Miriam's Life

Sorry, no new pictures.  I will get some more soon.  I’ve been so consumed with sleep issues lately that I have not been taking pictures.  Will is sleeping wonderfully at night.  I could not ask for anything better!  He goes down by 10:00 (sometimes earlier, like last night-7:30), and will usually sleep between 7 and 9 hours.  He’ll wake up to eat in the early morning hours and then goes back down for another 2-3 hours.  If he is awake after eating, I can still put him in his cradle (as long as he has burped well) and he’ll fall asleep on his own with minimal crying.  Because of his success at night, I am surprised and frustrated that we do not have the same success in the daytime.  I can tell when he is tired, so at least that step is mastered, but when I put him down he has been crying for over half an hour and getting too upset to calm himself.  The week started out wonderfully, with crying less than 20 minutes each time.  But as the days went on, it seems like it is getting harder.  I rock him for about 5 minutes than put him down either very drowsy or just asleep.  But he wakes up and cries until he works himself up to screaming, red in the face, tears streaming mad.  Then I end up getting him up and rocking him to sleep and putting him down much sounder asleep.  I am considering not dealing with the crying for now and trying again in a couple weeks.  Perhaps he is not ready yet to learn this skill.  It is making me extra stressed to hear him cry, so I think the best thing for now is to take the extra time to rock him to sleep or let him sleep in the swing when I don’t have the extra time.  He is 10 weeks now.  According to the last book I read on sleep (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child), 12-16 weeks is when they more consistently began to have a longer morning nap.  So perhaps some of that will happen naturally, just as his night-time sleep habits have.

In other news, Will has begun to spit up/throw up a lot more the last couple of days.  It has actually coincided with the greater naptime struggles, so perhaps that also could be related?  If he continues this new trend, I will be taking him in for a weight check, but hopefully it is a passing phase.  He is eating fewer times during the day and I am going to try to stretch him a little longer between feedings to see if that helps.  He’s been doing 2-2 1/2 hours apart during the daytime, and he could probably go 2 1/2 – 3 hours, so we’ll see if that helps any.

Well, pray for our sanity, and for my wisdom to do what is best for my son.  I want him to learn to soothe himself to sleep.  I believe that is an important thing for him to know.  But I don’t want to push him so hard that I am making more stress for all of us.  Otherwise, things are going well here.  Elise is enjoying school, dance, and AWANA.  She has even been more willing to stay in childcare during church and Mothering Matters (something that we had been struggling with).  I am enjoying my roll in Mothering Matters and my new responsibilities here at home.  Unfortunately, I have not learned the art of balancing them with housework, so my house is quite the mess, but that will happen eventually.  We are all getting fed; clean clothes are usually available (though you may have to check the dryer or the couch to get them); and school is getting done.  Those are my priorities as of right now.

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Sunday morning I awoke at 6:30, after about 8 hours of sleep, realizing that I hadn’t heard Will all night. I went to check on him, and he was still asleep. He slept until 7:45, which was almost 9 hours after I had put him down the night before. I was shocked. We hadn’t done any letting him cry yet. Last night he slept for 7 hours before waking at 5:15 to eat. He acted hungry and after eating went right back down for 3 more hours. I don’t think I am going to make him cry through night feeds yet. I’ll give him a little more chance to wean off of them on his own like he did Saturday night. When he does wake up, if he has slept over 6 hours, he often seems very hungry and I don’t think he would calm down yet without nursing. Last night I started putting him down awake to let him go to sleep on his own. Actually I hadn’t planned on doing that last night, but I was starting to fall asleep at 10 and did not feel up to rocking him to sleep. He didn’t fall asleep at his last nursing, so the only other option was just to put him to bed. He cried for I think about 30 minutes, but I’m not sure as I was so tired I actually fell asleep before he did! This morning I rocked him till he was just asleep for his first nap. When I put him down he woke up and cried for 5 minutes and then went to sleep. For this last nap I put him down awake and he cried for over half an hour and was not calming down, so I went in to check on him. He had leaked out of his diaper which may have been part of the problem. I changed him and rocked him til almost asleep and put him down. He fell asleep about 5 minutes later without much fussing. So far he hasn’t taken a long nap yet. We’ll see how the afternoon goes. The last couple of days he took 2 1/2-3 hour naps in the afternoon, so I’m hoping that is becoming a habit. Well, thanks for taking an interest in the little minutes of our day. :)

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Doesn’t this look like the most girly thing you’ve ever seen?  Elise is still loving dance class and improving each time.

She is also enjoying school.  Even her numbers, which she sometimes gets frustrated with, are improving.  Today, she wrote out her numbers to 30 with barely any hesitation.  When she made one mistake, she merely said “oops” and corrected it, which if you know Elise, you know that is a huge accomplishment.  Then, on the way home from dance, I heard her in the backseat counting.  I asked her what she was counting, and she said trees.  She counted to 49 and then asked me what was next.  She kept going, merely pausing at each new ten.  Eventually she reached 100!  Anyway, I’m quite encouraged as the whole counting past twenty thing seemed to click with her today.  Oh, and she also read a very short story today called Fat Cat, Fat Rat.

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We spent all morning at the doctor’s today getting Will’s 2 month well child check-up (including shots, ugh!).  First off, Will really is huge!  He weighed 14 lbs. 14 oz., which means he has been gaining at a rate of about 11 oz. a week.  He was 25.25 in. long, a growth of almost 4 inches since birth.  John mentioned the other day that he looks big enough to be crawling around.  No wonder, he weighs the same as Elise did at 8 months old, right before she started walking!  He’s also only an inch and quarter shorter than she was at that age.  OK, so I know it is not fair just to compare to Elise, who has always been on the petite side, so I also looked up his weight and height on the official growth charts.  He is just over the 97th percentile for weight and length.  But he is well proportioned as he is in the 50th percentile in comparing weight and length.

The doctor encouraged adding a bit more schedule into his day as he is old enough to be trained now.  This would include setting a regular bedtime for him.  He said I was welcome to let him cry through his wakings in the night if I wanted as he doesn’t need the food, and if I let them continue he will get in the habit of waking at night.  The night-time wakings would be the easiest to let him cry, except for the fact that it keeps both John and I up.  But because he sleeps best at night anyway, he’d probably be more likely to go back to sleep quicker, and then perhaps the training would help him cry to sleep for naptimes as well.   We’ll see.

He received his shots and we discussed the use of the  chicken pox vaccine, which Will wouldn’t receive until he is over 12 months of age, but Elise did get and will now need a booster at her next set of shots.  I am considering skipping Will’s first vaccination of chicken pox with the hopes that we can let him get it naturally and therefore not need any boosters.  The doctor is thinking the boosters will have to be given throughout their life once they start getting the vaccine unless they get it naturally.  Anyway, I have some time to think about it, it just came up because Elise will be getting her booster shots at Will’s next appointment, a fact that caused me to end up having two crying children in the doctor’s office today.  :)

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OK, here is a cute picture that I just had to share:

By the way, Elise and I started doing preschool again on Monday.  She is really enjoying it.  Her favorite subject is crafts, her most challenging is writing her numbers.  Here is something we did together for craft time.  Elise did the purple horse and the small bird by herself; we did the parrot and the alligator together:

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Well, Will slept through the night Sunday night. Although that requires some definition. (I remember when I was a new mom how upset and surprised I was to find out that “sleeping through the night” could be as little as six hours!) Will was fussy until midnight, but once he went down after midnight, slept all the way through until 6:00 am. Of course at 6:00 am he was up for the morning, so that meant I actually recieved less sleep than when he wakes up once or twice in the night. He did not repeat his performance last night, though he did fight sleep for awhile.

He has been very dependent on his swing for sleep, and because he is now fighting sleep even in his swing I decided it was time to try to let him learn to go to sleep himself. So today began the experimenting of laying him down and seeing what he does. So far he fusses for awhile, sometimes hard, sometimes gently, but will usually eventually go to sleep with me going in a couple of times to give him his pacifier. But he doesn’t stay asleep for long. And sometimes I just have to get him up. We’ll see how the rest of the day goes. At least his night sleep is really good.

He was supposed to go to the doctor tomorrow for his two month well-check, but I got a call today from the clinic, saying they can’t actually do a two month check until he is two months old. I scheduled the appoinment one week too early! I was counting two months as 8 weeks, they count it by the actual date. So we’ll have to wait until next week to see how much he weighs.

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Elise began dance lessons today. She is in the preschool jazz and tap class at Rythm & Shoes in Tontitown. Here she is in her ballet shoes for jazz. She told me after the class that it was a lot of fun. When I asked which was her favorite part, she said “all of it!” I was watching the class through a one-way glass window and was impressed that she did not lose interest the whole time. She went right into class too, without even a hesitation or asking me to come with her. She listened fairly well to the teacher and tried her best to do everything that was asked. I was quite impressed. Even if she proves not to be gifted at dance, the good it will do for her social skills will be worth it. I’ll try to take my camera and get some pictures of her in class next week.

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