sweet little naked baby

What comes between a diaper blowout and bathtime? A naked baby photo shoot, of course!

weird cat

Our attention loving cat Ally has had her world turned upside down by our sweet baby Will. The lack of attention seems to have caused her to act out in strange ways, including:

Why drink straight from the bowl when you can use the extremely efficient paw dipping method?

sleep

This post is dedicated to something I hold very near and dear to my heart: sleep. There have been several sleep changes in William's world in the past few days, and I am hoping that things are starting to level off again. (fingers crossed for mom and dad's sakes!) If you read the post about Will's 4 month check-up, you know that he has been waking up for 2 nighttime feedings for a little over a month now. His pediatrician said that Will does not need to be eating twice during the night, and we would all be happier and more rested if we cut out the first nighttime feeding, which was occurring about 1 or 2 am. Since this feeding was a habit instead of a necessity, the doctor recommended that we work with Will to break the habit by using a modified "cry it out" method. Not complicated - basically using increasing intervals of time in which we leave Will alone to cry (insert frowny face here), in hopes that he will teach himself to fall asleep on his own when he wakes up during the night.

We decided to start the sleep training this last weekend. Let me tell you - it is NOT easy to listen to (and watch) your baby cry, even for a few minutes, knowing that you could easily fix it. So night #1 went as expected - Will woke up about 11:30 and we let him put himself back to sleep, which didn't really take that long (maybe because he wasn't expecting to eat yet?). Then he woke up at 12:45 and going back to sleep took quite a bit longer, but he did it! He woke up a couple more times that night, but all was going well. Until....at some point during his awake time, he taught himself how to do this:

That's right - Will is now an EXTREMELY proficient back to front roller. As soon as he learned this little trick, he became very proud of himself, and now he pretty much refuses to sleep on his back.

He wants to sleep like this:

So, when I look on the monitor at night, I see something like this:

Soooooo....the first time I looked at the monitor and saw Will on his stomach was about 4:30am on Saturday morning. After skyrocketing out of bed and running in to make sure he was alive, I rolled him back onto his back, and he immediately rolled back to his tummy. Stubborn little man. He absolutely refused to sleep on his back for the rest of that night, and I was a nervous wreck about it because he was still swaddled. I was super-worried that he wouldn't be able to roll back over if he needed to without the full use of his arms, but that he wouldn't be able to sleep without being swaddled. Ugh.

And this is how we turned "eliminate nighttime feeding" training into "eliminate nighttime feeding AND swaddling" training. Fun.

So for night #2 of this sleep-depriving adventure, we put Will to bed with his arms out. Instead of going completely cold turkey, I cut arm holes in his woombie so he would still have just a little bit of what he was used to. This added an entirely new level to our nighttime experience, because although Will now LOVES rolling onto his stomach, he seems to have forgotten how to roll back over most of the time, so sometimes he gets frustrated during the night when he is on his stomach. Since our little training method says, "Do not pick up the baby or you will lose all the progress you've made so far," we had an interesting situation on our hands. Do we go in and roll him back over when he cries? Should we let him figure it out on his own? Stick to the plan? Modify the plan? Yipes!

Needless to say, we have had a few interesting nights. But! We are making progress! We decided to continue with one nighttime feeding (around 4-5 am), since Will now goes to bed around 7:30 or 8 every night. I'm happy to report that last night, he woke up a few times between 8pm and 4am, but put himself back to sleep each time with no more than 5-10 minutes of fussing, and sometimes none at all. He is doing well with having his arms free during the night, and he now sleeps on his back sometimes and his stomach sometimes. I've pretty much gotten over my initial fear of the stomach sleeping, since everyone tells me that if he's strong enough to roll himself over, he's going to be OK. (It took lots of people telling me that LOTS of times before I could break myself of the fear!)

All in all, I'm very proud of how well Will has adapted to all of these changes. When he first started rolling over in his crib, I was really not pleased with the timing, but now I think that maybe it was actually a good thing. If we have to suffer through a few nights of no sleep while working on the feeding thing, we might as well knock out the swaddling too, right? I'm not sure if the swaddling habit would have been easier to break when he's older, but we really didn't have a choice!

Tonight will be night #4, and I've heard that it typically takes 3-5 nights to develop new sleeping habits. I hope that is true!

So for those of you who have made it this far into this extremely long post, here are a few recent pictures of our little monkey.

He loves to be sitting up:

Drool machine:

Playing with his rock band toy, even though he is still too little to reach:

happy father's day!!

Happy first Father's Day, Matt! What a fun adventure the last 4 months have been. You are such a wonderful father to William, and I can't wait to see you continue to have a blast with him as he grows up.

We had a very fun Father's Day today. The day was *supposed* to start with me getting up and having breakfast ready for Matt when he got up. However...Matt beat me up this morning! (not surprising) Oops! We still had a fun breakfast and some hang-out time with Will. Then we headed over to my parents' house to celebrate Matt and my dad with a delicious lunch. The day ended with some relaxation and fun playtime at home. Here are a few pics to celebrate fatherhood. :)

Matt and Will's first photo together:

Growing fast! Will's 4 month check-up:

Relaxing on Father's Day:

Happy Father's Day, Dad!! (this is obviously an old picture...I have a tan!)

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

4 month update + giggles!

William had his 4 month check-up today, and I am so proud of him! He didn't scream at the doctor, and he did very well with his shots (considering...). His development seems to be right on track, and he is a very healthy growing boy! Here are his official stats:

Weight: 15 pounds, 9 ounces (70%)

Length: 26.5 inches (93%) WOW! Tall like daddy!

Head: 16.75 inches (51%)

After the appointment, Will took a little nap while Matt and I grabbed lunch. Then we headed home to what I assumed would be a somewhat rough afternoon, based on Will's reaction to the 2 month shots. We've been home for almost 3 hours now, and so far SO GOOD! I was even able to get Will's first giggling video this afternoon! Definitely didn't think that would happen after shots! I've been getting Will to giggle by bouncing him in front of our big mirror, but this afternoon we were playing in his high chair, and I started singing the ABCs really fast (who knows why?). He thought it was hilarious! He even repeated his gigglebox performance for the camera. Enjoy!

Will is so much fun these days. Smiling, babbling, shrieking, laughing, and generally having a fabulous time. Here are a few of his favorite and least favorite things at 4 months.

Will LIKES:

• squealing & shrieking - especially when in his bouncy seat (see video at the bottom for an example)
• playing in front of the big mirror in our bedroom
• playing in his bumbo chair (but just for short periods of time)
• being outside
• walks in the baby bjorn - he loves this now that he can face outward!
• toys that rattle or light up
• the woombie - I'm beginning to wonder how the transition to sleeping without this lovely zippered bag is going to go...
• the television - he loves watching the lights and colors
• any kind of playing that involves being bounced or lifted high in the air (especially fun with dad!)
• Rolling onto and sleeping on his left side
• Sucking on his hands, toys, blankets, or anything he can get into his mouth

Will does NOT like:

• being tired - he is no longer able to nap well when we're out and about, because he is just too interested in everything. Unfortunately, this means that he will stay awake until he is overtired, and then have a major meltdown. So we now try to make sure to get those good naps in at home!
• sleeping through the night. (sigh) The days of the 8-9 hour stretches of sleep have left us in this last month. Not sure why, but Will never sleeps more than 5 hours at a time these days. Hopefully this pattern doesn't last much longer! The pediatrician said that little boys who weigh 15 lbs 9 oz really do not need to be eating twice during the night, so it sounds like we're going to have to work on eliminating the 2am feeding. I'm really excited about the possibility of sleeping more than 4 hours, but not excited about how we'll have to get there. Hopefully it won't involve too much crying (from Will or me)!

Here are a couple of 4-month pictures with his bear:

We set up the high chair for fun the other day. I thought Will might like to join us at mealtimes, even though he isn't quite eating solids yet. However - rice cereal is on the horizon, so it's good for him to get used to his chair!

He likes it!

This picture cracks me up. After being in the chair for a few minutes (and several pictures), Will started trying to get out by stretching up, which exposed his.....drumroll please...NECK! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the boy does, in fact, have a neck under there. It has just never been seen in pictures before. :)

I just had to post this picture to show how much Will loves the television. Please note that he is on his playmat with not one, but SIX fun, mind-stimulating items around him, yet when I turn my back for a minute, he rolls onto his side so that he can see the TV! Silly baby!

And last, but not least, here's a video of Will squealing in his bouncy seat. He really cracks us up with his crazy noises! Matt and I think he sounds like a dinosaur. Note - if you're not related to Will, 4 minutes of this might be a bit excessive, but you can get the idea within the first few seconds! :)

wicked!!

Yesterday we got to go see my favorite musical....WICKED! (Thanks Martha!!) It was awesome. I would go see it again today if I could. LOVE it.

So we had tickets to the afternoon show, because at the time of ticket purchasing, Will was a teeny tiny newborn, and I just didn't know if nighttime outings would possible yet by 4 months (yes, paranoid new mom), so we opted for the afternoon showing to be safe. Therefore, it was approximately 100 million degrees when we left for the show. Not a problem, right? I mean - it's not like the fair is going on, so we'll get to park right next to the music hall....right?? Not so much. It seems that there was some sort of VERY popular festival going on at fair park yesterday. In fact, so very popular that almost every parking lot was full. There were even people tailgating, complete with stomping contests and loud music. So we literally had to park about 2 miles away from the music hall. I might be exaggerating, but it was at least a mile! Normally this would only be a minor inconvenience, but I think other new moms will agree that when you get a chance to dress up after wearing t-shirts and flip-flops most days, it is fun! And you want to wear things that you don't get many chances to wear anymore. So I decided to sport these shoes:

Cute, huh?

Tell that to my band-aid covered feet! After walking super fast in the heat to get to the show, I had some pretty legit blisters, making the walk back AFTER the show even worse (plus there was no fabulous musical at the end of that journey). Matt will attest to the fact that during the walks to and from the music hall, I was screaming, "My feet are BLEEDING!" to anyone who would listen, while he was trying to convince me that one should never wear (or buy) shoes that make walking painful.

Lesson learned about wearing 5 inch heels? Probably not...

4 months old!

This little monkey turned 4 months old yesterday!

We have William's 4 month check-up on Wednesday, so I'll post official stats and more pictures soon. Love this guy soooo much!!