Crying, Napping and Clapping

Well, let me catch you up on the advances of Cole. For weeks Cole was refusing to eat anything but rice cereal or oatmeal. He wouldn't eat it as soon as I would mix fruit or veggies with it either. Little stinker! So for days he was just carbo-loading. He still is hesitant to eat anything else now but I sneak it in. Here's a little clip I took when trying to feed him applesauce (which he previously loved). Such big tears...the crying sometimes gets hysterical and yelling begins. I tried not feeding him unless he ate what I gave him but it doesn't work. Trying to wean him from nursing has been futile as well. I just can't stand to watch him cry and fuss when really is it that hard to give him cereal and nurse him? Nah. So I give in.

Also, his napping is too short and nothing I've tried yet is fixing it and it's getting progressively worse which then affects his moods and his nighttime sleep. Dr. Weissbluth's book (the bible for baby sleep) says this can happen to babies if they start getting overtired and it gets worse until they don't nap at all. He is starting to only sleep 10 hours at night and wake up at 4 or 5 am. I tried pushing bedtime back but that seemed to make things worse, so now I'm trying to move it up (which is what Dr. W recommends anyway but seems totally counter intuitive so I didn't do it). We'll see what happens.

On happier notes:
One of my favorite things to watch is Daddy and "ColiPoki" (a little nickname we have for him thanks to John H. Groberg's book "In the Eye of the Storm") eating a popsicle.

Cole is so smiley now and his laugh is more like a grunt or growl when he is amused but not enough to give you a belly laugh.

Wednesday he waived "Bye-Bye" at the appropriate moment while leaving Jefra and Cannon. He's waived before but never at the right time. He's starting to get the hang of it. When we left the house Thursday I said, "Okay, we're going bye-bye" and he started waiving his hand. SO CUTE!

Another "new" is he started clapping on Thursday. We were snuggled up on the couch chilling out before a nap when all of the sudden he clapped. It took me a second to realize what he did and then I got so excited so he did it more. He has been doing it A LOT since then. He loves it! I sing lots of clapping songs with him so he probably thinks it's the cool thing to do.

He loves to crawl around the house. He still does it mostly on his belly but he's quick! He loves to be in just his diaper but since his skin is so sensitive to the rubbing on the carpet I usually don't let him. I did once just putting on his pooh-bear diaper cover. He was a mad man crawling all around. It was so adorable. I didn't get a clear video of it. Sorry!

But here's another little video of him playing.