When your baby has his first cold.

You started having a slight cough 2 nights ago, and then some runny nose today. It's been disturbing your sleep because the coughing wakes you up and sometimes your runny nose does too. But otherwise you haven't been very much out of sorts. You seem a little sleepier than usual, but you are still playful and smiley, which is a good thing. You don't have a fever and don't seem to be in any respiratory distress.

Daddy started coughing yesterday and slept on the couch in the living room last night. He feels awful and jokes that you gave the cold bugs to him.

I don't know, though.. coz you cough and sneeze in MY face 99% of the time, and HIS, 1% of the time. Either HE gave it to you ( LOL ), or mummy's immunity is doing amazing things.

OR it could just mean that I'm next, and I'll have to take care of TWO sick babies while I MYSELF am sick.

*bah*

Wise Words

From ChemistryMama's blog over at What To Expect

"One of my very favorite things is to go into Ella's bedroom when she wakes up. She flashes me a smile so big that her whole face scrunches up and she starts wriggling for me to pick her up. The piece-meal sleep and bags under my eyes are so worth it for that moment. I'm trying to savor it even more with my second baby, because I know it goes so fast. Ella will never be five months old again. So we're going to enjoy it! "

"I have Footsies" and "Da boy needz sleepz"

8/15 Saturday.

You started grabbing your feet ! Your grandad had been asking over and over if you were doing that yet :) He had gone to Seminole with uncle Lin to celebrate their church's 50th anniversary.

Napped short naps in the car twice. Once to Walmart to meet Cindy, the other to & from George's for his baby shower. Had a short 20 minute nap at home while Cindy made lunch for mommy and daddy.

The Sleep Hump

7:50 to sleep

8:23 wake up crying soothed to sleep by 8:28

8:33 crying soothed to sleep by 8:35

8:44 crying soothed to sleep by 8:46

8:55 crying soothed nursing ( I threw in the towel and nursed ) by 8:58

HOY.

Sleep Woes & Poop Tales

8/12 Wednesday

Today you had two short naps in the day time, and a long nap in the afternoon, another one of those almost-3-hours naps, which was great, because I got to nap too. I notice that when I nap with you, you nap longer. Maybe because I'm right there when you stir, and coax you back to sleep again. Whatever the case, it should do mummy good, coz there are days when she is just at the end of her tether, and the world just swims around in front of her eyes, I exaggerate not.

Also, tonight after putting you to sleep ( took me an hour and a half ), you woke up after 10 minutes. I decided fuggit, and let you cry it out. You whimpered and complained for about 10 minutes, and then cried for maybe 5 - 7 minutes, and finally fell asleep on your own. I'm spent from hearing you cry.*sigh*

8/13 Thursday.

Another restless night for you, crying at an hour and an hour and a half after going to bed for the night. I patted your back and rubbed your tummy but you cried and cried, but finally got tired enough or something and fell asleep. Then proceeded to wake up hourly from 2 am onwards, whimpering.

Baby, this has got to stop. :(

It makes me sad that I can't help you to where you sleep good. :(

8/14 Friday.

You hardly napped all day, because it was one of those "wreck the boy's routine" days again. You napped probably a total of 50 minutes today, but went to sleep for the night pretty easily. I stayed in the room with you to help you get over your sleep humps. Sure enough:

Fell asleep: 7:50 pm

Woke up CRYING: 8:30pm

at this point, I nursed you a little to calm you down, and you started getting very drowsy about 7 minutes later. Patted you and rubbed your tummy a bit until you fell back asleep at 8:45pm, not nursing.

Woke up whimpering: 8:55pm,

rubbed your tummy a bit and you fell back asleep 2 minutes later.

*sigh*

Plus, you've started this thing where you really pinch down with your gums while nursing, and then pull away abruptly or push the boob away suddenly, while still having this death gum-grip.

YEOWCH would be an understatement. Hoy.

You had the first major "solid food" poop today. It was like semi liquidy melted creamy peanut butter, unlike the watery/liquidy fully-breast-fed kind of poop. Kinda phooey smelling too.

Silly Billy-ness

Baby giggles are da best.

Just ignore the silly mommy sounds in the background, that are making the boy laugh :)

What Eternity Feels Like

It's those 15 seconds or so when your seemingly "starving" and impatient baby is nursing frantically, and you're waiting for your milk to let down.

And of course, stress and anxiety ( in this case, caused by the above mentioned baby ) delays let down.

Which causes the baby to pull off...

Which causes more anxiety.

Which causes more ( imagined? ) delay..

It's a vicious cycle, I tell ya.

Jaxon 31/2 - 4 months

You finally feel more comfortable in the sling, maybe cos you have so much better head control and we can put you in the kangaroo position where you can look out and observe the world.

a sleepy baby....

Daddy was being silly and wanted to have fun with the sling too..

Some days you wake up on top of the world.. in this pic it looks like you're practising to be an opera star...

You have the cheekiest smiles :) ...

And the craziest hair...

You have started liking tummy time too!

Although you still like sitting up and standing up the best..

You're reaching out and grabbing anything you spy...

And you did seem to enjoy the trip to the mall with Daddy, Mummy and Grandad..

Everyone we meet love to say how beautiful you are, and we HAVE to agree.

Well, you can knock me down with a feather!

We have been doing tummy time more and more recently, because you now have so much better head and neck control and actually SMILE during tummy time.

For several weeks now, I have been helping you practise rolling over gently, and you have been trying to push up higher and higher on your arms and elbows.

Yesterday, after dinner and a bath, I brought you into the room to wipe you dry and start the winding down going to sleep process. I had you in your diapers and had "massaged" you with some lotion, when I put you on your tummy while I was doing some stuff nearby. I came back to watch you as you were not complaining yet, and you suddenly rolled over. I was flabbergasted. I put you on your tummy again.. and you flipped over again!

I got daddy to come into the room, and put you on your tummy. After about half a minute, you started rolling over and hey, you rolled all the way over for daddy! All 3 times to the right. You never did do a repeat performance for daddy, but he was so excited he called Stephanie up to tell her what had happened..heheheheh.. You should have seen daddy and mummy beam and beam and whoop! What a kodak moment :)

Also, you didnt' cry too much when it was eventually time to go to sleep. I walked around with you to Dav Koz's Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and you fell asleep. I transfered you to the bed, and you woke up some, but after some nursing, you fell asleep. What a day you've had!

Today, mummy put you on your tummy again, in the living room floor, and you rolled over twice! Woohoo!!!!

Adventures in Solid Food

Today, mummy bought some baby apple juice, baby apple sauce and baby mashed bananas in a bottle. We'll make our own food as time goes by, but for now we'll let Gerber take the reins for a bit while we get accustomed to solids.

This evening, I made about half a tablespoon of rice cereal for you with the apple sauce. It must have tasted a little tart, coz you made this little screwed up face ( LOL ) but then opened your mouth for more, so it must have been yum yum good :).

We'll try the apple juice for a few days and see if it agrees with you ( the rice cereal did! ), and then try the apple sauce, and then the bananas...ooo mummy and daddy are totally excited by this :)

Food Glorious Food

So we broke out the rice cereal this morning, mixed with a little bit of formula to make it runny. We sat you down in your bumbo seat, velcro'd the bib on you and daddy got his HD camcorder ready.

At first you were more interested in playing with the bib and the bowl, and ended up with a bunch of cereal on your face, but after a few tries, you actually started taking small swallows of cereal! Sure, most of the cereal ended up dribbling out of your mouth, and had to be rescooped into your mouth, but hey, you gotta start somewhere. :)

We tried again at dinner time, and by then you seemed quite the pro, at times opening your mouth in anticipation of the spoon. You didn't eat much more than probably one tablespoon all together, but we just wanted to get you "initiated" and used to being fed with a spoon and the texture of runny rice cereal.

I personally think Daddy was way more excited than you were :). He kept encouraging and praising you, and I know he was proud of ya!

Dare I hope?

There are certain days of the week that I semi dread, because they are days when your "schedule" has to be disrupted for certain things. On Tuesdays, Taco Tuesday kinda messes with your afternoon nap and winding down for the night; Letti Thursday does the same thing; Friday mornings you have to be woken up early for ladies' bible class followed by lunch with grandad, during which your morning nap is then disrupted as well. Sunday mornings, needless to say, you're up early again, morning nap is disrupted also. Wow, that's 4 days out of 7 where you get overtired etc.

Anyway, in the last post, I talked about where you soothed yourself back to sleep in the night? Well, on the day we went to Comanche, it REALLY messed up your schedule, and we only managed to put you to bed WAY past your usual bed time, but what was strange was, instead of your usual crying and needing to nurse to sleep, you coo'd and coo'd and fell asleep on your own that night, while daddy and I listened over the baby monitor, in the kitchen.

Well, Holly, Tyler and Sabrina celebrated their birthdays tonight, starting at 7 pm, coinciding with the time when you would be having your bath and winding down for the night, being asleep at about 8 pm. You had woken up from a nap at 4:30pm today, and so when we finally got home and tried to put you to bed, it was almost 8:30 pm, which was almost 4 hours since the time you woke up, as opposed to your usual 2 hours. I tried nursing, rocking, gliding, jigging, anything and everything, but you would not go to sleep, although I knew you had to be super tired. You kept trying to look everywhere, and so I turned the lights off, with only the lights coming in from through the slits under / above the bedroom door lighting the room. Even THEN, you kept squirming around to look at that.

At about 10 pm, daddy came into the bedroom and took over, rocking and holding you. The phone rang after a few minutes, and I went out into the living room to answer it. Daddy put you down in bed to come find out who it was, and by the time the phone call was over, the baby monitor was silent. We quietly snuck into the room to check on you and you were asleep!

I mean, I was totally amazed. This is ( or was ) a baby that needed to nurse each and every single time he needed to sleep. ( which may be a bad habit, but hey, we're working on it ). Daddy and I stayed in the kitchen to talk for a bit and at about 11:30 pm, we heard whimpering noises over the monitor. I suggested we just continue listening and not go into the room just yet. After a few minutes, you quietened down and fell asleep again.

I mean, this hardly ever happens! Right now I don't know whether to be hopeful or not, that you will be able to help yourself fall asleep. I'm hoping you would be able to, coz that would be seriously major.

It's 4:53 am right now, and I'm sitting at my computer when I should be getting some much needed sleep.

Why? Coz I CAN'T sleep! I don't know if it's because I'm full of incredulous excitement or it's because of all the "white noise" that daddy's providing, that's keeping me awake.

It all started about a couple of hours ago, when you started stirring in your sleep. Usually, you would start turning towards me and "expect" to be nursed back to sleep. So I nursed you for a few minutes and pulled away from you gently because I desperately needed to pee. You weren't too pleased with that, but somehow didn't protest all that much. When I returned from the bathroom, I watched quietly as you rooted around for me, and then finally started sucking on your own hands. Amazingly enough, after a few minutes you fell back asleep! I mean, this was MAJOR stuff! You have NEVER done that before ( or maybe I just hadn't let you have the chance to, before. )

Anyway, I drifted off to sleep myself at that point, only to be awakened at about 4:10 am by you playing with my face. I pretended to stay asleep and watched silently to see what you would do if I didn't respond. You whimpered a little, tossed around a little bit, and started sucking on your thumb/fist again. At that point, daddy woke up and I whispered softly to him that I was trying to see if you could soothe yourself back to sleep. Daddy said, "eh.", rolled over and fell back asleep. ( Lucky fella ).

You on the other hand, fidgetted and "talked" to yourself a little bit and I guess I drifted off for a few minutes, and when I woke up, you were asleep! I was totally astounded. In a sleepy sort of way.

Amazing.

And then I discovered "I" couldn't get back to sleep. Brother.

Anyway, I hope this is something that is here to stay. I had been wanting to reduce the frequency of night feedings, which has been real difficult, because nursing is just about the only way you would fall asleep ( Other than in your car seat rolling down the road - but who wants to wake everyone up, strap you to the car seat, drive around a bit, wait for you to fall asleep, then unstrap you from your carseat only to wake you up again in the process, all IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?! ).

Suffice to say, I'm full of excitement and can't wait to see if you will continue to be able to put yourself back to sleep.

Yay!

The Day After Yesterday

You slept from 6:15 pm last evening till about 9 am this morning. Talk about having to recover from the trauma of shots. Poor babyness.

Good thing was, you woke up all smiley and in a good mood. I suppose you had slept all your weariness away. Yay! You napped pretty good today too. Maybe it was because I tried to read your "sleepy cues" better, and put you to nap sooner. Or maybe you were still "recuperating" from the shots. Whatever it was, I'm glad you got to sleep good, and wake up smiling today. :)

One funny thing that happened today though, was that daddy "pretended" to feed you cereal, silly daddy. I don't think you found it amusing, though :)