A busy month!

January has been a busy month for us. A really fun month (especially once we got through the sleep training!), and a busy one. This month I stuck to my resolution to not work more than 1/2 time (which is my agreement at work), and Mark had some time off, so we got to spend lots of time working on projects around the house. And Ben hit a few milestones!

As you'll remember through earlier blog updates, the year started off with some intensive sleep training. That was not fun. But, the month got increasingly more fun as we continued on.

We'll start this entry with Ben in his "B'Jolly" Christmas outfit. We actually didn't open this gift until Christmas, so we only got to wear it a few times - and didn't get a picture until mid-January - but isn't he cute?!

Check out the line of drool on this kid in the picture below! You can see the shine of the drool line all the way down his front. He's teething. The first to make its appearance is a lower left front tooth. It's tough to see because it's barely broken through, and he won't generally let me pull his lip down to look at it. But, you can feel it when he bites your finger, and I tried to give him some water/juice from a glass this afternoon (all the sippy cups were in the dishwasher), and I could hear it clink against the cup.

The foot of this outfit apparently is fun to chew.

The first weekend of January, Aunt Sarah (Ben's aunt, that is - my sister) came to visit! We spent a long weekend with her before she left on a cruise out of Galveston, and then saw her again for a few hours before her flight out the next weekend.

Here are some of my favorite Aunt Sarah/Benjamino pics:

So, did we treat aunt Sarah to a leisurely visit?! No way!! We put her to work! Over the course of three days, we turned our former breakfast nook into "Benjamin's Corner." The space is small to begin with, and then it was just way too cramped with the addition of a high chair, so it was time to make the move. To make this move, we took apart one of the Xylophones (we have two), to make space for Mark's desk, which we moved out of the office (our formal dining room) and into the studio. With only one desk remaining in this space, we were able to move our kitchen table and high chair into it. Still cramped, but not quite as bad - and it was a better space to be cramped, since it wasn't a main traffic way in and out of the house, to the kitchen, and to the washer dryer. The transformation was pretty cool!

Here we are ready to start work! Even though it was a small space, it was a rather laborious process. We had to prep the wood paneling for paint - which included cleaning it, deglossing it, priming it, and two coats of paint!

The before picture:

And after:

The canvas is a Christmas gift from Aunt Sarah & Grandparents:

Ben seems to like his new space. It has a good view to watch all the activities in the kitchen.

Soon our dining room began to feel rather cramped again. So we moved the furniture around in our living room to make space for our computer desk. Then we bought an actual dining room set (table, sideboard and china cabinet) from Ikea. Ikea's generally cheap to begin with, and we bought it during their blue moon sale (saved some money, but it was a VERY crowded, slow experience). It's not our usual style - a little modern, and in general, I don't think Ikea quality is that great. BUT, we got a lot of furniture for the money, which will allow us to stash our growing kitchen supplies (to keep up with Mark's culinary pursuits, as well as Benjamin's stuff). Eventually, Mark wants to build a dining room set - so hopefully this will last the 10 or so years until he does?! The main reason we bought the set was the table is designed fantastically. It's got a couple of leaves so that it can expand to set 8 people comfortably - and the legs are positioned so no one is straddling a table leg.

Before:

After:

THE ADVENTURES OF BEN

So Ben's pace of learning new tricks has increased a lot during this stage of his development. It's crazy to think that he'll soon be crawling, and that before long our baby will no longer be a baby - but a toddler! He is really SO much fun now!

Ben's eating much more solid foods now - but over the last week or so has decided he doesn't like baby food - finger foods are much more fun! Unfortunately, there's a limited variety of what he can eat that is finger foodable - and it requires more work to prepare.

As a result of these solids, he's also faced his first bout of constipation. Poor Ben. Fortunately, with the help of generous portions of baby prunes, we were able to get things running smoothly again:

This month, Ben also got to enjoy his first jog! We've been using the jogging stroller for a few months for walks, but this was his first time to pick up the pace! Notice his frog hat - made by his Aunt Tita.

Notice two very happy boys in this picture! Mark's happy because Ben's sleeping better. Ben's happy because his Daddy is letting him play with the cell phone - the best toy in the world!

Little Ben is getting close to crawling. When propped on his hands and knees, he can hold the pose for a few moments:

Before falling to his belly:

And finally, the newest milestone is that Benjamin pulls himself up!! He's only done it so far in the bassinet we use for a play pen - it has low walls which makes it easier. I haven't got a picture of him pulled up on his feet - he doesn't do it too often - but he does often pull himself up on his knees:

Here he is peering over the edge. We were playing hide and seek, where he would have to pull himself up to find me. Looks pretty pleased with himself!

And lastly, a picture from today. Let the messes begin! Benjamin was refusing his mid-morning nap, so I got him up to play. I put him in front of a broken keyboard on the floor (it has been dedicated as one of his toys). He managed to migrate himself around to the basket of toys on the floor and help himself. They were all neatly put away before he began flinging them. Notice the red box in the background - that includes one of the toys that was flung! It's awesome that he can entertain himself for longer periods of time now, but once he's moving, we're going to have some major messes to clean up!

So that's our month of January. Let's see what next month has in store!

Sleep Update

I want to give a brief update on sleeping, and then hope to post soon after about what else we've been up to...Besides sleep training, that is. :)

I wouldn't say sleep training is now a non-issue, but I would say that our life doesn't revolve around worrying or working on Benjamin's sleep. It was a really tough two weeks, and then things seemed to really start getting better. He's still not sleeping through the night - he gets up two-three times. But, he is now always in his bed (except for nursing, but we return in him to his bed before either he or I fall back asleep) - and that is a HUGE improvement! Mostly, because Mark was able to rejoin me - and I can also use as many blankets and pillows as I want! It's interesting, because he was going for a long first snooze when he first started sleeping alone - sleeping from 7 pm to 2 or 3 am. He's back to getting up every 3-4 hours, though. He'll usually get up around 11 PM, 3 AM and 5 AM. Fortunately, he'll go back to bed after the 5 am, and for me, he was sleeping until 6-6:30. This morning, I had to dial-in to a conference call at 7:30, and he slept for Mark until 7:40. We're not really going to do anything about this just now for a few reasons. One is that I'm trying to get away with not pumping when I go to work - which is about 4-5 hours per day. Ben's eating 2-3 meals of solids per day now, so I think he can get along that long without milk. But if I give up his night nursing sessions, I'm afraid I'll need to be better about giving him bottles when I'm gone. I hate pumping. I hate it. And, it seems since we're in the early stages of weaning, I'm not making much surplus milk. It seems like it's harder to pump a decent serving, although he seems to be getting as much as he wants. Secondly, after he nurses at night, Mark can usually put him back in his crib awake, and he'll settle himself back to sleep. Mark doesn't mind bringing him to me and returning him to his crib a few times during the night, and I just have to wake up enough to latch him on and let Mark know when he's finished. So, we'd both prefer this inconvenience to another bought of sleep training. It's so nice to just live right now!

So, that's it with the sleep training. After perusing many books on the issue - I've found that there is no perfect solution. We went through bouts of trying to pick him up/put him down lots so that it wouldn't be a "stressful" experience for him. And we both let him cry it out a few times - although I think the longest I let him go was 10 minutes - when we were just too thoroughly frustrated.

Through all this sleep training, I feel like I know Benjamin and his sleep needs/habits much better. I feel like I know his "window" better for when the right time to put him down. I can better differentiate between his settling-himself-down whining and his I'm getting frustrated and need help settling down. He's gotten to be a good-enough sleeper, that when he has serious problems betting to sleep, I can tell it's not just his normal I-don't-sleep issues, and that something else is going on (constipation, hunger, etc).

I feel like we're enjoying this phase of his life MUCH more, now that we routinely get about 3 hours of nap time out of him in a day (usually spread between three naps, two short and a 1.5 hour nap). It makes me a little sad that we didn't do this earlier, but there really is no way we could have. Mark and I were both too focused on work and stressed out to have gotten through those two intense weeks. And I don't think I could have done it alone - it was hard enough even when we were trading naptimes/bedtimes!

So, that's hopefully our last sleep update (meaning he'll be a good sleeper from now on)... I'll update next on some of the other things we've been doing, and Benjamin's new "tricks"!

Sweet dreams!!

Sleep Training Day 10 (We'll keep him)

If you've been reading my blog over the last couple of weeks, you'll understand what a beautiful sight this is. It appears our boy has finally figured out how to sleep, unassisted. His naps are getting progressively longer with increasingly little intervention needed. He's sleeping in his own crib at night (although, we do still have to get up several times to help him back to sleep and/or nurse him). We might just keep this child after all.

Sleep Training - Day 5 (Anyone Want a Baby?)

So by the subject line, you may be able to tell that I'm just a little frustrated. I'm trying very hard to be patient, but I just got done with 2 hours of sleep training. That included his 30 minutes of actual sleep.

So to be fair, we've definitely had ups and downs over the last few days. One of the highs included less than 1minute putting him down at his afternoon nap yesterday, where he slept for over an hour (of course Mark got to experience that, not me). Mark went back in his room for that one after about 20 minutes, to give him a pat when he tried to rise after his usual 30 minutes. It worked well, and he slept for another 30 minutes.

This morning nap was a low. I spent 30 minutes getting him to sleep. He slept for 30 minutes. After 20 minutes I went into his room with a magazine, so I could be like Mark and give him a few pats when he tried to get up after 30 minutes. It didn't work so well for me. 1 hour and 10 minutes later, I've given up, and he's sitting in his high chair whining because he's tired. We'll try again for his second nap in a couple of more hours.

But, we haven't given up, yet, although yesterday Mark had to convince me not to just let him cry it out. and maybe someday before this Boy turns 18, I'll be able to post about something other than sleep...