for me to spend time with him. It upset me too much to see him fumble over his words or forget the stories he loved to tell. Eventually, he couldn’t even form sentences. He just sat there mumbling to himself.

I don’t want those to be my memories of my grandfather. Hopefully I can start remembering our time together prior to the past five or so years. It helped to be with my parents and relatives these last couple of days, sharing happy stories about my grandpa.

We were away for nearly a week, and now I need to refocus my attention on my family and friends, my work and my writing. I feel emotionally and physically drained, though, and my mind is fuzzy. Please excuse me if posting is sporadic over the next couple of days, and you’ll have to forgive me for not uploading Levi’s 7 month portrait yet. My to-do list is growing and growing, but motivation is still dragging behind.

xx PJ

Please reassure me… What is/was your 7-month-old’s feeding schedule?

Speaking of food, thought you’d enjoy this short video of Levi enjoying his peas and his fingers. Of all the veggies he’s tasted so far, peas are not Levi’s favorite. He prefers mushy orange anything — sweet potatoes, carrots, winter squash. Basically, whatever will stain his clothing, bibs and sheets a neon color when it makes its reappearance.

I’m always curious how other people stay organized, aren’t you? Right now I’m wondering whether I’m using the dresser and closet in Levi’s nursery effectively. Most of his clothing gets folded and put away in drawers. The changing pad is on top of his dresser, so most of his outfits are within arm’s reach.

The downside to that system is that the piles of teeny clothing in each drawer get messy quickly. I’m a visual person and usually end up sifting through toppled stacks before deciding what he should wear. (Although most days our nanny just keeps him in his jammies.) Besides his pants, short sleeve onesies, long sleeve onesies, bibs and socks, Levi’s dresser drawers also hold diapers, towels/washcloths, sheets, SleepSacks and clothing that doesn’t fit him yet.

If you’re wondering what’s in his closet, the answer is not much. A couple sweaters, play suits and jackets hang above a Martha Stewart 9-cube organizer that holds burp cloths and Diaper Genie refills in canvas bins. We also stash his books in that little cubby… that is, the ones that aren’t strewn all over the floor. I need a better system for those things, too.

I wonder if I’m making the best use of storage space in Levi’s nursery. Tell me, how do you organize your baby’s belongings?

{image #1 and #3, image #2, image #4}