Peter - 7 months

 Peter is an exhausting little ball of energy these days.  He is always on the move.  He does a quickly little army crawl to get around and he’s obsessed with the garbage can foot petal, those little caps that cover the bolts on the toilet, and the fireplace grate.  So yeah, pretty much anything completely disgusting.  I am blocking and redirecting and trying to get him to play with boring old toys all day.  If I am on the ground, though, he is climbing on me instantly.  He’s pulling himself up to couches, stairs, and anything he can and it kind of freaks me out since we hardly have any carpet in our home.  (I know hard-wood floors are all the rage these days, but I would choose carpet in a heartbeat.)  Even our plush shag rug doesn’t soften the falls quite enough.  Our well, he’s a rambunctious little boy and bumps and bruises are likely to be a way of life.  He smiles and laughs so easily and we just love it.  He loves making spit noises with his tongue all through church.  He’s a little noisy, but so happy.

Peter still gets up 2-3 times a night.  I HATE IT.  He was getting up once a night for a while before we moved, but for the last couple months he’s reverted back to a newborn sleeper and it’s really taking its toll.  A lot of my days start with turning on Curious George for Jane and letting Peter crawls around the living room while I doze off on the couch.  Parenting fail?  Maybe, but I’m too tired to care.  We’ve done some sleep training so he goes down pretty well at night, but it doesn’t seem to help in the middle of the night.  Also, he has been having really bad diarrhea/diaper rashes for the last few weeks, so I always feel like I need to check his diaper when he cries at night. 

He just had his first tooth break through a couple days ago.  That explains some of the sleep problems, but I don’t find it too encouraging.  We have to go through this how many more times?  Still he’s so happy and good natured during the day, it’s pretty easy to forget how rotten he can be in the night. 

Peter is getting close to sitting up on his own, but he’s not quite all the way there yet.  He can last for about half a minute before slumps over.  I can’t believe he can be so mobile, climbing and pulling himself up all over the place and still not know how to sit up.  Maybe he could if he’d hold still long enough to learn it.  He just knows he can crawl, so why sit around?