Who took my sweet boy?

7 months, 3 weeks

Alert!An alien has taken over my sweet little angel boy's body and is holding him hostage! We get glimpses of him from time to time, but this new aggressive, loud, bossy, but also hilarious alien has really thrown us for a loop!! Brock has always been a very chill, sweet baby. However, over the last week or so, his personality has started to change!

It started last week with is 'fake cry' that he totally forces when you make him do something he doesn't want to do (change his diaper), take something away from him, don't feed him fast enough or put him down when he wants you to hold him. Then it transformed over the weekend to him being a complete maniac rolling all over the place! We thought he had just skipped that step, but apparently he just was behind the ball a bit. He started just rolling everywhere to get to what he wanted or even just for rolling sake!

The alien took it to a whole new level on Tuesday night when he decided to just completely take over. On top of screaming thru dinner (which is really putting a hamper and possibly a total ka-bosh on the sign language), he was just wild all night long. He pooped after going to bed (which he hasn't done since he was a newborn) so we had to wake him out of a deep sleep, change him (from head to toe), and try and put him back down. He went back down with a minimal fight, but by  2:30 am, he woke up with his arm stuck in the crib. I went in to fix it, expecting he'd just fall right back to sleep as usual. But nope, he was WIDE AWAKE and would scream anytime I left the room. I stayed in there with him, trying to soothe and calm him down. Then slowly crept out. He was ok for maybe a minute. We tried letting him just 'cry it out' since he wasn't even really crying, more just yelling. Until after about 30-45 mins, he wouldn't give it up and was actually starting to get worse.

So, we broke one of our only rules with him. Something we never do, but seeing how we are used to a full nights sleep (I know, I know, we suck), we let him sleep in our bed. He just didn't want to be alone and we just wanted sleep. Well, little did I know that would entail me getting poked and scratched all night as he still couldn't find the sandman. Between his on and off 30 min to 1 hr 'cat naps', we were able to catch a few zzzz's ourselves. By 6:30, the alien was done even trying to sleep so up we all got to get him fed and changed. He spent most of the morning yelling at me while I got ready. Not mad yelling, just yelling!

Cynthia says his personality has started to come out a lot more there too. Him and his buddy Bo were yelling back and forth to each other yesterday.  I can only imagine how that looked! By last night, the alien seemed to be losing control and the sweet (and sleeping!) angel boy started to come back! No matter if he's the alien or the angel, we love him just the same!

This week, he has started eating pears AND gets veggies with his fruit at night. He loves the pears! As previously mentioned, we may have started the sign language thing a little too late for this one. I hate 'giving up', but at the same time, I don't want to make meal times too stressful for either of us. He wants his food so fast and screams if you take too long between bites, so it's hard to get him to slow down and learn the signs. Besides, with that boy, it's not like you really ever have to question what he wants!! LOL! I am working now on trying to slow him down a little big when he's eating. I don't want him to end up like me and scarf his whole mean before he even realizes how fast he's going.

He's definitely close to crawling. He's started pushing himself backwards with his arms on the hardwoods and again, rolling everywhere. I can tell he's trying to get up on all fours and imagine it'll come sooner than we realize! We are fully prepared to spend lots of time in the basement where there's carpet when he gets crazy mobile!

We've also started trying to teach him how to 'high five'. It didn't take long, but he's already starting to figure it out! He loves it and especially loves when you tell him 'good job' when he does it. He loves, I mean LOVES pictures. Mostly of himself, but he'll look at any pictures. He's starting to recognize Mommy and Daddy in pictures too! That is way cool! I asked him where 'mama' was the other day and he looked up at a big picture of us from our wedding! When you show him a picture of himself, you'd think you were showing him the winning lottery numbers! He gets the biggest smile on his face and sometimes laughs! It's pretty cute!

No new teeth yet that we can see, but his hair is getting darker by the day. Sometimes it looks dirty blonde, sometimes it looks like it may be trying to turn brown and then some days it looks straight up red! Not dark red, total ginger red! Either way, it's adorable!

He has also started learning how to isolate his forefinger. Usually he would grab or touch things with his whole hand. Now, he has learned how to just stick out his forefinger and touch things (usually my face). We call it his creepy ET finger. It's so cute and amazing to know that he's learning so much every day!