Athan is a happy baby. Thank God. He smiles a lot and is usually quite easy to appease (on a good day). These days, he no longer sit quietly on my lap. He wants to stand and bob up and down on my lap. He likes it even better and will squeal in delight if he is being repeatedly lifted high up in the air and come down again. He loves to play, and he loves it a lot when his father plays with him.

He puts everything he has in hand right into his mouth, and he drools a lot. He uses at least 3 bibs a day, and guess what? He likes to chew on his bib — more than his teething rings. We think he is teething but at this stage we have not seen any tooth yet.

He has started on solids. He gets really excited when he sees the spoon coming his way. His hands will reach for the spoon and then he will attempt to put spoon into his mouth. The contents in the spoon often fall out as a result. So, I give him another spoon to hold while I feed him. It works. At the moment, he is swallowing whatever I give him. Hopefully, he will be a good eater. I give him water after food in the hope of cultivating the habit of drinking water. He likes to hold on to the bottle although he can’t feed himself very well yet at this stage. He will improve with more practice.

Athan has 3 naps during the day before his bedtime at night. His first morning nap is around 9 – 9.30am, and he usually sleeps for about 1.5 – 2 hours. The afternoon nap is around 1 – 2pm, and he sleeps for about an hour. The third nap is around 4.30 – 5pm. I call this his “power nap” because he only goes down for about 30 minutes although sometimes he can sleep for an hour(if I don’t wake him), especially if the previous nap is shorter. He will eventually go to bed at night at around 6.30 – 7pm. He can sleep through the night and wake up at 6.30 – 7am the next morning, but this doesn’t happen everyday of the week. Some days he will still cry for attention at around midnight, and a quick feed is needed to settle him. I have read that such behaviour is common in babies of Athan’s age, and it will (hopefully) disappear when he turns 9 months.

He is happy in the morning when he wakes up. He usually talks to himself and makes cute little noises. Then he will begin to wriggle out of his blanket and push his way to top of the cot. We often find him in the position as shown in the photo above. He has even managed to kick one of his socks off. He gets really excited when we open the door to greet him. He flaps both his arms and kicks his legs non-stop. It is really funny to watch.

Athan is much more interactive and sociable now. We are enjoying him more and more. It has been an absolute joy to be able to watch Athan grow day by day. I have to say that it has not been easy taking care of a baby as well as a 3-year-old, but the effort is definitely worth it. I would not trade my time spent with my boys for anything else.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 11:18 pm and is filed under boys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.