Nap time miracle?

Prepare to be shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU!

Declan is asleep.  By himself.

I know, I can hardly believe it myself.


If you're currently scratching your head and wondering, "duh, babies sleep all the time, and there isn't enough room in a crib for anyone else," I have to catch you up to our reality.

A sleeping Declan, a wonderful sight

For a start, Declan does not have a crib.  He sleeps in a bed.  My bed to be precise.  (Well, our bed when you include my fella.)  We co-sleep.  While it may not be the best plan for everyone, it is certainly the best solution for us.  It has allowed us to get much more sleep as a whole.  And, I confess, it's a heck of a lot easier for me to just roll over to nurse him back to sleep than it would be to get out of bed, go to another room,  pull him out of bed, nurse him, and hope I can put him back in his crib without him waking again.  So, yes, laziness is definitely a factor.

Back to Declan napping, though...

Declan is not an easy guy to coax into sleeping.  He fights it, be it bedtime or nap.  Trying to get this boy to nap is a chore.  (Well, unless you're my daughter who must have some magic juju or something. Declan is asleep within fifteen minutes.  It's amazing.)  I'll save from the laborious details of what it sometimes takes to get this kid to nap.  But trust me, it's work.

Yet today, not so much.  Sure, my back is still aching from bouncing on a yoga ball for a good half-hour, but believe or not that's nothing!

Maybe he is finally getting used to the idea that he needs to nap?  Maybe letting him play quietly in his playpen before nap time is helping?  Maybe this is the only day we'll have such luck?

Whatever the answer, I'm just glad that it's happening now.

Eleven months and two days

In a few days less than a month, I'll be celebrating Declan's first birthday.  Cripes.  I was just thinking about how he's been around for longer than I was pregnant with him, yet it feels like less time has past.  Weird.

Who needs toys when there are KEYS!

Yes, Declan is eleven months old now!  And boy, do we have our work cut out for us.  He is mobile.  I repeat: he is mobile.  Quick, too.  He has truly mastered his crawling technique, a combination of crawling and crab-walking.  He can make it over to the dog's water bowl in the blink of an eye.  (That being one of his favorite, forbidden "toys.")

He has also expanded his repertoire of understood words and phrases.  He now will happily push a button on one of his toys when asked to do so.  He also gives kisses on demand to Big Sis and Daddy.  (Seldom interested in planting love on Mom, ah, well.)  He also is recognizing several baby signs, including "more,"and "milk."

Exploring the grass at Mile Square Park

Speaking of food, we've learned that he loves eating whatever Mom or Dad is eating.  He will flatly reject food offered to him if it is not what he sees us eating.  Declan still snacks on crackers and cereal, but will not be pacified with eating those if he sees one of us eating something else.

We are still happily nursing, too.  His six, almost eight teeth have made nursing a bit err... "bitey" at times, but Declan only seems to bite when he is bored.  Solution: remove him from the breast when he stops actively nursing.  This is working so far for us.

LOVES the pickles at Disneyland

We have decided to delay introduction to typical trigger foods, for the most part.  (We had to order mac-n-cheese for him out of desperation when there was nothing else his system could digest while we were out once.  Now he gets it occasionally.)  No refined sugars, no chocolate, no "nuggets" of any kind.  He eats mostly whole foods, as unprocessed as possible.  It's been tricky at times (see the mac-n-cheese comment), but we've done our best.  We've had to politely beg-off cookies, cake, ice cream.  He'll have a lifetime to enjoy those treats, but we'd like to start him off enjoying healthier foods.  And he is happy to eat them, too!

Declan is become more social.  He is beginning to make it out of the stranger phase and is allowing some folks to hold him for small amounts of time.  This is a tremendous relief to me as having it has been quite awkward having to politely explain to people that it's not that he doesn't like them, he just doesn't want to be held by them.

EARS!

This past month, we introduced Declan to that SoCal institution: Disneyland.  I've found that wearing him in either his soft sided carrier or our Vatanai wrap works best.  No stroller to push, easier to navigate the crowds, and I do not even need to remove him to ride rides.  I really do pity those folks trudging along with the strollers.  What a headache that must be!  Alas, I suspect that once Declan is even MORE mobile, we just might have to join the stroller flock.  Not looking forward to it.

Declan loves just observing all the people and all the fuss at the park.  He does tolerate a few rides, but seems happier people-watching in the queue house.  I figure it is only a matter of time before he is all about the characters and the rides.

All in all, he seems to be developing apace with his peers.  He's becoming such a clever boy, but definitely all boy.  He loves bagging on objects, and turns just about everything he can hold into a hammer.

Ten months this week

One goal that I had in creating this journal was to jot my son's development.  Any regular reader of my blog can already point out that I've failed.  Thankfully, I have have failed because I've been spending so much time with my son, and not a lot of time writing about him.

Years from now, I'll struggle to remember exactly when he cut his first teeth (heck, I'm struggling to remember that now!), but I doubt that I'll regret that I chose to be with him instead of updating this blog.

To note a few milestones:

While Declan still does not crawl, he does manage to get from one place to another a few feet away with relative ease.  He does it by somewhat crawling, somewhat scooting, somewhat crab-walking.  It's fascinating to watch.  Of particular interest to him (i.e. things that he often moves toward) include the dog's water bowl, six packs of beer, and kitchen tools such as pots/pans.

Declan LOVES to stand with support.  He has even showed enough daring to let go of said support for a few seconds at a time.  Yes, we are a bit worried that he'll skip crawling all together and go straight to running.  One behavior currently holding him back from this possibility is his habit of "dancing" once in a standing position.  Declan likes to rock his body back and forth while bobbing his head.  It is dangerously cute.

He is still a champion eater and breastfeeder.  Kid eats like food is going out of style.  Particular dietary favorites include oatmeal, bananas, sweet potatoes, saltines, graham crackers, and anything on Daddy's plate.  Declan will wolf down an adult serving of oatmeal after breastfeeding, and then demand to wash it down with more fresh breast milk.  All this eating has certainly fattened him up a bit, but I confess that I'm growing tired of the "Oh, he looks healthy now" comments.  Declan did suffer from low weight, that is true.  But Declan was always healthy.  He was always alert, never suffered from "failure to thrive" and was never at risk of any significant, or permanent health problems.  Sorry for the defensiveness, but I must counter the misinformation.  Still, we love our little chunky monkey very much and have always done everything we could to care for him in the best way possible.**

Back to fun milestones.

His language cognition is amazing.  He has known his name for a long while now, but he also recognizes the words "bounce," "jump," "more," "milk," "food," "dog," and "phone."  (And those are just the ones I can recall right now.)  We are using sign language to assist his communication.  Babies usually begin signing at around 14 months or so, so Declan does not sign back yet.  But we were told to sign to him as much as possible from about 6 months onward.

Declan has a new favorite toy: his exerciser!  After a few incidents where we paid good money for an item for him only to have him reject it, we were a bit worried.  He to this day dislikes the swing, and has no love for the pack-n-play, to name a couple.  But we let him try out the toy at the store and he seemed to adore it.  He'll still in it and jump, and jump, and jump (hence the word recognition above).  He just has a ball.

Still not sleeping all the way through the night, but he does do very well.  Typically he is asleep by 10:30 and he'll sleep with occasional nursing until about 5:00 or so.  It takes anywhere from a half-hour to an hour to get him back to sleep, but then we can usually count on him to rest until at least 8:00 or 9:00.  During the day he will typically cat nap a couple of time.  Oh, how I wish he were one of those babies that sleeps in a swing or bouncer.  No, Declan will only nap if held or worn and then only for a little bit.  Today, however, is proving to be the exception.  He's asleep in my lap at the moment and has been for the last two hours and 45 minutes!  Wow!

He is still in the stranger phase--he usually does not tolerate being held by anyone other than mom, dad, and big sister.  He began this phase at about 7 months, so it certainly made our visiting relatives rather awkward last month.  In the last week, he has shown a couple signs of progress, so we are hopeful that he'll start enjoying the company of others soon.

Everyday that I look at my boy, I am so touched by how much he is becoming a little boy.  No longer the newborn that I brought home with me all those months ago.  He has such a personality, such charm, and a definite independence.  I just cannot believe that in only a couple of months, he'll be a year old!  Oh, and did I mention that he now has SIX teeth!?  *sigh*

**Just a note: We are very touched that so many of our friends were worried about our boy.  Alas, some of those friends went too far and began spreading misinformation about his health and wellbeing--even going so far as to suggest that we, his parents, were not caring for him adequately.  Let me just point out that parenting, even when it goes beautifully, is stressful.  Having to squelch rumors of bad parenting is even more stressful.  Rest assured that I am the BEST mother for Declan, and Brian is the BEST father for him, too.  And either one of us would be happy to chat one-on-one about his wellbeing should anyone really want to do so.  

One Swingin' Fella

And so it begins... the guilt.  Nice baby-faced helpings of it.

Let me back up and bring you up to speed.  At the end of this month, Husband and I will be going on a "cruise" aboard the Art Deco gem, the Queen Mary.  Every Labor Day weekend, the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles hosts a festival of Art Deco lectures, cocktail parties, and just all out splendor aboard this floating hotel.  It was at this festival three years ago that my husband and I became engaged.  Two years ago, we were married there.  It is a special place and a special event.  Husband and I save so as to be able to attend each year.

Since before the Little Fella was born, his aunt has offered to sit for us.  Declan will be with us on Friday evening, so as to quell some of the questions about him.  But I am grateful that my sister-in-law has been eager to help us by watching Declan on Saturday and Sunday.  In order to get Declan prepared for playing and sleeping with her, we decided to chuck some money at the baby industry and purchase a baby swing.

To back up a bit further, I had initially decided that we would be a non-swinging family.  Sure, my daughter ADORED hers when she was an infant, but I had a lot more room at my disposal then.  Currently, the four of us live in a meager two-bedroom apartment where space is at a premium.  Have you seen the current army of baby swings?!  They're HUGE!  So I made an executive decision and vetoed the swing idea.  Plus, as a proponent of attachment parenting, my hope was to wear the baby most of the time. Too bad he doesn't always want to be worn...

What is it about babies that all the best-laid plans manage to go right out the window on a whim?

Since the Little Fella is not always keen to be in the Moby Wrap or his Hotsling, or even his Gemini carrier, we purchased for him a bouncy seat a few weeks back.  He LOVES being in the bouncer while Husband or I cook.  Declan is just the most contented little guy there, however he will not fall asleep in it.

Naptimes around here happen one of two ways.  1) Declan falls asleep while nursing and I refrain from doing anything until he wakes.  2) Declan falls asleep in his Hotsling while his dad finger-feeds him.  As Declan will be under the care of neither one of us for two days during the festival, we need a new sleep option.  Thus did we decide to suck it up and buy a baby swing.

We figured that our odds for getting him to sleep without boob or sling would be best with a swing.  Now we just have to get him used to it.  THIS is where my guilt comes in to play.  When I put him into the swing, he looks at me as if to ask, "Why don't you want to hold me?"  He doesn't fuss, and doesn't even look sad or upset.  But my mind immediately and irrationally imagines him questioning me.

This ought to make for a few interesting days.