43 weeks...

With stuffed animal:



43-week highlights:

• Henry seems to be showing an increased interest in balls. He loves to roll them and chew on them. We are suspecting that he may be on track to producing his first word. "a ba" is constantly being babbled while he plays with the balls. One can never be too sure about a baby's sound/object correlations at this age, but it's fun to think that he knows what he's saying.
• "mamama" seems to be the other word that Henry says most often, and it appears as though he may be connecting this sound with me.
  
• Henry is taking more and more steps...just not all at once. It's exciting to watch him gain confidence each and every day.
• Henry is now eating almost everything that John and I eat. This means that I am making far less pureed baby food.
• Sleeping at night has improved greatly. He is now waking up once and John can usually get him back to sleep quickly. He is waking up between 5:30 & 6:30 most mornings.
• Naps have been a struggle for awhile now. Luckily I am surrounded by wise women who suggested that I just forget about fighting with Henry at nap time and just nurse him to sleep. I know many books frown upon this, but for now, that's the way it's going to be around here. Since I've started nursing him to sleep, my stress level at naptime has gone down, and his naps have been 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours long. It's a win-win. We'll work on cutting out the nursing later.
• On the subject of nursing...I nurse Henry 4 times per day. When he wakes up, before his morning nap, before his afternoon nap, and at bedtime.
• Henry is a pleasant baby. If he finds the right toy/activity he can be entertained by it for quite a long period of time.
• Henry loves his grandparents & great-grandparents a lot. He (and we) are very lucky that we live so close to all of them.