From the very beginning…
Mother’s POV
We Have a Color Scheme!
016 years
Alright, so I found a color scheme for Ian’s bedroom and Jesse has approved it. We went by Lowe’s today and I saw this room theme in one of their books and I loved it. I found the colors I want for Ian’s room and how they are going in his room.
The walls are going to have two colors on them. The lower half will have “Lime Burst” and the upper half will have “Blue Tango”. The accents will be colored with “Pumpkin Butter”. Basically, a green, blue, and orange retrospectively. The green and blue will have a white stripe going around the room to separate the two. The bookshelf we’re going to put in his room with all primarilly be the orange, but will also have a bit of the blue and green in it. I tried finding the colors on Valspar’s site, but they colors on their site really don’t match the colors on the cards I picked up. Either way….the colors are decided. :)
Blogging & Security
216 years
Recently, my sister and I were having a conversation about having a blog for a pregnancy and/or a child (aka like Ian’s) and the question of security for a blog came up.
Jesse and I started this blog for Ian when we first decided on his name. I was only 20 weeks along in my pregnancy and I was finding a lot of things that I either wanted to share or remember. As Ian gets older, I’ve come to really love what I’ve managed to do with this site. I’ve been using it, not only as a way to keep family and friends appraised of Ian’s life, but as a journal of raising a child and going through a pregnancy. There was a lot of information that I obtained and I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember it all if we were to ever go through this again. I’m part of several Mom groups/discussion boards and I get so much information from them, that I like to have it all in one place. Plus, we’re still a young couple, so we meet a lot of people who are either just starting their families or have little ones but have questions. When they find out that we have a little one as well, we start trading stories or asking for advice from each other. I’ve given out this site a couple of times and others have found the information useful. That’s why I include it here. Not only will this information be here forever, but it’ll also be here when Ian starts his own family.
That’s the biggest reason why we started this site. We wanted Ian to have a record of his life, where he could find pictures, videos, and even comments from family and friends to all the important events in his life. When he gets older, we fully intend to give Ian access to this site (he’s a little young now). I’m sure he’s going to start contributing a lot sooner than we think, but he’ll have that option. He’ll be able to look back through his site in 10-20-30 years and see what he was doing and how we handled certain things. I personally would have loved something like this. There are a ton of things from my childhood that I have no memories of. I couldn’t tell you what we did for my 8th or 10th birthday, but Ian won’t have that problem. He’ll just have to search for it. I was going to create a scrapbook for Ian, but I don’t find it to be that important. I may do it at some point, but he’ll be able to get more out of his blog/journal than just looking at pictures.
You’re probably asking what this has to do with security and it’s easy….my sister and brother in law don’t want to do something like this because anybody would be able to see it. They want to be able to control who sees their journal and have some security with it. (For a little background information, my sister’s husband has to have a security clearance where he works, so he tends to think a little more about security in his personal life as well.) I’m not paranoid about people viewing this information. I put it up here so people WILL see it. We have friends who keep lookouts for videos, who like to see what Ian is doing without having to go through passwords. I’m not worried that some idiot will try to hunt down Ian for some nefarious purpose. I’m not stupid and I don’t post information that could easily be tracked to us, but nothing on the internet is ever completely secure. If you try to make it secure, you’re just painting a big bullseye on it. Even email isn’t safe. Everything can be hacked and information is always available for anyone who wants to look and have the means to do so.
What I’ve learned about baby food
016 years
Ever since Ian started eating baby food, I’ve learned some things that are handy to know.
- Don’t buy 1st foods – I know the doctor says to start off with the first foods (i.e. squash, carrots, applesauce, etc), but the only difference between the 1st foods and the 2nd foods is the consistency and you’re suppose to thicken it up with cereal anyway. Why waste the money on the smaller containers when you’re just turning it into the next stage?
- Rice cereal can be troublesome – It’s the first type of cereal we’re suppose to start out on, but next time, as soon as I can migrate to oatmeal cereal, I’m going to. Rice had a tendency to bind Ian up so much, that it affected his sleep. At 4 months old, I wanted to get more sleep at night, not less. He was sleeping so well until we tried the rice cereal.
- Gerber Graduates – The fruit and veggie puffs are awesome; the dried fruit is better than what you can find in the produce section; and they have these little meals that Ian can pick up with his fingers. Everything fits perfectly into his little hands and he can feed himself. He’s extremely messy when he tries to feed himself, but he can do it. These are perfect to teach and learn on, but I wouldn’t depend on them for everyday meals and snacks. For one, once Ian started eating more and more, they get to the point where you need more to keep him happy and that is just too expensive. By the time Ian mastered the fruit puffs, he was already eating animal crackers and pretzels.
- Just in case 3rd foods – The stage 3 foods from Gerber are nice to have on hand. Once Ian started wanting table food, I stopped using them as meals for him. However, there have been times they’ve come in handy. For instance, when I make something he can’t have or I’ll stash a couple jars in his diaper bag in case we’re out and about and he’s hungry for more than dried fruit. They are good for snacks during the day and when you’re traveling and you can’t share your meal. Plus, they only have six different types, so he gets bored with them fast.
- Juice – Start juice when you start the baby food. I didn’t start giving Ian juice until he was six months old and he wouldn’t take it at all. At the time, he was still getting breastmilk, so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but he would not take the juice. I’ve also found that he’ll take the mix fruit juice better than apple juice or any other single type juices. Once I started mixing up the foods and giving him meals (aka chicken noodle or beef vegetable), he started taking juice a lot more.
- Water / Hot & Cold – It took us awhile to get Ian to drink water. Mainly because it always ended up being warm. He does not like anything cold. He’s getting better at it now, but that first bite still gets an ugly face. It wasn’t until we could get him to take cold water that he started taking other things that are cold. I’m not talking about going cold turkey and going from hot to cold within moments, but definitely start cooling down water until the baby could handle it.
I feel like there is more than I haven’t mentioned yet, so I’m going to continually update this. I can’t think of anything else right this minute, but I know something will come to me.
2am Playtime
016 years
So yeah, last night Ian decides to wake up about 2am. I try comforting him in his crib since he’s not sitting up yet. That didn’t last long. He sits up and I bring him out into the living room to rock. Oh my god, you would have thought I was smothering the poor boy. He did not want to rock, be held, nothing. He was throwing such a fit and at 2am in the morning. So I put him on the floor and he’s as happy as a lark. He races off to his toy chest and starts to play. Since he’s happy now, I go to pick him up so we can rock and go back to sleep. Again with the screaming and fidgeting. Put him back on the floor….smiles and laughs all around. My son wanted to get up and play at 2am.
By this time, Jesse and I are both up and we’re trying to figure out what to do. Ian doesn’t want to cuddle or go back to sleep, but both of us want him to sleep because we’re tired. So we decide that Jesse is going to stay up with Ian, while I go back to bed and get some sleep. The theory is he can sleep in, while I normally get up with Ian in the morning. Plus Jesse was already on his laptop and he was saying he wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing Ian was up anyway.
I should also mention that we had already tried giving him a 4oz bottle (he’s only been getting 4oz since we’re trying to wean him off of a night bottle). He took it and wanted to go back to playing. After I was able to sleep for about 30 minutes, while Jesse and Ian were in the living room, I get back up and fix Ian a 6oz bottle. He takes that with no problem and still wants to play. So I decide, if he wants to play, he can do it in his crib while we sleep. That lasted all of 5 minutes. However, I was able to get him to go back to sleep after a few minutes. I’m not sure how long it took me, but the last time I saw the clock, it said 3am.
If he does this to us tonight, he’s going to play in his crib. I have had to do that in the past; where Ian gets up for his bottle, but doesn’t want to go back to sleep. I’ve been able to put him in his crib and he’ll jabber away for a bit before going back to sleep. For some reason, it didn’t work last night.
Has it really been 7 months?!
117 years
So a friend of ours is setting up her nursery and getting ready to have her baby in December and she was asking us for advice. As I was thinking of what to tell her, I started looking through some of the posts from when Ian was first born. After reading through most of the posts, it’s hard to imagine Ian ever being that small or having all the issues we did. Ian doesn’t cry that often anymore. Seriously, Jesse and I think it’s cute when he starts that pouting cry he does. At night, I rock Ian to sleep and I enjoy when he just sleeps on my chest. The other night, I remember thinking that I missed this, since he used to do it a lot when he was younger. Now I remember why he did it and the trouble we had because of it. There has been such a drastic change from the first two months to these last two months that it’s unbelievable. I’m sure the change has been there for awhile, but it was really never in my mind until just now.
When Ian was first born, Jesse and I were saying that nobody ever tells you about the horrors of the first couple weeks. We weren’t prepared for it. At the time, we were told it was because most people tend to forget it because of the good times that follow. Now that it’s been seven months, I understand and get it.
Too much energy
017 years
At this moment, I should be listening to Ian snoring in his crib (not that he actually snores, but you know what I mean). Normally, he gets his bath, changed into his pajamas, and then has a bottle and he is out like a light by 9pm. Yeah, that ain’t happening tonight. Right now, he is happily bouncing away in his jumper. We got through the bottle and he started jumping in my lap. I’m not talking little bounces either. If I hadn’t been holding on to him, he probably would have jumped off my lap. I know I should have stuck with the routine and laid him in his crib hoping he would fall asleep, but something told me he wouldn’t have. I mean, he’s been bouncing for 10-15 minutes as it is and he is still having the time of his life. Hopefully he’ll sleep better tonight since he’s getting rid of all of this energy. I just wish I knew where it came from.
Jesse & Ian
117 years
As I’m writing this, Jesse is currently sitting on the floor with Ian playing peek-a-boo. All day long, the two of them have been playing off and on without any fuss, cries, or irritability from either of them. This may seem odd to some people, but to those of you who know, it has taken Jesse longer to adjust to fatherhood than it took me to adjust to motherhood. I have to say, today has been spectacular. Watching the two of them interact on the floor has been amusing to say the least. Ian has been laughing and giggling all day. Jesse has been in a good mood and has wanted to interact with the wigglemidget. It is days like today that I can see what a great father Jesse is going to be, even though he has a hard time seeing it himself.
Review: “No Cry Sleep Solution”
117 years
Here is my review and notes from reading the No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. I’ll give a status update later to see if it really worked with Ian or not.
So I said I would give a review of this book once I was done with it. Well, I never finished it, but I thought I would still let people know what I thought. Overall, I enjoyed this book. The first half gave a lot of useful information and I think that was why I never finished the book. I started incorporating a lot of the things Pantley was suggesting and it seemed to work. It’s been four months and Ian is finally sleeping though the night – only getting up once around 2am – 3am. Ian and I did things the simple way. We started giving him the same routine every night between 7:30pm and 8pm. First we gave him a bath, then we changed into his pajamas, and then he received a bottle. I know it’s not the biggest routine, but we started this when he was barely 2 months old and he really wouldn’t stay still long enough to include reading or singing or whatever. Either way, after a couple of weeks, Ian started getting really fussy if he didn’t have his bath by 8pm and then it became even more obvious that he was waiting for it when he wouldn’t go to bed until he had his bath. Now once he gets his bottle after his bath, Ian starts to get sleepy and is usually out before the end of the bottle. So while I never did try the “no cry sleep solution”, I did do a lot of the other suggestions in the first part of the book and it really helped. I’m not saying it would work for everybody, but I would definitely recommend giving it a try.
Naps
217 years
My little man is growing up on me. Ian used to love falling asleep on me. He used to fall asleep while we were nursing and then complain if I tried to lay him down. Over the last week or so, I’ve begun noticing that he hasn’t been sleeping as long when he falls asleep nursing. The other day, I put him in his crib soon after he fell asleep and he slept for an hour. He doesn’t want to sleep on mama anymore. That’s fine, but now I’m having a hard time getting him to take decent naps. He starts rubbing his eyes and I know that’s a signal that he’s getting tired. So today, I am trying to get him to fall asleep for a nap in his crib. It’s not working yet. I’m also trying to get him to go to sleep without nursing.
Any ideas on how I can get him to take a nap without nursing (he nurses right before bed half the time too) or other hints that might help this transition?
New Books!
117 years
So I’ve been raiding our local library for new books and I found a couple that I had to share. The first one is Mother Goose’s Songbook by Tom Glazer. Basically, it’s a bunch of the Mother Goose nursery rhymes with sheet music. Jesse is going to translate some of them into a guitar tabulare (if there isn’t already one someplace) and then the three of us can sing them together. It should be fun. The second book is Playtime Rhymes for Little People by Clare Beaton. It has a bunch of rhymes with suggestions on how to use the rhymes to play with Ian. It should be good especially since I’ve been at a lost on this aspect. Amazon has a sneak peek for this one.
I’ve been looking for some new books as we tend to go through them pretty fast. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.