Christmas #3

Merry Merry Merry Christmas to us. Today's Christmas was wonderful. Everyone coordinated so well, and of course I didn't get a group photo. I'm hoping to get some from Liz or Mom. We got to see ALL of the Donnells and finally got to meet Carter! Oh my goodness is that one darling baby. He's actually just about the same size as Nathan (a little bigger if I'm being honest) and just a sweet sweet bundle of cuteness. I'm going to have to do a whole separate post of the two boys together. 

This year was the first year of the Christmas Talent Show. Highlights included Leah's singing of Snoopy vs. The Bloody Red Baron, Zach's signing of the alphabet, (up to p) the Donnell kids dancing to an elf yourself video, Mom's ability to hold a pop can in her mouth, Ted's juggling skills, and Liz and John's rendition on the violin and ukelele of Soul Sister (seriously amazing). I'm hoping it becomes a tradition.

Man, I just love these people. I can't wait to get everyone else's photos!

Christmas #2

We spent Saturday at Nonnie and Papa's house with the family. It was fantastic. Mom and Dad spoiled us all. Ted and Angela gave the kids the cutest hats imaginable. It was fabulous to spend the day with everyone. 

John got the gear to set up a zip line. WE ARE SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS PLAN!  

I think Zach liked the Dinosaur Train trainset that we got them... He could barely stop playing to look up. Now that's what I like to see. Serious dedication to play. 

Leah loved playing with Brian's wedding ring.

Dad discovered Nathan's new ticklish side!

Mom taught Nathan how to drink out of a cup. A video may surface of this. It was hysterical. He just kept ducking his head back for more. That boy loves his Nonnie. 

Winter Solstice

I spent Friday at my parent's house with Nathan. Ted is only in town for a few days and I wanted to get to see him as much as possible. Since Zach and Leah are there on Fridays, it was like an extended day of Christmas! We celebrated the winter solstice that night and then Nathan and I skeedattled. I was hoping it wouldn't be too bad, but N was a bit of a mess on the drive home. I think I need to rig up a blanket to keep the car lights from hitting his face over and over. Note to self.

Mo also came over and got to meet Nathan. Even though he's starting to get a little more wary of strangers, he warmed up to her pretty quickly. It was so wonderful to see her. I love living here, but I very much miss my DC friends. I'm lucky that Mo has to come home and visit her family periodically!

I love this one. 

Christmas #1

We celebrated with Cathy and Eva (and her parents) on Wendesday night. It was lovely and I think Eva like the doctor dress up kit we gave her. Cathy got Nathan a glow worm (he loves Eva's apparently) and some super awesome action blocks. The glow worm couldn't be a bigger hit. When everything else is driving our boy to tears, that glow worm saves the day. It's been really helpful over the last few days that have been a bit overwhelming. God bless Cathy.

Peeking

Here's the video I mentioned before. I love that this is a more interactive game now! I was using the big guy of a camera to take this video and clearly I haven't figured out the focus feature.

Boy's getting some skills

Though you can't see it in these photos, Nathan's been enjoying watching our train go round and round. I hope we may have another train guy on our hands. It's been awhile since I talked about where our guy was developmentally. I'm sure I'll miss some stuff, but here goes. 

He's really started to get a better grasp on cause and effect. Peek-a-boo has reached a new level where he can remove the blanket, sheet, lovey hiding either you or himself. It tickles him to no end. I have a video of him doing it with Brian that I'll post later. It's fun to know that we're not forgotten even if we're out of sight. He is also a big fan of light switches.

Mom brought him a few toys from the baby consignment store and they are big hits. He actually "gets" the drum/tambourine below. At first I though the just liked the music that it plays when you push the drum down, flailing his hands and grinning, but then he started pushing it down on his own when the music stopped.

He's a pretty solid sitter these days unless something catches his fancy or he is overly delighted by something. Which really means, he still lurches his whole body on a whim and makes it not at all that reliable. He's totally capable of it now, it's just that the world is such an exciting place. 

There's no question that first thing in the morning is the most exciting part of the day for him. He laughs unprompted, and JUST. CAN'T. STOP. SMILING. It's the best alarm clock ever. 

Blowing raspberries and smacking his lips are very common during pretty much all activities. It's especially funny when he decides to do it right after taking a spoonful of food. Right in my face. I need to start wearing a bib too.

While totally affectionate and social, he's not what you'd call a cuddler. You can tell when he's really really really exhausted because he may lie his head down on your shoulder for a few brief and wonderful seconds. Other than that, he's wanting to touch, grab, explore - thankyouverymuch. In general I try to remember that means that he's able to entertain himself and not so clingy that I can't get anything done. I am just grateful he can't crawl yet. 

Speaking of crawling, there's no question that he's INTERESTED in the idea. He hasn't quite figured out the mechanics yet though. On his tummy he'll have all four limbs working in coordinated movements and if he were underwater he'd be making some serious progress. Basically, he does breaststroke mid-air. He's also figured out that getting one leg under himself can help propel him forward so he'll do strange little lunges forward but nothing that would actually constitute crawling. Like I said, I'm in no rush, his reach seems to be a 5 foot radius around him, and that's enough for now.

Still lots of babbles, dadas especially, but no mama yet. 

We can't wait to see everyone for Christmas!

There was clearly a lot of oversight going on here. 

Operation: Feed Less at Night to Get More Sleep

The title kind of says it all. This post is long and there aren't any pictures. Suffice it to say that this is a post for myself and anyone else who ever finds themselves in a similar position. No hard feelings if you stop reading right now. Ok, then, I warned you. I've drafted this over the past week or so.

Over the last 3 months sleep in our house has been deteriorating. From early on, Nathan was a pretty great nighttime sleeper. I got cocky. I bragged about it.  And then I went back to work AND Nathan got a cold AND decided he didn't like bottles. So he started waking up more often.

I felt guilty because he wasn't eating with Cathy.
I felt guilty because he was sleeping and eating fine before I went back to work.
I felt guilty.

So I fed him. After a month he was definitely waking up in the middle of the night at least once to eat.  That was not great, but it wasn't the worst. Things got worse.

And here we are. For the last few weeks it's been 2-3 times a night. It's pretty much about as bad as it was when he was born. Needless to say, we're not exactly high functioning. I'm not against crying it out, and I suspect there will been an element of it in our plan down the road. Everything I read about night wakings/feedings says, babies don't need to eat at night after the first few months (which I knew, I had that baby at one time), and it's just for comfort. Those people don't feel his diapers at night. The boy was EATING. Cutting him off cold turkey seemed overly harsh. But I need to put a stop to it. Mama, Dad, and baby need better sleep.

There's some comfort in knowing that I'm not the first to find myself in this position. Liz has a post about Leah at 6 months. I literally could write it myself (were I as good a writer as my sister.) Basically, I just need to change the names.

Here are some clips that pretty well sum up our situation. I've underlined the parts that feel especially true for us.

"She was such a champion sleeper naturally from the get-go. For such a long time she was figuring out this sleep thing all on her own, and I figured she was just that good. She met most of the Babywise milestones of sleep without any significant crying at all for the first few months.

But...

We got off the rails about a month ago. I figured she was going through a growth spurt or something and just needed to eat in the night for a while. (What was I thinking? I wasn't, I was tired.) I assumed she'd be back to her old ways in no time. (Again, what was I thinking?) Instead, things have steadily deteriorated.  

She goes down beautifully and easily for most naps, and without a peep at bedtime. But then she wakes up before she's really had enough sleep after a short nap, and wakes up often all night. If I don't feed her, she wakes up every half hour for a few hours at a time. In recent weeks she never sleeps longer than 3 hours. It's like having a newborn all over again, but actually this is worse than our newborns ever were. Sometimes I can get her back to sleep without feeding her, but often I give up. My own lack of discipline has done this to her, and to me, and as tough as the solution is likely to be, it's necessary. The cumulative effect of these weeks has been an increasingly sleepy mama, who tries not to be unbelievably crabby."  

I'm sorry for that last part, Brian. I really, really, really am.

I've relegated Brian to the basement while I enact Operation: Feed Less at Night to Get More Sleep. The pressure of knowing that letting Nathan fuss keeps him up too is part of what made me get up and feed him in the first place. There's enough pressure during this process without that stress. This way, Brian's getting some good uninterrupted sleep, and I can call the shots without it affecting anyone but me. The trade off is that if we do need to do some tough love, we'll switch places, and I'll get to sleep in the basement while Brian plays bad cop.

What I've read says to target each feeding individually, but if that were the plan, we'd be at this for months. My super technical approach has been to, get this, feed less overall until it's just not worth his time to wake up.

Just after a day or two I noticed that his first feeding (usually around 8am) has started to go much better. He's hungrier and more focused.

I've decided the hours between 10 and 7 are my golden hours. The goal will be no feeding during that time. Here's our progress so far. WARNING: this log is boring and mostly for historical record so I can see the progress (or lack thereof).

Pre-Operation, I timed a few nights and it was around 15 minutes of nursing time a night, but I was up for about a half an hour per feeding once you include everything.This assumes I was able to fall back asleep right away.

Dec. 8th, Saturday (10 minutes):
12:25 am  - Woke up and fussed back to sleep after about 10 minutes. I didn't go in or feed him.
1:23 am - Woke up crying. Went in and nursed him for 5 minutes.
4:00 am - Woke up fussing. Went in after fussing and nursed him for 5 minutes.

Sunday (5 minutes):
3:20 - Woke up fussing. Didn't go back to sleep. Went in and fed him for 5 minutes.

Monday (4.5 minutes):
2:23 am - Woke up fussing. After 15 minutes I went in, changed his diaper, and fed him for 4.5 minutes. Went back to sleep without a fuss.
6:45 am - Woke up crying, went in and gave him his pacifier. Fussed 2 minutes and fell back asleep. Slept until 8:00 and woke up happy.

Tuesday (15.5 minutes):
Super stuffy with a cold. We regressed a bit. Lots of crying when I tried to soothe or stop a nursing. Then again, I'm not sure it's great timing to sleep train when he's sick. (For the record, this cold was a pussy cat until this night.) He seemed pretty hungry, but after feeling his diapers I don't think he ate as much as he was even a week ago.
1:00 am - 7.5 minutes
4:23 - 8 minutes

Wednesday (6 minutes):
1:46 am - Serious crying. Nursed 6 minutes.
6:00 am - Woke up crying. Waited 2 minutes before going in and giving him a pacifier. Kept crying off and on for 2 minutes and back asleep. Woke up after a few minutes and fussed/cried off and on for another 5 minutes and back asleep. Continued for 25 minutes and was out again. Slept until 8.

Thursday (3.5 minutes):
11:30 pm - woke up, pacifier in, back to sleep. (Just unfortunate that I had fallen asleep at 11)
4:00 am - woke up, fussed/cried off and on for 10 minutes. Put in pacifier, fussed /cried off and on for 5 minutes, asleep. 5 minutes later awake fussing/crying. Rinse and repeat for an hour. At that point I figured he may actually be hungry considering that he kept waking up. Went in and fed him for 3.5 minutes. He fell back asleep in 2 minutes (and stayed asleep). I did not.

Friday (0 Minutes!)
11:30 pm - woke up crying, went in and put the pacifier in, but didn't do the trick. Held, bounced, and finally got him calmed down. I think this was teething rearing its head because he really just seemed to want to be held, and his cheeks were fire engine red and quite warm. I really can't wait for these teeth to show themselves already.
6:45 am - let out a few yelps and kept on sleeping. Woke me up, but he slept til 8:15. First night of no night feedings in recent memory!

Saturday (2.5 minutes)
5:00 - awake and not falling back asleep with the pacifier. Fed a few minutes and put him back down. Cried for 20 seconds and was asleep in 2 minutes.

Sidenote: During the day he had really great feedings. Focused, calm, awesome.

Sunday (3-6 minutes - didn't time it. Too tired.)
11-12 - Woke up twice needing a little comfort
3 - Woke up, pacifier, back to sleep (rinse and repeat at 4.)
5 - Woke up, pacifier, sleep, up, sleep, up, pacifier, crying. Finally fed him for 2 minutes at 6 hoping it would take the edge off. Resulted in harder and more crying until I broke down around 6:30 and just fed him for a few more minutes. He was so exhausted I don't think he even ate that much more but fell asleep nursing. I was so grateful I didn't even care. Not my best work.

I haven't been changing his diapers in the middle of the night for the past few nights because "they" say it is a teaches the baby not to eat as much at night. Brian said it was the heaviest diaper he's ever felt in the morning. Makes me wonder if that's part of why he kept waking up. Maybe I should have changed it. Hmmm.  Thinking it may be time to think about crying it out.

Today:
And that's where we are. I got him from eating 2-3 times a night for a total of 15 minutes, to once for 2-5. In one week. Not too bad. Now it's time for the second phase of attack.

I slumbered last night in the basement (best night of sleep in MONTHS) and Brian took over baby duty. By his account, last night "wasn't too bad." I wouldn't know.

I do know that he went to sleep with his usual amount of talking/singing and there was crying when he woke up 45 minutes later. And it killed me. Then I went to the basement. I slept 8+ hours and was presented with a dressed and happy baby at 7:30 for me to feed. Fingers crossed things improve over the next few days. A baby who sleeps through the night again would be the best of Christmas presents.

Oh, and he drank 8oz in his first bottle today. Methinks someone is getting with the program.