Spoiled

Some photos from the weekend...Ry with Aunt Terese, Madeline, Grandma and Grandpa. My title "Spoiled" was referring to Keith and I as you will read about in this entry, but I guess the same word describes Ryan when you look at these photos of him with the people that love him so much!

As with many things in life, you don't know how good you have it until that good thing is gone. I knew that we had a good sleeper on our hands and several times I did acknowlege how lucky we were. We still are. But our good sleeper has been a little off over the last few weeks and we are trying to adapt as quickly as we can to keep the good streak going.

Usually we can just put Ryan to bed between 6 and 7 after the bedtime routine, shut the door and not hear from him until well after we go to bed. He would go right down no problems, and be down for many hours before we heard a peep. A few weeks ago, we put him down and 10 minutes later he was awake and crying. A fluke, I thought. We soothed him and he went back down fairly quickly; he was clearly very tired. Then again, maybe 30 minutes later, he was awake and crying. We decided to give him a few minutes but it only became worse. Up until this point we never had to grapple with the decision of whether or not we would let him cry until he fell back asleep or go into his room to soothe him. After about 2 minutes we both agreed to go in and soothe him! It is the hardest thing to hear your baby cry and ignore it. And he wasn't just fussing; I have let him do that for a while in the past, he was crying pretty hard...and that I just can't bear. So he went back down, and this continued a few more times. He would wake up crying and we would intervene. We hoped it would be isolated. That evening we had friends over, and although he had gone to bed on time, we thought he was a little wound up or just wanted to be up with us socializing. But no! It happened again and again for the next few nights. It stopped for a few days but then started up again. Add in daylight savings and things were getting a little off kilter. My friend Sarah, who has 3 children who are now all great sleepers, suggested that we change his bedtime to 30 minutes earlier, perhaps he was overtired, thus causing the frequent night wakings. We did that, and it definitely seems to be helping. Now he goes to bed between 6 and 6:30! A definite reminder that babies are constantly growing and changing, and we are all constantly adapting.

Last night he went down just fine but woke at 4am. He started fussing and chattering to himself which is normal up to a point, maybe 30 minutes max. But after 30 minutes he kept going, and then 60 minutes, an hour and a half....during this time i had gone in and reswaddled, soothed, picked him up and rocked back to sleep, you name it. As soon as I would put him down or leave the room, he would fuss again. I finally picked him up at 6:15 and held him while he slept until 7:15. That is never really a problem because I just hold him and stare at him while he sleeps, thinking about how he will be too big to do that before I know it. I actually really treasure that time, but I must admit, I am exhausted tonight from being awake since 4:00! I realize now how spoiled I am because many parents feel this tired every night! Even with our sleep "woes", we still get a pretty good nights sleep. I give those exhausted parents a lot of credit for being able to function day to day. I would be a mess. Who knows what tonight might bring!

On another note, Ryan is making great progress with swaddling, or should I say lack of. We still swaddle him every night, but he has his hand to his mouth in no time flat. He is now sleeping most of the night with one entire arm out of his swaddle which is huge for him. There is nothing that can keep him contained now, which is fine because all he really wants is that little hand to suck on.

He did roll over last week but has not done it since. I find that so interesting because I expected him to be rolling all over the room by now. I guess he will do it again when he is ready! He also tried his first veggie the other day, sweet potatoes, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy. Next stop: carrots!