Daniel's Rapid Development at 7 Months

The last couple of weeks have been really busy and so much has been happening - I'll try to write a separate blog about that and post some photos soon. But tonight, I want to quickly write an update on Daniel's development because so much has been changing that I know I'll forget if I don't. Here are a few things from the top of my head that are exciting to us about Daniel's development:

- He is sitting now for much longer unsupported - it's so sweet to see and he gets very excited, flapping his hands up and down.

- Just in the last couple of days he has been repeatedly saying sounds such as "ba-ba" "wa-wa" and even, yes, "ma-ma!" He also said "be-be" which in Portuguese means "Baby!" Should I consider that his first word? :-)

- He has two teeth that we can SEE (if you look carefully, still quite small) on the middle of his bottom gum. First he got one tooth and then now, a second one is coming. They feel sharp and now I'm wondering about what to do in terms of brushing his teeth - we haven't started yet but I guess we should soon! Any advice on this, please do let me know! Right now he doesn't like me to even touch his teeth with my finger, so how should I do the brushing thing?

- He loves to drop his toys from the high chair and watch them at a distance; he does this over and over again, so cute (and of course, we are happy to pick them up for him! :-)). He also loves to put his toys to the side of his bumbo seat, one by one, and tries to reach them and put them back on the tray - this can keep him entertained for a long time!

- He's started to enjoy the exersaucer a lot more and even played for over an hour in it the other day! He's also starting to put a lot more weight on his legs and stands for some time in the exersaucer.

- He's been eating so well now and even has sat in high chairs at the mall and in a seafood restaurant yesterday in Annapolis. I'm also getting more confident feeding him solids in public even though it's still very messy!

- He is sleeping through the night without a dream feed!! Jonny has been faithfully giving him a "dream feed" in his sleep for months now between 10:30-11:00 pm but in the past week, Daniel has been refusing it (I think he's just not hungry). So we decided to just stop offering it a couple of nights ago and he has been able to sleep through without this extra feed! This has been soooo exciting for us because it now means that Jonny can come to bed with me again, even at 8 pm if he wants to! Wow, I thought removing the dream feed would be so much more difficult, but I guess that he is now eating enough solids to sustain him!

- It now seems that he is down to only 2 naps a day.The first one is about 2 hours after he wakes up and then the second one sometime in the afternoon, about 3 hours after his morning nap. He's been starting to have one longer nap (about an hour) but at least one of them will be his usual 30 minutes. Anyway, what a difference it has made that he is awake for so much longer and we don't have to put him down for naps every hour as we did for months. I remember he used to have 5 to 6 naps a day and this almost drove me crazy! We've come a long way! :-)


Wow, our baby is growing so fast! It truly is a joy watching his development and wondering what he will do next; thank you Lord for this experience!