“You Forgot to Spray!” and other happenings August 14, 2013

We went through a phase for a while where we’d put the kids to bed and they’d get up several times before falling asleep, needing to go potty or have a drink or tell us something – typical stall tactics.  I’ve been able to reign this in quite a bit recently, and it’s now not unusual for them to stay in bed once put down (Hayden is particularly fantastic at this anymore – although he does take try it on with John pretty regularly).  One thing that has helped with Layla is my monster and dinosaur spray.  Every night for the last couple of months I have “sprayed” all around her bed with my two sprays.  Even though we can’t see the spray, it has kept all the monsters and dinosaurs away while she is sleeping.  Every night we spray (sometimes she has to come out of her room to tell me I forgot to spray!), and every night while I’m spraying she asks me if it will “last all day night”.

Another silly thing we are doing is pretending the food that she hasn’t eaten wants to go into her belly to see its friends who she has already eaten.  She’ll be eating, say, cereal and leave half a bowl.  I’ll scoop up some on a spoon and put on a funny voice to ask her to please let me in so I can go see my friend/mommy/daddy/sister/brother/cousin.  Today she was even having me give each spoonful a name (rejecting most of the names until I got to the ones she liked).  It can certainly slow down a meal, but it’s worth it to know she’s had a good amount of food, and over time it seems to have gotten her to start off eating a good amount on her own before I have to do the show.

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Growth Spurt October 31, 2012

We’re thinking Hayden is in the midst of a growth spurt, but it’s hard to see the outcome of that when you see him every day.  As I’m sure has been a blog topic in the past, he is a picky eater.  However, when we went to England he was chowing down!  Surprisingly, it was really easy to find food that he liked.  Layla on the other hand, not overly impressed.  She used to be such a great eater, but has been getting pickier the last few months and was particularly picky in England.  Of course, she had a nasty ear infection while we were there, was subsequently on antibiotics, and might have had a short stomach bug as well – so none of that is going to help the appetite.

But I digress.  Hayden, growth spurt.  Even since we’ve come home from England he is still doing better with his eating, in that he seems to be eating more (not necessarily more variety, but seems to want to eat more quantity-wise).  He’s also been sleeping later – in fact Layla has been too – so I think that body is working hard to add some inches.  I think his body had so much fun at Legoland that it wants to make sure the next time we go to Disney that he is tall enough for every single ride. 🙂

Layla’s First Week (or so) May 31, 2010

It’s been about a week and a half now since Layla was born.  She has been a little doll.  She eats really well and really only cries when she is hungry or if her belly hurts (in which case the cry ends after a burp or other such relief).  I wonder if she has been having a little growth spurt the last couple of days as particularly in the evenings she seems to eat for hours on end with little breaks here and there.  She sleeps all the time.  She has more wakeful periods every day, but I think she is only awake a total of about two hours per day. 

So far we have been really lucky with her at night, as she is sleeping well and gets up every 2 – 3 hours to eat (that’s from the start of one feeding to the start of the next).  Her feedings last 45 min to 1 hour at night, including changing her diaper which inevitably wakes her up enough to want to eat some more.  There has only been one night when she decided to wake up right before we were going to bed, and then was awake for a couple of hours (which meant I was awake for a couple of hours).  But the vast majority of the time so far she is going straight down after feeding and allows me to get a couple of hours of sleep before the next one (except for last night where she was up every 2 hours, so I was only getting one hour of sleep between feedings). 

Speaking of feeding, a little off-topic but something I didn’t want to forget was how long Layla fed right after she was born!  With breastfed babies there’s always the big question of how well they will latch on in the beginning.  I didn’t get to feed her until about an hour after she was born.  First they did their tests and all the different things they do to babies right after they are born (and in the meantime they were taking care of me and all the things they do to mommies right after the baby is born).  So once I finally got her back I was able to get her to latch on pretty quickly.  The nurse came over a few minutes after she was already eating, intending to help me and not realizing she’d been latched on for a while (she was impressed – well done, Layla!).  Those first few feedings were so sweet because I almost felt sorry for Layla as she used her instincts to try to get to her food but wasn’t always quite able to get there – either not opening wide enough, not going in the right direction, getting her hands in the way, etc.  So sweet.  Anyway, I hadn’t eaten anything since about 8:00 the previous evening, and by about 5 am, deep into labor, I was starving.  They wouldn’t let me have anything to eat, and there was a good half hour to an hour where I would have given anything for one little cereal bar.  So I imagine Layla was famished by the time she finally got to eat, and she breastfed for over an hour in that first session!  I had to switch sides three times as she just kept going!  If that first session and the following week and a half are anything to go by, we are going to have another good eater on our hands.

In the hospital they gave us 2 swaddle sleep sacks.  We had used these with Hayden and he had responded really well to them, but we must have gotten them when he was a bit older as the ones we have are too big for Layla.  The ones they gave us at the hospital are newborn size, so I washed them once we got home and as soon as we started using those at night she has just slept so well.  At the hospital she would not sleep well in her basinett, even if she was swaddled in a receiving blanket.  I would lay her down so we could both sleep at night and she would cry after about 5 minutes.  When I picked her up she was fine and didn’t necessarily need to eat.  The postpartum ward was not very busy while we were there, and both nights the nurse had come in during the middle of the night and had seen me sitting up in the dark trying to sleep, holding a sleeping Layla on the Boppy pillow.  This was the only way I could get her to sleep in the hospital, and both nights the nurses asked if they could take her to the nursery and rock her until she was hungry so I could get some proper sleep.  I decided to go that route because I wondered if I would ever get any sleep again once we came home and I didn’t have a nurse to rock her while I slept, but she has done a great job since we got home and I think it’s thanks to the swaddle sleep sacks.

The last thing of note is that her umbilical cord fell off this morning.  I seem to remember Hayden had his for a couple of weeks or more; hers definitely seems to have come off faster.  Whenever Hayden sees me changing her diaper and comes to see what’s going on he would ask what was on her belly, so I think he will be glad that it’s gone!

Sleeping in Mexico April 13, 2010

We didn’t really have a good plan for sleeping arrangements in Mexico.  Sleep – or lack thereof – can make such a difference in a person’s mood, particularly when that person is 2 years old.  So we were very pleasantly surprised that things worked out so well in that department.  First, we couldn’t decide if we should get a room with two double beds or one king.  We decided that it would be pretty cramped for John and I in a double bed with my rather large belly, so we went with the king.  Next decision – does Hayden sleep with us or do we try a roll away bed?  I was nervous about the roll away bed because it is the size of a twin/single (or maybe smaller), and obviously does not have any sides to it to keep him rolling off, whereas his bed at home is a double with little sides on it.  We decided to give it a try anyway, and he was brilliant with it!  We shoved the bed all the way against the wall and wedged one of the decorative pillows between the bed and the wall to keep him from falling that way, then put a duvet on the floor to protect him in case he rolled off that way.  I think he was so tired each night that he really didn’t move much once he was asleep.  He seemed to love having his own little bed, too, and when we were in the room he would spend a lot of time climbing up onto it.  Sometimes if John or I were on the bed with him he would tell us he wanted us to go to our own bed.  We brought his “owl blanket” (a blanket I made for him when he was a baby that he likes), curious George and Elmo stuffed animals, and as long as he could cuddle with those three things when it was time to sleep he was pretty happy.

We also didn’t know what to expect with naps.  At home he’s pretty good about napping (or was at the time of our vacation anyway – last week he was not napping well) but doesn’t always, but with the complete upset of routine that goes with vacationing I wondered if naps would be out the window.  Well, he actually ended up doing a great job of napping.  Most days we would go up to the room after a long morning at the pool and lunch, draw the curtains, he’d lay down in his bed and eventually drift off.  John and I would have to be sure to go to our beds and be still so he didn’t have anything distracting him, of course.

For me, the most interesting sleep-related thing to come out of the trip was that he eventually adapted to sleeping outside of a bed.  “The experts” say that the highest quality sleep is achieved in bed, in the quiet, in the dark, so we have always tried to give that to Hayden when it’s time to sleep and thus he has not had a lot of opportunities to sleep on-the-go.  However, he fell asleep on the plane, then during an evening “beach party” that was put on by the hotel after dinner one night, and he even fell asleep on the bus during our one excursion out of the resort, and continued sleeping as he was carried through the hotel and out onto a sun lounger in the shade where he slept for a long while laying on me.

Orange Juice Daddy January 3, 2010

We recently had the big boy bed conversion.  We had Hayden’s big boy room painted just before Christmas as we thought what a great time to get him moved over ready for baby number 2.  Incase it didn’t go well, it would be easy to manage (not having to work in the mornings) less sleep if we had a two year old continually turn up at our bedroom door!

We have been making a big deal out of his new room for a couple of weeks, and the day he moved we spent some time up there playing with brand new toys to get him excited about his new room.  Things could not have gone better!  From the point I’d got him about of the bath, got his PJs on, he ran into his new bedroom without me saying a word!  We followed the traditional routine but with books on the beanbag instead of the rocking chair, put him in the big boy bed and sang the songs.  I closed the door, nervous that he was just going to clamber out and follow me down the stairs.  I never heard a peep!  He was straight asleep.  And every night since then he’s basically done the same.  A rock star!!!

The first morning we did walk in and found him walking around his room trying to figure out how to open the door!  Since then we’ve told him he has to stay in bed and he’s going a good job at that.

The other night, about 5am, we suddenly heard out of the baby monitor “orange juice daddy”.  That was it, then silence and then sleep til 8am!?

Napping has been a little more of a challenge, it tends to be light in that room during the day, so i think it’s taking some adjusting.  Twice while he was supposed to be napping this week we’ve heard this huge thud on the ceiling, and then followed with tears a few seconds later.  Somehow he’s managed to fall out of bed and both times used his head as a brake!  Poor little guy!!

The times I’ve walked in on him when he’s supposed to be napping, but isn’t, I’ve caught him standing in the middle of his bed with a big cheeky grin on his face!  Little monkey!!!  I suspect that has something to do with the head bumping!!

Jokes October 1, 2009

Hayden has started telling his version of “jokes,” which absolutely cracks me up.  It’s all around saying he wants to do something that he doesn’t really want to do.  He will be playing and he’ll look up at me and smile and say “day care!”  So I’ll tell him it’s not a day care day and Mommy gets to spend the day with Hayden today, and he doesn’t really want to go to day care, does he?  And he’ll smile and say “day care!” again and laugh, and eventually I’ll say, “Okay!  You can go to day care!” and he’ll say “No, home.”  Then I ask him if he was teasing Mommy and he just laughs!  When I brought him home from day care yesterday and I was about to get him out of his car seat he said “day care” and I said, “You want to go back to day care?”  He said, “Yep,” so I said, “Okay!  I’ll take you back!”  He then said, “No, home, home,” and again laughed when I asked if he’d been teasing Mommy.  You can also replace “nap” with “day care” and have the same scenario.

The first “joke” he told was when we were looking through a book of sheep and he pointed to one and said, “Mimi.”  I started tickling him and said, “That’s not Mimi, that’s a sheep!” and he was laughing and laughing, and for a few days he would point to Mimi or Lucy and call them sheep or see a sheep in a book and call it Mimi or Lucy and laugh every time.

Nap update

I am thrilled to say that the non napping only lasted a couple of weeks, and Hayden is back in full nap mode.  His habit now when I put him down is to talk and talk and talk for a while until I come upstairs to check his diaper (many times he has a dirty one that needs changing, but even when he doesn’t this is still the routine now).  I check it and change if needed and put him back down and he goes pretty much straight to sleep!  Whatever works!  I definitely wasn’t ready for him to ditch the nap.

Hayden No Nap September 1, 2009

Hayden seems to be done with his naps at home.  I really hope this is a temporary glitch.  He is still napping at day care, but when he is home he sits up in his room and just chats loudly until we finally come and get him.  It makes for a long day, and he seems to get bored as the day goes on when he hasn’t napped.  That makes sense I suppose, since he isn’t getting any sort of break where he can come back and things seem new again.  Sunday he had not napped since Wednesday at day care and he seemed kind of tired all morning.  We tried to get him to nap and when John went in to check on him he had a dirty diaper that was likely the cause of him not sleeping.  So that got changed and after a while John tried again to get him to nap, which failed again.  There comes a time in the afternoon where it is too late to nap without impacting bedtime, and we had reached that point but by about 4:00 he was so tired that he was getting upset a lot so I just put him to bed to give him (and us) a break and he crashed out.  We didn’t want him to sleep too long, so a little after 5 we got him up and boy did we pay for that for about 45 minutes.  Nothing would make him happy; all he wanted to do was scream and cry.  He didn’t know what he wanted – he’d cry because you picked him up and then he’d cry harder if you put him back down.  Eventually I put him back in his crib to try to let him sort himself out either by going back to sleep for a little bit or by collecting himself, and that did seem to work mostly (although he was still touchy the rest of the evening).  He naps fine at day care, so I really hope this was just a two-week thing and he will be napping again on Thurs!  (fingers crossed)

Big Boy March 3, 2008

Hayden is of course growing up and doing new things all the time. He lies on his front, occasionally has a quick nap on his front, rolls around all on his own. In fact I went into his bedroom the other day and he managed to twist himself 90 degrees in his crib to be laying horizontal! It was very funny – he’s so tall i think he was stuck!!

He got on my shoulders the other day (well perhaps he got a helping hand!!), he loved that and grabbed my hair as a good grip. He likes to rip his mum’s necklaces off her neck. Drinking from grown up cups is also his favourite, but we are trying to keep him to his beakers (‘sippy cups’ or something for the Americans!). He loves holding his own bottle, but he needs a little more practice!

He is also trying to follow in his nerdy parents footsteps and has started developing his computer skills already.

Happy baby February 25, 2008

Hayden is so much fun right now!  He is often a very happy little boy, smiling and laughing away.  We love finding new ways to make him laugh.  Today while I was feeding him lunch I discovered that if I said ‘SMASH!’ enthusiastically he thought it was the funniest thing ever.  So that has been the word of the day.  What makes it even funnier is that for some reason when John tries it he gets a blank look or a little laugh that sounds like Hayden is trying to humor him.  He does it exactly like I do, but in Hayden’s world it is hilarious when I do it and not very funny when Daddy does it… which makes it quite funny for John and I (or at least for me 🙂 ).

Last night we went out to dinner with Reena, Sunil, and David.  We took Hayden and he was the World’s Best Baby.  He was so well behaved – the only time he fussed was when he was hungry.  He kept fussing while we tried to give him a bottle, but that was because Mommy is a big dumbo and left this little stopper in the bottle that keeps the milk from leaking but therefore makes it impossible for baby to get any milk when trying to eat.  Once I sorted that out he chowed down and carried on being World’s Best Baby.  I was telling him this morning how proud I was that he was such a good boy, but that unfortunately he is so young that Mommy and Daddy really couldn’t take any credit for his behavior!  We are very aware that the Good Baby Gods were smiling on us last night! 🙂

Weaning is going really well.  (I know the last post mentioned that I have just started weaning, but I accidentally had that post in my drafts since Valentine’s Day and forgot to publish it.  I have actually been weaning him since the beginning of the month.)  He is down to only breast feeding at night, which at the moment is about 3 feedings (from the time he goes down for the night until he gets up in the morning).  Tomorrow night I will replace one of those with a bottle, leaving only 1 or 2 breast feedings left.  Apparently babies go longer between feedings when they are on formula, so once he gets his bottle at night he may naturally drop the middle of the night feeding on his own.  He’s not on 100% formula yet, but he only has about 2 oz of breastmilk per bottle now so the vast majority is formula.  I will carry on putting a couple of ounces of breastmilk in his formula for a while because I still have frozen milk I have expressed so I will make that go as far as I can.

Nanny Mad is coming to visit in about a week and a half!  She will be here for a couple of weeks, then we will all go to Florida and meet up with Michelle there.  Very much looking forward to all that!