2008 September | Baby Rabies

Something magical happened tonight

Posted by Jill on September 30, 2008 14 Comments

The stars aligned and the new mom gods smiled upon me. I managed to get Kendall in bed and asleep by 7 pm, got dressed up in – get this- my SKINNY pre-pregnancy jeans (granted, I did have a bit of a muffin top, but nothing a peasant style blouse couldn’t hide) and heels. Yes, HEELS!! It’s the first time I’ve worn anything other than flats, flip flops or sneakers in nearly ten months. Since I changed after putting Kendall to bed, there wasn’t a hint of spit-up anywhere on me, and I even managed to flat iron my hair and touch up my makeup. And then I left the house without a diaper bag! That’s right. I was instead sporting a kick ass bag my best friend gave me for my birthday back in February that I’ve yet to be able to use – and it perfectly matched my heels! OH… and I got to wear long earrings! The kind that I can’t wear anymore because Kendall likes to rip them out of my ears. And they perfectly matched my top.

Then I left Scott at home with the sleeping baby, and a bottle of breastmilk just in case, walked past my SUV and hopped in his flashy fast car, opened the sunroof, turned the radio on and cranked it up just as Janet Jackson’s Black Cat came on. I jammed in the car, enjoyed the feeling of freedom and felt a little like my old self again. I arrived at a new restaurant where I met up with 6 other women and a few kids who were along for the ride. I had wonderful conversations with all of them, and at least half of those conversations had nothing to do with babies or kids or spit up or solids or height and weight charts. I had a margarita and a lovely dinner. I ate freely with the use of both hands since I did not have to hold a baby, rock a baby, or feed a baby while trying to feed myself. I accepted an invitation to do the same thing next month.

Then I drove home, rushed through the door, expecting to hear Kendall crying or to see Scott’s look of desperation when I walked in. Instead, I was greeted by a silently sleeping baby and my husband right where I left him – in front of the Science Channel. “Did he cry at all while I was gone? Was everything okay?” “Well, yeah. He’s been asleep since you left. He’s fine.” Wow. I can’t believe that went so smoothly.

5 months in 2 days

A not so fun game we play every day

Posted by Jill on September 30, 2008 6 Comments

Mommy needs to pee/clean/brush her teeth/have a moment to chillax… here, hop around/spin around in your Jumperoo/Exersaucer for a few minutes. Wheee! It will be fun! Here we are now, hovering over your fun-time device. Let’s see… if I move just a little more to the right…yup… you should be lined up right over those two big leg holes… annnnnddd down we go. Wait…ugh… stop wiggling! Can you please pause the jumping motion until you are actually engaged in the device? Back up, re-position, try again. What? Why are you screaming? Oh yes, I see. Your big toe is in your armpit. *Sigh* Back up, re-position (man, I REALLY have to pee now), try again. Uhmm… hello??!! There will be time to play with the toys when you finally get in. Cooperate, little man! I can not see over your chubby behind to line you up with the leg holes when you are reaching over in an effort to make out with your dinosaur puppet from mid-air. Grab you by the midsection with one hand, use other hand to manually insert each flailing leg into each leg hole, one leg at a time, while trying to avoid a swift kick to the nose and thanking God you’ve got some killer head control. Success!!

This routine never gets any easier.

Kendall will be 5 months in 3 days

Filed Under: Post Incubation |Tagged With: exersaucer, jumperroo |6 Comments

Reporting from the trenches

Posted by Jill on September 29, 2008 2 Comments

It’s been a week, and the war trudges on. It’s hard to tell who’s winning. If we go by who’s getting better sleep, then Kendall is kicking my ass in that department. I am exhausted. Walking 30 yards to his room three times a night seems about as dreadful as crossing the Sahara. Luckily, no stubbed toes yet. However, if I trip on a dog ONE MORE TIME!! And my days are pretty useless since I nap about as much as Kendall does just to try to catch up on sleep. On the other hand, I like to remind myself that the original intent of this fight was to get Kendall to sleep in his own room, and I’m happy to report that for the last week he has done just that. Granted, he’s still waking up one to three times a night to eat (and that’s what’s killing me) but he goes to sleep after minimal fussing and spends a grand total of about 12 hours in there before he wakes for good the next day. Soooo…. I say I WIN!

Well, maybe not completely. I kind of threw that whole cry it out thing out the window the first night. I think I’m going to listen to the advice of some loyal readers and check out some other options, including The No Cry Sleep Solution. The first night I let him cry for five minutes at about 1 in the morning, since I had just fed him a few hours before, hoping he would just go back to sleep. Well, after the fussing turning into crying and that turned into wailing, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I went to check on him and he would not calm down with the pats on the back and the shush noises. I finally picked him up and he practically unhooked my bra for me. Poor guy He was so hungry. Soooo…. yeah… that made me feel like an ass.

I have to say, all in all and exhaustion included, I am so happy we moved him to his room. I think Scott misses him more than I do. It was nice to snuggle with him at times and to always have him an arm’s reach away, but I’m starting to feel like this one GIANT step has given me just the tiniest bit of my sanity back. We’ve learned to turn the monitor way down and I no longer wait up to see if I can feed him just once before I go to sleep (the first night I stayed up until 1:30 and the second night I didn’t hit the sack until 2:45). Now, if I can just figure out how to comfortably nod off in that rocking chair….

Oh, and thanks for the compliments on the room! For those who asked, the crib is from Babies R Us and it’s the Tampa Lifetime Crib by Baby Cache. The dresser is actually from www.Overstock.com, but it doesn’t look like they sell it anymore. I wanted a real dresser, not some ridiculous looking thing with a cabinet in it. I do not understand just what the hell you are supposed to use that cabinet for. I know that, inevitably, when Kendall is 5, the only thing that cabinet will be good for is hiding/stuffing things he’s not supposed to have. And then when he gets even older it will be a jumbled mess of clothes shoved in, not folded, spewing out the sides, the door unable to close. The rocker is again from Babies R Us (Wendy Bellisimo) and the ottoman was a great deal from Overstock.

Kendall is days shy of 5 months old

Filed Under: Post Incubation |Tagged With: baby furniture, sleeping in crib, sleeping through the night |2 Comments

I may lose the war, but I won the first battle!

Posted by Jill on September 22, 2008 9 Comments

Holy freaking OMG this is so fanfuckingtastic! I just did Kendall’s new little night time, please get sleepy and stay sleepy time routine -bath, lotion, diaper, jammies, sleep sack, Rockabye Baby Lullaby CD, lights down, nurse, rock…. good God that is a shit load of work to get one small person to go to sleep. High maintenance much? Well, at least it WORKED!! I put him down sleepy, but not asleep, left the room, turned the monitor on and prepared for the wailing to begin, except it never did. All I heard was, “grunt… grrrrrunt….GRUNT…grrrrrr…gg…zzzzzz”. VICTORIOUS!

See, I was all prepared. Tonight was going to be the first night that we would start a modified version of crying it out. (Boo Hiss!! I can hear the disapproval of so many from miles away). My goal wasn’t to scar my child or to make him feel like he’s neglected. I didn’t want him to pass out from the sheer exhaustion of screaming his lungs out and choking on his own spit. It was actually quite difficult for us to come to this decision, but the little shit head knows what he’s doing now, people. The other day I let him fuss as long as I could before my heart was on the verge of shattering into a million pieces (I think I made it all of 4 minutes). I ran back into his room, convinced I had scarred him for life. I swooped in, sprinting to his bedside, only to be shocked when he immediately stopped the screaming, looked up at me, and smiled the biggest “I’ve got you where I want you” grin I’ve ever seen. Scott swears every time I take him from him when he’s crying and Scott can’t soothe him he practically winks back at him after the rescue.

But it’s more than the crying it out tonight. We are also hoping to get him to spend his very first entire night in his crib, in his room, on the other side of the house. I do not hold out much hope for sleep in the hours to come. Up until now, Kendall has spent the nights in our room. He starts out in his pack and play, but usually ends up in our bed, asleep next to my naked boob that is flopping out of my nursing tank, passed out after an early morning feeding. I eventually wake up and put myself back together, but if it’s after 3 in the morning, he just stays in between us. It’s a system that has worked well for us. Especially for me. Other than having to switch sides of the bed with Scott depending on what side Kendall needs to feed on, it’s very little disruption to my sleep. However, for many reasons (fear that we will roll over on him, fear he will fall off the bed, fear we will have a toddler/child/pre-teen/socially awkward young adult sleeping with us in the future) we have decided that the honeymoon must end.

I’m sure it will be hard at first. I expect bruises and stubbed toes as I try to make my way through the house, half awake, to nurse him in the middle of the night. And who knows how many times he’ll wake up. That’s where the cry it out thing comes in, I guess. The goal is to not rush off to his room every time he stirs, but to wait and see if he will put himself back to sleep or if he really is hungry before making the sleepwalk journey. I guess that will eventually lead to better/more sleep, but the problem is that for a while I know that I won’t sleep through those grunts, whimpers and whines. Instead, I will lay as close to the monitor as possible, analyzing each and every noise, wondering, waiting, not sleeping. Yup. Tonight is going to be brutal.

I anticipate the fight to be long, tiresome, and perhaps bloody at times (only my blood, I assure you, probably from stubbed toes and broken toe nails from bumping into walls in the middle of the night). I will be at a disadvantage. I will be more exhausted. But I’m hoping some sneaky tricks will help me win. Maybe he will be so enamored with his new room (which we just put the finishing touches on yesterday!) that he’ll be led to believe all the cool babies sleep in their own rooms and let their mommies and daddies get lots of sleep.

With that, I leave you with pictures of said cool room. It is the only room in our house that is completely unpacked, let alone decorated. Sometimes I like to close the door, hang out in there, and pretend the rest of my house is as pristine and color coordinated. It’s a space and planets themed room that we’re hoping he will like just as much a few years down the road as we do now. The mural is the most kick ass thing about the room by far. My brother’s girlfriend hooked us up with her amazing artistic skills and painted it in a day. She and my brother are headed to their first year of college in Seattle in a week (yeah, she’s 18 and this talented). I told her she should do this for people up there as a college job. So if any of you are interested, let me know! I bet you could get her for a steal. Okay, enough talk… here are the pics-