SIXER

Once again, this post is a conjunction of what should ideally have been many different regularly updated posts. However, due to extremely hectic developmental days (the same ones that I should be writing about), my own laziness and more importantly because it is much more fun to be enjoying Sid than writing about him, I have been putting the whole baby diary bit in the back burner. Finally, since a new month starts today, and he is past his 6 months landmark, I decided to update all the interesting tit bits of the last month.

Blabber Boo Bits: 

In the middle of a speech



The month began with a lot of bubble blowing, pffffffffft and pa poo sounds. The most delighted with this development was granddad who kept repeating "appuppa" (grandfather in Malayalam) to Sid and Sid seemed to be managing a very similar sounding response. However, like with all his practices this one also lasted only for a 2-3 days (I'm very thankful for that time frame especially with regards to the screaming bit). This progressed to an inward breathing "ka" sound which was very weird but seemed to thrill Sid. The essence of all the special thrills with these stages is having everyone repeat after him and Sid tends to find that hilarious. And since the universe thrives to make a baby laugh, the house has become a constant babble of meaningless repetitions.

And now, since yesterday, Sid has slowly started conversing in ak ka ka ka sounds. Especially when everyone around him is talking to each other, he tends to go ak ka ka in varying pitches and volumes like its part of the conversation. 



Crawlingly Mobile:

Learning to Crawl



After all the turning, toppling and moving in reverse, Sid finally decided to pull himself forward. This happened about a week back and now we are crawling "worm style" full force forward. Right now I'm really glad I am not the one to wash his clothes cos they are as good as a mop by the time he has dragged himself around half the house on his chest, especially since his favourite places are under tables, chairs and beds. Hope he gets off his chest and onto his hands and knees very soon for the sake of his clothes. His favorite pass time at the moment is to chase plastic bottles (when one is looking. The moment you turn he will be lunging after floor mats and slippers!).

The weirdest moment was last day when Sid thought it was a game that whenever he tried to follow mama into a particular room she came running, put him back outside and then disappeared again. Actually though, it wasn't a game. I just had to use the restroom and as usual left the door open to ensure I could hear Sid, never imagining him to follow me  inside, crawling (yeesh!).

Games and Fun



His grandma has been singing to him a sweet little Malayalam rhyme of 4 lines accompanied by closing and opening of her fist  for about 3 months now. Finally her patience paid off when last week he started closing and opening his fist right back at her. Eventually he just had to hear the rhyme to start opening and closing his fist. Now he opens and closes it at everyone leaving outsiders bewildered at the gesture.

Misc New Habits

• 

  

  A few Seconds of Sitting

  
  Weird Sitter: Sid has been trying to pull himself up to a sitting position from his back by holding our hands. Has been trying this for quiet some time. Now all he needs is just some place to hold with one hand while pushing hi,self up with the other. With a tiny nudge from us he can now reach a sitting position and hold it for some seconds too by himself. This is kind of weird though as normally babies are known to start sitting up while lying on their tummies.
• 
  Scary Girls:  We have discovered that when faced by strangers, he smiles at/ does not cry when men pick him up or play with him but cries or looks away when women do the same.
• Mama's Pet: A new developent this month is Sid's special attachment to Moi. Even when around his grandpa and grandma, he has to know I am around and whenever he sees me I recieve huge smiles of pleasure. Even to sleep, eat and everything he needs his mama, and grandma is not enough. Now this is all very flattering and I am at the top of the world, but then a little free time would also be highly appreciated.
• Time Waster: Sleep (especially at day time) has gone down even further (like I had ever thought that possible!) now that there are so many better ways to spend time and so many new corners to explore. There are nights though I get about an hours sleep at times instead of half hour and so on. I'm hoping and praying these are signs of improvement. (Thought long and hard about writing that one. Didn't wanna jinx it).

I am sure there are many more tit bits that I am missing and will have to add in later. However, for the time being I stop right here as this has gone on long enough time wise and space wise. By the way, since I started this post 2 days back, I have realised that its not that I am lazy, I really am not getting any time whatsoever to sit down and write posts in between meal making, retrieving slippers and stuff from Sid and retrieving Sid himself from under beds and tables.  

Sleep Like a Baby?

Well, well...whoever coined that one has definitely not met many babies in his/her lifetime; at least not many like mine. And, thereby I finally get down to writing a post I was putting off for the longest time ever, because just writing this brings out all my pent up emotions and normally has me going on a rampage:

"The Tale of the Elusive Sleep".

From the day Sid arrived at my side, some motherly intuition told me to be very careful with his sleep. I used to whisper and tiptoe around him, only to be scolded by one and all that thats all too silly and babies don't wake up that soon. Even when everyone noticed him waking up every half hour, (after a  marathon 2 hour effort to make him sleep) no one would agree it was due to the sound of the pressure cooker whistle from the ground floor at the other end of the house! So, I was all alone trying to ensure that he slept beyond 45 mins, at least once in the day time as well as the night time.

Over a period of time though, everyone had to agree (extremely reluctantly) that he was a cat-napper who would wake up at the tiniest possible sounds, even some that only he and Danny (our Dog) could here! We even asked a few paediatricians if it was ok that such a tiny baby wouldn't sleep at all and they all said the same thing - that if the baby is happy, active, playing normally and so forth, there is no point in interfering, it will all shape up just fine. What no one seemed to get was that mama was tired, sleep-deprived and had become a zombie.

Then there were people giving me time lines by when babies start sleeping normally, like 3 months, which later become 4 and then 6, though I am yet to see any change whatsoever.

I went around doing a lot of online research on baby sleep patterns but could not figure out anything wrong with what I was doing. Whats worse is other parents who complained about there baby "not sleeping through the night" complained about having to wake up every 3-4 hours. and this had me even more depressed; what I wouldn't give for even 2 hours of undisturbed sleep.

To top it all came a thousand different advice from all quarters, out of which my least favorite was when people asked me not to be especially quiet so as to make him "used-to" sleeping through noise. Yeah! you can say that since you didn't walk aorund, singing and swinging a sleepy crying baby for the last 2 hours, only to have him wake up in 15 mins cos of some sound you made, esecially when you yourselves are sleep deprived and practically fainting!!!

People even ask me how I went back to my post pregnancy weight so quickly. I am sure all these walks have hepled me (lose) a ton.

Anyhow this state of things continued, and then we shifted from Trivandrum to Pathanamthitta, And then it got worse (like I had imagined THAT possible!!!). But thankfully that seemed to be only due to a change of place and he  went back to his half an hour routine soon enough. 

Mama's half hour break time



Whats really puzzling us these day is that whenever we go back to trivandrum he manages to sleep through 4-5 hours without any disturbance at all and as soon as we come back he goes back to 30-45 mins routines. We are all racking our brains trying to find out what might be missing here cos it can't be the "new place" phenomenon anymore; He lived in trivandrum for about 3 months and has been here for almost 3 months now. Only if I could get that missing link.

So, here we are still struggling and living by the motto "Wake Up Sid". (Yea yea bad one, but sleep deprivation can do that to ones brain!)

P.S (on a serious note) all those out there asking me not to be quiet, please note that docs advice to do whatever it takes to ensure your baby sleeps at a particular time everyday. Eventually he will be habituated to fall asleep at that time whatever be the conditions. (I am working really hard towards it) On the other hand if you keep making noises (to make him used to it), his system will just get used to not sleeping at that time. We all have these internal clocks.