Lost in Baby Space

Yes, it has been a darn long time since the last post--we have been sucked into the vortex of new parent baby space.
We'll have to update a little at a time, but for now, Will is great--walking, saying some words, climbing stairs, expressing his wants and desires strongly now and then (aka. the stubborn streak is starting a show a wee bit).  Here's a pic to tide you over till we can go back and add more about our family adventures since we posted last.

Will's counter attack to baby boot camp

Well, our first night of baby boot camp, Thursday March 31st, went ok.  I think the longest crying spell was 30 minutes during Jim's first half of the night shift.  I was pretty encouraged Friday morning.  When Will got up, he seemed tired and cranky and wasn't too interested in eating.  I thought this was because of being up and fussing more during the night.  Took him to child care and thought he felt a little hot, but I figured I had overdressed him, snow suit what not for the drive in. Got to work at 9:30 a.m. and by 9:35 Will's teacher called and said he had a temp of 101.5.  So back to childcare to get him, got a Dr. appointment for that afternoon, gave him some Tylenol and rocked him and cuddled him till his appointment (he took some bottle during that time).  At the Dr. office, Dr. said he had a temp of 101.3.  Didn't think it was due to the new antibiotic for his continued ear infection (yes, it is still infected so another 10 days of antibiotic).  Dr. thought it was probably a virus thing, in addition to the other stuff going on. 

So now we are doing the Advil, Tylenol switch off every 3 hours, but he did much better yesterday.  His fever had broken after sleeping in until 9 a.m. (he was up off and on most of the night Friday/Saturday a.m.) but came back around 5 p.m.  Back to the 3 hour routine but he had a better night last night/this a.m.

Poor kid must be so confused--we start out Thur. night with trying to train him to self soothe more and go to sleep without the bottle/being rocked to sleep--so he had to wail his head off from time to time--to Friday morning where we were soothing and cuddling as much as possible while he felt so cruddy.  I just hope his wee immune system is getting stronger after going through all of this stuff. Poor little guy.

And so it begins...

Now that we're well enough following our various colds, tonight we're officially entering the 'sleeping through the night' battle. Yup, time for baby boot camp - i.e., getting Will to give up night feedings and awakenings (or at just get down to only 1 for the time being), soothe himself back to sleep consistently, etc. so Mom & Dad can get back to sleeping through the night (we actually did that at some point in our lives??!!).

We've been getting him to bed pretty regularly the last week (7-7:30), just reading his sleep signs and putting him down before he gets over-tired. Tonight we started a new routine of settling him down directly in his crib and that wasn't too bad - cried on & off for about 12 minutes before falling asleep. We'll see how long he goes tonight...

Last night, after 3 awakenings between 11 & 12, he and Jim went toe-to-toe for 20 minutes (Liz fortunately slept through the whole thing!), but Jim held his ground, didn't get up, and let Will cry himself back to sleep. Will, of course, had his revenge at 3:30, keeping Liz up for about an hour.

Hopefully, in just a few days (please!!), he'll look like this...

and not like this...

at 4:00 in the morning!!

Pray for us... 

Where does the time go?

It goes to growing up, teething, Halloween, Thanksgiving, bad colds, Christmas, nebulizers, New Years, visiting family, pink eye, ear infection, learning to explore his world, etc. etc.

We will have to do some life review posts--kind of like those time travel sci-fi episodes in paralel universes.  But for now, this most recent pic. of our darling 18 lb. 9 month old will have to do.  More flashbacks and updates to follow.