18 Weeks Old

Bennett is 18 weeks old today and it has been a pretty monumental week in his life due to two reasons: sleeping through the night and rolling over. I've mentioned both already but it's a big deal! So far he has slept the whole night for three consecutive nights. He goes to bed between 8 and 9, and can go 10.5 hours without eating. Bennett is also still doing a great job going to bed each night. He gets a bit fussy but it lasts about 10 minutes max, before he falls asleep. One of the challenges we've had with his sleeping is this:

Needless to say he gets VERY MAD when his limbs get stuck and is usually the reason he wakes up in the middle of sleep. Yesterday we bought a mesh crib liner, so this won't be an issue anymore. The other challenge with sleeping is his other achievement this week: rolling over. Any time we put him on his back, he rolls over, then gets stuck and becomes angry. I read that it usually takes about a month for them to learn to roll back onto their backs, so this could be a long month... But as I mentioned before, he is just SO PROUD of rolling over, especially if he struggles with it because his arms get stuck and prevent him from flipping onto his stomach.

I have a feeling he will learn to crawl quick because he likes to push with his legs like he is trying to do an army crawl. He will also slowly turn in a circle, so that he can look around. With all his big accomplishments this week, I feel like I'm losing my baby!

Even with all the extra rest at night, his schedule is pretty much the same. He has two big naps, 8:30-10 and 2-4. He will usually catch a 15-30 minute nap around noon. If he ever wants to sleep more during the day, I let him, but we try to keep him awake after 5 pm, so that he will go to bed on time. This is never a problem since this is the time Joel is home, and Bennett is always really happy to hang out with Daddy (probably because he is sick of Mommy). The thing we have noticed with his sleeping is he babbles in his sleep... or maybe he is awake with his eyes closed, but either way, we'll catch him doing it in the middle of the night or when he's waking up. It's pretty cute though, and a much better noise to wake up to than crying!

Bennett is getting a bit antsy at baby yoga now. I think he still enjoys it because he likes to look around, but he doesn't have the patience he once had. I still enjoy taking him though because it gives us something different to do. He still likes to read and LOVES to chat. I think he babbles for 75% of his day. He likes to laugh now, especially with Joel, like a solid laugh. It is really the best sound! He is super curious and aware of the world around him. (This week our yoga teacher even commented on how much more aware he is, than when we first started going.) His eyes are also a solid brown now. They've been pretty brown these past few weeks, but the outside of the iris has always been gray. This week I noticed that even turned brown, so now I have my little brown eyed boy.

This morning we found him sleeping like this. He likes to sleep face down, which leaves finger marks on his face.

 

 

Here we are having breakfast:

 

We made it to yoga again today, then went on a walk and enjoyed nature:

 



Fun fact: It wasn't until the second summer in our house that we realized we had a rose bush. We had one rose bloom. Since then we've only had one rose each summer. The bush must love the remodel because this year we've had two roses bloom and about another dozen buds ready to go!

 

In case you are wondering, this is what the girls do during the day:

 

 

And finally, pictures of my happy boy:

 

 

Swaddle

It has been a while since Bennett has been swaddled. He's kind of big for it and has liked to stretch out when he sleeps since he was about a month old. He has been a bit fussy today, has a touch of a cold and I could see from the way he's been holding himself today he needed a good swaddle. Sigh, I miss those swaddle days...

Naptime

Notice the balled up blanket by his stomach. An attempt to stop him from rolling onto his stomach when falling asleep. It doesn't always work...

Success!

Here it is, the face of someone who slept from 8:30-6:00!!!! 

He is the happiest baby in the world this morning. We found him chatting away in his crib. Good job, Bennett!

Roll Over

 

 

 

My technical expertise is limited with social media, so if the video doesn't work, copy the link into a browser: http://youtu.be/_j_iTsQr7Aw

 

 

Also, Bennett was doing his impression of the MGM lion, in case that wasn't clear.

Relaxing

Nap Time

Nap time has become more of a challenge now that Bennett does this: 

He's been rolling over for a while now. We'd seen him do it occasionally and he'd wake up a few mornings on his stomach, but this weekend he perfected his rolling over and can now do it purposefully. So the difficulty with nap time comes when I lay him down and all he wants to do is rollover and look at the picture on the mobile attached to the side of his crib. Then he gets stuck because he hasn't perfected rolling back yet and all he wants is to lay on his side. 

I'm sure he'll figure that out soon enough but because of his new skill, the days of letting him nap alone in our bed are long gone. 

It was pretty awesome to see him develop this skill and even more awesome to see how proud he is of himself. Sometimes he struggles getting all the way over because his arm gets stuck so he has to work on his momentum to roll over it but he is just SO PROUD when he does. Then he gives himself a big smile and you can tell he is thinking, "I did it!"  It is so cool to watch!

An update on sleeping through the night: it's going well. Thursday and Friday nights were bad. He woke up every few hours screaming but it was super stormy those nights as well. I'm wondering if the storms kept him from deep sleep. These past two nights have been great. He goes to bed around 8:30 pm and will fuss around 4 am. This is when he would have a feeding in the past so it's not a surprise he fusses but its clear he isn't fully awake when we check on him. Patting him on his butt helps put him back to sleep, as does changing his diaper, which is what Joel has been doing. Again, the goal is for him to sleep until 5:30 or 6. I feel like we're getting closer to the goal because he doesn't expect to eat at 4 and tends to fall back asleep when Joel changes his diaper. He'll figure it out soon enough!

Lazy Saturday

We didn't do much today. Assessed storm damage: 

Took naps:

Love it when he has happy dreams 

Hat

Took the hat out for a spin today. He fell asleep towards the end of the walk and this is after his 4.5 hour nap. 

17 Weeks

A birthday blog post before 11 pm?! I know. We had an early start to our day. So the big news this morning is... drumroll please... Bennett slept through the night last night! Not a baby boy any longer! At yesterday's appointment our pediatrician noted that he's getting close to the age where he can go 11 hours without feeding at night and his kids were 4.5 months before he did the 'cry it out' method. What does that mean? No more rocking/cuddling to sleep. No more middle of the night feedings. No coming to our bed at 4 or 5 am. Our pediatrician plainly said that we keep this up, he'll sleep like junk, but then nicely added that he's not yet 4 months, so it's something we should think about. This nighttime thing isn't a HUGE deal to me, mostly because Joel's been getting up with him. I've been so tired lately I only get up with him maybe 20% of the time. So anyways, despite his fussy day yesterday, Joel decided it'd be the night to cry it out. In some ways, it seems like he was ready for it. He didn't eat a ton in the middle of the night and some mornings he'd wake up with a dry diaper.

Always drooling

So last night around 8:30, his usual bedtime, Joel laid him down in bed, turned on the mobile and walked out of the room. We waited for the crying, but Bennett just chatted with the mobile and eventually went to sleep on his own. This isn't that unusual as he's done this many times in the past. Then he started crying his half asleep cry around 1. Here we go, I thought and told Joel to go in and rub his back. Joel didn't and 10 minutes later he was back asleep. Then at 2 he cried, it again sounded like he was half asleep, but Joel stayed in bed and 5 minutes later he was asleep. At 4 he cried for a minute and went back to sleep. He finally woke around 5:30 and was pretty whiney because he was hungry. Or maybe he could've slept longer and I was too anxious to feed him.. He usually wakes up super happy, so we'll see what happens tomorrow. Then after he ate I went to change his diaper but it was dry. Not too bad! Since he has been getting up with Joel for a while now, it was clear he was looking for his Daddy, so we went to bed to wake him up. We had an appointment to check out a day care at 7:30, so it was good we had an early start. (I think this might be our schedule when I go back to work. Bennett gets up at 5:30 and eats. Then Joel takes him so that I can get ready and pump, so that I can leave the house at 6:30.)

It was a beautiful morning and I've been itching to take photos of Bennett outside, so with Daddy home, we decided to give it a go today. As I mentioned before, he woke up a little crabby... so I didn't get the lovely photo shoot I was envisioning. (You know, early morning sun, birds chirping, smiley baby in nature.)

 

Notice the progression of anger...

Save me, Daddy!

 So that was fun for everyone! Hopefully he was just tired and not an indoor boy because that would break Joel's heart.

The daycare we visited today was the second one we've seen. Yesterday we toured a daycare at a church and today's was a center. The church daycare had a great homey feel but didn't offer any kind of learning curriculum for infants. Basically, they just played all day long. Today's center had an individualized program for each child and taught sign language (which we really want) but the place just felt really rundown. As we were leaving we noticed a Montessori next door with competitive rates (we assumed they'd be incredibly expensive) so we're going to check it out tomorrow.

Cute little feet!

When we got home at 8:30 Bennett ate and then we played until he started falling asleep at 9:30, so I brought him up to his crib. He then slept until 11:15 and woke up super crabby, so he ate a little early and fell back asleep and is still sleeping now. I'm hoping the crabby tiredness is due to yesterday's shots, a new nighttime sleep schedule and waking earlier than usual, because he's really never this crabby nor tired.  Either way, we made it through the night. Yay!

 

 

Blue sky, is that you?