On A Happier (and More Adorable) Note...

Here are some fantastic pictures that Grammy Sue took during their visit last week.  Enjoy!

Something over there is funny.

OK, how do I get my face out of the smile position?

Yay, old people are the best!

My great-grandfather and I are no longer amused.

What did you say about my great grandpa?  ...That's what I thought.

I hope you are not going to try to come between me and my food.

Ohyesgivemethefoodputitinmymouthrightnowyumyumyumthisismyfavoritepartofthewholeday.

You're going to give me more of that right?  Right?  Yes, put the spoon in that green stuff.  Then put it in my mouth.  No funny business.  Just put the green stuff in my mouth and nobody gets peed on.  Well, ok, you probably will get peed on.  But I'll smile at you during it.  Just keep that food coming.

Hey, I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible for you to put that food where it goes.  You can't miss it.

Stylin', as usual.

Nope... I'm just not ready to walk yet.

Time to chill.

Feelin' good with my Poppy Pete.

CIO Showdown

I'm up at 2am to write this post because Ben is screaming.  He has been crying on and off since 11:30pm.  I figure since I can't sleep while my baby screams anyway and I'm too tired to do anything more productive, I might as well write down my frustrations here.

In my time as a parent, I haven't really subscribed to any "methods."  I'm not really one to read parenting books.  I've just followed my intuition and tried to stay consistent to make it easy for my kids to pick up on patterns in how I respond to what they do.  I'm not saying I have such great mothering instincts that I don't need anyone else's advice, just that so far my kids have been nice enough not to do anything major that I'm at a loss for how to handle.

So it's not that I'm a particular fan of the "cry-it-out" method for getting babies of a certain age to sleep at night.  I think it's important to give them comfort if they need it.  But in certain situations, I feel justified in trying to let a baby put him or herself to sleep.  It's bad for me if my kids think that whenever they wake up, someone needs to rock them back to sleep.  My "rule" is basically that if you're well-fed and burped and have a clean diaper, I will rock you to sleep twice (or ask John to do it one of those times).  If you fall asleep easily once I've picked you up but you start crying again soon after I put you back down, I have to infer that nothing is seriously wrong and your main problem is not being held.  And after I've already rocked you to sleep once or twice, I don't really have the patience to keep that up indefinitely, and certainly not when I should be sleeping.  Of course, a newborn baby is not going to get this.  I don't know what the magic age is -- that's where the intuition comes in, and mine tells me that Ben is plenty old enough to pick up on cause and effect.

The problem with Ben is how persistent he is.  When I hear other parents talk about reluctantly letting their kids cry it out at night, the story is usually that they decide beforehand to give the kid 15 minutes to fall asleep.  The kid falls asleep in 15 minutes or less.  So maybe it's just that the moms who let their kids cry for longer than that aren't telling others about it because they're ashamed, but I never hear anyone say they do that.  When Ben is really worked up, he'll cry for an hour or more.  I just can't believe how long he lasts.  Here is tonight's story: tonight he wakes up at 11:30pm to nurse -- earlier than I'd like, but fine.  He nurses for plenty of time, and I put him down with no problem when he's done.  I think everything's good, but about 15 minutes later he starts crying.  I wait about a minute, then go in and rock him back to sleep, making sure to give him a chance to burp in case that's the problem.  Once again, he goes down easily.  Then about 10 minutes later, crying again.  This time John goes in, rocks him to sleep, puts him down quiet.  Then... crying again.  OK, now we leave him on his own: he's not crying like he's hurt (just mad), I can't think of anything that could be wrong, and we've comforted him twice.  It's 1:30am.  Well, like I said, I started typing this post after 2am.  I think he finally quit around 2:15.

I do feel really bad letting him cry that long, and I don't know how Sophie can sleep through it.  But I also just can't bring myself to reward that behavior.  So we see who breaks first.  It seems really messed up to be playing chicken with a 6-month-old baby.  My decision in this case isn't something I'm proud of.  But I still think it was the right one.  Sigh...

Something Stinky This Way Comes

Ben is almost through his second week of solid food.  He LOVES it.  I can't believe how excited he is about eating.  We started with rice cereal mixed with breast milk, then added peas, and finally carrots.  He eats everything we offer him, and sometimes cries when it's all gone.  We don't even use a bib for him, because he swallows every last bit.  Next I'll add sweet potatoes, then maybe avocado.  Once he's been eating veggies for a week or two, I'll add bananas and applesauce.  I think after he's tried lots of things, I'll get a food grinder so I can just quickly puree whatever we're having for dinner.  He's a great eater, but of course this means the end of the relatively benign yellow poops that we're used to.  They didn't even smell bad... like buttered popcorn.  Now we are in for the stinky brown messes.

What else is new?  Ben's Grammy Sue bought him a nice wooden crib and dresser, and we added a cute bedding set to make his room look like an actual nursery.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  I had convinced myself that these things don't really matter, but I think we did a good thing to make his room a nicer place to spend time.  Here are a couple of pictures:

At his last doctor's appointment, he weighed just under 18 pounds, which puts him in the 75th percentile.  I could tell he was getting a little less chunky, so I wasn't surprised to hear that his weight was getting more "normal."  However, since we began feeding him solids, I notice him getting chunky again.  I thought maybe he would nurse less, but that doesn't seem to be the case... probably because we've been feeding him at our mealtimes instead of at the times when he would normally nurse.

We finally went to Wakulla Springs last weekend.  Ben did just fine on the drives there and back, and mostly stayed in the sling while we walked around and took a boat ride to look at the wildlife.  Here's a nice picture of our family out on the water:

Slowly, I'm beginning to see patterns of things that Ben really likes.  Here are some things that always seem to make him smile:

Meeting strangers
Looking at himself in the mirror
Being naked
Standing (with help)
Eating, especially with a dramatic approach of the spoon to his mouth
Being lifted in the air
Watching Sophie run in circles
Being wrapped up in his swaddling blanket right before it's time to sleep

He used to love baths, but not as much anymore.  We're kind of in between good places to wash him.  He kind of squirms out of his baby tub, but his sitting isn't quite good enough for the bathroom sink yet.  So he just doesn't get a bath very often.  Oh well, maybe that's why his skin is still so soft!  :)

On A Roll

Ben finally rolled over!  So far, he's done it 4 times... I think!  He always seems to do it when I'm not watching!  So either he can roll over, or the gnomes that live in our house and steal our camera chargers play with him when I leave the room for a minute.

Cute video of Ben in his new monstrosity (otherwise known as an exersaucer):



Nights have been great lately... Down at 8pm no problem, up at midnight and 4am (give or take an hour) to nurse.  Sometimes he wakes up really early -- like 7am -- and is all ready to greet the day, but actually if I just nurse him, I can put him down on his rainforest playmat and he'll be content for up to an hour while I go back to bed for a bit.  I guess his teeth are taking a little break.  Still nothing showing on top!  I can tell they bother him even though they're not out yet.

He's getting really good at grasping things, which of course he just puts in his mouth.  Recently I started reading books to him, and he really loves that!  I was reading to Sophie much earlier, for lack of anything better to do with her.  I don't think it will make a difference, but it illustrates how important it will be for me to make sure Ben is getting the attention he deserves.

Here is Ben watching his sister's antics:



Ben loves SuperWhy!  Something about that show really appeals to my kids.  It's not just the fact that it's TV... Ben will sit there and watch the entire 25-minute show, grinning at the characters.  Then as soon as the show ends, he starts fussing.  I really think Sophie benefited a lot from SuperWhy!, so I don't mind letting Ben watch 2 episodes a day with his sister.  It means I can have dinner ready when John gets home.

Here are some very cute photos of Ben from the past couple of weeks:

Next week should bring more updates.  Ben's Grammy Sue bought him a crib, which I hope we can pick up this weekend -- that should make possible some cute nursery pictures (dresser to follow at some later date).  He also has his 4-month appointment with the pediatrician next week, so I'll report on that as well.

Poor Ben

He's been crying a lot lately.  It's easy to be worried that this is a lasting change in his personality, but the real issues are that he has been sick for the past week, and his incoming teeth are bothering him.  So we'll see if his temperament improves over the next couple of weeks.  Meanwhile, I'm not always able to give him the comfort he needs.  Poor Ben.

I see his personality emerging in leaps and bounds through all this, though.  Not in any specific way.  When I notice these types of changes in my kids, it always scares me a little -- in a healthy way.  Each of these moments appears to me as a tiny burst of independence from me.  It's exciting and frightening to be reminded that these kids are their own people.

Fortunately, I think we finally have a very solid schedule.  Wake up between 7am-8am, sleep from about 10:30am-noon, sleep again from about 2:30pm-4:30pm, then down for the night again at 8pm.  There is still some variation in what happens at night, though.  Two weeks ago, I was exhausted because he would wake up to nurse three or four times during that twelve hours.  Now, it's just twice, but both times can be kind of strange.  Once he woke up at 10:30pm when he normally doesn't wake up until midnight or later.  Unfortunately I had a drink that night, so couldn't nurse him back to sleep right away.  Last night, he woke up at about 4am to nurse, which is what I want him to do.  However, he was hyper and agitated and did not go back to sleep!  So I tried rocking him for a little while, but he only seemed to get more hyper.  Finally, I put him in his swing, which he often sleeps in during the day.  I thought maybe being there would cue him that it was time to sleep.  No such luck... he cried for a half hour straight before finally falling asleep.  I felt terrible.  But all my options seemed to send a bad message: either that it's ok to be awake and playful in the middle of the night, that someone will come if he just cries long enough, or that no one will come no matter how much he cries.

I don't mean to sound too negative.  He's still VERY good-natured and loves to interact with people.  He'll give just about anyone a big smile!  Here are some extra pictures from the past month or two:

Happy New Year

Ben is now well into his 4th month of life, and he's doing great!  It's easy to forget about his weekly development when we're watching his sister do new, grand, and funny things every day.  But we know "Mr. Chunks" -- my nickname for him -- is taking it all in, and he's doing a wonderful job of adjusting to the world around him.  Here are some tidbits:

• He now weighs just over 17 pounds.  Woo!  He's just so adorably chunky I can hardly look at him without laughing.  Note: he isn't chubby.  No rolls.  He just has a really big frame for his age.  We hear his daddy was the same way.
• His schedule is really starting to become regular.  He takes one mini-nap in the morning, no more than 45 minutes, then one mega-nap in the afternoon at the same time as Sophie.  He goes to bed right around 9pm every night.  He wakes up in the 2am hour to nurse, then again in the 5am hour.  He wakes up in the morning at about the same time the rest of us do, sometime between 8:30-9:30am.  I love how his sleeping times are so convenient, but I have to say that I'm looking forward to the time when I don't need to wake up twice a night.  Sophie would wake up on her own for that first night feeding around 12:30am or so, so I started to just wake her up and feed her right before I went to bed; then she would just wake up once more in the night, which was ok with me.  With Ben not waking up until 2-something, though, waking him up right before I go to bed seems a little drastic for his natural schedule.  I guess I will wait and see how it evolves in the next couple of months.
• If he weren't so huge, I'd have real worries about his eating habits.  For one, he is a VERY fast nurser.  3-5 minutes per side, unless he is teething or nursing himself to sleep.  However, he doesn't usually drain the milk all the way.  I have tried to get him to, but when he's done, he's very adamant about it.  One might expect him to need to nurse more frequently, but I don't think that's the case.
• Often in the mornings when I try to feed him, he would rather just look up at me with the most adorable face and have us smile at each other for a while.  It's very cute, but it's always hard for me to believe he'd rather do that than drink his milk!
• He is very comforted by his dad.  He has very little patience for my efforts to cuddle him or sing him to sleep, but John can almost always put him to sleep at the piano.  He's also been falling asleep snuggled with his face against John's chest walking around... he would definitely not do that with me.

• He does enjoy it when I sing to him, but only if I'm really looking at him and he can tell I'm engaging with him.  I think he hears my singing as entertainment, not something soothing.  (Another difference from Sophie, who is still relaxed by my singing.)
• This week I started taking him and Sophie to the music time for kids at the public library.  He likes to stand on my legs and see everything, but today it really zonked him out.  He fell asleep on my lap while everyone was singing, and barely moved when I transferred him to his carseat.
• He doesn't really like to sit up.  He likes to stand (with help, obviously) or lay on his back.  When I prop him up sitting somewhere, he usually fusses.
• He hasn't rolled over yet, but he makes moves like he's going to.  He rolls onto his side, but seems kind of far from swinging that leg all the way over.
• He likes baths!  Even if he is in a bad mood, a bath is a good way to get his mind off of whatever he's upset about.
• He doesn't like being left alone for too long, like most babies I guess.  There are lots of times when he cries just for lack of a face to look at.  But fortunately he's not the type of baby to need to be held constantly.  We do have lots of gadgets to take the place of being held and stimulated, so maybe that's why.
• He smiles and laughs when I tickle him on his chest and neck.  It's pretty irresistable.
• He likes to watch Sophie's TV shows (still just SuperWhy! and Sesame Street).  Uh-oh.

I promise I will post some pictorial updates soon... it's just hard to keep track of and choose among our pictures these days, in addition to those that other people take, which we often rely on.  Thanks for your patience!

Almost Out of the "Fourth Trimester"

I can't believe that Ben hasn't even been born for three months!  The time has gone by really fast, but also he just does not seem like a two-month or even three-month-old baby.

Number one, he weighed 15 lbs 6 oz at his doctor visit this month, which is still in the 95th percentile.  He is snug in his 3-6 month clothes and fits nicely into the 6-9 month size.

Number two, he has been sleeping on a good schedule since he was born, and he was already smiling when he was 2 weeks old!

Number three, he has 2 teeth going on 4 already!  The bottom two front teeth are well through the gums.  One of the top two is just breaking through, and the other is about to.  This development is probably the most important aspect of his life right now.  I think he is very uncomfortable, and the things they make for kids to chew on while they're teething are too big for his mouth (this was true for Sophie as well).  His schedule is disturbed because he isn't sleeping well at night because of his discomfort, and he is sleeping more during the day to compensate.  We have to be careful not to let him get his days and nights mixed up when he was doing so well.  Last night was probably the worst night he's ever had in terms of being awake: he nursed continuously for about an hour and a half, and we weren't able to put him in bed until about 11:30pm.  Then he woke up again at 1:45am, and again at about 5:45am.  This last time he could not go back to sleep, so John had to walk him around for about 2 hours.  We felt like that was a big inconvenience, but we're super spoiled... all I have to do is talk to other moms to realize that!