Playgroup

In the year before Natalie started school, I did a pre-school co-op with a bunch of other moms in my ward. For the past few months I've been doing something similar with Kelton. There are a bunch of kids his age at church and a couple of us moms got together to do a playgroup. It's been great! We only do it once a week, from 8:30-10:30 with just four kids. There are a ton of other 2 1/2 year olds that we know, but our sanity had to limit the group to four. So every four weeks I gain 3 extra 2 1/2 year olds (which makes me so glad I don't have multiples). When it's not my turn, I go and volunteer in Natalie's kindergarten class. That way I only have to take Damon with me. But today was my turn for the playgroup. We had a really good day today. The kids were all really good and we made snickerdoodles. I took this picture because I thought it was really cute. I gave them their cookies to eat while they were playing outside. Notice how they are all scrunched up in the tiny little spot of shade on the porch. They did that all by themselves. Even at 10:00 in the morning, it was sooo hot outside.

And here's my Damon update. One night at 10:30 I couldn't get him consoled, so I decided that was the night. He was going to cry it out. He cried a total of about 4 hours (3 1/2 continuously). The next night was about 2 hours. Next night, about the same. Five days later, still crying for long periods of time at night. I don't get it. We weren't going in at all. So night #6, last night, we'd had it. He slept until 3:00. I then went in and rolled him back onto his tummy and gave him his pacifier (which is usually what he wants) and he went back to sleep. Then woke up 3 more times before we finally just got him up at 6:20. So now I'm at a complete loss... I'm now reading yet another book. I'll let you know...

This is a picture of how I found Damon in the morning after the first night of "crying it out." I went in to see if he was still alive after his night of screaming and no sleep and found him hanging half way out of the crib. You know it had to be cute for me to risk waking him up with the flash.

Desperate cry for help!

Okay, I've been able to admit it for a while, but now I'm finally asking. Help! Please, anyone. Example: last night I (stupidly) went to bed at midnight. My day then started shortly before 6:00 am. In between that time, Damon, who is 5 months old, woke up 4 times. And it wasn't just "get up and give him a pacifier," or "needs to just be rolled back over," woke up. It was "crying and won't calm down," woke up. FOUR TIMES. In about five hours. Now, babies have bad nights. I know that. And last night was unusually bad. But not entirely uncommon. It's been a long time since I've even had a stretch of about 5 or more hours of sleep.

SO...I'm calling on all the motherly experience out there. Help me out. What have you read that you swear by? Or what has worked for your baby (ies)? I can't take it anymore. I need sleep.

Here's what I've been doing. Help me figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm willing to listen to any suggestions. It has been my goal from day one to get this baby to sleep through the night at an early age. I've tried to do everything right. I've been careful to try not to let him develop bad sleeping habits. He NEVER sleeps in our bed. I don't put him to sleep in my arms. I have insisted that he learn to put himself to sleep--which he can do most of the time. I put him in his bed, give him a pacifier, and he goes to sleep, for the most part. At night, I don't run in and pick him up when he cries. I pat his back or try to give him back his pacifier. When he would get too worked up, because said attempts failed entirely to calm him down, I would pick him up only until he calmed back down and then I put him back in his crib, still awake. If he cried, I would give him a few minutes of patting on the back before repeating the process. Lately, I've stopped picking him up. I just pull a chair over to the crib and pat his back until he cries long enough that he will take his pacifier and fall asleep. Then it is not uncommon for him to only sleep for an hour before doing it all again. I feed him once during the night, usually at 3:00 am or after. I only give him 2 ounces. I've been trying to eliminate nighttime feedings altogether because a baby his age does not need to eat during the night. At least they can be taught not to. And he isn't starving in the morning.

He has a set bedtime--7:00 or shortly thereafter. He set this time. Not me. I can't keep him up later. He won't let me. He usually always sleeps until around midnight. But really, he has no middle-of-the-night routine. It's always random. The only thing consistent is that he won't sleep for a long time. He's sleeping worse than a newborn. From what I can tell, I am not giving him any reason to wake up at night. I don't hold him, I don't feed him. I do give him a pacifier, but usually he won't take it, so that's not what he's waking up for.

Help me out. Short of giving in to the "easy fixes" that create bad sleeping habits, what would you do? (In all honesty, the easy fixes don't even work. I've given him extra bottles at times, and he still only sleeps for an hour or two. And he always cries even if we hold him, which is actually why I've stopped picking him up.)

It had the potential to be a grand disaster

Yesterday I was cutting out some fabric my mom gave me to make school kit bags for the Church's humanitarian efforts. It's a service project we are doing in our Relief Society. Anyway, I got completely distracted when I realized that some of the fabric would make a really cute skirt for Natalie. It's tan and up close it has a bit of the same grain look as denim. Then I realized that it is her school uniform colors and that she would be able to wear a skirt made of this to school. So I decided to give it a try. I had no pattern. In fact, I've only made like 2 articles of clothing with a sewing machine even with a pattern. I had no sample skirt to look at. All I had was an idea in my head. I really don't know what I was thinking. I grabbed a pair of Natalie's shorts to use as a size guide and started cutting. The whole time I kept thinking, "what are you doing? You have no idea how to make a skirt! This is going to just be a big waste of time and end up in the trash and then you're just going to be upset." But I guess I listened to the part of me that kept saying, "it's just fabric sewn into a tube shape. How hard could it be?" Now, we won't discuss how long it took or the fact that I also had to pretend that I know how to alter because I initially made it over and inch too big, and lets just say I won't be posting any "how-to" tutorials, but here it is...
It has pockets in the front and back, contrasting white stitching, and a belt tie. I have no idea how to do a zipper and I didn't want the look of an elastisized waistband all the way around, so I figured out how to make an adjustable waistband just for the back side. That way the front hangs flat and isn't puckered at all. I was pretty impressed with myself at this point, especially because I was still pretty afraid that my cute little skirt might be headed for the trash.

Natalie was super excited about her new skirt. She really wanted to wear it today. It looks so cute on--the picture doesn't quite do it justice, mostly because the pockets kind of blend in. Do you like how she already had the perfect shoes to match? And the best thing about this is that I didn't have to buy a single thing.

He also looks like...

So Damon may look like his daddy did as a baby, but he also looks like someone else. Today I was moving a bunch of files onto our external hard drive and I came across this picture.

This is Natalie at 5 months old. Same age as Damon is now.

Feeling Better

Look who's feeling a little bit better...
It's so nice to see him smiling again. He's pretty much back to our normal baby. Except for one thing. He's not sleeping at night. Like seriously, not sleeping. He wants to, but just cries instead. About the time we go to bed, Damon will start waking up and won't really sleep for longer than 1 1/2 hours. There are stretches where he will only go for 20 minutes. We had a solid 2 hours the other night where he woke up every 15-20 minutes. I was starting to go a bit crazy, when I figured it out. I think. My guess is that the antibiotic is upsetting his stomach or otherwise making him uncomfortable. He will scream and scrunch up into a ball, and then inevitably roll over on his back--which he hates when he's trying to sleep. So I guess the good news is that hopefully this is temporary. The bad news is that we've had about a week of nights like this and still have at least three more. We are exhausted! It's a good thing he's so cute.

(Just a funny note on this picture. Because we opened our windows last night, it was a freezing (haha) 73 degrees in our house this morning. So Nate grabbed Natalie's blanket to put over his legs. The funny thing is that we both know that doing this results in us getting in trouble. NO ONE is allowed to use Natalie's blanket. Not even dad. Not even mom. No one. It's hers and you get yelled at for using it. And its the first thing she notices when she walks into the room. This morning was no exception. Nate didn't have that blanket for long.)


Damon has also been doing this thing where when he's falling asleep, he wants to grab the pacifier out of his mouth. Problem is, he wants it in his mouth too. I'd been standing there trying to hold my hand between the plug and his hand until he fell asleep. He's strong and it didn't always work that great. Then I had a brilliant idea--go get another pacifier. One for his mouth and one for his hand! It worked great and was so cute I had to take a picture. It's kind of funny that I am so proud of myself for outsmarting a not-quite-five month old.

(Hopefully this picture isn't shocking too many of you with its multiple SIDS violations.)

Good news, Bad news

So we have good news and bad news. Usually when Nate tells me this and asks which I want first, I say, "bad news first." But, I am going to start with the good because it happened first.

Good News: Nate has a job! He is working as a law clerk for a firm in town. I would tell you the name, but it consists of like a million lawyers' names (not really, there's like 5 or 6) and I can rarely remember all of them. One of the lawyers is a retired Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court. The firm is a very successful one and this will be a great job. If he were ever able to go from a clerk to an associate there, it would be awesome! But, even if not, just the fact that he worked there should be a really good reference for getting another job. The downside is that his position is technically only part time--20 hours a week. However, he is allowed to work up to 40 hours a week if the attorneys have enough work they need him to do. And they told him that he is welcome to leave whenever he wants to if he finds a full time job elsewhere. So, we will see how the hours work out. Hopefully he will get closer to 40 hours.

Bad News: We have one sick little baby at our house. Damon had a temperature of anywhere from 101 to closer to 103 for three days in a row. On the second day, I took him to the doctor and they couldn't find what was causing the fever. The doctor said that if his fever didn't go back down, we should take him to the hospital so they could figure out what was causing it. It didn't go down, so I took him to the children's ER at about 3:00. And FYI, and because I'm still a bit mad about it, I didn't get home until after midnight! Maybe all the nurses in my family could give me the other side of the argument, but after being in the waiting room for about 30 minutes (very reasonable), we were put in a room and waited well over 2 hours (not reasonable AT ALL)before a doctor, no, a nurse practitioner came in to see us. He got all the same info from us that we gave the other nurses and then didn't really even tell us what his plan of action was before he left the room. So I tracked down a nurse and explained and she said she would go find out what was going on. Here's what I've noticed about emergency rooms; the communication time between the doctors and nurses is delayed by about an hour. Anyway, I will stop my ranting about how much I do not like the inefficiencies of the ER (we've just spent way too much time there in recent months and years). So, it turns out Damon has a urinary tract infection. Poor little baby. And after poking the needle around to get the IV in his hand to work, they didn't get it taped down before he moved his hand and pulled it out. Attempt number two failed in his other hand. So after three needle sticks and a lot of wiggling, they got the IV in his foot. He's doing a little bit better today, but you can tell he still doesn't feel good. Now we get to set up an appointment with a urologist because it's not normal for a four month old to be getting UTI's. Poor little boy.

We just got the mail, so I actually do get to end with good news. There are two parts to the bar exam--a multiple choice portion and and essay portion. He just got his scores back for the multiple choice part and he did really well. Way above the median and actually closer to the top scores received. This gives him a little more room for error with his essay scores. The letter also said that we will find out if he passed the bar on October 8th. Only one more month!