Amazing and Annoying

My son that is. He's becoming such a curious kid these past few weeks and there is no end of distractions and excitement in his world. As you can imagine this interferes with things like sleep, nursing, and general calmness and contentment. But what we gave up in those things we've gained in having a kid who is fascinated by books, by our faces, by our hands, by his toes, but the dog, by clouds, by his toys and by anything else you can think of. Every cast of light and breeze is something new to be explored and understood, even my shirt can provide a lot of contemplation and playing to explore how it folds, bunches, can be chewed on, pulled, etc.

I love to see his world expand by such leaps and bounds, I want him to explore everything and ask questions and make sense of things and experience everything. The problem is that I also want some rest, I want to be able to sit down at my computer for a minute and not have him scream because he just stuck his finger in his eye or gagged himself and threw up or because he pushed the ball in the corner and can't get it or he pushed himself in the corner and can't get out.

It's fun to take him out doing errands during this phase because he's fascinated by everywhere we go - the lights, the sounds, the people.... We went to the vet this past week and wow was that exciting. While being out in public is exciting he also must reach out and try to touch everything. His version of touch also includes putting it in his mouth, so everywhere we go and everything we do has just gotten exponentially more difficult. He's amazing, this time period is a little annoying though.

Breastfeeding a 6 month old

Yet again, a lot has changed. Well, a lot and nothing really. Just lots of new quirks have developed. Let me see if I can remember them all... Well the most memorable is the dexterity he has with his hands and how much he wants to use them while nursing. I say most memorable since I have two deep scratches on my breasts from last night and that's a pretty common occurance these days. If we're nursing laying down he has to be holding onto, scratching, whacking, tapping, twiddling, patting, pushing on my other breast and nipple. Soooo annoying. If we're in the nursing chair it's not much better since he does all the same stuff it's just on my face. It's just a matter of what that top arm has acess too.
He's still Mr. distractable nurser and even if he's not distracted sometimes he'll just refuse the boob altogether and instead want to use my breasts as a pillow or just a snuggle. This can be endlessly frustrating for me since I usually have leaky breasts while he's doing this and if I try to nurse he just purses his lips and wiggles his head around. He's also not doing much nursing to sleep anymore, he'll nurse for a while and then pull off and doze out while just looking at me. It's very sweet and encouraging that he'll develop his self soothing tools even more.

I've also had my mom and my husband notice this month that nursing is a full body activity for Q. He wriggles, he shimmies, his hands are going all over the place and his feet are kicking anything they can get a grip on to kick or push against. My body is feeling sort of abused by this little guy. I miss my sweet newborn cuddles and endless nursing sessions.

I'm also (un)happy to announce that Q celebrated his 6 month birthday waking his mom up by biting her nipple. Yow that hurt! It wasn't as horrifying as I expected it to be, but it was definitely not something I'd like to repeat.ever. you hear me you sleeping boy? don't bite mommy.