Daily Log #1: Week 8, 10/12/2010

We've had some pretty short nights with Andrew lately, and I'm ready to get him down to just one waking a night, so I thought it'd be worthwhile to keep a detailed log for a few days and work towards getting him on a rough schedule. It's funny - he doesn't cry like Grace did, or fight sleep, he just wakes and fusses pretty frequently. I'll get up and give him his pacifier, and he'll fall right back asleep, but about the time I'm getting most comfortable in bed, he wakes and fusses again until I go in to him.

With Grace, we'd sometimes have nights where she'd just cry and cry unless we were holding her and doing deep knee bends (you think I'm joking), and so this time through still seems easy by comparison, but for such a quiet little guy, I'm still getting very little sleep (well, until 7 in the morning or so, when Caleb gets up with Andrew and lets me sleep another hour or two. Not ideal, however, as I'd really rather sleep at night and have some time in the morning before Grace wakes up to, I don't know, maybe shower?) Anyways, here goes for the first of our logs...

7:00am - Nursed Andrew in bed with us for about 30 mins, left him asleep under Daddy's care and ran off to Starbucks for some much-needed Mama-time (and a quick grocery trip). I had a really enjoyable couple hours reading my Bible and journaling, and mapping out what I hope to accomplish with our kids and home this week. As part of that, I'm going to try keeping a detailed daily log the rest of the week and try to figure out Andrew's optimal nap and sleep times. (Last night was pretty rough - from 1:30 on, I was up with him nearly every hour. He doesn't really cry, but he gets fussy-sounding enough I'm afraid he'll wake up Grace. Sometimes he seemed really hungry, but other times he just wanted his pacifier, and still others I really have no idea...)

10am - Andrew woke up right around the same time as I got home and Grace woke up. Daddy breaked from work and watched them a few minutes while I put groceries away and dumped the coffee grounds I got from Starbucks on our new compost heap (or what will hopefully turn into compost one day; right now it just seems like a large buffet for the flies.)

10:15 am - Nursed Andrew for 15 minutes while riding the backseat of Grace's "car" (ie. her bed).

10:30am - "Played" with Grace in her room for awhile. She was still pretending to drive her car, after buckling all her baby dolls in their "carseats". Put Andrew on his playmat for awhile downstairs while I fixed oatmeal for me and Grace. Took a picture with my cellphone of Grace wearing her headband to send Mimi, who's out of town for the week.

11:15am - Andrew was starting to get fussy, so I changed his diaper and put him down in his pack 'n play with his pacifier. He quieted immediately, so I went back to a late breakfast with Grace and filled in this log.

11:30am - Got some yogurt and applesauce for Grace, started a load of diapers and checked on Andrew, who is sleeping soundly. Grace finishes her breakfast and has a blast pouring her water back and forth from her cup to her bowl. She's trying so hard to be careful, I let her do it. :-)

11:45 am - Gave Grace some soap bubbles to play with while I work on finishing the dishes from last night and empty the dishwasher. Use wheresmycellphone.com to find my cell. Find my cell in the playroom and be thankful Andrew's a sound sleeper. Add blue food coloring to my dishwater in an attempt to make blue bubbles; it doesn't work. Kill a mosquito with my bare hands (the things you do for your children...).

11:50 am - Andrew's fussing; give him his pacifier and see if he falls back asleep. Hurriedly put away rest of the dishes.

12:00 pm - Get Andrew, change Grace into clean (and dry!) clothes, and then nurse while playing with Grace. Andrew dozes in my arms a few minutes. Play our "reading game" with Grace.

12:20 pm - Play in the playroom with the kids. Andrew has some tummy time, then watches himself in his little mirror. Grace changes her monkey's diaper, then makes macaroni and cheese in her little kitchen. Grace helps me wipe off the walls where the workmen got some dirt in the hallway, then uses the sponge to clean Mama's vacuum and Grace's vacuum. And then the sponge becomes a bed for Caleb's old Chewbacca pez dispenser. Andrew gets a diaper change, I make some phone calls and Grace plays by herself awhile.

1:00 pm - Andrew's starting to yawn a bit, so put him down in the pack 'n play with his pacifier. Grace spends quite awhile playing with her "card bucket" - putting her old credit cards in a yogurt tub with a slit in the lid I made for her over a year ago. She hasn't touched it in ages, but seems totally taken with it today, and puts them in and dumps them out over and over. I'm a bit reluctant to interrupt her for lunch and naptime.

1:20 pm - Fix Grace a cheese sandwich, and heat up some chili leftovers for Caleb and me. Andrew looks to be asleep. Grace and I eat lunch at her little table; Andrew's apparently not asleep, but happy as long as he has his pacifier.

1:45 pm - Put Grace down for her nap. Andrew looks asleep, but periodically wakes a bit and fusses quietly. Work on laundry a bit and finish emptying the dishwasher.

2:10 pm - Andrew's definitely not asleep, but still really quiet, so I think I'll lay down and rest a bit while I can.

3:10 pm - I can hear Grace happily playing upstairs, but not quite sure if she's waking up from her nap, or if she's been playing the whole time and hasn't been asleep yet, so I'll leave her a little longer.

3:30 pm - Both kids are definitely awake.

3:45 pm - Nurse Andrew 20 minutes or so while watching Grace play in her room.

5:30 pm - Put Andrew down for a nap in his crib with his pacifier. Grace gave him his little teddy bear, and sang All Creatures to him.

5:40 pm - Andrew starting to fuss, so gave him his pacifier and rubbed his forehead for a few minutes until he started to fall asleep.

6:00 pm - The brush truck came to pick up all the tree branches we'd had pruned about a month ago. (It didn't occur to us till too late that you should wait till the pickup week to have that done. Fortunately, none of our neighbors reported us, but our grass is a tad worse for the wear.) Caleb heard them coming, and we all ran outside to watch. Grace loves big trucks right now, but the claw and noise made her a bit nervous, and she clung to my neck the whole time. She was really excited though, if a little relieved they left the trees in our yard alone.

6:25 pm - Andrew's fussing again; maybe a half hour nap? He still looks pretty sleepy, so gave him his pacifier and waiting to see if he'll fall back asleep. He doesn't. My dad arrives for dinner (my mom's out of town), and he and Caleb play with Grace outside awhile while I fix dinner and watch Andrew in his swing.

6:45 pm - Dinner - taco salad

7:15 pm - Nurse Andrew for 20 minutes or so. Finish dinner and cleanup while Dad holds the baby.

8:30 pm - Nurse a few more minutes and change Andrew's diaper while Caleb gets Grace ready for bed.

8:45 pm - Give Andrew a bath, and nurse a few more minutes. We're trying the "tank him up" method tonight, I suppose. Once Caleb finishes with Grace, we sit on the couch awhile enjoying our happy, well-fed, surprisingly awake little guy until he starts looking sleepy and yawning.

9:30 pm - Put Andrew down in the pack 'n play. He fusses every few minutes for awhile, and we keep giving him back his pacifier.

9:50 pm - Turned on a fan for white noise and rubbed his forehead awhile, and it seems Andrew's finally really asleep.

10:30 pm - Move Andrew upstairs to his crib for the night. We'll see how this goes...

Sleeping Baby

Since Andrew's such an easy sleeper (and I want to keep him that way!), I've been trying to follow more of a schedule with him. Yesterday evening, he'd fallen asleep around 6:30, and Caleb and I decided we should wake him up around 9 so he wouldn't take his long stretch of sleep during the evening instead of at night. Caleb carried him out into the living room, and that little guy slept right through a diaper change, so we jostled him, poked him, kissed him, bounced him, tried to nurse him, talked to him, kissed him some more, put him on the floor for some tummy time, put him on the floor leaning on the boppy, put him on the couch, tried to nurse some more, tickled his feet, gave him tummy time on mommy, and finally gave up and put him in his crib.

Firefighter Gracie

While Caleb was still off on his paternity leave, we took the kids down to the Museum of Natural Science and History. Most of it we skipped over, but Grace had a blast in the children's museum. She's a huge fan of fire trucks and garbage trucks right now, so this was a total hit.

Precious moments...

A couple days ago, I'd been having a difficult time getting Grace to come downstairs and eat lunch, and I'd been getting pretty frustrated with her. But totally out of the blue, Grace went over and leaned on her "big girl bed", clasped her hands together and started to thank God for "my bed, by babies", and a few other things I couldn't quite make out. I do love being her mama!

Andrew's getting bigger...

He'll be six weeks tomorrow, and he's a fast-growing little guy! He's still keeping his mama and daddy pretty tired, but overall he's quite the easy-going baby, and can sleep right through his big sister's loving kisses and happy shrieks (though we're working with her on that one...)

He's been working on holding his head up, though it's still awfully wobbly, and he only lasts a few seconds before he has to take a breather. When he's on his tummy on my chest though, he can squirm his way up till his head's right under my chin - to mama's delight.

Now that my life is being a mama anyways, it really doesn't seem that much more work adding in a second (though I think I got off easy so far!), and it's so enjoyable watching the two of them grow. And there's nothing quite so wonderful as snuggling on the couch with the two of them!

Our Little Grace is growing up

We have a baby! :-)

So I know we've been horribly remiss in posting these past few months, but man, they've been busy! We've moved to Dallas, bought our first house, and now we have our adorable little Andrew, and he's already three weeks old! It's been a really enjoyable three weeks getting to know our new little guy.

We had his two-week check-up last week, and he'd already grown from 6lb 15oz at birth to 8lb 10oz. When we brought him home, his newborn clothes were too big for him, and now he's already outgrowing them! It sure is fun watching babies grow-up though! Now that we've been through it once with Grace, it makes me even more look forward to seeing what kind of little boy our Andrew will grow up to be.
He's a pretty laid-back little guy right now - our nights are still a bit rough (as expected with a newborn!), but he's a good sleeper overall, and unlike his fiesty big sis, he stays asleep when you put him somewhere, which makes things surprisingly easier.
I've still never tried managing the two of them by myself; Caleb has some time off work, and both of our moms have been a huge help these past few weeks with watching Grace and bringing meals.




Grace has been handling all the transitions really well, though she has had a few melt-downs where she wanted Daddy to "nurse baby brother!" or put her baby dolls in the swing with him. I've felt really bad I haven't been able to play with her more like we used to since I got home from the hospital; I overdid it a bit the first week, and landed myself back in the bed for the second and it was really frustrating not being able to play with my little toddler like she wanted me to. We've had some fun snuggle times on the couch though!

It was so sweet when Grandma & Grandpa brought her to the hospital the morning after Andrew was born. She came in with her arms full with two of her dollies, and said "Mama! Daddy!". But as soon as she saw Baby Brother, she dumped the dollies on the bed and stretched up her arms saying "hold baby brother!". She sat up on the hospital bed with me, and we helped her hold him in her lap, and she started talking about how "baby brother come out of mama's tummy". She was so excited he was finally here, and still loves to hold and rock and sing to him.

We've had a few times where she wanted to wear his clothes or sleep in his bed or something, but overall she's been really good at understanding what things are too little for Gracie, and enjoying those that are too big for baby Andrew.