Dinner and babywearing

The rest of this week actually went pretty well with regards to sleep. He's gotten into a good pattern of going to sleep on his own around 7:30, waking up for a snack around 3/4am, then will sleep until it's time to get up for the day (5:30/6am). One night after his 3am snack, I had to change his diaper and was convinced it was going to keep him awake... he did wake up, but I put him in the crib and he went right back to sleep. Miraculous!

Last night was really amazing... we had reservations at Restaurant 17 (it's Restaurant Week in Greenville), so we picked D up from daycare and headed there directly. D has been really fussy in the evenings lately, so we were a little concerned how we'd get through the meal. We were amazed that Dargan actually sat quite happily in his high chair, eating puffs and various bits of food we poked at him, and eventually fell asleep in Scott's lap while we ate our dessert course!



Halleluia!

Last night I also had a visiting wrap arrive - Pavo Frost CA. I was so excited because it got here in time to take it to the local babywearing meetup and learn how to wrap with it! We had our first ups on a trip to Publix. :)



Other cuteness from the week:
Penguin butt, dino jammies, and helping with the dishes.

Sleep Training - Week One

Yes, it has come to this. After more than 7 months with about a dozen total nights of decent sleep, and still having to nurse him to sleep every night (sometimes multiple times a night), we'd all reached our breaking point.

I was having difficulty coming around to the idea, but after reading a post on the Precious Little Sleep blog about sleep training, I decided it was time. We made sure D was recovered enough from his surgery and on Wednesday night, it was go time.

From the blog, we determined there were 3 separate issues to solve:
1) falling asleep at bedtime (without nursing)
2) not eating at night (night weaning)
3) better napping

These had to be tackled one at a time, in the above order.

To get Dargan falling asleep on his own, I had to get him to dissociate nursing with being put to bed, so we had to rearrange bedtime routine. First nursing, then warm washcloth (or bath if it's a bath night), change into PJs, read some stories, read the bedtime prayer banner, then lay him in the crib, say goodnight, and leave the room.

Wednesday night, he cried for one hour exactly, fell asleep for an hour, cried for another hour, slept for 45 mins, cried for about 15 mins, then slept until 4am. Since night weaning is a separate issue, I fed him at 4am and he slept til 6. This night was HARD.

Night two (Thursday): put him in the crib at 8:20, cried 30 mins, slept until 2:30. Fed him then and again at 5. Up for the day at 6.

Night three (Friday): in the crib just after 7, cried just under 30 mins, up at 1 and 4. Up for the day at 6.

Night four (Saturday): in the crib around 7:30, cried 20 minutes. Up at 1:30 and 4. Slept til 7! He didn't go back to bed as easily after his night wakings, so I put him in his crib awake and the first time he cried less than a minute before falling asleep.

Night five (Sunday): in crib at 7:55, cried 5 (!!!) Minutes. Up at 12 but rocked to sleep by Scott. Up at 2, nursed back to sleep. Up at 4, changed diaper, let him cry...cried for an hour then fell asleep. Had to wake at 6 for daycare.

Night six (Monday): Scott got to do bedtime solo while I was at rehearsal. He fed him a bottle and got him in the crib about 8, less than a minute of fussing before sleep. Woke up at 3:45 for a snack, then slept til 5:30.

Night seven (Tuesday): I'd pumped late in the day at work, so after D nursed in the evening we fed him an extra couple if ounces from a bottle. Put him in the crib at 8ish, he let out one fuss as I left the room, then rolled over and was out! Unfortunately the rest of the night was AWFUL. He woke up crying at 11:30 so we tried letting him cry to go back to sleep. I gave in after an hour, rocked him for half an hour, still not sleeping so I nursed him at 1. He finally feel asleep, got him back in the crib. Cried at 3:30, Scott rocked him back to sleep. Cried again at 4:30, I changed him bc here had a big poo (WHY with the 4am pooping always???), then ended up sleeping in the chair holding him until morning because he wouldn't sleep otherwise. Ugh. Hoping it was just a fluke!

Conclusion/Summary:

After one week we have essentially completed Step 1 - he falls asleep on his own pretty well! Next step is to maintain this and work on staying asleep, especially without nursing. Overall I'm really proud of D for the way he can put himself to bed now. Hoping he keeps it up and we can continue to make progress!

Happy New Year!

Dargan has made a 100%  recovery from his surgery - big relief for everyone! I think he barely knows anything even happened, which is just as well.

Gee, mom, what's the big deal?

I'm a happy guy!

New skill: holding two toys and whacking them together.

Scott and I traded off vacation days / working from home days so that we could each get work done while D was out of daycare. It worked out pretty well! The weather was beautiful all of last week, so we were also able to get out a bit and even took D for a bike ride.

Kisses from Shiner

Petting Leo

As you can see above, D is also fascinated by all of the pets! Thankfully they like him, too. :)

On New Year's Eve, we went to Vim's party early to watch some football and made it home by about 8pm so that we didn't mess with D's bedtime too much. 

Bun bun!

Fire crackers = also appropriate for NYE

Got my fancy tux bib on!

Partied out.

We've been working on getting better naps during the day, but it's still pretty much a crap-shoot. Sometimes he refuses to nap, sometimes he's out for hours. No idea! We've also started sleep training, which I'll post in another entry.

Napping!

Not napping!

'Sup ladies. I hear chicks dig scars.

Over the weekend, we went to Asheville with our neighbors to check out some new beer places (surprise). 

At Pour Taproom

Southern Appalachian Brewing Company (Dargan's brewery #19)

Finally got a photo of D and I in our matching Chucks!

Penguin jammies!

Dargan's Surgery

Yesterday I posted about Dargan having to have some surgery to remove a cyst on his chest. I'm happy to report all went well and we are home from the hospital, resting peacefully!

The whole process started last night since D had to fast starting at midnight. I was afraid this would go horribly, given how much the boy loves to eat, but thankfully it went much better than expected! We put him to bed around 8, he woke up and fussed around 9 but got himself back to sleep without our intervention, and he slept soundly until we got him up to feed him a full 5oz bottle at 11:45pm. I was afraid this would wake him up and he'd fuss, but Scott was able to feed him and get him back down to sleep in the time it took me to pump!

A little complication was thrown into our evening when I woke up at 2:30am to the baby monitor beeping, indicating that it had lost signal... our power was out! Of course, that meant D's white noise machine had also turned off, and it didn't take him long to wake up and fuss. Scott and I took turns rocking him, finding a good Google Music station to substitute for the noise machine, and calling Duke Energy to report the outage. We got him back to sleep after a bit over an hour and I got a message that power was restored around 4:30am.

D slept until 5:30am (not too bad) and then was up for the day. He fussed a good bit when he realized I wasn't going to feed him, but thankfully we were able to keep him distracted and he didn't completely melt down.

We headed to the hospital around 7am.

I'm chill. Just got my keys here.

Got checked in and hung out in the waiting area for 15 mins or so. Dargan read the paper.



We then were taken into pre-op, where they explained the whole procedure, got D changed into his hospital gown, and of course we signed tons of papers. We were in the room for about an hour total, and again, Dargan was amazingly patient. He watched some TV, played with some toys, and eventually took about a 30 minute nap.




Eventually Scott and I scrubbed up and got to walk back to the operating room doors with him, then handed him off to the anesthesiologist to start the sleepy-time process. It was just before 9:30 when they took him back and we were directed to the outpatient recovery waiting area.

They kept us updated as often as they could, and it wasn't even 10:15 when they told us we could go back and see him in recovery. I expected him to be still asleep or at least groggy, but nope! Little guy was wide awake, getting a dose of sugar water (his second bottle, apparently, because he was demanding FOOD).

They let me nurse him immediately and then Dr. Abrahms came back to chat with us. He said everything went great, no issues. He's still not sure what the little lump was, but he thinks it's just a small mass of normal tissue, but in an abnormal place. They sent it off to a lab for routine screening just to be safe, and we'll get results at his followup in a couple of weeks.



They monitored him for about 30 minutes to make sure he didn't have any delayed reactions to the anesthesia or had too much pain, and then they let us go. Simple as that! Dargan was a champ the whole time, and the nurses even said he was a model patient. I'm so proud of him! I think he handled it better than I did.

We're now home and Dargan has been asleep for about an hour since the car ride. :)

Let's hope this was the LAST time we see that hospital for a while... I washed my hands in the restroom and the smell of the soap brought all kinds of not-so-fond memories back.

First Christmas

Well, I knew the good sleep was too good to last. A combination of coming down with a tummy bug early last week + holiday excitement got everything screwed up, and we've had a rough few nights recently. At least we know he CAN sleep well... ?

Sleep? Fooled you!

Playing with shadows on the changing table.

It was right after dinner on Sunday night (the 20th) when Dargan suddenly projectile vomited everywhere. I'd always wondered how to tell the difference between vomit and spit-up... oh, there was NO mistaking this. Poor guy looked shocked and horrified at what had just happened.

This called for a bath!



He slept ok and didn't seem ill on Monday morning, so we sent him to daycare as usual. I got the phonecall at about 12:15p that he was still vomiting, so I headed out to pick him up and take him home. My parents were coming to babysit since Scott and I had a work dinner, so they arrived and I headed back to Spartanburg to work the rest of the afternoon and have dinner. Thankfully D did well for my folks, and Scott and I enjoyed a nice dinner!

Tuesday we didn't go to the office but worked from home. D seemed much better.

Plus we got our sweet bibdana and slouchy beanie from The Raptor's Nest!

Wednesday we had a checkup for Dargan's chest cyst. I don't think I posted about it before, but he was born with a little lump (about the size of a flattened pea) right in the middle of his chest. We had it checked out right after he was born, the doc wanted to just keep an eye on it and check it again in 6 months.

You can see it a little bit here.

The doc decided that it's likely to rupture and/or get infected as he gets older, so it's best to remove it before it causes problems. We have surgery scheduled on Tuesday 12/29 to remove it, which will require general anesthesia (cue mom freaking out), but is outpatient so we'll be home the same afternoon.

"You're gonna do what?"

Scott's parents had arrived late Tuesday, so we spent Wednesday visiting with them and went to dinner at Sierra Nevada Brewery in North Carolina.

Shiner rides are fun!

Mom & baby selfies

Napping in the car on the way to Asheville.

Sierra Nevada Brewery (Dargan's brewery #16)

Straws!

With Grammy

You like my bibdana?

Christmas Eve was pretty low-key, mostly stayed in due to the rain. We had our traditional Cuban dinner of roast pork, rice & beans, and tostones (fried plantains).

At least somebody gets naps around here!

Grumpy from not napping.

Dargan got to open a gift early!

Still grumpy.

Enjoying the vibrating teether, but refusing to hold it himself.

Finally enjoyed a bath and got to play with rubber duckies!

And sometime after Dargan went to sleep...

Santa came!!!

Christmas morning we got up and had breakfast, I slept in after being up several times with D overnight, and before we even got to opening gifts, Dargan actually took a decent nap!

Santa Jammies (9 month size!)

This allowed the adults to open their gifts, then we had Dargan open his once he woke up. He wasn't quite sure what to do with the gifts, but he certainly enjoyed being the center of attention!

Opening his first Christmas gift!

He got loads of toys and clothes from friends & family and loved playing with all of them. He was sat on the blanket, surrounded by toys, just going from one to the next. He especially loved the egg shaker from Grannie!

Whew!

Scott and I got to go on a bike ride in the afternoon during a break in the rain, and we got 30 miles in. Felt great to be out on the bikes together! Not 10 minutes after we got home it started to downpour... good timing on our part!

On Saturday, the Trenor grandparents headed out early and the rain had moved out, so we loaded D into the bike trailer and headed down the Swamp Rabbit Trail to a new brewery that was having their grand opening. 

Upstate Craft Beer Co. - Dargan's brewery #17

On Sunday, the Wetmore grandparents and uncle Matt came to visit for lunch. It was so nice and warm, we had Christmas and ate out on the screened porch!

A lovely afternoon, and a great end to a holiday week!