Friday, February 27, 2009

Spring Cleaning

I know it isn't Spring in Michigan yet, and it won't be until about May 25. (Notice the dripping-with-melancholy grey tone to these photos. Blah). But yesterday it felt like we were spring cleaning our trees.

We have a bunch of nice old ones in our neighborhood, but two of ours were too far past their prime and had to be taken down. Jude took some great naps with all the white noise from the chain saws, and our yard now looks like Paul Bunyan was back there having a hey-day. (Use the husky in the far left of the photo for scale.) So that was our entertainment for the day. Sad, I know. I can't wait until it warms up and we can actually go places.


Mona was a little alarmed by the tree carnage. I think she put a crick in her neck looking at the guys hanging from the branches.

On a sidenote, as I sat in a living room chair nursing at around 12:30, I realized I had forgotten to pull down the shades. So there I sat as the strapping young tree removal guys walked back and forth by the window with giant chunks of tree. *Blush*
We also sold our car yesterday. Not because we don't need one, but because we were tired of paying for repairs on our "made in Mexico" Volkswagen Jetta. (Das Auto my arse.) So we're in the market for another dependable wagon that will get us to Chicago, the Upper Peninsula, and maybe the East Coast at the furthest. Any suggestions? We're kind of thinking a Subaru.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Big Three

Jude is three months old this week. Check it:

I love these two photos of him. He has a blue squirrel on his onesie* that matches his blue pants. The orange tree trunk matches his orange stripey socks. Not to mention he's filling it all out nicely with his round tummy and cloth-diaper butt (the bulk of cloth makes for a booty-licious baby).

It makes my mouth water.

* Jan and Becky got him the scrumptious onesie while he was still in utero.

BFFs IV

You may have noticed this has turned into a series. He smiles at her now whenever her toenails click-click-click into the room. Mona licks his chubby legs every morning (and tries to get into his mouth, but that's a little more love than we need.)

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Daddy & Jude

These two guys love to do stuff together. Boy things!!! Like...
Reading "Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken" by the fire:



Sleeping (well, one of them is):


Pestering Mona:

"So happy togetheeeerrrrr...."

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Hey Dad...


Happy Birthday!!!

Friday, February 20, 2009

Jude in a Hat

I'm starting a Friday installment of "Jude in a Hat*".
Here's the first one:

*He got the hat from Kristen and Annie (I think). It's made of bamboo!

Booo-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa

Jude's new thing is a fascination with his hands. He stares at them, brings them up to his mouth and sucks on them. He makes loud smacking noises while he does it and is really proud of himself. Sometimes he wrings them together for awhile first.

Here he is plotting world domination:

He's about to do a villainous laugh in that one.

And...a few more of him just before and after that:

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Cluster Feeding!

As of last night I am a HUGE fan of cluster feeding before bed. It's a tip I got from someone at church and I'm hoping it keeps working. Last night I fed Jude three times in the three hours leading up to bed time, rather than the usual once-every-three-hours routine. Jono put him down to sleep after the last feeding, and not only did he not wake up once in the first hour, but he slept for six hours straight after that. Ha ha!!! Please God, let it continue. (I'm not using His name in vain there. I've been praying about this for weeks.)

Sure, he wouldn't really go to sleep again after that unless I took him in bed with me, but I'll take my small victories where I can. I slept for four hours straight last night. Woot!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

So...as you may have guessed from the title of this post, Jude moved into a crib in his own room recently. We took the plunge two weeks ago. It's been the hardest thing I've done since he was born.

Until we moved him, Jude had fantastic sleeping habits for his age. As a newborn we had him sleep in our room in his carseat. We'd gotten the tip from friends, who said it had worked well for their newborn, and we could tell he liked being propped up slightly and surrounded by the wooly lining. (Since then we've learned of some risks with letting newborns sleep for long periods in their carseats, so we don't recommend it.) From his first week on he routinely slept six hours straight in that thing and I only had to get up once a night to feed him.

I knew I had to transition him, and soon. You can't have a five-year old putting his footy pajamas on and squeezing himself into an infant carseat before getting up for kindergarten the next morning. Our carseat friends had told us it took them only one sleepless night to transition their son. That sounded easy enough. I thought, "I can swing that."

Like I knew what I was talking about.

Two weeks later, I'll just say our son is a bit more stubborn than this other saintly child. (No halo around Jude's little head - although the hair sticking up on top is better than a halo in my opinion. But that's beside the point.) We can't believe how little sleep he can run on. We keep reading that at this age babies tend to sleep 15 hours a day. Jude? Try eight. On a good day. Parenting books are no help in this department. They gleefully report things like: "Babies sleep all day and all night and only wake up to eat or have their diaper changed!!" Ha ha. That's great.

During the first week he went down pretty easily and would usually sleep for a two-hour block, during which I would go to bed. This sounds quaint so far. But within the first 30 minutes of my head hitting the pillow I could expect to be up again. This was followed by four or five hours of waking every 15 - 30 minutes. All...night....long. By 6:00 am I would finally cave and bring him into bed with us. He would sleep like a brick then.

On the fifth night or so of this we tried letting him "cry it out" on advice I'd heard from parents who'd reached the end of their rope, but I could only last five minutes. It was pathetic hearing a little baby get more and more upset, and I couldn't handle it. When Jono went to get him finally his crib sheets were wet. From his tears :(

So we tried everything else we could think of. Making his room nice and warm with an oil heater. White noise from the humidifier. Soft music playing. A crib mobile. Complete darkness. Feeding every three hours through the night. Hovering over him in his crib rather than picking him up to soothe him so he wouldn't be so dependent on us for sleep. Nothing was working.

I called my mom. I was hesitant and afraid, but she juiced me up. It was just what I needed to do what had to be done. I HAD TO LET HIM CRY.

I was thinking he was too young to "cry it out', and some claim an infant can't self-soothe, but I was a desperate zombie by this point and was willing to try it. He needed to learn to go back to sleep without me hovering over him every 15 minutes. Mom said, "It's the best thing for both of you. No one is sleeping, and it isn't good for you or for Jude." Jono said, "Em, we need to do a little 'detachment parenting'."

So I tried it. This sounds terrible (I can't believe I did it), but I let him cry for over an hour two different times throughout the night. I made sure that he'd recently been fed when I did this so that he wasn't crying from hunger. I actually managed to sleep through most of it, which shows how bone-tired I was. He eventually went to sleep on his own after the second crying jag, which was the point. Man, he is stubborn.

When I went to him in the morning I was terrified he would resent me for doing this. Had I messed up my best efforts so far at healthy attachment? Did his stress levels rise so high from crying so long that he now had emotional damage? (I read something about that in an attachment parenting magazine!) Were some of those AP people out to lunch on some of these things, or was I?

As I snuck up on him in his crib, I saw that he was awake and playing by himself. He was sucking on his fists, staring at his mobile, and making adorable sounds. After watching for awhile I picked him up. Jono came in and offered to change his diaper (read: good marriage choice). I watched him getting his bum wiped on his changing table, as I often do, because he is so happy and cute when getting his diaper changed. I caught his eye once and silently begged forgiveness. He gave me a big smile. No hard feelings Mom.

Since that night he's gotten into a pattern of waking and feeding every two to three hours, and I still bring him into bed with us for his last night-time feeding around 6am. This is still a lot of waking for an 11-week-old, but it's so much better than it was last week. Now we can try some other, less traumatic tactics for getting him to sleep for longer periods as he gets older. I have no real expectations for him to "sleep through the night" right now. I suppose he'll get there when he's ready.

Even though it was effective, I still feel guilty about the night I let him cry. The next day his voice was scratchy, and it still hasn't come back all the way. This makes me feel worse. Yesterday he opened his mouth to coo at me, and he thought he was making a sound, but he wasn't :( Today I noticed the coo was back. It's one of the best sounds in the world.

Tough love starts early I guess. Here's to second guessing myself for the rest of my life.

Sorry about the novel. I haven't actually been writing much, so maybe it's okay that I just posted a mini manifesto on a baby's sleeping habits. Out of necessity, I'm a little obsessed right now.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

He's already giving me sass.


I'll take my sass with a side of sweet cheeks please. Thanks.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Here Comes the Sun...

We spent this past weekend in Cadillac with Jono's dad and Jan. On Saturday we saw snowmobile races, reindeer and husky puppies.

The weather was warm enough for us to take Jude out for a walk, which was lovely. We bundled him up in his new reindeer suit (thanks Grandpa and Grandma) -- the replacement for his bear suit, which he outgrew :(

This was my favorite shot of the weekend. BEHOLD:

I love this one too. Sundrenched.

The sun was setting.

When we got home Jude was all smiles. So was I :)

BFFs III




Saturday, February 7, 2009

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Winter Camping

I consider myself fairly outdoorsy, but I draw the line at Winter camping. Jono's blood runs much warmer than mine, and he goes every year -- usually with friends Jan and Johan. Johan is teaching in Korea, so this year it was Jono, Jan and Jan's dog Haylee. (Mona didn't go because she has the unfortunate habit of taking off without telling anyone where she's going.) They had to dig out a campsite in about two feet of snow, but they had fun.

Nice.

The campsite.

Waves breaking in frozen Lake Michigan

Jono squinting because it's bright and windy

Jan and Haylee

First Hoodie

Jude just grew into his first hoodie. I think it frames his cheeks nicely, don't you?

I had to do a close-up, and as I did, Jude made this hilarious face. I'm not sure what it reminds me of. An ewok? Either way, I munched on his cheeks right after this was taken.