Rain and Cold Must Go!

It's a cloudy and cold day today - only 46 degrees at 2:30 pm.  YUCK!  We had planned to go to a Spring Fling family something or other in the park yesterday, but it was rained out and rescheduled for today. Given the cold, I don't think we're venturing down there this afternoon either. Too bad - we were looking forward to getting out and about. Thomas and I took a long walk on Friday afternoon; it was really warm and he had been cooped up in the house and the car all morning.  He does great in the Baby Bjorn and it's great exercise for me.  The heavier he gets, the slower I am getting up the hills, though - ha! Thomas continues to make us laugh and keep us on our toes.  We never know what to expect!

Talking

We caught him on tape!

Talkin' and Kissin'

I won't write about sleep in this post... except to say, we're not getting enough!  We'll continue working on it and I'll update you another time. Thomas is cracking us up these days.  He is "talking" up a storm.  He can make all kinds of noises and blow raspberries and of course practices both of those at every opportunity.  He is trying it out during feedings - I ended up with a face full of squash the other day.  He thought it was big fun!!! He will turn to you if you call his name and he definitely has his favorite toys and activities. He can roll over from tummy to back, but can't yet do it the other way.  He'd love to crawl, but instead he "swims" and turns himself all around trying to get what he wants. We are starting to do some sign language with him - just the sign for eating right now.  Who knows what he thinks we are doing?  I'm trying to teach him to pucker up and kiss - so far he can get his mouth closed unless of course he tries to eat my nose :-) I'm enjoying being at home - it's a bit of a juggling act with work, Thomas, and our friend's baby, but completely worth it to see his smiling face at the end of every nap.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Our little darling - and this time I don't mean it sarcastically - slept from 6:35 pm to 6:05 am! Not a peep was heard throughout the long glorious night. Then, because he is GREAT, Tom fed the baby, played with the baby and put him down for his first nap.....all while I went back to sleep for 2 hours. What a great day it has been in the Terry/Pittard household.

Bleary Eyed

I haven't written in fear that people will flock here worried about my sanity-hahaha! In reality, we are struggling. Thomas is still waking up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep - last night he woke up at 3:50 am and was awake for an hour, then went back to sleep until 6:00. I, true to form, never went back to sleep. Fortunately, I was completely exhausted from the 5 hours of sleep the night before and had gone to bed early. It's looking like I'm going to have to go to bed when Thomas does! We are sticking with our routine at bedtime and making sure we are consistent with what we do in the middle of the night (we give him time to try to go back to sleep, do a diaper change if he's still crying, and then leave and don't go back). The earlier bedtime has helped him go to sleep easier, but the night waking thing is killing us. Hopefully this too shall pass and I'll forget how tired I was at this time of my life. Wish us luck some more :-)

10:00 is a reasonable bedtime for an adult

This is what happens when you get cocky and stay up a little later. Thomas woke up around 4:30 am, cried for a few minutes, slept for 10 minutes, cried for a few minutes, slept for 10 more minutes, cried for a few minutes - you get the picture. At 5:30 am we swaddled him, gave him a pacifier and put him back to sleep. He slept until 6:20 am and woke up very happy. So we began our day... from 4:30 am on I got 5 minutes of sleep (from 6:15 am to 6:20 am) and so don't feel my best today. We are at a loss- he's not waking up to eat, he's napping well, he's going to bed early enough, etc. etc. Hopefully, one day, this will all get better.

Wish us luck!

A Great Day!

We have a great kid - crazy cute as a matter of fact! He was so happy today - he's making all kinds of noises and babbling and loves for you to answer back. He's been hanging out in his exersaucer and trying to reach all the toys. He hasn't yet learned to turn himself around, but I can only imagine his surprise when he does. He ate a bunch of food today - now that I'm home I can give him food along with his bottles during the day to help him learn to eat it even better than he already does. So far sweet potatoes are his favorite. We're going to introduce a green vegetable soon- either peas or green beans. I can only imagine that he won't love those as much - hahahaha! Our nanny share baby was here today as well. She comes 3 days a week. While they were playing today they kept grabbing each other's hand. I tried to get a picture, but couldn't stop laughing - they weren't playing, they were trying to put the other's hand in their mouths! Apparently drooling all over their own hands just won't do anymore. Of course I'll mention sleep - Thomas woke up at 6:00 today. Much more reasonable! We are ready for the early start, but continue to hope that he sleeps later and later. Last night and tonight he went to sleep very easily - 5 minutes to sleep with none of that awful screaming from last week. A much more pleasant start to his slumber for everyone.

It wasn't the weather

Apparently darling Thomas has determined that 5:15 is in fact the time that we should all get up! We're still doing the "cry-it-out" thing, but he's only going back to sleep for 10 minutes after 30 minutes of crying.  So.... it seems that it's because he's starving!  He's eating his full bottle plus food 3 times a day - he can't eat a lot of food, but it's more and more every day.  We fed him as much as he could take all day today and hope that it helps.  If he wakes up at 5:15 tomorrow, we're going to feed him a bottle in the dark in his room and hope we can put him right back to sleep.  We'll see.......  This morning, Tom let me go back to bed and he stayed with Thomas until he went back to sleep.  It was heaven- I got to sleep until 8:30.  We've also discovered that putting Thomas to bed earlier helps him go to sleep faster.  Tonight it only took 5 minutes after we put him in his crib - he was out at 6:50.  We hate putting him to sleep so early if he can only sleep 10 or 11 hours, but it's clearly the time he's tired and if we wait later, he screams for 30 minutes to go to sleep, wakes at the same early hour, and is much less happy. Maybe as he starts eating more during the day and taking shorter naps, he'll sleep longer at night - hey, we can dream right?  We took him to the park after his last nap today - it was really warm so we took off his socks and let him "stand" in the grass.  He's fun to watch while he's doing new things.  We're thrilled that the weather is getting warmer and that the park is close to the house.  We sometimes only have 30 or 45 minutes between his last nap and his bath, so we can only get out for a few minutes.  But what a great few minutes they were!!!!  We continue to be really happy and feel really lucky that we have such a great little boy in our lives.

No Tornado Here

Just terrible thunderstorms at our house. It hit last night around 9:30. Tom and I were headed to bed (yes, we still try to sleep when the baby sleeps!) and heard the warnings. We opened the baby's door just in case we had to grab him and waited for a while. The tornado hit a couple of miles from here and we didn't even lose power... crazy.... There was another round this morning.

I'm going to believe that the storm this morning was why our darling son decided to wake up at 5:15am. We waited a few minutes, changed his diaper and put him back to bed - he cried until 5:40am and went back to sleep. At 5:50am the thunder and lightening got heavy and he woke up again - we decided at that point we were too close to his usual time for getting up and might as well get going. Hopefully this was all related to the weather and not anything else. Wouldn't you know.... for the first time since he was born I wasn't waking up every 10 minutes from 4:00am on.... One day these blog entries might not be about sleep. It could happen......maybe........

Sleeping Adventure #625348594783

No.... it only feels like we've been talking about his sleep our whole lives! He was a much happier little boy after all his naps today and went down much easier tonight. He only made noises for about 20 minutes, and most of those weren't the screaming fits from the last two nights. Tom and I decided to sit on the porch and have a drink until Thomas went to sleep so that we didn't have to listen to it for so long. We took the monitor, turned off the volume and watched the lights - only checking in on the sound every few minutes. Much nicer than pacing the den. Thank goodness spring is coming soon and we may be able to do that more often. Even better, maybe the time between putting him down and going to sleep will get shorter.

I'm officially a working at home mom now. It's very weird and so great, though I have to say that having Tom home this week made me completely enjoy work again. I'm not ready to switch places though - I'm definitely staying home :-)

One more time

So everyone involved survived Tuesday. Thomas and Caroline did a little tag team routine that resulted in only about 5 minutes together, total for the day. On the up side, I pretty much only had one to worry about at a time. The hard part, was that there was no stop from about 9am until pickup at 4:30. They both napped, they both ate, they both had diaper changes, and we're on tap to do it again today. Thomas is having a good nap right now, and Caroline should be arriving in about a half hour. No telling what today may hold, I'm sort of assuming that they'll both need attention at exactly the same time. Tara tells me that they were both very patient with her when they were eating together last week. Thomas slept pretty well last night, seemed to be in a good mood at breakfast time, and has napped for over an hour and 40 minutes as of now, so ... maybe ... dare I hope ... it'll go OK. I go back to work tomorrow:( I think this time is going to make me miss being here even more. Oh well. Tara will be here with him (them), and that'll be good!

No Swaddle

We've gotten rid of Thomas's swaddle at night. He was waking us up in the middle of the night because he was bustin' loose! Of course when Tom came in to reswaddle he was giddy with delight at the thought of playing with Daddy. Well, you can imagine the screaming when he was put right back in his crib and the door was closed... he clearly didn't realize that 2:30 AM is not playtime-hahaha. We decided enough was enough and we were going cold turkey.

YIKES - he cried/screamed/wailed/pleaded for 35 minutes last night and 30 minutes tonight. Hopefully this will decrease more and more once he gets used to going to sleep with his arms free. So far though, we are not enjoying it one little bit. We have noticed over the past few days that he's not going to sleep as easily, but he's tired earlier - he just doesn't seem like he's really himself from his last nap until bedtime. Who knows?

Maybe one day I won't have to worry about Thomas's sleep and our lack of it - that would be GREAT!

ps- Tomorrow is my last day at work. I've been given the okay to work from home, so I will be able to earn a little income as people need me and I will do what I can from home.

220...221... Whatever it takes

I'm Mr. Mom this week.  Tara's at work to tie up some ends and work out some details, before she takes on the task of being stay-at-home-mom and also trying to find income sources that she can do while being home with Thomas.  One of those things they forgot to tell us ... Just how much having a baby changes your priorities.  Certainly, we expected it to happen and be big, but I don't think we were prepared for the degree to which we would feel the need to put all other things after his well-being.  We both feel pretty great about the fact that we think we've been able to work out a way to make this happen, at least for the short term.  Having spent today at home with him, I am even more glad that it'll be one of us with him.  He's really amazing, and having just that one day, I feel somehow a little more connected than before.

I put him to sleep for a nap and when he started to stir, I stood for over a half an hour at the door watching through the crack so he wouldn't see me.  Later, after he rolled over (twice), and stood with a look that I swear was pride, because he was standing with only the help of one of daddy's hands, we went for a walk around the block.  We stood on the roots of a large Oak tree and I put his hand against the massive trunk, knowing that I was with him the first time he ever touched a tree.  We watched the carpool parade for the school next door, and he looked at me with a wonder that I couldn't quite interpret exactly.  Then he napped for two hours late in the afternoon and woke to Mommy back home to lift him lovingly out of the crib.  He ate, he slept, his clothes were relatively clean, the house didn't burn down, and we all get to go to bed and try it again tomorrow.  Tomorrow ... Caroline comes for a longer than usual day.  Two babies, four and a half months old, and me ... taking care of them.  I'm sure it'll all be fine. 

Going to be staying at home

Next week is my last week at work. I'm going to be staying home for a while. It will definitely be a change of pace, but I'm excited to be doing it. After our nanny debacles, I feel better about being the one who cares for Thomas! I'll also be keeping the other little girl from our nanny share for a few days a week. I'll earn a little bit of income, and Thomas will still have his playmate.

Thomas slept well last night. We put him to bed at 6:30. He made a lot of noise until he fell asleep at 6:45. He woke up at 5:50 this morning, but since we moved the clocks ahead, it was now 6:50. We'll see if it makes a difference for his naps and bedtime today. I'd love it if he would sleep until 6:30 or 6:45 every day, but I seriously doubt it's going to happen! We aren't complaining, though - he's sleeping around 11 hours every night and that's great for us :-)

Day Light Savings Time

Well, it should be interesting. Tonight we put Thomas to bed earlier than usual in preparation for moving the clocks ahead one hour. Since he wakes us up between 5:45 and 6:15 usually, maybe he'll be on a schedule we like better :-) Somehow I doubt that it works this way!