Little Hanky-Spank is 7 Months Old!

Henry turned 7 months old yesterday.

He has been changing so quickly lately. He'll pick up a new trick one week and it's gone the next. A couple weeks ago he was coughing to get attention, now he growls. Like a dog. Like a dinosaur. Like a weirdo.

It sure is funny, though.

He's still crawling, but now he is lightning-fast. He does push-ups... he lifts his entire body off the floor, just up on his hands and toes. I'm assuming that any day now he's going to figure out how to tuck his little legs up under himself so that he can really crawl. Meanwhile, I guess he's getting a good workout.

He still thinks his Dad is the funniest, most interesting person in the whole world. He just stares at him when he's home. If he's laying with us on our bed, he rolls over to Dustin's side and gets as close to him as he can. He laughs especially hard for Dustin. 

We took Henry to the doctors a couple weeks ago for his six month check-up. (Picture above is him at his appt.) It was a little irritating for me, to say the least. Henry weighed in at 20 bs 12 oz. and he was 28 inches long. This puts him in the 80th percentile for height and weight. When our doctor looked at his stats, he asked us if we had a lot of tall people in our family. Dustin is average, and I'm a little taller than average (average in the U.S. is 5'4" and I'm 5'7"), but everyone else in my immediate family is on the shorter side. Henry is on track to be a tall kid. The doctor was concerned because he started out in the 25th percentile, then the 50th, then the 75th, and now the 80th. They're going to "keep a eye on him" because he's growing so quickly. Here's where the visit got a little irritating... the doctor then gently lectured me on childhood obesity and then told me to limit Henry's television watching time. UMmmmm... he's 7 months old!!!!!! He doesn't have the attention span to watch any amount of television even if I wanted him to. It's not like he wakes up from a nap and then sits down to watch hours of Judge Judy, Days of Our Lives and Oprah. I will sometimes turn on a Veggi Tales or Berenstain Bears DVD for him to watch while he's drinking his bottle, but you had better believe that the minute he's done eating, he throws down his bottle and crawls off to get his toys.

I was also a little disappointed in the doctor because I asked him what he felt was the best method to follow for getting Henry on a better sleeping schedule (or if he was concerned). He didn't seem like he had an answer, so I told him about the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and asked him what he would suggest for a child that seems to just not need as much sleep as other children. (He sleeps from 10 or 11 at night until 7 or 8 and takes two or three naps and is perfectly happy.) Our doctor had never even heard of that book and asked me to explain the premise to him. I don't expect doctors to read every popular press book there is on child-rearing, children's sleep habits, or the best organic baby foods, but I DO expect them to read the most well-known ones - especially those that are based off actual research and not just some know-it-all mother's personal opinions.  I think it is a doctor's responsibility to know what literature is available to parents outside of the doctor's office.

Our pediatrician was also a little "blah" when it came to his advice on whether or not to give Henry the H1N1 vaccine. I knew that I wanted him to have the regular flu shot, but I was really on the fence about H1N1. I asked the doctor and he basically said that doctors recommend that people are vaccinated and that the vaccine was constructed similarly as the seasonal flu shot. We asked him if he would get his child vaccinated, and he just repeated what he said. He seemed very robotic in his response. We weighed our options (Dustin really made the choice b/c he's better at thinking these things out) and decided we would have him get it. When the nurse came in, she told us that he could not get 5 shots, only 4 so we needed to get rid of one... it must have been meant to be -- we nixed the H1N1 shot. The nurse proceeded to tell us that she hadn't seen a case of H1N1 in their office in almost 2 months -- she was almost certain that it was over. She said she would NOT recommend it. So why couldn't our doctor give us that kind of information? That's the kind of stuff we wanted to know about! 

I'm thinking about switching doctors. We used to see a Nun (no joke), but now we see some other guy in the practice. Neither of them have kids.

For the past couple weeks I've been reading a Berenstain Bears book to Henry every night. He LOVES it. He sits in my lap and just talks and growls at the books. He is perfectly content to just sit there though the whole book (which I think is a long time, those books aren't terribly short). I have a video, which I'll post soon.

I also love when he wakes up from his naps. When he sees me, he instantly lights up and gets excited. He's also super cuddly. He's content to just snuggle for a few minutes after he wakes up.

I'll leave you with a crappy phone picture of Henry in his new winter coat. It matches his Dad's.