Bonnie & Clyve: Emmett at 7 Months

I’m not a seasoned-enough mom to be able to have a favorite age yet, but I already do. At 7 months old, Emmett is my favorite age right now. He’s so fun and giggly and happy (ever since his bottom teeth finally popped through). He’s still not sitting up on his own, but he’s a lot more comfortable rolling onto his stomach. He started sleeping on his stomach sometimes, which really freaked me out. But he’s able to roll back and forth pretty easily. He usually ends up rolling off our rug onto the hard wood floor.

I’ve become very superstitious as a parent. Every time I breathe a sigh of relief that he is napping longer than 30 minutes, he wakes up at 35 minutes. When I was dealing with his nursing strike at 4 months, whenever I’d start feeling smug the he latched on, he would stop and get angry that it wasn’t coming out fast enough. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night and look at the baby monitor, I swear it wakes him up. As soon as I think we have his perfect nap schedule figured out, he starts teething or gets sick and throws the whole system off. But for all my stressing and complaining, he’s actually kind of a dream baby. He started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks old and he started sleeping 12 hours at night at 3 months old. We have done Babywise sleep training with him since he was 1 month old and I highly recommend it. He’s not a very good napper at all, which is kind of frustrating. But I’ll take it as long as he keeps sleeping all night long while I’m sleeping. And he’s very happy and giggly and chatty as long as he isn’t going through a Wonder Week leap. We love our beefy baby boy.

A little before 6 months, Emmett figured out that he can scream in a really high pitched noise. So, he didn’t really stop doing that noise for a whole month. Our poor neighbors. One day, I woke up with a scratchy throat and was worried I was getting sick. Then I started screeching back at Emmett and realized that my throat was actually sore because I like to shriek back at him so much. It’s our love language.

I’ve discovered some funny traits in Emmett that I think he inherited from me. When he coughs (or fake coughs, which he also loves to do), he sticks his tongue all the way out. Billy makes fun of me for this, but now since Emmett does it, I can say that I probably did it from day 1. It’s in my blood.

My friend Mika just had a beautiful baby boy in December. She was asking me if she should get some of those Peepee Teepees to put over his penis when changing his diaper. I had never heard of such a thing and didn’t realize that boys usually pee on you during a diaper change. Emmett has only peed on us once during a diaper change and on his Grandma once or twice. And that’s when he was brand new. And I think I realized why. Personally, it is impossible for me to pee when I’m cold. My whole body tenses up and I have to focus and push really hard. But if you put me in a hot tub, there is a 100% chance that I’m peeing in that hot tub. I’m thinking that Emmett is the same way. And so when we change his diaper, it makes him cold and he doesn’t pee on us. However, he does pee in the warm bath tub quite frequently. Sorry you got all these weird quirks from me, Emmett. And yes, being a mostly stay at home mom has given me way too much free time to think about these things.

I found $100 airplane tickets to Virginia, so Emmett and I flew out there for my mom’s birthday at the end of January. I know in my last blog post, I vowed never to fly alone with him again. It’s amazing what 2 months of time can do to repress your bad memories. He was a champ on both flights. Although, he did shriek a lot. But it’s what he does when he’s happy, so I didn’t know how to get him to stop. And I’m not sure the other passengers believed me that he was happy. Oh well. I asked the ticket agent if there were any extra seats so I could bring my carseat on the plane and there actually were! It is such a game changer when they have their own seat. It almost makes me want to buy a seat for him every time! I even got to read my book a little bit and enjoy a drink while he slept in his car seat. I thought my days of reading on flights were over! I wanted to kiss the flight attendant when he said yes. I ask on every flight and I’ve been shot down so many times that I thought it was an urban legend. But if you’re a flight attendant, I think your number one priority should be making sure that babies and moms are happy. It will make all other passengers happy as well! That’s just my unbiased opinion.

It was so good to see my family and have them see Emmett now that he’s a little more fun and interactive. And it’s so fun to be able to go to family events and bring him. I kind of forget all the fun things that we miss out on by not living close to family. We got to watch his cousin Mary Grace’s basketball game. Their team went on to win the championship last week! The little cousins would all take turns holding Emmett and playing with his toys. Sadie was especially sweet with him one day (and sharing his binky) and then she had a fever that night, so we were a little nervous. And the next day, Ari was being really sweet with him and then she threw up a few minutes later. But he surprisingly didn’t get sick! I’ll credit the breastmilk.

He did great on the flight home and there was another open seat next to me (but the flight attendant said I couldn’t bring the car seat on for some reason. Rolling eyes emoji). So, as long as I keep lucking out like that, maybe I’ll keep flying solo with him. He was really excited to see Billy after several days away from him. But the cutest thing was when we were backing into our garage, his eyes got so wide and he started flailing his arms and kicking around happily. I had no idea he recognized the shelf in our garage that has a bag of cement and other junk on it. But it was the funniest thing to see that he recognized we were home. The boy is a homebody like his momma.

The next week, Billy’s parents came out to visit us. We had a lot of fun going to the Field Museum and eating at Mike Ditka’s restaurant. But the highlight of the trip was when we took Emmett in his first pool at Bill and Stacy’s hotel. He LOVES his bath, so I was excited for him to love the pool water. He wasn’t sure what to think at first. He was just kind of timid and observant for the first 10 minutes. But then, once he felt comfortable, he started kicking and thrashing around. He’s a little water baby. It makes me kind of sad that we don’t live in Grenada anymore, because I know he would love it there.

Some things that I don’t want to forget about Emmett at 7 months old:

He has started clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth. He started doing this out of nowhere. We have never really made that sound to him either, so it cracks us up. He’ll just click to himself when he’s in bed or just playing with his toys. My little freak.

He likes to hit everything with his hand over and over and over. We like to pretend that he’s actually waving at us. And sometimes, I feel like he really is. But it’s probably just wishful thinking. He loves scratching all types of fabrics and hearing the noises it makes. He especially likes doing it on our leather couch. Such a little weirdo.

He is super ticklish. We can get him to laugh super easily just by tickling him under his neck or on his ribs or butt or thigh. And it’s even easier if we tickle him while he’s upside down He also laughs at the weirdest things. He still thinks our hair is hilarious—especially when mine is in a messy topknot and wobbles from side to side. The other day he started laughing uncontrollably because I touched my big toe to his big toe. He gets even gigglier the closer it gets to bedtime, which makes it really hard to want to put him down for the night. Our little slaphappy baby. And he gets so excited to go to bed. He starts squirming around and kicking whenever we put him in his little squirrel suit (zipadeezip). He also gives me a giggle every time I wipe poop off his bum. And when I stick a thermometer up his bum. And I won’t go into too much detail, but I have to do something so that his circumcision doesn’t heal up every time I change his diaper, and he laughs every single time. He’s very ticklish on all his private parts apparently.

My favorite thing in the world is that I can tell if he's smiling even if I can't see the front of his face, because his cheeks lift up against his eyes. Even from the back, because his cheeks are so massive. He has also started sticking his tongue out for fun and it makes me laugh every single time.

His splashing in the bath has gotten even more ridiculous than before. He’s figured out that instead of just randomly thrashing every limb to make a bunch of little splashes, he can combine the power of his legs and arms in one movement to make one humongous splash. He’s gonna be real good at cannonballs when he’s older. Whoever gives him a bath gets soaking wet and has to change their clothes. After a bath, there are water marks all the way up to our 10-foot ceiling.

He has started shaking his head back and forth. We’re pretty sure he doesn’t realize that it means no. We think it’s probably just a way to air out that neck of his that never sees the light of day. He also does this thing with his jaw that makes it look like he’s chewing gum. We have no idea what it means. But he’s really good at fart noises with his mouth. We’re pretty sure we know what that means.

He could jump in his jumper for hours. I’m so glad my sister lent us hers, because I don’t think I would have bought one. And then I would have missed out on seeing how happy he is when he’s just bouncing away. We have an exersaucer for him, but he gets kind of disappointed that he can’t bounce as high as he can in the jumper. The jumper is definitely his favorite toy right now. But even with how spazzy and squirmy he is, he loves to cuddle. He HATED being swaddled, so I was really worried that he would hate to cuddle with me. But, he loves it. And that may be the reason that he isn't sitting up yet, cause I hold him way too much. You would too if he wrapped his little T-rex arms around your neck.

He rolls all over the place now. He’ll roll all the way across the room and he always ends up chilling on the hardwood floor. We bought a cozy shag rug just for him to be able to play on the floor and he always manages to roll off of it. He likes to roll during diaper changes now too, which is fine as long as he’s not poopy.

He went to his first “class” last week at the library. It was a tummy time class where they sang songs and rolled all over the floor. He could not stop staring at all the other babies. There were probably 15 other babies, and he was just in awe. He’s gonna be that weird kid that just stares at everyone else on the playground.

He still is mesmerized by his hand. I’ll catch him just starting at his fingers and rotating his wrist in a circle. His 2 bottom teeth came in on the same week at 6.5 months. I thought I would hate seeing his gummy smile ruined, but I love his little bottom chompers so much. Except when he bites me.

He loves being scared/startled. Which has actually turned into kind of a problem for me, because since he has started biting me with his new chompers, I jump/yell/scream and he just laughs at me. Send me all the tips you have to get your baby to stop biting your boob, please.

I’m happy to say that his bald spot is almost completely grown in, except for a random “3” shaped mark. So his hair is super long on the very top and front of his head and pretty short everywhere else. We call it his toupee.

He still can’t sit up on his own. We try and have him practice, but he really doesn’t like doing anything that is strenuous. We try to force him into a sitting position and he’ll either stand up completely or lay flat on his back. He can also hold his bottle on his own now. But that doesn’t mean he’ll do it. We have to really force him to. He’d much prefer to have his arms hang limp at his side. Again, lazy baby.

He still loves any type of food and continues to moan like Bob Wiley eating hand-shucked corn. He will be completely content until he notices that I’m unhooking my nursing bra to feed him or opening up the baby food. And then he acts as if he’s been starving for years. Which always makes me panic and then I end up going slower. He’s a lot like his dad in that way. Billy will all of a sudden decide he’s STARVING and can’t wait 45 minutes for dinner, so he has to have a snack. Emmett gets real mad if either of us take too long shoveling the food into his mouth. Patience is not one of his virtues. He doesn’t have very many virtues except cuteness yet. We love our eccentric 7 month old.

Now, here is a random assortment of 1.2 million photos of Emmett. I don't expect anyone to go through them all. They're merely my way of journaling.

We eat naked cause Momma does enough laundry

He came to work with me and was having a blast with his Aunt LaShonda

Baby unabomber

Husband unabomber

Pretending he can stand

He was staring at the light like he was being abducted

Handsome boy chilling in the Mother's Lounge at church

None of the Griffiths (with Griffith blood) like sweet potatoes. But all of the people that have married into the family love them. So, this was a test to see if he was really a Griffith or a Strong. He devoured them.