46 weeks old: aaaaaand he's crawling!

This was the biggest yuck face Oliver has ever made to date and included shuddering. It was adorable and sad all at the same time. He is so expressive. We went out to eat at Bollywood Theater and he did NOT like it. Thankfully afterward we went to Salt & Straw next door to wash it down with some ice cream. Eloise appears to be doing a phantom lick in the background of this next picture:

It was Spring Break this week in Portland and schedules were changed up a bit. We showed up for Family Story Time at the library but it was off for the week. So instead we spent an hour reading 87 books on the floor and playing with this contraption.

But the BIGGEST news this week is that Oliver is crawling! Check him out in this video with the password Oliver2016.


Oliver seems to be advancing in a couple areas recently. He has really hit his stride with self-feeding and eating solids in general. His appetite seems to have suddenly increased and he's up to three meals and two snacks a day, just like his sister. I'm able to feed more of the same things now, too, his just need to be in smaller pieces. Here he is enjoying a spinach pancake.

In addition to solids, in a shocking turn of events, he began to wean himself from nursing as well. It started in early February when he was sick; he started declining to breastfeed and wanted a bottle instead some of the time. I thought maybe it was due to having a harder time breathing through his nose. So those times I would give him a bottle and then pump. But when he got well, he still turned down nursing in favor of a bottle about half of the time. So I was pumping quite a bit and feeding him a bottle. His refusal to nurse got more and more frequent still, to where it became only once or twice a day. Finally, at the beginning of this week after 6-8 weeks of this, I decided to stop pumping when he refused to nurse and only give formula. Now, today as I write this, he has refused to nurse since two nights ago. And even then I didn't produce much and needed to give him a bottle an hour later. I offered to nurse for the last time this morning and he refused. It is pretty sad for me! Never in a million years would I have predicted that the kid who so adamantly refused a bottle would later wean himself off of breastfeeding. And it's just 5-6 weeks before I would have. Breastfeeding Oliver - well, both of my kids - has been such a special privilege and a sweet and connecting experience that I am so grateful to have had.