7 Months

Ocean is hitting that stage where he's growing and learning new things so quickly. It's so fun to see, but it's also bitter sweet. He's rapidly growing out of babyhood and growing into a toddler. Which means we have to always be on our toes and aware of what he's doing and where he is.

the Force is strong with this one

He's rolling around and has become quite mobile. He started the month wiggling around on the floor, but by the end of the month he was getting up on his hands and knees and face planting forward. Not quite a crawl, but pretty close. He also combat crawls very well and is quite proficient at pulling himself around with his arms. All this moving around means we're back to making sure doors and baby gates are shut.

don't mess with this youngling

Ocean does this full-body wriggle when he's excited, which makes him look just like a little puppy. Mr M thinks it's more like a fish wriggle, but either way, it's so funny. Though it does make it hard to hang onto him when he's mid-wriggle...

Ocean loves eating and gets mad at meal times if he's not eating also.

he's mastering the "Force push" at a young age

He's finally in his crib full time. We should have done it a lot sooner but I wanted to finish moving things around and organizing the room better. I'm getting more sleep at night now so I'm kicking myself for waiting so long. Sunshine and River were in their cribs at night at a much younger age.

wearing a hat Sunshine sewed herself

Ocean has developed object permanence and it's quite entertaining. He gets upset when you take something away from him- a toy, his sippy cup, whatever. Give it back to him and he's back to being happy. Such a funny kiddo.

His eyes still haven't settled, but they're getting closer. They might possibly be hazel like Mr M or Sunshine's eyes, though I could see them maybe going light brown. I don't think they'll be dark brown like River's or mine though.

Ocean had his ENT/hearing test follow up yesterday (the last one was back in November). He still hasn't managed to successfully pass his hearing test, unfortunately. His eardrums are still stiff and there's still fluid behind them, which is why he keeps failing the tests. Since the fluid isn't infected and he can hear, we're still taking a wait-and-see approach. We'll go back in July, when it's warmer and he's had a chance to get over the winter crud and he's a bit older. Hopefully his ears will be looking a lot better then. At this point, his hearing probably is affected a bit- if you enter a room without making a lot of noise and he doesn't see you do it and then all of a sudden he sees you, he gets badly startled. This makes me think he can't hear softer sounds. The fluid is probably also muffling other sounds. We know he hears a lot of things because he does respond to them, so he's not completely deaf. I think the main concern at this point is delays in speech development because of the muffling. Luckily we know a good speech therapist and I've been able to get a couple hints of things to look for as he gets a little older (he's a bit young to pinpoint any speech issues just yet).