b e n j a m i n f a l k e n b e r g

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Well, he fell out of his toddler bed at least once overnight…

I’m pretty sure he fell out the first time and actually got right back into bed, which was pretty cool. I heard a pretty loud THUD in the room and I was debating…do I go in, or just let him be? I figured–the still-new-at-this-guy that I am–that I’d go in and make sure he was at least OK… I didn’t want to go in this morning and find him laying there with a snapped neck or anything. Ridiculous thinking, perhaps, but hey, new parent, can’t be too careful!

I opened the door the first time and I couldn’t see him; it’s not just a redecorated room, but an entirely different room altogether…and we keep it pitch black/dark. He’s been sleeping in total darkness since he was born, basically–the exception being naps, etc, where he sleeps in bright daylight.

I grabbed a little flashlight and went back; he was laying across the bottom of the toddler bed like he crawled back in and flopped right onto his stomach and passed out.

The second time, about an hour or so later (around 1-1.30am), was another same-volume THUD, but this time he apparently woke up enough to not recognize where he was and started screaming and sobbing. I was in there in about 10 seconds; he was sitting on the floor next to the bed (I had to feel around a bit because his room is so dark). I picked him up, and before his head hit my shoulder he was out and dead to the world again. I patted him down and stuck him back in bed, and he was fine until he woke up this morning around 8:30.

We close his door, but the door frame is a little wonky and the door doesn’t quite latch… He can reach the knob, but he’s still too short to turn it. Just in case he manages to pull the door open, we have a gate up in the hallway to block the stairs. And of course our door to our bedroom is open for him if he gets out, so he can at least get to us easily.

For his first night, I think it went quite well! :)

And yeah, we know it’s gonna get more…interesting. But we’ll take what we can get as we go… ;)

Benjamin’s getting to be more and more active. He’s also wanting to be more mobile than he’s currently capable of being, and it seems to be frustrating him a little bit. He’s rolling over back and forth like there’s no tomorrow, and he’s even kind of figured out how to mini-steamroll around the room, but only for a couple of flips before he stops… He can spin himself around pretty easily, either while on his back or his belly, and if you’re not paying close attention, he can move about ten feet across the floor and be in a totally different orientation, leaving you wondering how he even did it…

He’s still not quite crawling, but he is up on all fours now pretty often (and more and more every day). He rocks back and forth now, and he’s been occasionally bunny-hopping his way across the floor in very short spurts. He’s got the idea of crawling down, we think, but he’s not quite coordinated enough to make it work; he gets on his stomach, realizes he can’t do what he wants to do, and eventually gets frustrated and needs some help.

He sits up for an hour or longer at a time now, so we think he’s got that pretty well under control, unless he’s hungry or tired or bored, in which case he very readily falls back/over and cries for assistance or additional entertainment. Smart kid, heh. He’s getting so much better at entertaining himself for longer stretches of time, too, playing with different toys…and he’s quite the little talker when we’re playing with him, too! He is increasingly ticklish and loves to laugh–great sense of humor so far!

Benjamin’s still on cereal twice a day (in addition to regular breast/bottled-breastmilk feedings), and that’s going really, really well. We’ll be introducing some vegetable baby food in a couple weeks or less, we think. He’s been sleeping really well all night long, too, which is fantastic… it’s so nice to have some quiet, alone time for Mom and Dad in the evenings. He’s up earlier in the morning now as a result, which has obliterated Dad’s morning 1.5 hours or so’s free work time…but Dad will get used to it.

We started babyproofing the house recently, too. Fun! (ok, not really…) Outlet covers, some cabinet locks, etc. Crawling around on the floor trying to see things from his vantage point… We have some openings between rooms that aren’t the right size for standard baby gates, so we’re not sure what we’re going to do about that just yet, but we’re shopping around still hoping we’ll find some that will work. We finally got around to buying a new vacuum cleaner, too, so that’s taken care of now.

We were also talking a couple days ago how he’s starting to look more like a little boy and less like a baby (cue Dad’s excuses about the lack-of-pictures situation here). We were also talking about how everyone has told us how quickly this time would fly by, and how we were prepared for it to go by quickly, but we’ve still been stunned at just how much more quickly it’s gone by than we ever could have imagined! We’ve probably said it a billion times in the last nearly-six months: amazing!

Friday we were excited that he’s been sleeping through the nights again, only to be awakened Friday night by a boy with an upset stomach… We were on Day 10 or something of this most recent run of all-night sleep. Darn. At least he’s not waking up for food or attention, so that’s good. :) He was only awake for 20-30 minutes, needed some comforting through his stomach gurgling (from the cereal? we don’t know), and went back down for the rest of the night.

As for his progress crawling, it’s an ongoing thing, but he’s been making big strides this week, and in the last few days in particular. He’s getting his legs and knees up under himself and rocking back and forth, and making small gains in the forward–and occasionally backward–direction(s)… It won’t be too long, we figure…and we still need to babyproof the outlets, etc. We’ve gotten down to baby level on the floor and taken care of a lot of the lower stuff he could get into, but we still need to rearrange some furniture, cover outlets, move cords, and buy a new vacuum cleaner that works better than our current one. It’s amazing how dirty your carpet suddenly seems when you’re down with your face in it with your new child!