Enthralled

Gammy and Pop are visiting from Columbia.  Thomas is definitely on full entertainment alert. He is ready with no notice to laugh or play or flirt! 

Today we went to the Summer Shade Festival at Grant Park near our house.  Thomas was great- he loved all the people and watched everything that was going on around him. Tom snapped this picture as Thomas was watching a performer juggle and do other tricks during a kids' show. 

Ahhhh...Sleep

A better day was had around here! Much less crying at naptime and no crying at bedtime. We can watch him on the video monitor and he was hilarious! He played in his crib for about 30 minutes and then laid down to go to sleep. He squirms all over the place while he's sleeping and this is where we found him right before we went to bed.

Ferber Anyone?

Since we are avid readers of all information related to baby sleep, we know that Ferberizing your baby means checking in on them at progressively longer intervals until they fall asleep. The verb Ferberizing is from the name Ferber...the doctor who first talked about this method. We don't do this because putting Thomas down and leaving him to eventually fall asleep has been working for us. He is still waking early, but going to sleep well most nights and staying asleep. Because we were feeling confident, he has decided to throw a few wrenches into the mix.

First, he is taking FOREVER to go to sleep for naps and is waking up at least once during both of them. Second, he will let me feed him breakfast, but is refusing to eat lunch or dinner if I feed him. He will only eat what he can feed himself. He's eating a lot of little crackers these days after I force a few bites of other things into his mouth.

So back to Ferber. Today was the day to tackle naps with a modified Ferber. I got him drowsy, put him in the crib and silently pronounced, "Let the screaming commence!" It did. For the next hour I went in every 15 minutes for one minute of soothing and then left again. He finally fell asleep and stayed asleep for the whole nap. I did the same thing for nap #2. I had to go in one time and he took only about 20 minutes total to fall asleep. He had a great nap that he slept through entirely. We decided that to be consistent we would go in every 15 minutes at bedtime as well. Hmmm...there was only squirming and changing positions for a while, but no crying and so no parental visits! Whew- wish me luck tomorrow.

The food thing is what it is. We're not worried about his size! He'll eat cheese and Cheerios and crackers until he won't :-) Note the messy bib- it's hard to force a baby to eat. I got a lot in him, a lot on him and then let him have some crackers.


This is where I found him earlier today

Baby Olympics

Untying the bumper (note the gate to his left attempting to corral him in one place)



And the dismount...



We give it a 10!

The Best Laid Plans

So we've been putting Thomas down at about 7:00 in the hopes that he'll get a little more sleep. He's up at 6:00 no matter what, so we figured that we'll let him get some more on the front end so that he's a more resilient happy baby. Wednesday night worked fine...we put him down at 7:00... he squirmed around for a few minutes like normal and was asleep by 7:15. We had a much happier baby on Thursday morning. Thursday night comes and we do the same thing. Well, 45 scream filled minutes later the baby finally passed out in an awkward heap in the corner of the crib. Good grief! Needless to say, he woke up at 6:00 and was a slobbering mess for much of the morning.

This too shall pass :-)

In other news, he can walk really well if he holds on to both of my hands!

Ten Months Old

Baby For Sale. Very cute and playful....cruising well, crawls fast, laughs a lot. Has 2 teeth, others may not EVER come in. Goes to sleep early and easily, wakes exceptionally early in the morning. Likes playing chase and throwing towels on the floor.

Cruising!

Where's Thomas?

I was typing at the computer the other day, heard a noise, and this is what I saw.


You never know where you'll find him :-) I can assure you that it's not asleep though! We continue to battle the early morning waking. Today we tried to change his diaper and put him back in the crib like it was the middle of the night. He may not be able to tell time, but he was sure that he wasn't going back to sleep. Hysterics ensued and not much fun was had by all.

Little Monkey

The quarantine has been lifted. Tom is feeling much better but still has some lingering coughing and sniffling. He's worked hard all week to get his classroom ready for the new year. The kids come back Monday and Tom is in a new space - an addition was built onto the gym that will house his program. Supposedly he'll have a door to his classroom in a week or two :-)

Thomas and I are keeping busy! I'm working to get ready to begin online teaching and generally work on that while Thomas naps. He's crawling and cruising and laughing and keeping us on our toes...you never know where the little monkey will end up. He hasn't yet gotten his top teeth, but his gums are bulging and he's a drool machine.

His sleep is better - he's still waking up too early, but at least the other parts are good.

Trying to climb the nightstand and really mad that he can't :-)


Kilroy was here!

Quarantine!

Things here have been........interesting. On Saturday, Tom spent the day moving most of the mulch in Atlanta into and around our yard. It looks MUCH better :-) By the end of the day he was feeling pretty achy and was sneezing a lot. I was also sneezing and had a crazy runny nose. We thought that the mulch was causing allergy reactions for both of us, muscle pain for him, etc. etc. By Sunday, it was clear that this was wishful thinking. Out came the saline spray, humidifier and nasal aspirator for Thomas. You can imagine his delight. The nasal aspirator is beginning to cause him to scream just on sight! Anyway, after a while it seemed that Tom was the one who was going to be hit the hardest. For his first day back to work yesterday he had a fever of 102. Fortunately he could get in to see our doctor and he diagnosed an upper respiratory infection and an ear infection. An antibiotic (z-pack) was prescribed and is working magic. Tom was back at work this morning doped up on antibiotics and Sudafed. He's not feeling great, but is hanging in there. Thomas is getting saline spray, Vicks and a humidifier and I'm chasing everyone around with Lysol and drinking Airborne like it's water. We should be safe for the public soon.

Drool Factory

A picture is worth a thousand words

Are playdates magic?

We had a playdate yesterday with Cassie and Garner. Was it magic? I don't know, but Thomas slept from 7:30 pm to 7:00 am with nary a peep. We were greeted by a happy waving baby this morning! We have a playdate with Kelly and Caroline today....maybe he'll learn to drive. Hahahahahahahaha!

A Boy and His Towel

Thomas's towel game continues to evolve. Now he doesn't even need to be in his walker...he just grabs the towel and goes! He checks back to see if we're chasing him and then squeals when he sees us coming. It's good that he's cute. I think he knows I'm collecting pictures for the auction. He's also started waving when we wave to him...more cuteness in his favor.

I won't write too much about sleep except to say that 6:20 AM is NOT a reasonable time to get up!

Getting the towel...

On his way....

And gone!

A Mixed Bag

So Thomas is a baby full of surprises. We put him down last night fully expecting tears and screaming because even though he was tired, he was really awake. He squirmed around for a little while and went to sleep. Not a tear was shed! We naively thought that our plan was working :-) At 4:40 this morning, we realized how foolish we really are. After 10 minutes of him not settling, we went in, changed his diaper and calmed him down. Tom then put him right back in the crib to work it out on his own. 45 MINUTES LATER he finally went to sleep. So, he is learning again how to do all of this on his own and we weren't pacing the floors with him in our arms....but, it's really good that I don't have to be anywhere until 10 this morning and that Tom wasn't planning on going anywhere early in the day.

Aaaahhhhh Sleep!

He cried for a while when we put him to bed....a long while, but less than the night before. He was asleep around 8 and slept until.......wait for it......7 o'clock this morning! We found a much happier baby than the recent past. We're finding much happier parents than the recent past as well.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at Lee's house in Atlanta for a Boccelism event. Thomas was great and played with his toys on the deck for a couple of hours. He enjoyed watching all the people and being outside for a while.

Back to Reality

We had a great visit with Gammy and Pop. Thomas was a definite entertainer the whole time we were there... shaking his head, making funny noises and falling into pillows! We got to see Cousin Drew and Uncle Trent and spend plenty of time in the pool. Thomas is getting better and better at moving around and can pull himself up and use furniture to walk around. Fun to watch and not so fun to try to leave him alone!

He is also depending more and more on us to help him sleep. He woke us up almost every night we were away and needs us to rock him almost totally to sleep at bedtime. Because we know he can do better than that, we did our normal bedtime routine last night, rocked him for only a couple of minutes and then put him down. He was an unhappy baby about that and let us know about it for 58 very long minutes. Fortunately he slept through the night. Though he woke us up at 6:30 this morning, he at least remembered how to get himself to sleep! Sneaky little boy to get us trained like that- good thing for us we finally caught on!