Sleepy head

I’m very glad to be typing this. I realize I might be about to jinx myself here, but teething might be changing things already, so I’ll take the chance.

Evan is sleeping through the night. Twelve hours straight. It’s bliss.

How did we get there?, you may ask. Well, easy: we moved across country, with a 3 hour time difference, and changed his bedtime to one hour later. Piece of cake!

I don’t know what it was exactly, but we did move dinner to around 5:30-6 pm (he used to go to bed at 6 pm), last bottle at 6:30 pm, bedtime at 7 pm. And he’s good until around 7 am. Unbelievable.

We’ve had a couple of not-so-great nights lately, but because molars are thinking of making an appearance. And by thinking, I mean we won’t see them for probably two months, but they’re starting to give Evan pain in advance. So Orajel is our friend right now.

I hope the move to our house won’t change this. New noises (street noises!) might be a problem, but getting his comfortable crib back might balance that. We’ll just have to wait and see. For now, we’re enjoying his twelve hours of sleep. Now, if Bear would leave my bladder alone at night, I might actually sleep through the night myself…

White and pretty

Evan finally got his second tooth! I was giving him Ora.jel last night right before putting him down, and I felt it. And I saw it this morning, all small and pretty :) I'm a proud mama.

Also, he's sleeping very well. Yesterday he didn't wake up until 4:30 am, and last night he woke up at 1 am (Josh rocked him to sleep) and then not again until 6 am. Just need to be patient...

I'm not sure I posted this, but when I was reading The Time Traveler's Wife, I had a few time traveling dreams. One of them was me coming from "the future", saying in 2 months Evan would sleeping through the night. Maybe I ought to have some faith...

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:

We seem to be having a bit more progress on the sleeping front. Evan is still waking up twice, but he now wakes up between 1-3 am, and again between 6-6:30 am. Hopefully those will keep moving a bit, until his second wake up is around 7:30 am, which is really when I'd like him to wake up for the day. It we get there, we'll only have one night waking (yay!), working it's way out.

Also, turns out he does like avocado! He just doesn't like it pureed, but if it's a chunk he'll eat it. And he's the best at letting me know he doesn't like something. He tries it, puts it down, and looks at me with a "No, not really. What else do you have, mom?" expression. Better than screaming and spitting!

The Bad:

His attention span is so short, and he gets over toys so quickly, I have trouble keeping him entertained. And he's set on getting to the dogs and/or their dog beds. He probably tries about 15-20 times a day. Let's not go into details of why I don't trust our dogs to just be cool if Evan reaches out to them or is in their way. The dog beds are NASTY. Evan eats enough dog hair from the carpet and the dog hair laying around, I don't even want to think about him getting to those beds... And those beds will never see the inside of my still brand new washer, where I wash diapers. Hell to the no!

Also, he doesn't like broccoli. But like I said, he was very cool about it.

The Ugly:

I've given up faith. It's time to admit defeat, and let go of my silly dreams. I must admit, here and now, that I was wrong. I don't think Evan is left handed. Sigh... Oh well, nobody is perfect ;)

Slight improvement

Just a quick update on the sleeping front. We moved Evan's bedtime to half hour earlier, and it seems to be helping. Most nights he has been waking up only twice, about every 4 hours. Let me tell you that alone is huge, because I seem to function better with 4 hour intervals of sleep than with 3 hour intervals. I feel more rested and less cranky.

And Evan is more calm when he wakes up at night. Instead of starting to cry, he talks and whines, but it takes a while for him to cry, and once or twice he has been able to go back to sleep on his own, albeit only for about half hour more. After some more reading we'll probably start doing a few more things to help him sleep through the night.

I'm feeling positive, people!

Nighttime schedule

For better or for worse, we're on a pretty regular schedule for nighttime feedings. Evan goes to sleep around 8 pm. We change him, I feed him, burp him, and put him down. Most nights he's still awake when I put him down, but falls asleep within seconds.

Then he wakes up between 11-12, again around 2 am, and around 5 am. So, basically every 3 hours. Since we've been on this schedule (probably close to 2 months by now) he wakes up wet frequently. So I have to change his diaper either at 2-3 am or at 5 am. That, or I have to change his diaper and onesie next time he wakes up, which probably happens because he's wet.

So our solution of using disposables at night because they absorb more is not working too great anymore. I tried using a super stuffed cloth diaper and it just gets too cold with all that pee, and wakes him up nonetheless. So I do the middle of the night diaper change (to cloth, so we still only use one disposable per day), hoping once he stops eating at night he'll be able to sleep through with one night diaper.

But I digress. This waking up 3 times every night is really not working too great for me. He's really easy in that he eats and falls asleep right away, so it really only takes me away from my bed for about 10 minutes. But the vacation was a little brutal on me (We went to North Cascades for 3 days/2 nights). I didn't get any naps, and I was very concerned with responding to Evan's noises as soon as possible so we wouldn't wake up our friends' twins. And we slept on an air mattress which didn't help much either. And I don't drink coffee, and tea doesn't really do that much (and I don't drink tea that often either). So I'm still recuperating from it, and the occasional 4 wake up nights don't help.

I also thought maybe once we started solids he would sleep better, longer, as so many believe. Well, we're up to two solid meals per day (cereal and vegetables) and he's waking up as if he had an alarm set up. So I believe that's false.

My mom told me to try and give him water and not milk... he cried on and off for an hour before really staying asleep, and that's too long for me. So we have two options: either we try again the 3-4 nights in a row cryfest, or we just let him be and I feed him when he wants.

The cryfest, well, you know I don't really like letting him cry like that, and he's a stubborn little one (reminds me of his mom...). The two times we've tried this he cried for a full hour, and I'm not sure I can take it.

Letting him be could be fine, except I think it's more about him falling asleep on thebreast than anything else, and I do want him to fall asleep on his own. But how can I tell if he's waking up because he's hungry or if it's just that he can't go back to sleep on his own? He falls asleep on his own no problems for morning naps and at bedtime, but he has problems in the afternoon and possibly at night. So what's the answer??

I don't know.

I should have some breakfast before he wakes up, so I'll let you ponder that question.

Promise

I spoke too soon, Evan is not entirely back to normal... but there are no sleep patterns to talk about. He will wake up once one night, three times the next, once, twice, sleep through the night, three, three, twice, once, once... you get idea. We never know what kind of night we're going to get, there's no way to tell. Needless to say I'm tired, and I've been neglecting writing updates for you.

And now my brother Carlos and his family are visiting for a week. On top of a 6 month old, we have a 5 year old girl and 2 year old boy, which makes for some fun times, but not many naps. And Evan's sleep schedule is all over the place, so there you have it.

So, this is a post with a promise. I promise I will blog next week! I could write more now, but I feel it may be a better use of my time to try to enjoy the current peace and quiet, and maybe get a 10 minute nap (I'm being optimistic here!)

But I will blog about our now 6 month old baby! Evan turned 6 months old yesterday and he has a few tricks up his sleeve, so I'll tell you about that. And I'll show you how I look 6 months postpartum.

I promise. ::cross my heart and all::

Back to normal

It's been 3 nights in a row of waking up only once per night. Evan slept 12 hours last night. Aaah, the bliss!

My best guess as to what was going on is teething. Add a messed up schedule, and I'm not surprised our sleep deprivation lasted so long.

I was getting worried that maybe he was hungry, but now I know that was not the case. I really need to stop listening to others and just go with my gut. Nobody knows my baby like I do, nobody spends as much time with him. Sometimes I get lost in the noise, but my mommy instinct is really the one I should pay closest attention to.

Now he's taking the first nap of the day, and later we'll go see his friends from baby class. Maybe I'll try to take a nap now!

11:30, 12:30, 2:30, 5 am

Oh my goodness, I'm so tired today. It was a long, long night, I'm dying for a nap and it's only 9 am.

I don't really know what's going on at this point, all I know is that this is crazy! Evan is waking up more now that he did when he was 2 weeks old! I don't know if this is because he's teething, or because he was sick, or his schedule's messed up, or he's growing, or more hungry, or just a pain in the rump. It's been over two weeks of this now, and I just need it to be over, whatever it is.

And in a very real way this is worse than when he was 2 weeks old. Yes, it took longer to put him back to sleep back then, but he's so active now, there's no down time, he must be entertained. And if not entertained, I have to at least stay close and alert. Sleep deprivation doesn't help either. And he naps less now.

And can I just say I hate the Jeans Hug.gies commercials? I know that was out of nowhere, but I was just watching it and it's annoying.

Back to play with the Bug. I hope he gets tired soon so I can at least take a shower, because we have to go into town. Sigh...

Crib time

Evan has been sleeping in a sleep sack for weeks now. He had no problems with the transition from swaddling to sleep sack, so we thought we'd try the next step. He'd been staying with us in his pack and play, but we were asking for trouble because he's right around 15 pounds (which is the weight limit). The bassinet in the pack and play in very sturdy, but we believe the risk doesn't come from the bassinet falling into the pack and play, but from the pack and play falling on its side since the bassinet makes it top-heavy. We got rid of the bassinet and decided he would just sleep on the "floor" of the pack and play, but then that same night we decided to give it the crib a try.

Evan has been sleeping in his crib for two nights now, and he's been fine. It helps that he practically sleeps through the night: Washington nights, that is. He goes to sleep around 9 pm and wakes up between 4 and 5 am, which is from dusk until dawn. Then he goes back to sleep for another 2-3 hours.

And I think he's getting ready to ditch that last feeding too. The past 3 nights he's been eating just from one side. I personally think that's great, because it's the only time I can pump to start building a stash. With all the moving, I didn't have a chance to freeze any milk, and the rest of the day he pretty much eats every two hours, so there's nothing extra to pump, ever. So now I'm very proud to have 10 oz of breast milk in the freezer :)

Another change of late is that we're down to only one disposable diaper per day. We only use a disposable at night because Evan is such a big wetter, but during the day we're using only cloth, and we feel great about it. Garbage disposal here it's on the expensive side and you pay by weight, and diapers get pretty heavy! So that's another huge incentive for us to use cloth. We're getting our new Bum Genius one size pocket diapers today (yay!), and other than getting a few hemp inserts in the future for night, we're done buying diapers. We should be covered for Evan and for the next baby (if we ever decide to have another, that is!).

Things are good in Cape San Juan...

Hot nights

We're still in AZ and it's getting hot in here! It gets cool at night, but during the day the house gets pretty warm. By the time we go to bed (8-9 pm) it's around 77 degrees in our bedroom.

Needless to say we started feeling swaddling Evan at night would make him too warm. Then again, it gets cold around 2-3 am, so we still needed some way to keep him warm. The solution? A sleep sack.


That takes away the problem of keeping him warm, but I wasn't sure he was ready to be unswaddled. Josh said we should try and I decided to go with it, but I had absolutely no faith in it working. Well, it's been 2 nights of happy, 6-hours, unswaddled sleep. Then he sort of wakes up, eats and goes right back to sleep within 30 minutes, unswaddled, and sleeps for another 2-3 hours. His hands get a little cold, especially once he tries to eat them and they get all wet, but that's it. He's such a great baby!

Speaking of hands, he tries to eat them all the time now. He's mastering the art of sucking his thumb, and he's getting pretty good at it! And when he's not trying to eat his hands, he's looking at them figuring out what else he can do with them. He's completely fascinated with them.

And he used to fall asleep in our front carrier, as soon as we started walking. Now he's all awake, looking around and taking in his surroundings. He won't even take his binky, the world is more interesting at that point. Eventually he's fall asleep, but not before a good half hour of exploration.

We're flying to San Diego this Saturday to see Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Debbie (and the rest of the family, of course!), and we should be in WA in 2 weeks time. It's going to be an exciting couple of weeks!

Craziness ahead

I'm starting to get nervous about the weeks to come. I'm having trouble falling asleep, I have a hundred thoughts going through my head. It took me over an hour to fall back to sleep last night after our nightly feeding, and it took me almost 45 minutes to fall sleep for our morning nap, which only lasted 30 minutes. Evan wasn't awake yet, I just woke up on my own. Now I'm tired, but every time I lay down, I can't quiet my mind.

So here's what will happen in the weeks to come:

Tomorrow: Movers come here to estimate times.
Sunday: Josh leaves for work training.
Tuesday: Evan gets his first shots. I'll be all alone with him.
Friday: Evan and I fly to meet Josh. It'll be a long day...
Saturday: Visit Grandma Duffy.
Sunday: Visit Dennis and Ellen.
Monday: Visit Dave and Caroline.
Tuesday: Head back to Baltimore.
Wednesday: Fly back home.

Following Tuesday: Fly to WA --- Try to find a place to rent -- fly back on Saturday.

Two weeks after that: move to WA!

Evan is doing great, we have a good routine going. Very flexible on hours, but pretty consistent. He goes to sleep around 8-9 pm, wakes up between 1-3 am, he nurses and stays awake a total of 1.5 hours before going back to sleep for a good 3 hours. He's awake for about 2 hours and then he takes a morning nap, that can last up to 3 hours. And he's now taking an afternoon nap, a good 2-3 hours long. Of course, the craziness ahead almost guaranties that it'll hit the fan, so I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

So there's a lot on my mind, a lot of things to do and think about.I can't wait to be all moved in.