Oliver the Night Owl

   Ever since Oliver has become mobile there have been some funny night time happenings. Before when he would wake up in the middle of the night he would just lay there and cry until attended to. Now he actually gets up and plays around in his crib. Often he doesn't make much noise so sometimes I wonder how long he was awake before I noticed. I guess if he is happy then it isn't really a problem. He hasn't quite figured out that he can just lay back down and go to sleep without my help yet, hopefully that happens soon.
    The other night after we put Oliver down for his regular bed time at 7pm, I went to visit my friend. While I was gone and Easan was watching him, Oliver stayed awake for another hour and a half playing in his crib. Crawling around the crib, clapping his hands, laughing at stuff, shaking the bars of the crib, snuggling his blanket. We can see all of this on the video monitor. The camera for the monitor is attached to the top rail of the crib with zip ties. Then something adorable happened. Easan got it all on tape:

Oliver Update

    Since I am a terrible blogger who can't manage to write anything down more than once every few months, I have decided that instead of trying to be witty and creative and thinking up specific topics for blog posts I am just going to use it as a way to chronicle Oliver's childhood. That is what I intended this blog to be in the beginning and I think I got a bit ahead of myself trying to be all writerly about it. Yes I did just make up a word.

     Lots has happened that I feel the need to document so i don't forget it later. I am just going to list them to avoid the previous writer problem.

• Teeth - Oliver now has six teeth. Four on top and two on bottom. He got the bottom two first and at the exact same time when he was 8 months old. I remember right before we went on the cruise in January he sprouted the little suckers. Then he got three at the same time on top. The left middle one, the left incisor and the right incisor. For some reason the right middle one (also called an incisor, I just looked it up) got skipped at first. Not long after those three erupted the right middle came along too. Those top three happened when he was ten months old. Also, they are crooked. 
• Crawling - Oliver has started crawling at 11 months old. The first day he crawled on his own was April 13th 2013. He was home with daddy while I was at Aunt Priya's wedding shower. After that he can't be stopped. He doesn't crawl in the traditional way but sticks his leg out like a kick stand.

Eating a Bean

• Food - Oliver is eating all sorts of things now. He still eats some of the pureed stuff but mostly as a way to get veggies in him without him choking. He loves starches and is all about pasta, rice, breads, tortillas, and any kind of baked goods. He loves beans especially black beans and kidney beans. For a while he was eating so many kidney beans that we started calling them Bugga Beans. He has backed off those a bit however. He hates yogurt, which is strange because he loved it for a week and then changed his mind. Any kind of food he doesn't like he gets angry at and tries to hit off of his tray. It is quite amusing. He loves fruit, Easan calls him his little fruit bat cause he downs bananas and grapes so enthusiastically. I make fruit purees for him to mix with cereal of just eat plain. Also, peas for some reason peas are a winner. When he won't eat any other veggie you can always fall back on peas. I have started mixing spinach in with the pea puree to get some more nutrients and he digs that too.
• Hair - still not much hair, but the stuff he does have is getting longer. He gets awesome little curly wings on the sides and sometimes the top curls up too. 
• Talking - He is doing lots of talking. Not much of it is very understandable but I feel like he converses a lot in his own way. We are pretty sure his first word was Duck, he started saying that about 8 months. He also says "vroom" when playing with cars, he knows that dogs say "oof oof oof" and cats make a high pitch squealing noise. When he drops something he says "UH OH!" and he also likes to point at things and say "whats that?" Except it sounds more like "uts dat?" The question is more rhetorical than actual I think. He of course can say Dada and Mama. Other than those words there is lots of chatter that is not distinguishable yet. He will respond when you ask him stuff and he is loving to exercise his vocal cords with a lot of screeching. One of the games he thinks is absolutely hilarious is the back and forth mimic game. He will make a little high pitched squeak then you copy it, he laughs then does it again. This can go on for a good long time and sometimes devolves into tickling and raspberry blowing on the belly.

Those are some of the major updates that I have happened in the last few months. I feel less anxious now that they are recorded. My head is a bad place for these precious memories...