[Shinrei]

Walking at 6.5 months (even while holding onto stuff) is FAST.

And here I thought my girl was a butterball at almost 24 pounds at 9 months.

[Baco Xtath]

Yeah, 6.5 is real fast. My first girl crawled at 7.5 months, cruised (assisted walking) at 9, and walked at 10. My little one right now is 6.25 months and is damn near crawling (though she can roll to wherever she desires). Both my little girls were butterballs. Before they walk/crawl, they don't really burn calories so they just pudg up. My 6.25 month old weighs 18.4 lbs ( her birth weight was 5.8) and she's in the 90th percentile.

[Solidsnape]

Well what can I say,
My biggest tip?
Routine, routine routine!!!
Bath, milk and bed for both of my sons at around 6.0 every night without fail.
The big 'un stays up an extra half an hour (later at weekends) but generally they're both in bed for 7.
They don't get up till 7 either. I never hear from them, even Seb who's teething. No bother at all. Apparently, I'm told, this is quite rare and I'm really lucky.
I don't believe that for a second, it routine.
Routine I tells ye!!!



On a more boastful note,
My son's (4 years old) nursery teacher said to me the other day that he is by far the brightest individual she's EVER taught.
She said that his understanding of words and spelling and the way he grasped phonetics was to a 6-7 year old standard.
My 11 year old niece who started year 7 in September this year said she'd seen Ben read words that she didn't know.
Of course I am extremely proud of him, I just hope it doesn't end up hampering him or socially alienating him. Ah the woes of a nerd in the making!!! Ha!!

[Tsundoku]

No boasting at this stage. We will just have to settle for all your amazing progeny becoming our most valued subjects later on.

Dear God, how much shit can one 4-day-old kid produce???
Went to change it just now and I swear if I had produced that much in proportion I'd have shed 90% of my body weight. Too add insult to injury, there I am with Grandma in a 2 person combo trying to wipe up the spill from the Exxon Valdez and just as we've cleaned it up and the damn seagulls look like they're going to live, he decides to make like some sort of ornamental fountain and send this beautiful arc of wee in a trajectory up and over towards his feet. Thank goodness for those baby wipes, otherwise my place would have looked like it was hit by a yellow Hurricane Sandy.

[Solidsnape]

Sombra, on 05 November 2012 - 04:55 AM, said:

No boasting at this stage. We will just have to settle for all your amazing progeny becoming our most valued subjects later on.

Dear God, how much shit can one 4-day-old kid produce???
Went to change it just now and I swear if I had produced that much in proportion I'd have shed 90% of my body weight. Too add insult to injury, there I am with Grandma in a 2 person combo trying to wipe up the spill from the Exxon Valdez and just as we've cleaned it up and the damn seagulls look like they're going to live, he decides to make like some sort of ornamental fountain and send this beautiful arc of wee in a trajectory up and over towards his feet. Thank goodness for those baby wipes, otherwise my place would have looked like it was hit by a yellow Hurricane Sandy.

My youngest managed to urinate in his own mouth one time.
"A beautiful arc of wee"
Like it.

[Shinrei]

Don't have that problem with girls, although ours has decided that the car seat is THE place to take a dump. The number of diaper changes we've done in convenience store parking lots.....

For those of you with older children learning words etc, I just found this free ebook site for kids:

http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Teacher

[Gust Hubb]

I don't know if you all have done this yet, but comparing kiddo to my own baby pictures is fun. He looks nothing like I did as a baby. He's got a fluffy cheek, round face and normal build whereas I was a string bean. Oddly enough, I looked exactly like my dad when he was a baby. We'll see if kiddo gets my wife's height

[Solidsnape]

Shinrei, on 05 November 2012 - 12:40 PM, said:

Don't have that problem with girls, although ours has decided that the car seat is THE place to take a dump. The number of diaper changes we've done in convenience store parking lots.....

For those of you with older children learning words etc, I just found this free ebook site for kids:

http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Teacher

These are excellent books. Can't overstate that!!
My son got the collection in a box set that my sister in law got cheap at the book bus.
They took him on leaps and bounds, and he loved Biff, Chip and Kipper.
He doesn't really go near them now, he prefers reading the Mr Men and Little Miss books now (he likes to read one himself and have another read to him at bedtime every night) but I'll keep them for my little un.

Nice find Shin.

[Acorn]

Shinrei, on 04 November 2012 - 11:05 PM, said:

Walking at 6.5 months (even while holding onto stuff) is FAST.

And here I thought my girl was a butterball at almost 24 pounds at 9 months.

Haha, 24 lbs at 9 months is big too, don't get me wrong, haha. And height has a lot to do with how chunky they look - My boy's pretty tall for 6.5 months, but he still has hugemongus thighs... I swear they are the size of my upper arms (which while not huge, are adequate enough to work manual labor =p) And his chub-rolls...... So cute.

We had a Bradley Birth... Bradley Method babies tend to be bigger than other babies due to the focus on certain nutrition in the "Brewer Diet" that we encourage our pregnant mothers to maintain. (80g+ of Protein a day) And my Girlfriend tends to have bigger babies anyways - this is her 4th, and each one was larger than the last (as is pretty typical) but all 4 were over 9 lbs. ACE has a normal growth pattern, he just started big, so he's stayed that way... Gonna have to get him outfits that say "I am ____ Old, don't expect me to act older" because people assume he's over 12-18 months and expect him to be walking/talking/etc.

Baco Xtath, on 05 November 2012 - 12:08 AM, said:

Yeah, 6.5 is real fast. My first girl crawled at 7.5 months, cruised (assisted walking) at 9, and walked at 10. My little one right now is 6.25 months and is damn near crawling (though she can roll to wherever she desires). Both my little girls were butterballs. Before they walk/crawl, they don't really burn calories so they just pudg up. My 6.25 month old weighs 18.4 lbs ( her birth weight was 5.8) and she's in the 90th percentile.

Nice! That's really good timing on yours, and rolling is actually a way some children get around - some babies NEVER crawl, they roll instead., so maybe you'll experience that. My older sister was like that - went from rolling straight to walking without crawling one bit.

That is also a hell of an accomplishment! 18.4 lbs from 5.8! The typical growth chart says a baby should double their birth weight at or around 6 months. This is a really poor standard because it doesn't take into account "pre-mature" or "post-date" births into consideration - for instance, my ACE was born at 42 weeks and 4 days, he was born at 11 lbs 10 oz - but it makes me wonder how much he'd have weighed around the 40 week mark (the idiotic number that the imbiciles in the USA OB/GYN community insists and DEMANDS to be the max term for a "normal" pregnancy).

However I digress... I would like to think that the environment we put him in has helped somewhat in his "early" achievements, but who's to say. I pretty much just let him have the whole living room to roam in even before he crawled. Big open space for the most part. He never got any of those walker/bouncer things either - couldn't afford them, and the ones I could afford wouldn't have held his weight lol. But honestly, as much as I'd like to say it was some or mostly my/our doing... I think he was just ready when he was ready, much like he was born when he was ready, instead of when we were told to be expecting him.


I could rant for days about the issues with the current state of Prenatal, postnatal and newborn care and such in this country, but I don't want to sound like a lunatic preaching to pigeons in the park.

I've been lucky enough to be home during all the "major milestones" for Ace so far. I'm hoping that doesn't change.. I hate missing out on his time, even if it's just the time I go to work... Makes me wish I could quit working every time I walk out the door without him =p

[RodeoRanch]

I'm like 75 percent certain I'm not a father.

[Shinrei]

Acorn, on 06 November 2012 - 12:35 AM, said:

Gonna have to get him outfits that say "I am ____ Old, don't expect me to act older" because people assume he's over 12-18 months and expect him to be walking/talking/etc.

I hear ya. My girl is close to 90th percentile in the US, and that makes her especially big in Japan. People are surprised when she can't walk or even wave bye-bye yet because she is decidedly bigger than some of the toddlers I see. She's standing and cruising, and started crawling faster than average, so her development is normal.

She's just a chubby little boo.

[King Lear]

I keep thinking Shinrei's avatar is a chicken and that he's Illy. And then I read his posts in this thread and am terrified.

[Traveller]

Nice thread.

I was lucky enough to be able to drop my work hours when my little girl was born. (I do fewer longer shifts instead). I didn't want to miss her growing up, and having all that time with her has meant that I have had quite a lot of input in her development, and had loads of fun too.

She is about 2 and a half now, and since she picks things up so quickly, I try to show her as much interesting stuff as I can, books taking a big part, but also getting outside and getting muddy.

Discipline is quite tricky though sometimes, I just try to follow up on a first warning, and not continue to whine at her if she pays no attention like you see some parents do. She's so cheeky though; having your 'stern dad ' moment mocked by being copied in a funny voice can kind of ruin the authority, especially when its so funny.

Anyway, got a small boy now too. He's got a snotty cold at the moment, and keeps puking his milk out. He seems easier to take care of generally though, apart from the random wee during a nappy change, that could go anywhere!

But I shall repeat the above advice.. routine wins every time! My girl has a bath and goes to bed at 7 every night, and she's slept through since she was very small. And my boy does the same..already, and he's only 3 months old. He feeds all day, and sleeps all night.

There is nothing quite like that moment when they are both actually asleep, at the SAME time..

I wonder what everyone elses view is on kids and technology is? Our kids are growing up with 24 hour kids tv, tablets and cell phones. I want to keep my kids from getting hooked on all that, but at the same time they need to learn how to use it, as everyone else will. Just have to find a balance I guess.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 06 November 2012 - 09:42 AM

[Macros]

Biff chip and kipper books were ace!
i didn't think thed still be going now. I read them 20 years ago!

[Shinrei]

So Mac, you're 38 years old then?

[Gust Hubb]

It's funny hearing about the routine advice. I would have totally agreed, but with our kid, you have to just go where the wind blows. He still goes to bed around 8-9 pm and wakes up around 7-8 am (so we're just lucky I guess), but with naps, eating, etc, we just troubleshoot his fussier moments.

Is he hungry? Nope.

Then is he just teething or crabby today? Possibly but seems more so right now.

NAP-TIME!

Works surprisingly well. So I'll add the caveat that while I whole-heartedly endorse routine, routine, routine, recognize that in life nothing is simple and you may just end up having a kid like mine.

[RACHEL]

Dont' be the type of parents that brag about how smart their child is, but when you say they did something naughty the parents look at you and say they don't know any better. That infuriates me. If your kid is speaking sentences then surely he is old enough to be disciplined. Also, when in public with a child keep it from being an annoyance. I know kids cry but when a kid is screaming at the top of their lungs and the parent is acting like nothing is going on I get so angry. Also never let your kid be mean to animals, unless you want a serial killer for a kid. I don't have kids, but I want to someday and these are all things I hope I never do as a parent.

[Vengeance]

Good thread. My guy can say 10 word type of things. Started walking when he was 10.5 - 11 months. Loves to look at dogs but isn't so sure about touching them. Goes to bed at 7 wakes up at 5:45 but stays in his crib until almost 7. Daylight savings has played havoc with his nap but he is starting to get back on track. Noon nap for 2.5 - 3 hours. He loves berries (black, blue, rasberry, straw) really fruit of any kind. He has 5 teeth.


Really that is all I got. He is a great kid. I love being a parent.

[Shinrei]

10 month old daughter does NOT sleep well at night. Still haven't figured out what to do with that.

She has 8 teeth, more than mini-venge, but apparently girls are supposed to get their teeth faster than boys.

Dogs...man, we are going to need to get her a dog. She loves to watch them when out and about, and if they bark (even huge big scary barks) it sends her into giggling fits. No fear, just pure amusement.

[Acorn]

Shinrei, on 07 November 2012 - 04:47 AM, said:

10 month old daughter does NOT sleep well at night. Still haven't figured out what to do with that.

She has 8 teeth, more than mini-venge, but apparently girls are supposed to get their teeth faster than boys.

Dogs...man, we are going to need to get her a dog. She loves to watch them when out and about, and if they bark (even huge big scary barks) it sends her into giggling fits. No fear, just pure amusement.

Can you provide me some more details? In PM if you prefer... but here are some of the things I need to know:

Are you still breastfeeding (which is preferred of course, even if you've added solids)?
What sort of solids are your giving her?
How often and when is she waking up?
Is she in a nursery or in your bedroom?
(If you're breastfeeding) have you changed your diet much? Any Medications?
And do you have a set routine developed for her?

Routines are sometimes hard to manage if one or the other parent has a changing work schedule. But they are very helpful.

And if you're using cloth diapers (there are some really awesome and easy ones) that could be it - Children using cloth diapers usually potty train faster and more easily, because cloth diapers allow them to actually feel the wetness/etc - they get uncomfortable, which sometimes can wake them up in the night.

I can't think of anything else right now, but I hope I can give you a hand! It's always nice to get through the night on a regular basis!