Conor's crazy week

This week Conor has been waking around midnight and again around 3 or 4 in the morning. He probably has some teeth coming in slowly that are causing him to wake. Or of course it could be gas, but that isn't the type of thing to wake him up anymore. It has been really hot too although not as hot as last summer, or even last month. Fingers crossed that he gets back to a regular sleep schedule.

Nighty Night!

The books all recommend a consistent bedtime routine for babies, so that they can begin to calm down; the day is nearly done and it is time for bed. At least that's what I guess the idea is.

Typical bedtime routines involve taking a bath, brushing teeth, maybe a last drink of milk or water, and a bedtime book. I try to follow that routine but it doesn't always work too well. The idea is to get baby to calm down and ready for sleep. We find that Conor wants to play, play, play until he is wiped out.

After his bath and brushing teeth, he gets another hour of running around the living room, chasing and throwing balls, playing with cars or exploring some other favored toy. Once he shows signs of starting to be tired (usually between 7:30 and 8), one of us gets a little sippy cup with milk, and his blanket and heads upstairs with him to his room. If it's me, we like to rock in the chair for a few minutes and listen to some music (Caspar Babypants), or I like to sing a few lullabies to him. It is almost my favorite time of day sitting in the semi-lit room, singing some favorite songs to my little guy. Here is a quick list with links to some of our/my favorites:

Skye Boat Song
Tur-a-lura-lura
All the Pretty Horses
Dance to your Daddy
My Darling
Golden Slumbers
There's a Kind of Hush

He's very sweet when I sing to him. He either really does fall asleep to the singing, or is faking it to get me to stop, ha ha. Next I'm looking for a simple Greek lullaby to balance out the celtic-ness of our night time drill.

He speaks!

The last two weeks or so have been exciting for us to realize that Conor's babble is slowly becoming language that we actually understand.

I had been enjoying the sound of him just stringing incomprehensible words together into babble sentences (in the back seat of the car while we're driving, or in his crib, or in his high chair at the table). I don't think even he knew what he was saying when he did this, but he enjoyed the act of "talking" and didn't care if anyone was listening or not.

Before we knew it the babble started to sound like actual words. Here is a list of words in Conor's official vocabulary: hot, bubble, milk, bottle, poop, mama, dada or daddy, kitty (sounds like keekee), Ian (sounds like Eee), up, three, bye bye, all done, go and ball.

For some reason if he doesn't know the word for an object, it is automatically "bubble" til he does learn the word. He doesn't use all the words on a regular basis, but we've heard him say each enough in the right context to know he understands what the word is. The words he uses most are bubble (he likes his blowing bubbles), go (as in Go Go Go!!!), dada, mama, and ball. He knows what blueberries are but I think it is easier for him to just say bubble when he wants them.

I catch him repeating my intonation with phrases alot. This morning I said "right now" and he mimicked the sound of the words. When he was learning to say "all done" he did the same thing.

He knows many more words of course. Ask him to go get his shoes, blanket, coat and he'll go look for them. Tell him something is "over in the corner" and he looks to the corner. If I tell him to put something in the trash he runs to the kitchen and stands at the cupboard that holds the trashcan. It's a great but dangerous time. I think we're at the point he's paying attention to things more than we might realize, especially TV and our own occasional bad words that slip out.










Here's Conor with Oma Barbara in June 2010.