Walter-7 Months

Weight: He is 18 lbs. He is definitely my biggest baby!

Health: He is having a little rough patch with these bottom two teeth coming up. No known ear infections, but he just seems restless and uncomfortable more.

Diet: This is the longest I have made it on the breastfeeding journey without using formula, so I am really proud of that. I have been on campus a lot more this month, so I have dipped into our freezer stash a lot since I am only making 10 oz on the days when I pump and he eats 15 oz. I have been contemplating pumping extra on the weekends to extend the time that we are exclusively using breastmilk, but then I saw my thoughts from last month about my promise to myself that I am not going to pump extra this time around. Remembering how it affected me with George and Daphne is a good reminder that it is not needed, and I don’t need that guilt put on myself. So my resolve is to only pump when I am at work on campus, and we’ll continue to just see how long that takes us! Walt feeds 5 times a day, and on average it adds up to 2 hours of nursing. He is going around 4 hours between feedings during the day. My app says that we have had 135 feedings over this last month, and spent 3 days nursing him. I have also pumped 33 times over the month, which is almost 3 times as much as last month. Can I say how much I hate pumping? I am really hoping that I will still be able to do a hybrid work situation come the fall because I honestly think it has done wonders for this journey and my mental health. So we’ll see what transpires as I have a new boss and the new school year begins. We did start with solids this month, and he just doesn’t seem interested. He tolerates the experience for a few minutes then just wants to be done. The only thing he seems excited about is strawberries. We have tried avocados, black beans, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, oatmeal, eggs, broccoli, and zucchini.

Clothes: He is size 3-6 month in clothes and size 3 in diapers. He is going to be swimming in his 4th of July stuff since it is all 6 or 9 month things…He seems like he is so big now though!

Sleeping: Sleep has been a little trickier this month, and I think it has to do with his teeth. For the most part anytime we lay him down, he will eventually go to sleep. He goes to bed around 8pm. His pediatrician did recommend that we cut out the last feeding and see if he would seep through the night. i was really hesitant to do that, but she said the fact that I had to wake him up for that feeding meant that he may not need it and I may be interrupting good sleep instead. So we did cut that down, and for the most part he does sleep from 8pm until we get him up the next day. During the week, I get him up at 5:15am. On the weekends, we sleep in until about 8 am. The last week he has been waking up in the middle of the night some, but I think it is more of a comfort feed with his teeth more than him actually being hungry. He typically takes two naps during the day, but they aren’t usually very long. He is almost exclusively sleeping in his crib in his room now. I would say that 9/10 times, we are able to put him down awake, and he falls asleep within 5 minutes. He is still sleeping in the zipadeezip, and this kid cruises around in his sleep. He is all over that crib!

Likes: Daphne and Tom are his favorite people. He still loves to be rubbed like a dog on his belly and under his chin. He chews on basically everything. He loves to be bounced up in the air or be lifted like an airplane. He started using a pacy this month. I think it has been helpful with the teething.

Dislikes: He really hates the prep time it takes me to get him set up for feedings. He screams at me for the few minutes it takes me to get unwrapped or switch sides. Nursing on a plane next week should be a good time. He is not a fan of eating real food, which has been so different than the first two monster eaters. They would eat everything until they turned two, so maybe this means he won’t become a picky eater later on?

Nicknames: Walt, Wally, Wally Bear, Wally Olly, Butters, Sweet Bean, Stinkerdoodle, Waltie baby, Cutie baby, Sweetie baby, Baby guy, and Baby Walter. Tom has really gravitated to calling him Wallace with Daphne. I think the most common are Wally, Wally Bear and Waltie.

Milestones: He is sitting on his own. He went swimming for the first time. He just lays back in the floatie and lives his best life with us pushing him around.

Quirks: He will let anyone hold him. He is 100% chill. This month has been a little tricky to nurse him because he thinks it is swimming practice and acts like he is trying to win a gold medal in the freestyle.

We parents are: surviving. This was a hard month with losing Grace. Tom got to go to a really cool training for firearms instruction this month. He was living out his dream for sure, and it was such a full circle moment thinking back on this time last year. We celebrated our ten year anniversary without much hooplah because of kids and training, but it is still an amazing thing for us to have made it this far. There used to be down times at my job, but summer has proven to be busy as ever. Although we did get approval to hire another position in my office, so hopefully that has some trickle down affects with taking things off our plates because we have been operating as a four-person office even though it has been a year and a half with only three of us.

Big kids are: living their summer lives. They both sleep in super late and stay in jammies pretty much all the time. George did go to VBS with his grandma for a week this month, and he seemed to have a really good time with that. We also started Tball, which is an experience for us all. Daphne is really becoming quite the entertainer. She loves to sing and dance, especially when Wally is her audience. She has to give him a kiss and hug a thousand times a day.