Quite the jumble of thoughts and pictures.

We tried to get all gender neutral stuff when Kalena was a baby, with the thought that we didn't want to have to buy all new stuff if we had a boy next.  Also, I'm not the biggest pink fan in the world.  I like it fine, but I didn't want an all pink nursery or anything.  Well, when we found out we were indeed having a boy next, I was especially glad for the neutral colors.  Green carseat, brown and tan pack-n-play, blue stroller, green and tan vibrating chair.  We did, however, end up with a pink bumbo.  It was the only color they had in the store.  This means lots of pictures of my little guy in a bright pink chair.  Oh well.

I'm sure you're all wondering about the initials on the bib.  (Because apparently I think my blog readers have nothing better to do with their time than wonder about my child's clothing.)  The bib was a gift, or rather part of a gift basket, from Aldolphson & Peterson Construction.  No, that's not the company Brian works for.  It's a company his dad works with.  Sometimes.  I guess they really want to get in good with him, sending a gift basket for the birth of his grandson.  It had a lot of nice stuff.  ANYWAY, he's not wearing it because I was feeding him.  (In case you weren't paying attention to what I said about baby food.)  He's wearing it because he's a drooler, so if he's not in a bib the front of whatever he's wearing ends up soaked.  

Decided to take some pictures on the couch with no bib.  Classier than the pink bumbo with bib pictures.  Although, I left him in the duck sleep sack, so probably not the manliest pictures he'll ever have.

As soon as Kalena realized I was taking pictures she wanted in on the action.  She is starting to smile when I ask her to, so that will make picture taking easier.

At least until she gets distracted.  

Will's hair has gone blond, by the way.  It stayed dark longer than Kalena's did.  I thought maybe it would stay dark for good, but I guess for now we've got another blondie.  They're definitely looking like siblings these days.

Ah, to be a two year old.

Then I could sit around all day in a lawn chair and eat suckers.  Sounds pretty good to me.

Drowsy but AWAKE

I'm pretty sure that every parenting book ever in the history of parenting books give this piece of advice: when putting baby to bed or down for a nap, make sure to lay him down when he is drowsy but awake.  In other words, don't feed your kid to sleep, don't rock him to sleep, don't walk him around until he falls asleep in your arms.  Kids need to be AWAKE when you lay them down.  I suppose this is to keep you from having to feed/rock/walk to sleep every night for however long.

When Kalena was a baby I thought, well sure, that's great advice.  THEORETICALLY.  Unfortunately that girl would not go to sleep unless she was eating.  (Or sometimes riding in the car, but you get the point.)  There was no laying her down awake.  Not even when she got a little older.  You may remember from other posts that she took a bottle to bed with her every night until she was 18 months old.  18 months!  The first time I ever put her to bed drowsy but awake and she actually went to sleep she was a YEAR AND A HALF old.

All the parenting books make it sound so EASY.  Just lay baby down drowsy but awake and TA DA!  Sleep.  They don't get into what happens if "drowsy but awake" equates with fussing then crying then screaming and then a child who not only isn't sleeping, but is no longer even drowsy.  ANYWAY.  After our experience with Kalena, I just assumed that those parenting books were full of crap and that babies don't actually fall asleep without help, the books just TELL you that to make you feel bad that YOUR kid won't.

Then Will came along.  And one night when he was a few days old, he was awake after nursing, but I laid him down beside me anyway hoping to rest my eyes for a few minutes before he started crying.  Then I watched, completely amazed, as he went from wide-eyed awake to asleep in just a few minutes.  Who'd have thought?  It is actually possible.  He doesn't do it every time, most of the time he nurses to sleep, but still.  The times it does happen it always surprises me.

What parenting book advice did you hate?

Seriously, just one more post about the good nite lite.

After this I'll shut up about it.  For awhile anyway.

I just have to say, Kalena LOVES this thing.  Like, lots.  Lots and lots.  Loves it so much I thought it might actually be a problem.  Because for the first few days, when she got up in the morning she wanted to take it with her.  Unplug it and carry it around for the day.  I would have let her do it too, except she reset the times when I let her and I didn't want to have to set the thing every night before bed.  Then she would cry when I made her leave it there.  Fortunately we've resolved this problem.  She now kisses him goodbye every morning when she leaves the room.

It's definitely love.

Mother's day. Pictures first.

The family, all dressed up for church.  How come they always hand out flowers in church on mother's day and not cookies?  If you gave me a choice between a corsage and a cookie and I'll choose a cookie EVERY time.  Maybe it's subliminal messaging-- ladies, we like you to smell nice, but we don't want you getting fat.  No cookies for you.

Not that I need any cookies since my mom made the world's most delicious dessert and I've eaten like half of it.  ANYWAY.

Brian ruined what would have been the best picture.  But then I realized Will is making the same face, so now it's just funny.

Me with my mom.  And Mr. William.

Happy mother's day!

The Good Nite Lite so far

Well, so far so good.  The whole point of this thing (for those of you too lazy to click over to the website and read about) is to get your kid to sleep later in the morning.  (The night light shows up as a moon when it's time to sleep and changes to a sun when it's time to get up.)  It hasn't *exactly* worked like that around here.  I started out setting it for the sun to come on at 6:30 am, the time she'd been getting up for the previous few weeks.  She woke up early the first morning, around 6:15 or so, but I didn't go in right away. I went in right before it switched to the sun so I could tell her that we don't get up while the moon is on, we have to wait until the sun comes up.  The next day she was quiet until the sun came on at which point she started saying, "Up! Up!"

After a few days I set it to go off at 6:40 instead of 6:30 and she seems to be doing alright with that.  It has not (and probably won't) encouraged her to sleep any later.  BUT!  She doesn't cry when she wakes up now.  She waits (or talks to herself) until the sun comes on and someone comes to get her.  This is GREAT.  I cannot believe what a relief it is to KNOW what time she's going to get up.  I don't have to worry that she'll be up at 5.  If I get up at 6 I know I can shower before Kalena will be up.  (I don't have to worry about Will, he's a more predictable sleeper.)  She doesn't wake me up by crying anymore.  It is AWESOME.  Next week I'll be pushing it back to 6:50 and then 7:00 am the week after that.  Depending on how she does with that, I may or may  not try to push it later than that.  If this system does eventually cause her to sleep later, I'll probably push it back a little more.  We'll see though, I don't want to make her bedtime any later.  I very much prefer her to be up in the morning and have the evenings to myself.

One of the reasons we started it now is that she's still in a crib.  When we move her to bed, I fully intend to use it to keep her from getting out of bed in the mornings.  (I REALLY hope this works.)  There is one change I'd make if I could though.  I wish it had a "nap" setting.  Kalena doesn't always nap, but I think if I could tell her that it's "quiet time" while the moon is on and we don't get up until the sun is back out I think that would work.  Maybe some other sort of visual cue would work for this?  Any suggestions?

Anyway, even with no nap setting, I'm sold.  It's worth it.  I'll keep you updated on how things go as the weeks go on.  Because nothing is as exciting as sleep schedules.  I know you'll be holding your breath.

Books, books, books.

I'm in a book club.  Okay, I'm in two book clubs, but I'm just going to be talking about one right now.  It's newly formed with my friend Sherry, and we're reading exclusively young adult literature.  Since I grew up reading classics, that's a change for me.  I conned Sherry into it really.  I wanted to start reading young adult stuff, but didn't know where to start, and Sherry does.  Thus, a book club.

ANYWAY, I've learned some things.  First off, I've learned that YA stuff is almost exclusively series stuff.  Apparently this is because single books don't make enough money?  Sherry was explaining it all to me.  Also, I've learned that my compulsion about book finishing?  (Wrote about that here.  (Big fat fail on the keeping track of what I read for a year, by the way.  That lasted like 4 months.))  It extends to series books.  It doesn't even matter if I didn't like the first book, I HAVE to know what happens.  I realized that after our March book.  I came away feeling like I'd watched a confusing movie preview.  I didn't really know the characters, I was never really sure why things were happening, and it felt totally unresolved.  But as soon as the next book comes out I'm totally reading it.  I just need to know.  It's the same way I'll read through ridiculously long books I'm not enjoying, just hoping it will get better.

Ah, compulsive reading.  If only I didn't need sleep I'd have more time for it.

Toys and noise

I have a strange tolerance when it comes to noisy toys.  Electronic toys that talk or play music?  Don't bother me.  I really don't even notice them.  The exersaucer or Kalena's toy laptop or her toy cell phones or the star on the baby Einstein playmat?  That stuff can play ALL DAY LONG and I am unfazed.  But if she turns on her toy dirt devil vacuum?  I'm asking her to turn that thing off like 30 seconds later.  It doesn't make sense, it should just be white noise (it just makes a vacuum-like noise) but MAN that thing annoys me.  I have the same reaction to those popper type toys.  Luckily Kalena doesn't own any.

I'm not sure what the deal is.  I think maybe the noise those particular toys make is louder than others?  Anything that is particularly loud really gets on my nerves, so that could be it.  Even loud white noise bothers me.  That can cause problems in the summer when it's too hot to sleep without a fan on, but the noise from the fan keeps me awake.  Weirdly enough, I can sleep through lots of noise going on OUTSIDE my room.  Just not in the room.

Anyway.  Back to the toys.  It's not like I go out of my way to buy the noisy ones, but I don't avoid them either.  I also don't hide them away, or avoid replacing dead batteries or anything like that.  The vacuum however, those batteries may need to go.  Do you avoid the noisy toys?

We'll be waiting on the solid food

When Kalena was a baby I was SO excited to start feeding her "real" food.  That was because I didn't realize that baby food is a big fat pain.  You have to buy it (or make it) and spoon feed the baby and it makes a giant mess and maybe she'll like it, maybe not.  UGH.  At Will's 4 month appointment the pediatrician said the recommendation about solid food has changed and 6 months is now the recommended age to start.  This did not make me sad.

In fact, I was sort of thinking I'd skip the baby food altogether this time.  I think I'd just prefer to nurse until he's ready to eat ACTUAL food.  (Kalena quit eating baby food altogether at like 8 months, so it probably wouldn't be too much longer anyway.)  Maybe he'll get super interested (like my nephew Eli who is just a little older and LOVES baby food.  Seriously, check out this video.)  If that's the case I'll deal with baby food.  Otherwise, I'm just not so interested.  What do you think of the baby food stage?

Too many toys

As you may know, Kalena's birthday is coming up.  On the 18th to be exact.  And that brings up the issue of toys.  She has plenty to play with, and while I make an effort to keep the toy buying to a minimum, I don't think a birthday is the time to skip on the toys.  Still, it's getting to the point that I think I should be rotating through them, or making some of them "special toys" or SOMETHING.  I've already put away toys that are too "young" for her, although we'll be getting them back out soon for Will to play with, so that may be a lost cause.

So, lovely readers, tell me-- what do you do when there are too many toys?  Do you get rid of some?  (She plays with everything.)  Do you rotate through them, or bring some out only on special occasions?  If you rotate them, how do you do it?  Weekly?  Randomly?  Are they sorted by type or all mixed together?  Tell me everything, I NEED to know!  And if you have kids of multiple ages, how do you deal with younger toys vs older toys?

I hope you all spend as much time thinking about this crap as I do.