UT fans in secret

Looked in the mirror and realized we were burnt orange...

Ta da!

Almost 5 months! And sitting!

Goodnight

Reading Thomas before bed...

Master Builder Kate

Kate is working this morning on making a house for the turtle.

Daddy P was up literally all night with one kid or the other. As a reward (?) I have trucked both kids to my parents' house so he can alternatively sleep, watch football and not have to do anything in particular.

Happy Birthday Daddy P !

Breakfast pancakes (Kate nursing horsey), playing in the sunshine, carrot cake for dessert, steak on the grill...a very wonderful day for everyone.

Fast asleep

Take what I can get

This falls into the "I'll take what I can get" category.

After our weekend of crazy sleep training (and lack of sleep for everyone in the house), Jacob has totally changed his sleep patterns.

He's now taking 2 1.5 hour naps, after last week taking a twenty minute one here, and a 45 minute one there.

He woke up at 3am this morning, crying, and fell back asleep on his own!  A first ever.

Nap today I put him down totally awake (but sleepy) and he's out cold!  That's the second time, now.

I really hope this isn't a fluke, but I'm really grateful either way.

Restful Sunday

We had a really nice weekend. We woke up and made pumpkin pancakes and coffee. Lazy and slow morning, followed by some lunch at our local bakery on the patio. Kate and Daddy P worked on spelling words. And Kate camped in the living room.

We have been sleep training Jacob. Or rather, I should say Daddy P has been. It was going well all weekend with Jacob habit an easier and easier time falling asleep on his own. And then...I tried to put him down last night. I spent 1.5 hours doing Paul's technique with the result being screaming and more screaming. After I gave up and Paul took over it took Jim literally ten minutes.

So although he is still going down hard for me, he goes down easy now for Paul and we went from a week of him being up every two hours to now he has slept through the night twice. He even woke up last night, rolled around for thirty minutes, and then fell asleep by himself. It was great!

halloween candy

Enjoying some Halloween candy...

Tonight we are having a camp out in the den while sleep training continues.  Hopefully Kate and I will be able to get some sleep.

Catching up

Time to catch up.  Nothing like sitting and listening to a baby crying to get you to blog.

Yep, that's right.  We're sleep training.  Kate is at my parents' house so she can actually sleep.  Daddy's drinking wine.  And, well, I'm blogging.  Our current plan?  Go in after 5 minutes until he's asleep.  We are on Cycle #1 Calming #4.  So far the Daily Show is keeping us sufficiently distracted to tolerate this.  Might be another story at 3 in the morning...

Meanwhile...

Kate's parent-teacher conference was today.  How funny is that?  Three years old, and parent-teacher conferences.  They had mostly good things to say.  She's ahead in fine motor, writing skills, and other academic areas.  Socially though, my little one is a rabalrouser.  She, apparently, is very much in a phase of trying out asserting herself and seeing what happens.  Which is funny, because the other feedback we got is that Kate is timid (i.e. won't answer questions in front of the class, etc.).

She's loving her baby brother and has been just amazing.  She reads to him, talks to him when he's upset, wants to carry him (just waiting for that day she tries when I'm not looking), and now feeds him.

Jacob continues to have some problems... Apparently, our bottle problem was a bad bottle and a bad nipple. We started with Born Free and then tried the faster nipple and he still hated it.  Then we switched to Dr. Brown and he loved it for a week then refused it.  Finally got faster nipples and he's back to eating again.  Sleep, though, is still lousy.  This week, most nights, he was up almost every hour.  Last night I felt blessed to get a 3 hour chunk.  Thus our evening venture.

(Still crying, by the way)

We'll see how we do.  Hopefully between the two of us we can stick this out and get us all better sleep because momma can't talk this much longer...

Sweet sis

Although this picture was from the other day it illustrates my tale... Paul put Jacob on the bed to use the bathroom at which point Jacob starting crying. Kate goes, gets a book, and is sitting, reading to a calm Jacob when Paul emerges.

Mom time

Some donuts to start the day...sorry teachers.

Like Uncle Like Nephew?

Paul and I decided yesterday that Jacob is like his Uncle Adam.  While I had come to this conclusion separately, I felt funny saying it outloud because, well, although I know Adam fairly well, much of my decision making was made on assumptions.

I believe that Jacob is like his Uncle because he is:
a) Very social -- friendly, sweet, likable, good eye contact... :)
b) He's active
c) He's stubborn (but, in a nice and subtle way...)
d) He's a flirt
e) He's clearly very smart

First Cereal

Jacob got his first taste of cereal this weekend. The doctor recommended it to help him sleep. She also reiterated what I'd already figured out: Jacob could no longer use us (rocking, nursing, singing) to fall asleep because it was costing us our sleep. Last night he was up every hour all night because he's so used to having help going back to sleep. Next weekend: sleep training...

Just laying around

Paul complained about drool in his ear...

Alone, just me and ferber

After two nights of Jacob waking every hour, I shipped sleep-deprived Paul and Kate to my parents house to sleep one good night. Paul's circles were getting steadily grayer and larger and the poor guy doesn't need to be sleepy on ous commute. Kate gets cranky when tired (she is 100% like me; sorry, Kate) so I needed her to have sleep.

Tonight, I am alone with Jacob and have been Ferberizing. For those of you less familiar with the wave of parenting terms, this one refers to the sleep training technique of going in to soothe the baby after progressively longer periods of time, with the end goal that he can soothe himself to sleep.

All you need to know about the picture is that a red light means crying and a green light means quiet.  Right now I have a baby who is awake hut STOPPED crying.

Now, Kate wasnt a ferber baby. She would cry herself to puking before she would cry herself calm, so we never bothered trying this with her.

But Jacob is way more dependent on people, and way more needy with soothing, but ironically is easier to soothe.

So, we will see. At least two people are sleeping tonight.

Dinner out

I realized we only eat at places that say "seat yourself"....

"circle time"

Kates the teacher...

"its kinda like a duck"

Heck, yes, its a duck. Rock on, Kate.

Sitting pretty

Have moved to sitting and he is loving looking around on walks!