Earlier this week, one of Dorothy's daycare teachers commented that she seemed to have grown up overnight. Within a very short time, she's suddenly started gobbling up solid food, standing up, walking a few steps, chattering for long periods of time, and putting herself to sleep at naptime. She's also sleeping through the night, and breaking four molars.
As mentioned previously, Dorothy's been walking for a week now. On Friday, she started standing up without using anything for support - she starts on hands and feet, sticks her behind waaay up in the air, then sort of bends at the knees as she leans back to bring her torso to vertical position. And then she can start walking from there. This morning, she stood up from sitting on her chair, took a couple steps, stopped, took a couple more steps and stopped again, then took a couple more steps before falling forward. She's never had that much control before; up until now she's just kept leaning further and further forward with each step until she falls on her tummy.
We can feel three large bumps on her gums where molars come in, plus a sharp corner of one molar that's already broken through. The pain seems to come and go, but certainly seems extremely annoying at night. For whatever reason, she's been fussing at bedtime to a great extent, and a dose of Tylenol seems to be the only thing that lets her sleep. Hopefully the remaining molars will come in (or slow down) soon, so that she can get more peace.
We're not sure if she's starting a growth spurt, or if the breaking through of her first molar has eased the sensitivity of her gums, or what, but she's suddenly decided that solid food is good stuff. As you may have seen in the photo gallery, chicken nuggets and grilled cheese sandwiches are very popular. She ate almost an entire grilled cheese sandwich for dinner one night this week! :-O It seems like such a leap in volume compared to her jars of strained meat and veggies. Other foods she's been eating, either at home and/or at daycare, include: fish sticks, hash browns, pizza crust + cheese, whole bananas, and macaroni and cheese. And at breakfast, she's been like a little dog begging table scraps - she bugs me for pieces of my bagel. It's getting to the point where I have to wolf down my breakfast if I want to be able to eat a majority of it.
Finally, in a development we've been longing for forever, Dorothy now sleeps through the night. She's usually asleep by 8pm, and hasn't woken us up before 6am in a week, at least. This weekend, she even let us sleep in till 7am! A luxury! She may be waking a bit at night, but she's not making much noise, and not for long. It truly feels wonderful, and we're grateful she's made it to this stage.
Posted by Tom Nugent at March 27, 2005 08:20 PM