Thinking About Replacing All my Furniture with Nerf

sorry it's been so long since i've updated the blog. we've been busier than a one armed paper hanger around here. robb and i are both working long hours with exciting new work projects and henry never holds still for a second. not ever. not one second. ever.

really, monkey business's world has totally changed. he is crawling every which way and starting to climb a bit, too. he's making me see our house as less like a cozy bungalow and more like a baby fingers remover-ator. if it can't be pulled down on top of him, then perhaps he can wedge himself between it and something sharp/heavy/toxic. and if he really shouldn't put his fingers in that or his mouth on that, then he's dodging, dipping, ducking, diving and dodging to get to it. sometimes he seems to be hugging us, but really he's just lulling us into complacency while he reaches for the chain saw or rat poison behind our backs.

we're slowly installing electrical outlet covers and anchoring the heaviest and most easily toppled items and gating him out of places....but mostly we're just following him everywhere he goes. we follow him and the dog follows us, so we're like one big family unit moving en mass around the house from one pokey shiny thing to the next.

7 teeth now, working their way up. he sort of plays with them, jutting his little bottom jaw forward to feel how the two rows meet. i remember feeling that way when i got braces. where there were smooth teeth (or gums, in his case), now there are sharp and painful bits crowding out your lips.

he's sleeping better. overall, better. the crying-it-out thing is going alright. he now goes up to 7 hrs at a time sleeping straight through, which is a huge improvement. but we're still working on it. we haven't had the same results a lot of my friends had who said "they cry for the first 3 nights and then they'll sleep 12 hrs at a time, no problem." but things are getting better. when he does wake up in the night, he's (usually) able to get himself back to sleep in a matter of moments. and that's a big step forward.

the whole teething thing certainly doesn't help the sleeping cause, but eh...whatcha gonna do?

through all of this, he is a sweet, smiley, genuinely nice guy.

such a blessing. i got to congratulate a friend today who is several months pregnant with her first child and i said without hesitation that this year, with henry, has been the best year of my life. he is just bliss.

I Likes the Blueberries

i haz a goatee made of antioxidants

Are You Sick of Me Talking About Sleep Yet? It's That or Poop, You Pick.

this just sucks. i have an intense visceral response to my crying child and yet i have determined to let him cry himself to sleep.

for his own good. for all our good. so that he can get to and stay asleep and then sleep deeply for lengthy periods of time. the tiny brain needs sleep to grow. he's not being traumatized by feelings of abandonment. we are not creating a serial killer in the 12 minutes we let pass between visits to his room to calm him down and reassure him we're still here.

i just keep telling myself that.

but here we are, on night #4 and we are 28 minutes into snotty tearful crib gymnastics.

my resolution has failed me a few times, but overall, we've stayed the course. i'm just so hoping it's worth it. because this is brutal.

church helped yesterday. the message was exactly what i needed to hear. it was all about parents' duty to their children. parents have this forceful, almost ravenous love for their kids and we want to pile it on them, throw it over them and keep them safe always in it, but we can't. our job is to prepare them for life. to be on their own, independent and self-sufficient. as our very keen speaker said, 'if we do our jobs right by training our children to not need us, we'll put ourselves out of work.'

it feels self-less but it's actually self-ish to keep them dependent on us. we feel needed and important but then they feel uncertain and weak.

but that's so much easier to comprehend than it is to execute.

each decision to let them do something difficult on their own, to let them learn painful lessons without cushioning their fall is so hard.

and we're only 8 months in!!

i've been writing these last few minutes in silence since henry finally fell asleep. on his tummy, sideways at the bottom of his crib, but asleep none the less. and when i righted him and moved everything around just now, he didn't wake at all. :)

dear God,

please show me how to be a parent, since You're very good at it. i always know that You're here, but You let me make my own decisions and learn my own lessons. you always ALWAYS hold me when i'm hurting and reassure me when i've totally blown it.

like that, i want henry to be confident in venturing out into the world, but to always ALWAYS know that my arms are ready. thank you so much for the blessing of having any of these 'problems' at all! thank you so much for this tiny perfect critter you put into our care. please keep him safe and strong and help us to do right by him every day. and if you help him learn how to sleep consistently through the night, that would be groovy, too. but if not, that's cool, too. we'll just keep trying. :)

amen

Day 2 of Crushing Our Child's Spirit and Damaging His Tiny Soul

...went well!

last night we let him cry in increasing intervals (3 mins, 5 mins, 10 mins) and at the appointed time we'd go in and rub his back, give him his pacifier, unhook him from the bars of the crib where he had spider- monkeyed himself on to get a better screeching platform...and it took about an hour of this all told before we slept. and he slept for 7 straight hours! which is way more than he's done in many months.

so tonight, we did it again, but in longer intervals 5 mins, 7 mins...would have done 12 mins, but didn't have to. he fell asleep with a little encouragement after the first 2 rounds.

we'll see how it goes for the next few nights. i decided to try all this because his night sleeping was getting worse and not better. and my coworker just did this and had a lot of success with her 5 month old, so i thought i'd give it a shot.

it's murder listening to him cry when you know your arms can fix it for him. but man needs to sleep and the tiptoeing around him trying to accommodate his delicate sleep and throwing him in bed with us, none of it was working- so here we go.

i just hope he knows he's secure and protected and we love him. this morning, after our first rough night of trying this, he didn't seem to hold anything against me. he was cheerful and sweet. and he actually had a great day of naps and eating and everything.

so perhaps we haven't messed him up for life.

yet.

Crying it Out

we're 8 hours into our 19 minutes of letting henry cry himself to sleep using the 'ferber method.'

each minute feels like forever as we watch the clock not move.

will keep you posted.

so far? he probably needs a cocktail as much as i do.

Busy Bumpkin

i got to daycare to pick henry up today and he was hanging out on the floor with a little girl who was born on the exact same day that he was! and, miraculously, he didn't look like too much of a moose next to her. they were at about the same developmental stage, too. both kind of playing together, touching hands and smiling at one another, sharing snotty kisses, etc. and crawling-ish. it was adorable. they actually seemed to care that the other one existed. maybe sharing a birth date gives them some sort of pseudo wonder twins powers and they're communicating. hopefully they are not planning a rebellion. i don't think they yet have the dexterity for that.

in any case, he's a busy guy these days. cuddling with him is more like him climbing us like a jungle gym.

he's intrigued by everything and wants to feel it, taste it. more and more like a little boy each day.

still no words. waiting for him to look at us and call us by name. i think it would be awesome if i could get him to call me "mother" instead of "mama." i would also like to teach him to shake hands instead of give high five.

he'll be the smarmiest baby on the playground. :)


those cheeks just kill me.

Eight is Great!

he decided he did not wish to wear the sticker this time, so he's holding his 8 month sticker in his little paw. this is just before he ate the eight.

...eights months old today! he's getting through this nasty RSV bug and back mostly to his normal self. we'll keep him off the rest of the week and then send him back to daycare monday to pick up the next round of crud. (wouldn't want him to miss any of it). :)

when he went in to the peds office last week, he weighed 20 lbs 11 oz. i don't know if they measured, but i think he's roughly 5' tall now. he's huge. he takes up the whole changing table.

he's also started getting a will of his own. when you steal something from him, he follows it (object permanence) and he's pissed! it's cool to see his personality coming out. he's already complaining when he feels like his rights are violated. so that's good.

and he's been scooting and rolling all over and tonight he actually took a knee or two in a forward direction! he's rocking on all fours and i think will be full on crawling in a day or two!!

we have a LOT of baby-proofing to do around this house. but i think instead of doing any of that, i have a different idea. remember the movie 'ET' where the men in hazmat suits came to examine him and set up a whole tube system of tents going to-fro the house? i might construct something like that running through our house, so that he can't actually interact with any of the real surfaces in our home, but can exist in a sort of middle-tent zone where he will be injury-free and won't break anything. you like it? right? RIGHT?

(no, not like bubble boy at all! you're missing the whole thing....see, there are these tent hallways and they go from room to room...and...no, i'm not paranoid and over protective/bearing. i...i'm not talking to you anymore.)

...and he has teeth! lots of them. 3 on the bottom and 1 1/2 up top. he has the cutest little smile now (see above). he looks more and more like a little boy and less like a baby every day.

well, he looks more and more like a little person and less like a baby. he still often gets called a "she." i'm not at all offended, he's a beautiful child. big gorgeous eyes and long eye lashes, etc, etc. plus, we're not putting him in football and truck clothes. mostly gender-neutral animals and stuff, so there you go.

we're loving this phase. he's so funny and playful and goofy. it's just fantastic.


he may be growing longer and leaner, but he still has those epic cheeks.

Porter Tomater

it's been quite a week.

i was out of the state for some training and spent my first night away from monkin. everything went well. he and robb had fun together and managed just fine. and i got to watch joan rivers and kelly osbourne talk SAG fashion disasters and drop terrible one-liners while lying in a fluffy hotel bed in which i then got a full 7 hrs of uninterrupted hotel fluffy bed sleep.

when i got home tuesday, henry's snotty nose and little cough had devolved into wheezing and a big wet cough, so i called my pediatrician and we ended up taking him in wednesday. his little nostril was swabbed and they found that he has RSV, a super common viral respiratory infection. it's not a big deal in big people, but can be quite catastrophic in tiny ones and can increase the odds for asthma affliction in the future. so we're giving him nebulizer treatments and trying to get him to drink/eat as much as he can. he's managing just fine. no real distress at this point. he loathes the breathing treatments and throws himself around and screams for the whole 8 minutes unless we double team it and one of us is entertaining him with puppets and dancing and pyrotechnics while the other one holds him down.

that's an awful feeling. so is hearing that pitiful little cough and wheeze.

there's this great kids program called "veggie tales." in one episode, the cucumber is telling the tomato that he (the tomato) can't dance, in spanish....and he says "pobre tomate, no puede bailar." my family has always used that when we're sympathizing with someone. but my dad never gets it quite right (intentionally to make us laugh, i believe) and destroys it with "porter tomamer" and other similar silly fails.

well, henry really is a pobre tomate.

he's out of daycare the rest of this week and all of next to make sure he recovers completely before going back to the germ farm.

but, really, this week was the first time he had to go to the sick kids waiting room at the pediatrician's. he's almost 8 months old. that's pretty good! what a little war hero.