Someone does not want to get up this morning. Which, believe me, I completely understand. This happens like .000743% of the time.
‘Family’ Category
-
Sleepy boy
February 2, 2012
Category Jamieson | Tags: | No Comments
-
Fun fishing game
February 1, 2012
We cut out and decorated some fish from origami paper, attached a paper clip to each one, and then went fishing with a stick, string, and magnet.
Category Games, Jamieson | Tags: | No Comments
-
Becoming a boy
February 1, 2012
Good lord. Apparently I have a little boy and not a baby anymore.
Category Jamieson | Tags: | No Comments
-
Learning to sleep “by all self,” timeouts, potties, etc.
June 14, 2011
I’m going to stop apologizing for not updating this blog very often anymore, seeing as how I am only updating every few months, if that. I guess that’s the new normal…. for now, anyway.
And if you’re not interested in reading about the daily minutiae of being a parent of a toddler, you can probably just skip reading the rest of this post! Sorry, my two loyal readers, parenting pretty much consumes my life at this point.
*****
Our toddler is officially two and a half years old. WOW. This has been both the longest and shortest 2-1/2 years of my life. At a very basic level, I’m pleased that I have managed to keep another human being alive, safe, and as happy as relatively possible, for that long. At a higher level, I’m very proud of how well we have seemed to do in the genetic lottery. Sure, he’s got these food allergy issues and he’s very strong-willed and stubborn. But he also seems to be seriously intelligent and can be very very sweet when he wants to.
He is now pretty much talking in full sentences. We long ago stopped keeping track of how many words he can say because he can say nearly anything that he wants to now. I’d say his vocabulary is 500+ words.
He knows all his letters and their phonic sounds, and can count to twenty (and beyond, with a bit of prompting). He can draw a few of the letter shapes with crayon or chalk. He knows the words to most of the songs we sing to him, and can sing along fairly well, and sometimes in tune. One of his favorites is Seven Days of the Week (I Never Go to Work) by They Might Be Giants – he can sing the whole thing.
Jamie's happy face drawings look somewhat like this
He loves drawing, and his favorite thing to draw is “happy faces.” They look sorta like this (see my interpretation at right).
Unfortunately, he hasn’t yet outgrown his tendency to hit (or scratch) when he gets angry. I guess it’s normal for a 2 year old to be unable to control himself, but we keep trying, over and over again. He gets time outs when he hits or scratches, or for serious infractions of obedience. He definitely does not like the time outs (only 2 minutes long at this point), and we try to explain to him in simple language that we don’t hit (or scratch, or that he needs to listen to mommy and daddy and do what we say), that hitting hurts, and that it’s OK to be mad but not OK to hit. So far, none of this seems to be having an effect since he’ll hit us again the next time he gets angry, but I just hope that on some level he’s getting it. We’ve tried offering him alternatives to hitting, such as breathing deeply or using words to tell us that he’s mad, but he either can’t or won’t go that route.
One book I read said that for time outs to be effective, we need to show that we are sad that he made the choice (to hit, or whatever got him into timeout in the first place), and we are sad that he is having to pay the consequences for his choice. This is kind of hard to do when you as a parent are royally pissed off at just having been clocked across the face by a flailing 2 year old. Another book said that the best technique is to show no emotion at all, to just set the little offender in timeout and basically ignore them.
Jamie is constantly saying things like “Daddy be happy.” and “Mommy be sad.” — he wants to control our emotions by just ordering us to be happy or to be sad. He likes having control over his environment and the people around him. When he’s in timeout, he knows that he has upset us, and so through his crying he is pleading with us “Mommy be happy, mommy be happy, mommy be happy.”
We have started telling him that he cannot make us be sad or happy just by demanding it, but he can control his own behaviour, and that his behaviour influences mommy and daddy’s happiness. It’s a fine line and a hard concept for someone his age, I know.
And while I understand the idea behind appearing sad that he’s made a poor choice, part of me thinks he needs to understand that his actions can cause other people to be angry, and that anger can be directed at him, and that it’s something that he doesn’t like and should change his actions so he can avoid it happening in the future. I’m not talking about corporal punishment — we are firmly against spanking or hitting our child for any reason. But like this morning he smacked me as I was trying to get him dressed, and I had a tough time controlling my anger. I didn’t yell but I put him in timeout and I definitely raised my voice more than I normally do, telling him that I was angry with him for hitting me.
Maybe not the best choice, but then again – shouldn’t he know that his actions can make Mommy angry?
At any rate, I’m pretty sure I’m not doing timeouts right. I let him know I’m unhappy, I ask him why he is in timeout (he usually tells me correctly what he did to get there), I explain that we don’t hit, because hitting hurts, and I sit there with him the whole time – usually. I think maybe I need to just have a sad look on my face, set him in timeout without telling him what he did wrong (’cause he knows), and leave the room for the 2 minutes. Then after it’s over, no rehashing of anything, no demanding an apology or a kiss or hug — just go on about our day like nothing happened.
It’s worth a try, I guess.
In health news, he’s been off his steroid inhaler since some time early this spring. His new gastroenterologist (whom we really like — Dr. Michael Russo at Children’s Medical Center in Plano) felt he didn’t need to be on it anymore. It seems that he was right, although it’s kind of hard to tell these days. Jamie has days where his eczema flares up for reasons we can’t figure out, and he also has days where he’s super cranky for no discernible reason. Could be that he just doesn’t feel well, or that he’s managed to ingest something that he’s sensitive to. I’m not sure the inhaler was really helping too much with that aspect of things, anyway.
He’s been sleeping through the night most nights (this means about 8:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., with some variation day to day) since late August of last year. And this has been beyond awesome. However, we have always stayed in his room with him until he falls asleep, a process that can take anywhere from 30 minutes on a good night to an hour and a half on a bad night (and the same thing with nap time). Since I usually do bedtime duty (maybe 6 out of 7 nights), this presented two big challenges to me, personally:
- By the time I was done putting Jamie to bed, it would be generally close to 9 p.m. I try to go to bed around 10:30 or 11, so I only had a very short window of time to cook dinner, eat dinner, clean up from dinner, do my chores around the house, plan meals, make lists, complete any freelance work that needed to be done, spend some quality time with my husband, spend a bit of time watching TV/reading/having fun/talking/winding down, and anything else that I wished to do that evening. (Caveat to my dear husband: this is not meant to make it sound like you don’t do the cooking or chores. You do. It’s hard for both of us to fit everything in to that short time frame.)
- Sitting in that quiet darkened room for an hour signaled my body to shut down, that it was time for me to go to bed too. So after I was done with Jamie for the evening, I had pretty much no energy or motivation to do anything. This meant that if I was going to complete any of the aforementioned evening tasks, it would take a monumental force of will, which I usually just didn’t have. So consequently, I would pretty much scrounge for something to eat and sit on the couch exhausted, thinking about everything that I SHOULD be doing but wasn’t, until bed time.
So a while back, we realized that we needed to start the long, gradual process of teaching him how to fall asleep on his own. It began with us lying beside his bed, holding his widdle hand, until he fell asleep – this was pretty much our baseline routine for a long time. Then we moved to us sitting in the rocking chair while he stayed in bed. Then we moved to sitting beside his door. And a couple of weeks ago, we decided to try The Next Big Step, sitting OUTSIDE his door while he fell asleep.
I planned to make this an extremely gradual process, taking place over the course of at least a month. I though I’d begin with opening his door a crack while I sat beside it, waiting for him to fall asleep. Over the course of the month, I would widen the crack in the door until it was mostly open. Then I would gradually move from inside the room, to sitting in the doorway, to sitting outside in the hallway. And if all that went OK, I would very gradually close his door until it was shut.
The very first night I tried this, I opened the door just about two inches and plopped myself down into my usual spot, lying by the door in the dark. And what should happen next? Neko, the big fat striped kitty, nosed her way in through the crack and slipped past me, collar tags jangling in the quiet room. Of course Jamieson popped right up from bed and said, “Mama! Neko in Jamie’s room!” I sighed and thought, GREAT. Thanks, cat, for interrupting and waking him back up. But then something occurred to me. I could USE this situation to my advantage. So I scooped up Neko, walked over to Jamie’s bed, and said, “OK, baby, say goodnight to Neko. I need to take her out of your room now.” He said nighty night to the kitty, and I opened his door all the way and set her down outside. Then I said to him, “Jamie, I’m going to sit here in your doorway and make sure she doesn’t come back in, OK?” He said, “OK.” So… I sat down outside his doorway with the door about halfway open, and prevented Neko from re-entering until Jamie fell asleep about 45 minutes later.
I should clarify that he loves his kitties to death, and he is not afraid of them. He just feels, apparently, that they don’t belong in his room at night.
The next night, I allowed Neko to come in shortly after he’d crawled into bed. I told him again, “Uh-oh, here’s Neko. I’ll take her out and sit by your door to make sure she doesn’t come back inside.” It took about 40 minutes for him to fall asleep that night.
Yes, I threw the cat under the bus and used her as an excuse. Sometimes you just have to grasp at any available opportunity…
And so it went, night after night. Now it’s been about two weeks, and as soon as we are done snuggling and singing songs, I tell him goodnight, give him a kiss, and go sit outside the doorway, with the door open about four inches. No drama, no fanfare, it’s just the routine.
(Usually when I tell him goodnight, he asks me to “lay by Jamie bed for few minutes,” which I’m more than happy to do. I lay there, hold his hand, and about ten minutes later I kiss him goodnight and go.)
He actually can’t see if I’m there or not when the door is only open a few inches. Sometimes I’ll quietly head downstairs before he’s asleep. I’m pretty sure that he knows I’m not there anymore, but I haven’t brought it up yet. Not sure if I should or not.
And Doc has been doing the same thing at nap time (although I think that he generally hangs out in the hallway outside the bedroom until he’s sure Jamie is asleep, which is definitely a good idea at naptime. Naptime is a whole different animal than bedtime).
SO… the point of this long detailed story is that I feel, physically, MILES better than I did when I was lying in the dark waiting for him to fall asleep. I don’t stress anymore about how long it’s taking him to go to sleep, watching the minutes tick by and my free evening time evaporate before my eyes. My body doesn’t think that it’s MY bedtime, too. I have energy and a positive attitude and can accomplish basic household chores before bedtime.
And I am also happy that he’s learning to fall asleep by himself (or “by all self,” as he says). It’s an important skill to learn, but a tough one. Doc thinks (and I agree for the most part) that it’s been tougher on him than he’s letting on, and it may be why he’s been a bit crabbier than usual for the past few days. He lets things build up and then it comes out in a fury of hitting or scratching or just general “unexplained” anger and crabbiness.
We’ll just need to keep an eye on his moods and attitudes, and perhaps think about adjusting the routine a bit and see if it has a positive effect.
For my last bit of update (for those of you who are still reading and have not fallen asleep), we’re attempting to slowly introduce potty training. He was pretty interested for a while around the beginning of the year, but he resists trying more than he accepts it these days. And we definitely don’t want to be pushy about it or turn it into any sort of conflict or battle (because we will LOSE). We’ve been trying to make it a bit more routine, just to get him used to it, by setting him on the potty first thing in the morning and also before he goes to bed, when we go to the bathroom to brush teeth. No fanfare, no drama, no asking him if he wants to — just unfasten the diaper and set him down without a fuss, like it is a completely normal routine thing to do. He was a bit resistant to it at first, but we keep trying over and over and so now he’ll generally sit down without complaint and he’ll actually go about 75% of the time. And he is SO PROUD of himself when he does manage to go. I think it’s just going to take a long long time with him — like most things. All three of us fare better in the end if we pay attention to his signals and take things slowly, on his schedule.
Category Family, Jamieson, Parenting | Tags: | 1 Comment
-
More vocabulary, and love and logic
March 13, 2011
Jamieson’s talking up a storm lately. His vocabulary is probably well over 200 words by now (we’ve stopped counting), and he’s saying things like airplane, helicopter, lemur, brown, black, pink, shark, pants, please, walk, toy, play, fourteen, nineteen, paint, rock, battery. He is coming out with a lot of these words without us prompting “can you say…?”. Like today we were coming down the stairs with one of his bath toys to give to Doc to replace the batteries, and he looked up at me and said “New… battery!” He mangled the pronunciation of “battery” a little bit, of course, but I knew exactly what he was saying.
Overall his pronunciation is improving drastically, too.
He is also using sentences of up to five words. We taught him to say “I want” when he wants something, rather than just saying “Meeee! meee! meee!” over and over while pointing to something, or saying the name of the object over and over again. This morning at breakfast, with oatmeal on his hand and face, he busted out with “I want wipe, Mommy, please.”
One of the most amazing things I have ever experienced is that kid’s smile when he knows he’s said a new word or sentence correctly. “Smile” isn’t even an adequate word for it — it’s like a 500-watt bulb comes on and lights up his face. It’s the most joyous expression of pure happiness and self-pride I have ever seen. After the brilliant 500-watt “new battery” smile from this evening, I made a promise to myself that I would never, ever, EVER do anything to crush that feeling in him.
I’ve been reading “Parenting with Love and Logic” by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. I only get a page or two at a time because I’m reading it at the table while feeding Jamie his breakfast and dinner. So far I am in agreement with a lot of the principles they are teaching, but my gut also tells me that some of the reactions and techniques they espouse are just too vindictive. One of their big tenets is saving “consequences” for later. Like, ok, you can disobey me/make a poor choice now, and I’m not going to punish you, but tomorrow when you ask me to take you to school/your friend’s house/your soccer game, I’m going to be just too busy. It really seems vindictive to me, but maybe it’s just that because I have a 2 year old and these techniques are not appropriate yet. The consequences for his actions need to be immediate at this point or he’s not going to understand what’s going on.
Parenting is teaching me that I have to go with my gut every time — it’s leading me in the right direction. Heck, if we hadn’t gone with our guts and fired our idiot pediatrician when Jamieson was 5 months old, we might have never found out that he had food allergies.
Category Family, Jamieson, Parenting | Tags: | No Comments
-
Formula Isn’t Poison
January 27, 2011
Story written by author Teresa Strasser about breastfeeding. The best line: “Yes, I liked nursing. It was pretty sweet knowing I could keep my baby alive with my boobs.”
Formula Isn’t Poison
Every week, I go to a breastfeeding moms support group. I stopped nursing three months ago.
At first, I tried to blend — made my baby a bottle of formula beforehand and fed it to him during the group hoping people would assume it was previously pumped breast milk. But I’ve gotten brazen. Now I just take out my little bottles of Good Start and feed him right there, as the other moms try not to stare in horror.
I guess I’m just lonely.
Any guilt I had about weaning at 4 months is healed by these weekly meetings — the nonstop obsessing about what size breast shields to use, what kinds of supplements to use, how often to pump and for how long, how to wake up in the middle of the night to pump so the supply doesn’t drop, the best way to freeze and store milk, how to deal with plugged ducts and babies that need to nurse every hour through the night.
Sometimes, I want to raise my hand and say, “Listen, you crazy mamas, it’s not all about the breastfeeding. I’m sure you can bond with your babies in lots of ways that don’t involve turning your lives inside out just to make sure you never expose your baby to an ounce of formula. It’s not poison.”
But I was one of those crazy mamas. I took the herbal supplements and drank the tea. I tried to go as long as I could, but at 4 months, supply just couldn’t meet demand. Did I want to make motherhood all about nursing, or did I want to let go knowing I did the best I could?
Well, I didn’t want to let go, but my body was in charge, and that’s how it went. The well ran dry. To see the pressure these women put on themselves is to look in a mirror. Would I have been a better mother if I chose to get up every couple of hours and pump so I could keep nursing? Or would I have been a sleep-deprived mess who let myself get brainwashed by my peers?
So I go to the group. Maybe just to kill time, but maybe also to feel better about the formula thing because these moms look downright miserable. In the end, instead of feeling inferior, I just feel relieved. I have enough crazy obsessions without adding this one. And as much as I truly understand that breast milk is superior, I wonder about all the struggles that seem to go with nursing a baby.
It’s natural.
It’s right. It’s what Mother Nature intended. And yet, so is breathing, and most moms don’t go to breathing support groups. My pediatrician says we need help to nurse properly because we no longer live in communal situations with aunts and cousins and elders who could show us how to do it. Stores and groups and books are the new “village” it takes to raise a child, or at least to nurse it successfully.
The dark secret for me is that I had to work. Worse: I chose to work. I had a book to write, and I went off for four hours a day and let the baby have a bottle. Maybe that’s why I stopped making enough milk. The less I made, the more formula I needed to use, the less I produced, the more I used formula, the more demand shrunk, supply shrunk, the whole thing unraveled, and it’s all my fault for working. Or that’s what I tell myself when I’m kicking myself in the butt about the whole thing.
The pendulum has swung so far since the days when doctors advised moms that formula was best, when nursing was seen as radical and kooky. Now, if you don’t nurse your baby for at least six months, you are a selfish failure. In the tacit competition between moms over who can nurse the longest, the competition that may exist only in my mind: I LOSE.
Yes, I liked nursing. It was pretty sweet knowing I could keep my baby alive with my boobs. I did feel like a natural woman. At the pediatrician, I felt like a rock star. Around formula-feeding moms, I felt a potent mixture of superiority and pity. And after awhile, I felt like an idiot for my nonstop focus on how I could keep it all going.
When I see what these nursing moms are going through, I don’t miss it. I’m angry that the unintended consequence of this well-meaning “breast is best” movement is to guilt working moms into nursing on demand, all the time, all night long, for six months or until most jobs won’t want you back. The accidental message is that if you don’t press the pause button on every aspect of your life to nurse your baby, you are the worst thing in the world: a bad mom.
So maybe I don’t go to the nursing moms support group just because I’m lonely. Maybe I go because I’m guilty.
Teresa Strasser is an Emmy-winning television writer and a multimedia personality. She is the author of a new book, “Exploiting My Baby,” the rights to which have been optioned by Sony Pictures.
Category Family, Parenting | Tags: | No Comments
-
Early fall update 2010
November 1, 2010
It’s been a while since I updated; guess I’ve been busy.
In early September, I went in to work one morning and found my computer frozen up and making a loud clicking sound. When I restarted it, I got a screen with a blinking question mark. Uh oh. Our IT guy was unable to fix it, so they had to get a new hard drive for me. And guess who hadn’t backed up her work lately? And it wasn’t just my current projects that were lost, it was my entire e-mail archive (13 years’ worth of work emails), my carefully categorized photography library, stock photos I’d purchased, all my administrative documents including annual reviews and other important documentation, and other things that I am still discovering that I no longer have.
My office has no official daily-backup system; everyone is just supposed to copy their current projects to a central server at the end of the day. Even if I had been doing that, the rest would still have been lost.
The following weekend I went out and bought a new 1TB backup drive for my home computer, since I haven’t been very good about backing that up, either. I think I’m going to bring in one of my older backup drives to use at work as a Time Machine drive. I just know myself and I know I’m not going to remember, every day, to spend 20 minutes copying my projects at 5 p.m. I need a system that does it for me.
We spent more than 2 weeks in September at my parents’ house in Sequim, WA. The weather was wonderful: very cool, some days rainy and some days sunny. Jamie had tons of time with “Ama” and “Diddah” (as he calls his grandparents) and wanted to spend every moment of the day outside. There was lots of room for him to run and play, unlike at home. He had a cold when we arrived, which he promptly shared with everyone in the house. We went to the beach a couple of times, a national park, and then Doc and I spent a couple of days in Victoria, BC.
Shortly after we arrived back home, our TV broke. We had to get a new one; we had already poured so much money into repairing the old TV and there was no guarantee that another expensive repair would actually fix the problem. We got a Sony Bravia and hung it on the wall — and boy do I like having a TV that can be hung on the wall. It’s funny, I don’t think you can buy a CRT TV anymore (old style with a picture tube). Fry’s doesn’t carry them and I haven’t seen one for sale anywhere in a long long time. Flat screen is the way of the future. This TV is full 1080p and shockingly crisp and bright.
In early October, I went to Austin for Debbie’s wedding reception. We had just gotten back from visiting my parents, and we just didn’t feel up to making another family trip with the baby, so I went by myself to represent the family. I had a great time and it was fun to see everyone again, but I missed my boys.
Doc and I (and Jamieson) have been sick off and on for the past few months. It seems like as soon as one of us starts feeling better, another one of us gets sick. Ugh.
We started feeding Jamie chicken a couple of weeks ago, at the instruction of his allergist. We’re not sure if it’s affecting him or not. He’s been somewhat fussy overall, but he often is fussy so we are not sure it’s attributable to the chicken. Anyway, life seems a bit easier now that we are not so carefully watching out for chicken in stuff that he eats. It means that when we go out to eat, we can order him grilled chicken, potatoes and vegetables!
I am investigating the possibility of Rice Krispy Treats as a nonallergenic food. I know that marshmallows are OK; we can use his special margarine; and Rice Krispies have “malt flavoring” in them, which I need to investigate as being possibly wheat-derived. If it’s Jamie-safe, then that may be something we can make and eat as a treat.
Jamie’s language skills are exploding over the past week or two. He has started putting together two and three-word sentences, such as “help me, mommy” and “up daddy,” and is learning to speak new words daily. For instance, yesterday morning he picked up the computer mouse off the coffee table and handed it to me, saying “Boo!” I thought… well, it IS Halloween, but how does he know the word “Boo?” Then I realized that he was pointing out to me that the glowing light on the bottom of the mouse was BLUE! And in the car on the way home from the grocery last night, I said “we’re almost home! Can you say ‘home’?” — and he did. I LOVE the expression on his face after he says a new word or puts together a sentence for the first time: it is pure unadulterated joy. He is SO proud of himself, and he know he has pleased us immensely.
This weekend we held our annual Halloween party. We had a nice sized turnout and a fantastic time! Sadly, no photos were taken of the evening; we were too tired and/or busy talking to our friends and having fun to pull out the cameras. Everyone brought delicious food for the potluck dinner, and Rich brought a great parlour game called “The Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow.” Essentially we all played townspeople, and there were a couple of werewolves among us who would eat a villager each night. Our task was to find out who the werewolves were and shoot them before they could decimate the entire town. Lots of lying, laughing, and fun. Rich and Angela came over early and helped us set up and decorate the house, too.
Jamie’s Halloween costume was a garden gnome. He was just too cute in his beard and hat:
He attended a party at his Gymboree class, and we went to the Arboretum on Halloween morning to play in the pumpkin patch and hay mazes.
Category Family, Friends, Halloween, Jamieson, Party | Tags: | 1 Comment
-
Another Lord Emperor Toddler-approved meal
August 30, 2010
Turkey and Broccoli with Lemon Rice
- 1 cup cooked brown rice
- 1/2 cup diced cooked turkey
- 1/2 cup steamed broccoli, finely minced
- lemon olive oil (you can use plain, too)
- salt
- pepper
Stir rice, turkey, and broccoli together. Heat in microwave until warm. Drizzle generously with olive oil, and add one small dash of pepper and a bit of salt to taste.
Jamieson loved this. And it was delicious enough that I’m going to make it for the big people in the household next time, too; maybe adding a few Katamala olives.
For dessert he had about 1/2 cup of fresh local blueberries. I wasn’t sure he’d eat them so I only gave him a few at a time (I didn’t want a carpet full of purple stains), but he kept asking for more.
In non-food-related news, we were playing with his wooden cars this morning and as soon as I stopped, he looked at me and said, “More vrooom!”
Category Family, Food, Jamieson | Tags: | 1 Comment
-
Living on the face of the sun
August 26, 2010
Jamie’s newest words are:
- “Bello” (for Jello)
- and “e-i-e-i-0″ (very clearly enunciated, super cute)
Doc and I got to go out on an actual date last weekend, thanks to the generous babysitting talents of Kathryn and Brett. We intended to go see “Inception,” since we know someone who worked on the movie (and plus it just looks interesting), but our show was sold out when we arrived. Knowing that we had a limited timeframe to be out on the town, we chose another movie that started around the same time, “Dinner for Schmucks.” Not something we had intended to see in the theatre, but it was funny at times and moderately charming, and at this point I am so starved for movies that it almost doesn’t matter what I go see. It was just nice to be out on a date with my wonderful husband.
Beginning July 30, we had 26 days in a row of heat over 100 degrees. The official recorded temperature was 99 on a couple of those days, but it is always hotter at our house than out at the airport where they record the official numbers. Last weekend was just the worst; the analog thermometer on our back patio registered 108 on both days. Thankfully Jamieson has not seemed to want to go outside as much as usual lately. He’ll look out the windows to the patio and say “HOT.” On Sunday afternoon I filled up his wading pool and let him swim for a while. He also ate a couple of big slices of cold watermelon, perfect for a hot day.
Yesterday the highest temperature I saw all day was 77 degrees (I was so excited that I checked every hour or so). That’s lower than we’ve had most nights this month.
Anyway, I don’t expect it to last, but it has been a very nice break from living on the face of the sun.
Category Family, Jamieson, My Boring Life, Weather | Tags: | No Comments
-
And on the 11th night, there was no waking.
August 24, 2010
Well, well, well.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever see the day that this happened, but it finally has.
Lord Emperor Toddler, age 20-1/2 months, has SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT! Indeed, five out of the last six nights, he has slept all the way from bedtime (8:30-ish) until 7 or 7:30 in the morning. Occasionally he will cry out for a minute or two, but I can tell by how the cries sound that he’s not actually awake. He quiets down after a minute or two and settles back to sleep.
This happened eleven days after we began the process of weaning him from the first of his two night feedings. We always gave him his second bottle when he woke up for it. I guess he just decided that it wasn’t worth waking up for it anymore. Who knows what went through his little brain, consciously or subconsciously. Maybe he realized that he felt better when he got a long stretch of sleep, and he began to get comfortable knowing that daddy always comes in first thing in the morning with a cup of milk and some banana slices and cereal, so he won’t be hungry.
We had been looking forward to this day for such a long time, with such longing and anticipation, and it even became a running joke between Doc and I (“I know we said this last night, but tonight is actually the night he’s going to sleep through the night.”). Eventually there came a point when I internally gave up thinking/wishing/pining for a full night’s sleep for both he and I, because it never ever happened, and I had learned to get by pretty well with the routine we were in.
And when it happened, I was way less excited than I ever thought I’d be. Angels did not sing, golden light did not shine from above, I did not spring forth from my bed fully rested and ready to take on the world. Which was TOTALLY not the reaction I was expecting from myself.
I guess the potential excitement of that moment had been dulled by months of … well, drudgery is not the right word, but just months of a 2x/night waking schedule with no real signs of Jamie changing it up on his own. And of course, we had to be 100% certain that he would be getting all the nutrition he needs during his waking hours before we pulled the ripcord on the night feedings, so we chose to let it continue for a very long time, WAY longer than I think most people would. But I honestly don’t think that any of us would have been successful with this process even a few months ago.
As I am constantly reminded… every kid is different.
Category Family, Food, Jamieson | Tags: | No Comments
-
Weaning continues with ups and downs
August 17, 2010
We have had nine nights so far of weaning Jamie from one of his night-time feedings. Overall it’s going well. I went into great detail about the first four nights in a previous post, and I won’t bore anyone with vast amounts of detail here. Suffice it to say, some nights have been fantastic, with one waking between 1:30 and 3:30 for a super-easy, roll-right-over-and-go-back-to-sleep kind of feeding. Other nights have been more difficult with multiple wakings and difficulties getting Jamie soothed back to sleep.
But like I said, overall it’s going very well. It’s going to take time for him to completely settle into this new routine (and of course we are going to yank feeding #2 at some point soon too), and I have to say that I am very impressed by how much patience we, as his parents, are exhibiting throughout this process. We’re both remaining very zen about the whole thing, and focused on the long term. I suppose that’s one benefit to being “older” parents: higher patience levels.
Jamieson doesn’t seem to be any the worse for wear during this process. He doesn’t appear to be more upset than normal during the days, or dreading bedtime or anything of the sort. Getting longer stretches of sleep may be doing him good.
His allergist suggested we take him down to 1/2 his previous dosage of his medication, but he seemed to be a little more uncomfortable at that dosage, so we’ve taken him back to the normal amount. We’ll try the half dosage again in a month or two and see how it goes then.
In other news, he doesn’t seem to dig fake mustaches.
Category Family, Jamieson | Tags: | No Comments
-
We have a weaner!
August 12, 2010
Jamie used another two-word phrase the other day: “Mama, more.” He’s very cooperative when we’re trying to get him to verbalize some of his signs. “More” comes out sounding like “moahhhh.” Too cute.
Oh – so this was kinda crazy. We were at Wendy’s for dinner the other night (don’t judge) and Doc was holding Jamieson as we waited in line to order. Right next to us was a signboard advertising some sort of apple chicken almond salad or something of that nature. Jamieson leaned over, touched the word “apple” and said, plain as day, “apple.” There were no picture of apples on the board. Some of his storybooks have the word apple in them, associated with a picture, so I guess that he recognized the shape of the word. I was quite amazed by this. I’m not operating under the illusion that our baby can read, but he’s definitely beginning to remember and recognize words he’s seen before.
In other news, we began weaning him from his night feedings on Sunday. As an aside, I hate the word “wean.” It sounds like cold and moist and just icky. Wean. Wean. Weeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaan.
Anyway. We decided to take this plan in stages. His normal routine is to wake around 11 p.m. for Feeding #1, and around 3 a.m. for Feeding #2. We are beginning by cutting out Feeding #1.
Many people like and employ the Ferber method, commonly known as cry-it-out. We are not fans of this technique. I know that it is fast and effective for a lot of people, but we are not comfortable leaving Jamie alone and frightened to cry himself back to sleep. So we came up with our own modified plan. We will not feed him when he wakes the first time, but we will stay with him, comfort him, and hold him if necessary until he calms down and goes back to sleep (which, hopefully, he will do). If he wakes again after 3 a.m., this counts as Feeding #2 and he can have milk at that point.
The first night was rather brutal. Doc went in at 10:45 when Jamie woke up for Feeding #1 (or should I say, Nonfeeding #1), and rather than handing him a bottle of soymilk like usual, he just gave him back the binky. Fury ensued, the binky was violently spit out and “ay-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi” style wailing began. Fury continued, broken by short periods of nearly-asleepedness, for somewhat close to two hours before Jamie finally fell back asleep soundly enough for Doc to leave the room. Two hours of Jamie fury is pretty intense, especially because his fury level would intensify whenever Doc tried to sit in the rocking chair with him. So, two hours of standing. Not good times.
He woke again around 2:15. I steeled myself and entered the war zone, armed with a bottle of soymilk, fully expecting him to be furious about what had happened earlier. He took the bottle, drank 3/4 of it, and rolled over and went right back to sleep. I guess he was too worn out to be angry.
Night #2 was different. He slept through Nonfeeding #1, woke at 3:15 for Feeding #2, and it went quickly and easily.
Night #3 was different yet again. He woke for Nonfeeding #1, and cried angrily for about 15 minutes when I didn’t produce a bottle. I kept trying to give him his binky but he’d slap it out of my hands and sob. I laid quietly next to his bed with my arm up over the side so he knew I was there. After the furious crying subsided, he half-heartedly fussed for another 10 minutes or so, in sort of a “Hey, I’m crying here! Anyone? Helloooo?” manner. Then he quieted down, fidgeted around in his bed for about 30-40 minutes, and fell asleep. He stayed in bed the entire time and didn’t ask to be picked up.
Night #4 (last night) went smoothly, with a strange twist at the end. Nonfeeding #1 only took about 10 minutes for Doc, and didn’t involve much crying at all. Feeding #2 happened at about 5 a.m. when I heard him quietly sigh on the baby monitor. He wasn’t moving much so I thought I could sneak in there for a “pre-emptive strike,” since it’s always touch and go after about 4:30 a.m. as far as how awake he’s going to be. If he didn’t wake up much, he might go back to sleep easily. Unfortunately, he decided that he was wide awake after he drank his milk. I was like, uh-uh, mommy don’t play that 5 a.m. game anymore. I laid quietly by his crib hoping he’d drift back off to sleep, but after about 40 minutes of him tossing around in bed, babbling, and thumping his legs against the crib slats, it was clear to me that it wasn’t going to happen. And then he suddenly got very very quiet.
I cracked open my eyes and looked up to find him standing RIGHT OVER ME staring at me. EEEEEK! Freaked me out. He was so silent getting out of bed! How long had he been staring at me?! Anyway, as soon as he saw me open my eyes, he smiled and put his head down on my arm and snuggled up tight next to me. That was heartbreakingly cute but it lasted for all of about 10 seconds before he got up again and made a move for his toy shelf.
By this time I had to pee really bad, so I decided that rather than take him with me to the bathroom, which would basically guarantee that we were both up for the day, I would put him back in bed, shut his door, use the bathroom, and then come back and try to drift into half-sleep on his floor while he played with his toys for a while. So I laid him back down in bed and left the room. As you might imagine, this was not well-received. He began to cry, but not quite as loudly as I was expecting. I took care of my business, all the while watching him on the video baby monitor. By the time I was ready to head back to his room, he had stopped crying, laid down in bed, and wasn’t moving anymore. So I went back to my own bed, watched the monitor for a bit, and then went back to sleep!
He didn’t wake up again until 7:45 when we woke him up so I could see him before I left for work.
Crazy times. I wonder what tonight will bring.
Category Family, Jamieson | Tags: | 1 Comment
