Turtle Monkey

Mark finally put together the changing table yesterday. We cleaned out the pack and play and washed the sheets. For the first night ever, Elias spent the entire night sleeping on his own. It’s been getting very obvious that Elias needs his own space to sleep. He likes to move around in his sleep a lot, which is not so fun for me.

He slept so well; I was quite surprised. He didn’t wake up once between 7pm-6:30am. He’s taken a couple of naps in it today without a problem. I know my boy loves his sleep, but I was expecting the transition to sleeping on his own to be a bit more difficult. We’ll see if it remains this easy.

Our bedroom is really coming together. It’s almost baby-proofed, but he keeps going for the glass cabinets on the TV stand and the standing fan. Not sure what to do about those other than sit in front of them (luckily they’re together). It’s nice to have an organized, spacious bedroom space again.

I am grateful that my son takes teething in stride. He takes everything in stride, really. Even when he’s sick, you can tell his spirits are up and he’s eager to play. Elias’ teeth started breaking through at five months. Now that we have 7 confirmed and 9 suspected teeth in the collection, I realize there are definite signs and clues that he is actively teething.

Since five months, every few weeks his teeth start growing again. I find the way they break through and grow in so interesting! When he’s teething, Elias drools in ridiculous amounts. It will come from absolutely nowhere. His mouth will be dry, then he’ll smile and a deluge of water descends upon his chin and chest. Naturally, he’s more interested in putting things in his mouth and gnawing on them when he’s teething. He’ll bite down on something and it’ll hurt, so he’ll cry for a second and then get over it. He’s more whiny in general, probably because his mouth is constantly aching. He doesn’t whine or cry very much period and it’s usually only mildly different when teething. If he’s constantly uncomfortable, I’ll give him some Tylenol which almost always helps.

Other than that, he’s himself while teething. Thankfully, his sleep isn’t usually disrupted. (This boy loves his sleep. I’m very interested to see how naps and nighttime will go down while we’re in Texas. The last time we were there, he refused sleep toward the end of our trip. His sleep routine is so much better now though.)

He started with two breaking through at once in the middle, on bottom. Then two on top in positions on either side of where the top two would be. Before long, the top two started breaking through. The final confirmed tooth is the one on the right side of the bottom two. We’ve also suspected that his bottom molars are making their way up. He focuses a lot on that area and his past couple teething spurts have been crankier than usual. His room teacher at daycare brought up to us separately that she thinks those teeth have started breaking through as well. Mark hasn’t been able to feel them and it’s hard to get a good look back there to see what may be just under the gums.

Dental health is very important to us, so we’re trying to be diligent about brushing his teeth. It’s really easy to get distracted and forget. At night he starts to melt down very quickly. He’ll be active and playing one minute and the next minute it is clear that he needs to be put to bed ASAP! He doesn’t mind having his teeth brushed and gums massaged, but he has other ideas for our fingers when the little finger brush is in his mouth. He prefers to bite down and gnaw just as hard as he possibly can. The little finger brush offers a bit of protection against his sharp little teeth.

Elias has definitely perfected his pincer grasp to pick up bits of food and put them in his mouth. He knows exactly what his teeth are for. Every morning I see him place Cheerios very deliberately into his mouth so he can bite them in half. I find it funny that most guidelines for finger feeding site both crawling and the pincer grasp as milestones needed before this should be accomplished. I don’t know what mobility has to do with eating. I really don’t think he’s anywhere near starting to crawl.

He still can’t stand being on his tummy. He refuses to roll himself over, though he is perfectly capable. He has started rolling onto his belly to sleep. If he wakes up even a little bit, he’ll get angry about being in that position and I’ll need to roll him over. Usually, he’ll sleep on his side. Unless it was a dream, I am almost positive I woke up this morning to find him flipped around entirely, with his feet pointing at the head of the bed. I have no idea what was up with that. We’re still cosleeping and hoping to get a crib as soon as we get the study cleared out so there’s room for it. We just got a bed rail to fit our king sized bed which we love because it gives us all a lot of extra room in the bed. Before, we were using a pillow between him and the edge of the bed, plus pillows on the floor. He didn’t move around much in his sleep and this was never even remotely a problem. Now he’s starting to move around more in his sleep, so I’m thankful for the bedrail. It really is time for him to move into a crib, though. He likes sleep a LOT and I know he’ll appreciate a space to sleep all of his own.

This is the third week in a row our son has allowed us to watch ABC’s Lost uninterrupted and the second consecutive week of being able to watch it the night it aired!

Elias is getting a lot better about going to sleep at night. We always get up around 6am. I was shooting for an 8pm bedtime, but most nights he seems to be sleepy before that. One night he went to sleep at 6:30! It’s a bit disappointing because we don’t get very much time with him after we pick him up from daycare.

For the past two nights, Elias hasn’t gotten up in the middle of night to feed (though he nurses on me throughout the night - there’s no telling how much milk he gets there). So he sleeps from about 8pm - 6am!

Elias has always been a good overnight sleeper and I feel really lucky about that. I’m afraid that he’s going to hit a developmental spurt that disrupts his sleeping patterns.

Mark and I had some friends over last night to watch the SuperBowl. I was expecting Elias to melt down because he normally melts down when we have friends over in the evening. I’m sure our friends think he’s some sort of crying terror because they usually only ever see him when he’s being fussy and I have to go back into the bedroom to calm him down.

I’m not sure why he’s normally like this. We’ve been having friends over to the apartment just about every weekend since he was born, so he should be used to having people around. I guess evening time is just not a good time for him, as with most babies, and he wants things as quiet and normal as possible.

Last night he was a perfect little baby, though! He had a nice long nap in my arms from about 2:30 until 4pm when people started arriving. Once he awoke, he sat in his swing for a little while, watching everyone. I sat next to him playing with him, talking to him and smiling at him and he seemed to be having a grand old time. Once he got tired of being in his swing, he spent the rest of the evening in either Mark’s lap or my lap. I was expecting him to take another nap around 7-8pm, but I guess it was just too exciting. He fell asleep for maybe 5-10 minutes before waking up again and wanting to know what was going on.

At the very end of the game (around 10pm) he was just way too tired and started getting cranky. Both Mark and I tried holding and rocking him, but he’d fuss for a while and then forget about sleep to stare at the pretty television for another few moments. Finally, as I was getting the bedroom in order, he fell asleep in Mark’s arms and stayed there for a 10-15 minute nap before I took him back into the bedroom to go to sleep.

Mark and I were able to put him down to sleep in the bedroom on Friday night. Once we finally got him settled in the bedroom, he stayed asleep back there until we were ready to join him (midnight). On Saturday we tried to get him to nap back there, but his cough usually woke him up. He did take a very long nap (2-3 hours) in his carseat when we all went out to get Mark’s truck from the Kauffman Tires. Saturday night I found myself too tired to try to stay up, so instead of trying to get him to go to sleep alone, I just went back there with him. Sunday he refused to nap in the bedroom as well, but he did have that nice long nap in my arms. I have no idea how to get him to sleep on his own. He seems to do it just fine at daycare, but not at home unless he’s in his swing and it’s completely quiet or he’s in my arms. We need to work on getting the study in order so Mark can put together our changing table and we can buy a crib. He has a crib at daycare and I think he enjoys the secure feeling of the bars around him. Though we place pillows all around him on the bed when he naps, it must not be the same.

It is getting better. He was a perfect baby yesterday. Saturday night I went into the bedroom after his feeding at 10pm and nursed him in bed in the dark until he fell asleep. I didn’t put him in his cosleeper until midnight and fell asleep while nursing him, so I have no idea when he fell asleep, but he didn’t stir or cry during that time. He got up once in the middle of the night to eat and I tried nursing him, but it wasn’t cutting it for him, so I had to get up and get formula ready. Afterward, he fell right asleep.

Through out the day, he’d be up for maybe 45-120 minutes at a time, then would take a 1-4 hour nap. He fell asleep last night on the boppy while I was nursing him around 9pm and was due to be fed again around 10-11, so I just napped with him in the recliner with him on the boppy. I woke up at 12:30 and he was still sleeping soundly, so I got up to change his diaper and by then he seemed hungry, so I fed him again. We repeated the process of going back into the dark bedroom to nurse back to sleep last night and it seemed to work well.

He hasn’t been fussy since Saturday morning. We got him infant anti-gas medication and the formula we’re using is 1/4 lactose, so one or both seem to be helping.

In breastfeeding news, I nurse him pretty much ALL the time. My supply doesn’t really seem to have increased very much, but it’s been at least a little bit since I started the Reglan. On Saturday I was able to hand express maybe 1/4 ounce in 15 minutes or so. I decided to go ahead and buy a AVENT Isis hand pump to see what I can get that way. It’s much cheaper than an electric pump. I think it’d be a pipe dream to be able to pump enough to sustain him or increase my supply enough to sustain him, but any breast milk I can mix in with the formula is better than none.