My jeans! Yippee!!!

After much hard work, today I decided to try on my old jeans again. They fit!!!! Yippeee!!!! They are still a bit snug, but not the obscene/shouldn'twearthemout/spillingoverthetop that they used to be :D

GO ME!!!!

Very long little man...

H, as of his 4 month check up, is 26 1/2 inches long! That is in the 95 percentile. He is only in the 25% for weight so he is long and skinny. Took this photo this morning - legs too long for his overalls and feet hanging over the bouncy seat!

Love the FISHES!!!

Like crack for a baby...the FISHES!!!



We just received this ugly, plastic, non-crib matching, music playing, light-up, bubbling fish thingee. And he LOVES it. I turn it on each time we lay him down to sleep. Even if he wakes back up as we lay him down, he is mesmerized by it's soft twinkly music, the moving fish and the bubbles. Heck - the thing could put me to sleep. People tell that as their kids get older, they start hitting the button themselves. We may run into the poor house from buying D batteries (how can a sophisticated device like an ipod run on a teeny tiny battery, but this plastic contraption requires 3 giant D batteries!?!?), but Happy H is worth it!

Sleep Smackdown

Well, Z is still out of town and I'm still tired. So last night I thought I'd try a different tactic. I fed H at his normal 7:30/8ish and put him to bed easily. Then, around 10, when I was ready to go to bed I decided to go with the dreamfeed (pick him up still asleep & rouse him just enough to eat) to see if doing this would eliminate a wake-up. Dreamfeed went well - took 3.5 oz and drifted back off to sleep easily. Off to bed I went.

At 12:15 - guess who's awake?!?! So I went to check on him. Not stinky. Not in a weird place in his crib. Just fine. Now I'm convinced little man just wants me and my trusty bottle to come & put him back to sleep. And thus the smackdown begins. I wasn't really planning on it, but I just decided to go for it. I didn't pick him up, I patted him a bit, offered a paci (which he didn't take & never will if he's mad) and then left. He got quiet for a second and then the wailing began! It was solid for about 12 minutes. Then quiet. Then on & off for another 15 or 20 or so. Then little man conked out. It was not easy. I laid there with my jaw clamped so tight I nearly gave myself a headache. I almost gave in at one point. But I reminded myself it was worse to go back in, because it would only start the cycle over and he would only learn that if he cried long enough I would come.

He was up again around 2. But it was interesting - he didn't escalate to the extremely loud wail he had been doing lately. I was able to get up, heat a bottle and then go in after I had the bottle ready. I figured at 2 a.m. it had been 4 hours since he last ate, so I'd feed him then. I took a long time feeding him, paused midway through and changed his diaper (which he wasn't too keen on since I don't normally change him in the middle of the night) to wake him back up a bit so he'd eat plenty. He took a solid 4.5 oz and drifted back off to sleep with just a tiny bit of fussing. And the best part - he didn't get up again until 6:50 a.m.!!!

As tough as all this way - I think we are heading down the right path. As much as I hate putting the smackdown - it's going to be better for HDog in the long run!

4-month sleep regression a.k.a. HELL

Well, after being a pretty darn good sleeper, H has decided to go back to getting up multiple times a night. At least 2. I was doing great with just one. One time a night was totally manageable, allowing me at least one 4 hour chunk of sleep, sometimes 5 and then another 2 to 3 hour chunk. It was beginning to feel like a normal amount of sleep, and I had learned to function pretty darn well on that.

I am back to googling every resource on infant sleep and discovering that this regression is NORMAL. Ugh. Not fun. Apparently it means he is gearing on all sorts of new skills that occur around 19 weeks, so since we are at 16 weeks as of today (yay! 4 months!), it means we've got a few more weeks of this waking up crap. Double UGH.

Henry is starting to laugh!