Another post stuck in drafts – enjoy!
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Ezra is seven months old as I’m writing this, but this has been our routine for awhile.. things haven’t drastically changed since my four month update but I would say they have gotten easier/more smooth. Here’s what our days look like now:
Around 8:15 or 8:30am, I hear Ezra wake up. Alex is already up, having gotten ready for work, so he gets Ezra’s diaper changed then brings him to our room where I nurse Ezra in bed. This takes about 10 minutes.
After that, I bring Ezra out to the living room where he has play time with Alex and I pump and have my breakfast. Recently (like within the last week) I’ve started waiting on breakfast and having it with Ezra.
Alex leaves for work at 9:20, and I either put Ezra in the highchair and we have breakfast together (oatmeal for me, kefir for him) or we play for a bit. I get him dressed at this time, too.
Ezra starts getting tired around this time, so I put him down for a nap around 9:45/10am. He will nap for about an hour and a half to two hours. During that time, I catch up on chores or knit or get some other work done.
When Ezra wakes up, usually around the 11:30am/12pm mark, we do a diaper change, nurse and play for a bit. Around 1 we have lunch together. I give him something in the mesh feeder or small chunks on his tray to practice with. After I’ve had my food, I give him a puree. Lately, though, he is getting kind of tired of the puree and is much more interested in finger foods. He likes puffs, but will use his palm to pick up most anything.
After lunch, we play a little while longer. I try to encourage independent play at this time, which means I will give Ezra a basket of toys and let him explore with it on his own, rather than handing him a bunch of toys. He really enjoys this because he can play with things at his leisure and he really enjoys just checking stuff out.
It’s nap time again around 2:00pm. This nap lasts anywhere between 1-2 hours. We’re working on making it a long nap so we can get in about 4 hours of nap time a day.
When he wakes up from this second nap, we nurse and do a diaper change and play for awhile. If we have any errands we run them at this time. We try to be home by 5pm or so – to cook dinner or to squeeze in another nap if the afternoon nap wasn’t very long.
Alex gets home between 6:15 and 6:30pm. We all have dinner together, then quiet play time with Alex and Ezra after dinner while I clean up.
Around 7:15 Alex starts the bedtime routine – drawing a bath, bathing Ezra, baby massage and then jammies. Usually this is completed by 7:30 or 7:40 and I take Ezra to nurse him one last time before bed. He sometimes falls asleep nursing, other times he just unlatches and gives me a look like “put me to bed now!”Either way he is in his crib no later than 8pm, and he sleeps usually all the way through until the morning. Sometimes he will wake once or twice but Alex is the one who goes in and comforts him then puts him back to bed. I would say starting at the 6 month mark we started seeing 12 hour nights. As I said in my last update, though, things can change overnight with a baby so… I appreciate the 12 hour stretches, but I certainly don’t take them for granted!
The biggest changes between 4 months and now are:
- We lost the third nap – it got consolidated into one, long afternoon nap
- All naps are taken in the crib – rarely will Ezra fall asleep on me for a nap during the day
- Bedtime is much earlier – by an hour and a half. One night, Ezra was just extremely fussy and I realized that for the last several nights he’d been having a harder time in the evenings. So, we just moved his bedtime up and haven’t looked back since.
- More time is spent experimenting with solid foods – Ezra will eat most anything and everything. Within reason of course 🙂
- More awake time between naps, which means more play time.
- Ezra is A LOT more mobile. He started crawling, so play time is a lot different. We actually play now, instead of me just laying him on the floor and trying to entertain him
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