Eating, Sleeping, and Walking

My boy has really changed his eating habits. First of all, he doesn't like to be fed. He loves to eat, but usually tries to take the spoon out of your hand. Most of his food is the consistency of applesauce so it leads to big messes, but he is proud of his messes. He would rather lick the food off of his hands than eat a spoonful given to him by someone else. I don't know if I mentioned before, but he now has 4 teeth – 2 on top and bottom in the front. Not enough to eat a lot of real food, but I will admit it is sometimes easier just to give him my scraps rather than fight him over some Gerber mush. We went McDonalds and bought him some apple slices which he loved. Of course with only 4 teeth and no molars it took 10 minutes to finish 1 slice. He just kept gumming the poor thing until it just gave up. Saturday night we were at a birthday party and he had a small bottle and my leftover pizza crusts for dinner. He acted like he was mad at the pizza and wanted to teach it a lesson.

We have been trying to get Jordan to walk for months now. That was probably an error. We have trouble keeping up with the current crawler. I have spent last week baby proofing parts I didn't think we would have to worry about so quickly. Our cabinets don't have handles so I thought that might slow him down a bit. Our pantry has folding doors which I thought worked in our favor. I also thought that the baby would one day learn to climb out of the playpen. Well he can open everything in the kitchen without a lock including the fridge, and he hasn't let anyone even put him into a playpen since Labor day.

When people who haven't had a kid ask what it's like for the new parent, I tell them the following story. After months of trial and error we now know exactly how to put the baby to bed. We have a system and the system works. If the baby gets a bath, you start with that. When I'm home alone, he doesn't always get one. Then dress him in the Pjs. Close the door to the bedroom and don't open it again. Then sit down on the bench with him on your lap and give him a sippy cup with formula while you read him a story. After the story, turn him around, give him a pacifier, turn out the light and he will fall asleep on your chest. Yes it's adorable, yes it effective, but it is ultimately flawed. The baby goes to sleep with food, a pacifier, and his parents holding him. It took most of a year to give him all of that so he could get to sleep, and now as parents we have to take it all away. However, what do we take first and how do we do it? We have already started making some changes, but this story is a perfect example of what it's like to raise the baby. As part of growing up we parents know we have to make these changes, but ultimately Jordan will be making the calls.