The New Bedtime Routine

We are working hard to help Eli sleep better at night... for everyones sake! Here is the new plan... 5 days in and I think it is working.

Rule: Eli wakes up from last nap no later than 7:30. ( I am considering moving this up to 7)


8:30 - Go upstairs and change diaper and put on PJs (This is also play time with daddy for a few minutes and his beloved "nakkie" time... this kid sure does like to be naked)


8:45 - Get wrapped up in his Swaddle Me wrap and nurse with momma for a bit.


At this point he hopefully falls asleep while nursing and gets plopped in bed for the night. Sometimes however he isn't so interested in food and instead we rock to sleep... this is sometimes harder for everyone involved but he is generally asleep and in bed before 9:15, which is working well right now. We are also working on slowly moving the bedtime up a little. We know it would probably be best for him to got to bed earlier, but we need to get there slowly, he doesn't take kindly to dramatic changes in his routine.

In the Laboratory

Eli love his Exersaucer, his favorite position these days is standing up so the saucer suits him just fine. He also free to use his hands while he is in there so he has really started interacting with his toys! So fun!

He gets all serious and focused when he is in there and so Dan has started calling it his laboratory. This little mad scientist loves to touch and turn and hit all the "controls" at his finger tips.

I love this kid in hats!!

Watching Daddy work from his new favorite seat!

In other news, the sleeping is getting better. We had one night with 7.5 consecutive hours of sleep and last night he only woke up once! I am excited things are getting better, but we are going out of town again next week and I am afraid all of our hard work is going to get messed up again! We shall see!

Writer's Workshop - Photos make a home

I have decided to subscribe to Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop as a fun way to come up with more topics for the blog! Each week there will be a list of topics I can choose from and post about on Thursday. So, here it goes!

4.) Photographs can turn a house into a home. Share a photograph that is not on your wall, but should be...if you weren't so lazy about actually putting it there.

My Brother Darren and I at my Wedding

My sister Kim and I at My Wedding

Sucker.

Today while rocking my sweet little boy I noticed a few reddish marks on his little arm.

Cue the new mommy freak out!

I called for Dan and panicked. Despite Dan's reassuring that they were JUST BRUISES. I was upset. Like seriously WHY should my little dude have bruises... Baby Cancer...... Iron Deficiency..... Arm stuck in his crib.... Should I call the doctor?....eeek.....my brain was in hyperdrive.

Then, about an hour or two later, thankfully before any embarrassing calls to the doctor, I put Eli on the floor for his second round of "tummy time" for the day and had a huge AH-HA moment.

My kid was giving himself HICKEYS!!

Seriously, when he gets tired on his tummy he lays his face down and sucks...apparently very hard... on his arms...

Self-inflicted Hickeys... Seriously...Wow. Needless to say we got a good laugh out of this one.

What a SUCKER!

The Process of Going Back to Work - Part 1

I have been exceptionally lucky to be able to spend the first three months of Elijah's life at home with him and have not had to work. We only have 1 more month of that wonderful arrangement before I head back to work and Eli starts at daycare.

While I like my job and I am happy with the daycare center we have chosen for Eli, I am not at all happy about returning to work and leaving my lazy days with my boy. I am very nervous about leaving my boy with others, I know him best and I want to be the one to care for him. I don't want to miss anything, he grows and changes so much, that I don't want to be away from him even for a minute. I can't hardly imagine being away from him for 8 hours a day, but soon enough that will be our norm. It is going to take a lot of adjusting for me emotionally and in our schedule.

All that being said, we like our 2 income lifestyle and I worked really hard to get a Master's degree and become a Speech Pathologist. I never imagined that I would even toy with the idea of not working, I have always been focused on my career, but it is amazing what that little boy has changed in me. I am hoping to find out more details about my work assignment for this year so that I can start getting excited about work instead of dreading or fearing it.

The Montessori school where Eli will be going called the other day to confirm that he has a spot in their infant room and we set his start date as August 9th, my first day back at work. Instead of thinking about leaving my boy, I am instead working on gathering the "supplies" that he will need at daycare and thinking about how we will make the mornings work. One thing is for sure, I will certainly be getting up earlier this year.

Little Fan!

This is a nearly out of date post. I had started it a long time ago and never got around to posting it!

For Father's Day, Dan and I took Eli to his first baseball game. This is big stuff in our family. Cardinal's Baseball is serious business around here and we were totally excited to share it with our boy! Amazingly enough he made it through the entire game... 9 WHOLE INNINGS! I really thought that it was going to be a short0lived experience and that we would be cutting out early because he needed to go home, but nope, he was great. Once I took him and walked around a bit, but for the most part he slept in my arms or played with his Daddy. It was an awesome family outing!

Mississippi Adventures!

I never would have thought that the easiest, least stressful part of a weekend road trip would be my 3 month old. I was super stressed about traveling 480 miles to Madison, MS for a family reunion with Eli. I packed everything in the house that wasn't nailed down, read a million articles on the internet about how to travel with a little guy, and generally braced myself for the worst. Or so I thought.

Elijah did fantastic on the car rides. I sat next to him in the back and we sang, read books, and played with toys. He did a great job putting himself to sleep in the car and it was really a pretty easy journey.

The stressful part of the weekend didn't happen until we were down in Mississippi. Friday evening we went to get Coldstone with our friend Jack. Coldstone was less than a mile away from our hotel, but we never made it there. We were hit in our car by a lady in a white SUV that rear-ended another car (going very fast) and then bounced onto the front end of my car. We were not injured, but it sure was scary. It took over an hour to fill out all the police paperwork and get going back to the hotel, by then we were all exhausted and shaken up. I had an EMT worker check Eli out, but even after she gave him the okay, I worried about him all night and didn't sleep well.

Saturday morning we woke up and went to the Atkins-Whiteside Family Reunion, which was the whole reason we were in Mississippi. It was a fun day of talkin with family, playing games, looking at pictures and eating good food. Elijah had a great time playing with so many new people, events like this are great for him because he always has someone to hold him and play with him. Eli and his new friend Sam were the life of the party and so fun to play with!

Saturday night after the reunion we had made plans to go see Toy Story 3 in 3D with my cousins. Well, I am not going to share all the gory details of that evening, but Dan and I didn't end up seeing the movie at all and instead ended up hanging out in a Jackson ER because I had a reaction to some over the counter medicine I took. Yeah, there was screaming, tears and lots of pain and the worst part was no Woody or Buzz :(. My parents, grandparents and uncle were awesome and took care of the little man for us while we were at the ER.

So, Dan and I are now planning a date night that involves Toy Story and Coldstone to make up for our failed attempts at fun this past weekend. Luckiy for us there is a movie theater with a Coldstone in the same parking lot near our house, less driving = less opportunities for disaster!