A bad day

Squiggles did not take a nap yesterday. As in, no sleep at all.

I should have known the path our day was going to take when I woke up at 9:30 and didn't hear anything on the monitor. Usually Squiggles is singing or talking to himself or, if I've been asleep too soundly, crying out for me. Yesterday there was nothing. He probably slept longer today because he was up for 30-45 minutes the night before. I went in to get him and he was sitting up quietly playing with his pillow, so I don't think he had been up for long.

He was very pleasant in the morning because he had gotten so much sleep, and asked to go out after breakfast (i.e., he took me over to the garage door and said "dis, dis!"). Yes, an outing, what a good idea little child! So we got dressed and headed out into the beautiful sunshine. We went to Babies R Us to look at a few things and then I figured we'd head to Chik-fil-a for a bite of lunch and some playtime.

He was great as we meandered through the store; but after we checked out, he started to unravel. The trigger was a giant ride-on Garfield as we left the store. I didn't have any change to turn it on, but I let him walk around it and even set him in it to "ride" the kitty. He had a lot of fun, but after a bit, I told him it was time to go. Cue meltdown!

Thinking maybe the promise of chicken nuggets and a slide would help him, we drove over to Chik-fil-a. No luck. He was crying and screaming and had already flung his socks and shoes at the back of the seat in front of him. I got out of the car to explain what we were doing, but he just screamed louder and tried to hit me (our fun new discovery, which Brian and I are not impressed with). So we left - I wasn't about to take him into public already mid-meltdown.

I managed to calm him down during the ride home using this trick I read in Parents magazine a few months back: I act out his emotions and use words to describe how I think he feels. In this case, I banged my fist on my leg and declared that I know he must be frustrated, hungry and tired, and that it's okay to feel that way. It usually works like a charm. I hoped he would fall asleep on the way home, because I figured he was tired after all the screaming. Wrong again.

We went back and forth over the next couple of hours, me trying to get him to sleep and he throwing a fit over it. So at 3:30 I gave up and we snuggled in the chair together under a blanket and watched Sesame Street.

After this "rest" and a good snack, he perked up a bit and was only slightly trying for the rest of the day. Of course, I was ready to rush out of the house as soon as Brian got home, but it all worked out. Good thing last night was Zumba night for me!

Moving day (night)

We decided to make the big drive from Ohio to Florida in the still of night. Hard on us? Yes. Easy on Squiggles? Yes! We left at bedtime, and he slept like a champ for almost the entire drive. There was an hour around 3am where he was awake, but he just stared out the window and eventually fell back asleep again. It kind of sucked for Brian and me (well, mostly Brian, who drove all the way through to almost the Georgia border by himself, only stopping for gas...unfortunately, he accomplished this by getting hopped up on energy drinks and then couldn't fall asleep even though he wanted to), but it was so worth it to keep Squiggles on some semblance of his schedule.

We took it easy the day we arrived (Labor Day), but I think everyone adjusted pretty well to the temporary apartment that Brian's company had put him up in.

Squiggles didn't waste any time finding a fun place to hide and play. It just happened to be a kitchen cabinet. The dogs made themselves comfortable, too:

Oh, and Squiggles really helped out while we made the transition:

Happy Camper

Ha-ha! Squiggles got a 2 hour nap in this morning, and guess what? He was happy the rest of the day, even with a shorter 1 hour nap in the afternoon! I am convinced that that first nap is crucial for him - if he gets a long morning nap, he's a happy camper; if not, well, we're in for a bumpy evening.

He has been wanting to go to bed earlier, though, but I think it's just part of the new schedule. Since he wakes up from his afternoon nap between 4 and 5pm, staying awake until 8pm is probably about all I can ask for right now.

The oatmeal feedings are still going well. He just about scarfs down 2tbsp, so tomorrow I think I'll make 3tbsp and see how much more he'll eat. I'm also starting to plan for his introduction to fruits and vegetables. I borrowed a couple of baby cookbooks (not how to cook a baby, but how to cook for one) and I'm learning all about purees and such. Loads of fun!

By the way, the official countdown to Florida is just under 73 1/2 hours. I'm so excited! Though, I am starting to wonder when I'll blog - but I'll figure it out!

No Nap Nick

That's what I call Squiggles when, uh, he doesn't want to take a nap. Yeah, I'm not the most creative person.


As I mentioned earlier, we're working on dropping a feeding (5 down to 4) and a nap (3 short to 2 long). I think he's got the feeding thing down, and I must admit I feel like less of a milking cow when he eats every 4-5 hours. The nap schedule, however, is still in flux. At the middle of last week, he really seemed ready for two naps. But by the end of the week and into the weekend, he wasn't doing so well. Maybe an hour, hour and a half in the morning, which led to a short 30 minute snooze somewhere in the afternoon, and then maybe another hour in the late afternoon/early evening. Maybe.

Today, he took an hour and a half nap in the morning, then a 30 minute nap in the late afternoon. That was it. Needless to say, he was beyond tired by about 7:15pm. We managed to drag it out for another half hour with singing, dancing, and a bath, and finally put him down around 8:15. I hope he doesn't wake up at 6am!

Friday Soup

So it's late - well, late for me, which is after 10pm these days. I remember staying up later on Friday nights, knowing that there would be some extra sleep coming to me on Saturday morning. But Squiggles doesn't care what day it is, or that the weekend is for relaxing. We're up at 6:30 and that's that. So I guess it's not such a surprise that I have a hard time staying up past 10:30 anymore.


Yeah, it's late and I've had a long day and I've got a migraine that's been hanging on since this morning. And I haven't blogged yet today. So this will be a Friday soup post - "cream of walk-in" as Chef would say. Bits o' randomness to tie up loose ends and clear everything out at the end of the week. Maybe it will catch on.

More oatmeal today - another 2 tbsp. Squiggles really seems to like it, so I am encouraged. Of course this is making the diapers messier, but we're learning to roll with the punches. I think we may start introducing veggies over the Thanksgiving week.

Dinner at The Pub last night was excellent. Good beer, good scotch, good food, and, best of all, good company. I will make the suggestion, though, that if you go to a restaurant called "The Pub", please order pub food. Don't expect a place trying to be close to an authentic British pub to have killer salads. That said, we loved the Shepherd's Pie and Fish and Chips (well, Chef had Crisps instead of Chips). We also all determined that our new favorite beer is Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale.

Squiggles is in the process of dropping a feeding (4, down from 5), and moving to two long naps instead of three shorter ones. This has not been the smoothest transition. Tonight he had a meltdown around 6pm. I finally got him to doze off around 6:30, and 25 minutes later he had finished his power nap. Maybe the oatmeal will help him with all of this.

This weekend should be nice - Chef is away for the weekend, Sarah and I (and Squigs, of course) are going shopping tomorrow, and I'll probably start working on getting the house in order on Sunday. There should be plenty of time to blog, though I'm starting to wonder how and when I'll be able to blog while we're in Florida for our big Thanksgiving vacation. Oh, well, I have 7 days to figure it out. Right now it's time for sleep-sleeps.

Fiberful

I started back up with the cereal again today. Chef picked up some infant oatmeal at the grocery yesterday, so this afternoon I gave it a go while I was home at lunch. I say lunch, but it's really more like 2:30 in the afternoon because Squiggles eats around 11am and again around 3pm. Sometimes I come home for the earlier feeding, sometimes for the later one. Today was the later one. Don't worry, I have a snack at work so I don't starve - we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

The oatmeal mixes up a little runnier than the rice cereal did. Or maybe I was a little heavy-handed with the breast milk; who knows. It smells different, too. Heartier, I guess. And it's more of a tan color. I was hoping Squiggles wouldn't pick up on the differences.

Guess what? He must not have, because he loved the oatmeal! He kept opening his mouth and looking at me and kicking his little feet. If I waited too long between bites (because I was talking with my mother-in-law while I was feeding him), he would let out with his little howler monkey imitation. He put down almost two tbsp. of the stuff. Woo-hoo!

Today's success gives me hope for the cereal feedings, though I'll reserve final judgment until we find out how this affects his sleep.

On an adult note (but not the x-rated kind!), Chef and I are going out with my friend Sarah and her husband tonight while they are in town. We're going to try out a new restaurant, The Pub, that we heard about last year while we were at the Dayton Ale Fest (we got to talk with the owner). I'm excited to see Sarah and have some grownup conversation and (hopefully) yummy food. And beer.

Not Quite Ready

Welcome to NaBloPoMo day, um, 2? Day 6? Curses for not starting on Nov. 1!

Here's an update on the cereal experience: it's on hold for the time being. Yes, that's right, I haven't fed Squiggles his rice cereal now for about a week. Why? Well, it certainly isn't because he wasn't getting used to it.


Not only was he getting used to eating cereal, it seemed he was even enjoying it. I had decreased the amount of milk so that it was less of a liquid consistency. We even made it up to 1 1/2 tbsp of cereal mixed with the same amount of milk, and he was eating almost all of that.

What made me stop feeding him the cereal was how it was affecting his sleeping pattern. Isn't starting babies on solid food supposed to help sleep through the night better? Well, not us. Squiggles had been sleeping just fine through the night, but after a few days of cereal feedings, he started waking up during the night. More than once per night. And it was getting harder and harder to put him down at night. We'd get him to sleep, and, as soon as we'd lower him into his crib, he'd wake up. And scream. It was not fun. Chef and I were at a loss as to what to do, so I suggested we stop feeding Squiggles the cereal. That was the only explanation; we hadn't started him on any other new routines lately.

Squiggles is sleeping just fine through the night now. The first couple of nights, we had a hard time getting him to go down - he'd wake up about an hour or so after we put him down - but now he's back to sleeping around 9 hours through the night. I'm not sure what really happened; maybe he was getting too much gas because of the cereal? Rice is supposed to be very gentle and benign for baby digestive systems. I shared this experience with a friend of mine who said that her daughter had problems with rice cereal, too, and that they had better success with oatmeal because of the higher fiber content.

So I will get Squiggles some oatmeal and we will try again. Maybe I'll even try a different time of day - late morning or early afternoon as opposed to the evening. But I'm in no hurry. He's gaining weight (18.5 lbs!) and sleeping through the night and isn't even six months old yet, so I don't see any need to rush this whole transition to solids. Plus there's that tiny part of me that doesn't want to him to grow up.

I've got my baby back, baby back, baby back...

No, I'm not eating ribs, even though today participating Chili's are donating 100% of its profits to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (in case you don't have dinner plans yet).


I'm talking about getting my happy baby boy back today. Squiggles has been out of sorts for over a week now, and he's just now coming back online. He's had a stomach bug for almost 2 weeks, I think he may be starting to teethe (he gnaws on anything he can get his little hands on, including, well, his little hands), and we had to deal with Chef being out of town for most of this last week. Not a good combination of events, I tell ya.

Needless to say, naps have been few and far between, and he couldn't even be counted on to go to sleep very well even at night (I don't even want to get started on the piercing screams from Friday night that prompted a call to my parents for help...all I have to say is that I'm glad I have family close by and that I'm not a single parent). I was beginning to wonder if this new, fussy baby had permanently replaced my Squiggles!

Then, today I saw a glimpse of the Squiggles I remembered! He slept great last night (9 1/2 hours), woke up in a splendiferous mood this morning, and has, for the most part, fallen back into his regular nap/feeding schedule! Praise the Lord!