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!

Daddy's Boy

A few days ago my visiting teachers were here and one of them asked, "Does Damon just look exactly like Nate did as a baby?" A lot of people say that Damon looks like Nate, but I had looked at baby pictures of Nate a few months ago and thought they looked nothing like Damon. So I got out my book of pictures of Nate as a baby to show her that they look nothing alike. This is what I found.

Nate

Damon

Now, I'm not saying they look like twins or anything...

Nate

Damon

(isn't he just the cutest thing? His mom thinks so.)

But the resemblence is hard to overlook. Let's just say, he doesn't belong to the milkman.

I felt a little stupid after pulling out that book to prove that Damon doesn't look like his daddy.

Zonked out

I was looking through my August folder of pictures on the computer and I started to notice a trend. I thought it was kind of funny...

Here is Natalie. She is actually asleep for the night--in our bed because we can't put her to sleep in her room because Kelton is in there and they just play. (I'm sure that NO ONE reading this post has ANY idea of what I'm talking about.) Anyway, I thought each arm wrapped around a doll was too cute not to take a picture.
Then we have Kelton. That's him under the towel. Poor kid. Didn't get a bath until lunchtime, then no one dressed him (I'm sure at his insistence--is that even a word?), then he just couldn't make it through lunch.

Now Damon. He really only falls asleep in his crib, or sometimes in your arms if you are trying really hard to get him to sleep. The other night we were trying to make him last until bedtime, and he just didn't make it. All of a sudden, he was just gone. It was funny because he just never does this.

This picture was not my idea. I think I look strange. But yesterday Kelton was refusing to take a nap--which is also a rarity. Usually we have no problems with naptime. (Bedtime is another story...) Natalie was at school and Damon was sleeping. Nate and I were very tired so we both layed down on the couch to take a nap. When Kelton saw this, he got very upset. I guess he figured it was kind of pointless to be the only one awake. So he crawled up with me and went right to sleep.

Now there are no sleeping pictures of Nate, but I can guarantee you, they would be plentiful if I wanted them to be. Also, don't have any picture of this one, but Natalie has fallen asleep on the bus ride home twice (that I know of) this past week. So, do you think maybe none of us are getting enough sleep at night? I sure think so.

Good mood

The other day after school, Natalie wanted to hold Damon. He was in such a happy mood. Just look at that face! I thought, wow, I could get a really cute picture if I could get Kelton up on the couch too. But no such luck. He flat out refused.

3 1/2 months old

Damon is already approaching 4 months old! He will be 4 months old on the 20th. We are still working with his schedule. He seems to want one as much as we want him to have one, but he just can't quite get it down--at least not with naps. (I have him on an eating schedule during the day.) He falls into a pattern at night, but not so much during the day. But as long as he isn't tired or thinking that he's hungry, he is the sweetest baby. He loves to play. It is really easy to make his chubby little cheeks smile and he loves to laugh. Sometimes he will burst out laughing just because Natalie is looking at him. His newest love is pat-a-cake. The other day I was singing "wheels on the bus" with him and he was smiling and having fun, but as soon as I started "pat-a-cake" he wouldn't stop smiling and laughing. It's so cute how he is old enough to understand when we are playing games with him.

Second day of Kindergarten

Natalie rode the bus to school for the first time this morning. She was very excited. Notice that today she is in shorts and sandals. I think she was a bit too hot yesterday in pants and socks and shoes.
My sister-in-law makes a cake for her kids' first day of school, and I thought it was a great idea. However, I didn't remember this until today. So Natalie got a "second day of school cake" instead. Good thing she doesn't care. She's just happy to have a cake. I think my sister-in-law only does cakes on the first day of Kindergarten (right, Erica?) but I think it might be a fun tradition to do a cake every year. As of right now we don't have any summer birthdays, so it's been a while since we've had cake. We need more excuses to eat cake, right? Right.

Please don't pay too much attention to detail. I actually remembered about the cake about one hour before I needed to get Natalie from the bus stop. So by the time the cake cooked and was cool, I didn't have much time to be a perfectionist with the frosting.

Natalie seems to be having a good time at school. She doesn't tell us a whole lot. So either they aren't doing much yet, or she just doesn't remember. Her favorite part is, of course, playing on the playground. We've been having on major issue though. She has yet, in two full days, to go to the bathroom at school. She says she doesn't know where it is. And we think she is embarassed to tell the teacher when she needs to go to the bathroom. And she is afraid that she will miss something fun. We sent a note, explaining the situation, with Natalie to give to the teacher, but it didn't seem to help today. So, I am going to go with her tomorrow and try to talk to the teacher and find out what is going on. And show this little girl where the bathroom is. Fun. Hopefully we can straighten all this out.

It all starts...First day of School!

Natalie's first day of Kindergarten is here. We were all up (way too early) and Natalie was off at 6:45. Normally, she will ride the bus, but today, Nate took her. When she came out of the bathroom from taking a shower and getting dressed, she had the cutest look on her face. Like she was trying to contain her excitement, but couldn't.
Getting ready to go...putting on her new shoes. They are about the only thing we have any choice on. They have to wear uniforms to school, so we are limited to collared shirts that are navy, light blue, white, or gray. But she was pretty excited about the shoes.

"Natalie, show me how excited you are!" And this is what I got...

And there she goes. (Not to return until after 2:00--long day.) I just can't believe that she is old enough for this!

When the daddy's away, the kids will play

So Nate is off in Phoenix taking the bar exam and we are here alone for a few days. We got a really good monsoon storm this afternoon and it rained really heavy for about an hour and then continued to rain for a few more hours. It was nice. The kids decided to go play outside, which was really nice because they never do that. It's just too hot and we have no shade. After a little while, I discovered that they looked like this... (and yes, they are both losing their pants.)
And here is the reason why. According to Natalie's imagination, its a big pile of chocolate.

After they were good and muddy, I made them strip down so I could spray them off with the hose. I thought they would hate that. But despite the cooler temperatures due to the rain, the hose water still came out warm. So they thought it was pretty fun to be sprayed off by mom. Even Kelton didn't cry when I sprayed off his head and face. (This kid cries if he gets any water on his face while taking a bath.)

I realized that I haven't posted any pictures in a while and I just moved pictures from the camera to the computer, so here's a few favorites. Some are not super recent, but they are all from July.

I love how it looks like he is doing the dishes. Ha! He's just playing with the bubbles.

I absolutely love this little face...

And this one too. This is one of my favorite faces. It's really hard to get it on camera because it doesn't last long. I think most babies make this face and it is just sooo cute.

Here's Damon all ready for church in his cute tie.

And it's starting... Seconds after the first picture, the tie headed straight for the mouth.

These pictures are from one of the first monsoon rains. It was sprinkling and I knew Kelton had gone outside. I went to check on him, and this is what I found.

He's not asleep--just enjoying the rain. Because he is only two and a half, I'm sure he doesn't remember the last monsoon season, so he doesn't really remember rain. I remember Natalie reacting about the same way when she was this age. I love the picture below. It's like he's looking into the sky trying to figure out where its all coming from.

We recently got back from Snowflake. We went for the 24th of July celebration. We took our camera, but it never made it out of the car, so I don't have any pictures. We had a lot of fun though. We got to see the town's production of Beauty and the Beast, staring my neice Delsy as Belle. We took Natalie with us and she had a lot of fun. She wasn't too happy when the Beast ripped Belle's dress (it was supposed to happen) and said, "Grandma, he ripped the dress you made!" Nate's mom made all of Delsy's dresses for the play and Natalie knew that. So she wasn't too keen on the Beast messing up Grandma's hard work.

Nate got to play in the golf tournament with my dad and brother, Rob. They won most of their entry fee back plus got some tomatoes and cucumbers and matching shirts. Aren't they cute?

The highlight of our trip was our fun visit to the Summit Hospital ER in Show Low. After having my whole body hurt for a few days (and thinking I was just getting sick) I woke up on Thursday morning with everything hurting, I was freezing, despite all the blankets piled on me, and I was shaking violently and could not stop. That's when I realized that for the second time in my life, I had a kidney infection. So off to the hospital we went and spent all morning and part of the afternoon there. All just to get some antibiotics. Gotta love the ER. So I didn't feel too great for the first part of our trip, but I am feeling better now. Thank goodness for being born into a time with modern medicine.

And while I am rambling on... Damon rolled over for the first time today. I put him down for a nap on his tummy (and am no longer ashamed to admit it--I've found that despite what they tell you, most people but their babies on their tummies) and when I went in to get him after he woke up, he was staring up at me, on his back. Also, his crazy long hair got a trim today. It looks a lot better.

Cute

Kelton says some very cute things too. Right now, here are two of my current favorites that make me smile every time.

"I wanna want some!" This phrase comes out everytime he sees something he wants to eat--usually something we are eating.

"I have a sneaky diaper." This is how he informs us that he is 'stinky.' I love it.

I usually correct my kids when they say something wrong. But sometimes it is just too cute to fix and I am sad for the day when they figure it out on their own.

Sweetheart

Me: "Natalie, I love you. Do you love me?"

Natalie: "Yes."

Me: "How much do you love me?"

Natalie: "All of the numbers!"