A Mama's BlogSeems my baby is getting bigger every day. Today he looked at me and said, “Ma, Ma, Ma,” and smiled. He keeps saying it when he sees me, so I am taking that as his “official” first word- “Mama!”
He sounds so sweet when he says it; I had forgotten how cute a baby sounds, uttering their first words.
Cole had his nine-month check-up this week. He is 21 pounds, and is 29 inches long. The doctor said he was doing great!
He has his two front bottom teeth in, and just got his top 4 front teeth in- ouch! Poor little guy- no wonder he was so fussy last weekend.
He is starting to stick out his tongue, and will do it, if he sees someone else do it. He loves to clap- he claps when it is time to get out of the car, when it is time to eat, play, bath, or time for bed.
He drinks out of a cup really well, and loves to eat! Seriously, he almost eats the same amount of food Ryan does. He loves everything so far he has tried, except for broccoli.
I think my favorite thing right now is his adorable, cute, pudgy, chubby, cheeks. I love squeezing them, and he just laughs every time I do. I also call him “Roly Poly Colely.” My sister called him that when she was out for a visit in November, and it just kind of stuck.
He is still a very cuddly baby, and is happiest when he is being held, or is having attention being paid to him. He is starting to really enjoy and want Dad, which is a welcome milestone.
He has also been sleeping pretty well in his crib, next to our bed. I think he is getting used to it. Tonight he nursed for about 10 minutes, and when I placed him in the crib, he rolled over and fell right asleep. He is growing up a little every day, and I am sure I will be wondering where the time went with him very shortly too.
I hope to have some better pictures soon of Cole, but here were a few we took this week after we went for a walk, and he decided to play with his hat.
Joe is on vacation again, having to use up some time before he looses it. I don’t know how we missed all these days- it sure would have been nice to have had some extra time after Cole was born, but it is a nice and surprising break.
If I don’t get to blog much this week, that is why. 🙂After having a few rough nights with Cole, Joe took Ryan out this morning, and Cole and I took a long nap. He has gotten 4 front teeth this weekend, and has been miserable. He slept about 3 hours total yesterday, so he is just wiped out! He had a fever this morning, but just woke up from a nap, and seems like he is feeling better, so I hope tonight is better.
We all slept in on Sunday. We almost went to the zoo, and after asking Ryan what he wanted to do, he kept saying he wanted to go see Grandma (Joe’s mom). We aim to please, so we went out there for lunch, but Grandma wasn’t home. Grandpa was, and while Ryan was eating lunch, he kept looking out the window to see if she was coming home.
After lunch, Ryan and Grandpa, went outside and started messing around- Grandpa let Ryan sit in his truck and “drive,” so Joe and I took Cole on a long walk on a walking trail.
When we got back, Cole had fallen asleep, and Ryan was crashed out on the couch, so we hung out for a while. Grandma came home, so Ryan got to see her, and sit on her lap. Then we went and got pizza. It was a fun and relaxing day.
I like this “vacation at home,” it is fun not to have to be in the regular routine. I read in the paper that a local restaurant that we like is having a free entree night, so we are going to go get some yummy free noodle / rice bowls tonight. Can’t beat that!
We do have to do our taxes this week, but with Turbo Tax, we are optimistic it won’t be too “taxing” (pardon the pun), and then we are going to do some work on seeing what kind of mortgage we qualify for, etc.
We have needed a bigger place since Ryan was born, but for various reasons (maybe a future post?) we have stuck around in our current place- but now are getting really serious about moving.
We went to a few open houses on Saturday in a neighborhood we are now 99% sure we want to live in, and there was a house that we fell in love with. It would be ideal for us, so we are going to finish our taxes and then proceed with seeing if this will work out.
We want to keep our current house (it is a duplex) for retirement income, so it gets kind of intimidating thinking about having two mortgages, but we have done some work with paying down the mortgage over the last few years, so we have been working towards this, but it is exciting, fun, and a little nerve-wracking to finally be at this point.
We don’t want to get to excited yet, but it is nice to know that we have at least decided on a neighborhood, and if this house we like sells, there will be another one. We are in a good position in that we don’t have to sell our house- we can just sit and wait for something that we really want, and then go for it. It seems like it always works out this way though- when you aren’t totally ready, that is when you find something you like, so all we can do is just go from here.
Finally, after not having an outside (paying) job since February 2005, I start my first day tomorrow, at a very, very, part time job. It is bookkeeping for a mom that just moved back to our area who has her own sling / baby carrier business. It will be a few hours, every other week for now, but that is just perfect for me. It is very flexible so that is big plus, and I will be able to come in whenever it works for me, including weekends, so this is a great chance for me to get some mental stimulation, (not that the boys don’t stimulate me, but I mean some business stimulation), take a small step back into the working world, while still being able to keep the ideals that are very important to Joe and I with raising our children.
Joe will be able to stay with the boys if I go in on the weekends, or I can leave them for the few hours with their Grandma. I am excited, and eventually I would like to continue to build my bookkeeping business, but for now, this is a step in that direction.
We went over to my dad’s house for dinner on Saturday night, mainly because my grandmother- Ryan & Cole’s great-grandmother- is visiting from out of town for a few weeks. She is the only great-grandmother the boys have, so she is VERY special.
She had never met Cole, so it was nice for her to be able to see him. Unfortunately, he was a total mama’s boy all night and only wanted me to hold him. Grandma did get to hold him for about 5 seconds, before he started crying, at least she got to hold him.
My dad bought an out-door fire pit, and had a fire in it, under his covered patio. It was raining, so Ryan bundled up with his older cousin under some blankets and watched the fire, and then they got down to the business of roasting marshmallows.
I was inside the entire night with Cole, but I heard from Joe that his cousin, (who is 13), would roast her marshmallows, catch it on fire, yell, “AHH!”, and then blow out the fire on her marshmallows.
Ryan watched a few times and then proceeded to do exactly the same thing, including the “AHH,” yell. Here is a picture of Ryan his cousin took, with his marshmallow success (he is pretty proud of himself.)
It was great to see, and have Cole meet Grandma. We are planning a trip to her place this summer-she has a beach house on some water, so it will be wonderful to see her then, and have her be able to spend some time with Ryan and Cole.
Last night I had Cole down sleeping, and was trying to read Ryan a story to put him in bed (Joe wasn’t home), and sure enough, Cole started crying. I was hoping it would only last for a minute or so, and he would go back to sleep, but he started getting more and more upset. After a few minutes, it was obvious, he was now fully awake, and despite having an upset three-year-old, who was NOT happy his story was being interrupted, I had to leave Ryan to go attend to Cole.
It has been a week since I have started nursing Cole to sleep, and then putting him in his crib, next to our bed and it is working a lot better than having him sleep in the bed, but he still wakes up a lot. So he was in his crib, and after my eyes adjusted to the darkness in the room, what I saw, just about broke my heart.
For my kids, I don’t believe in “crying-it-out.” I firmly believe that when a baby is crying he needs something. He may be scared, and just need the reassurance that his mama is still in the vicinity of the house. I certainly don’t think a couple of minutes when I can’t get to Cole is making him cry-it-out. I am talking about leaving him while he is crying in a crib, obviously distressed for a long-period of time. Also, I just don’t have the stomach for it. For me, there is nothing worse than hearing your baby scream and cry for you, while they are in a dark room- alone.
Plus there has been some research from Harvard and Yale, that have shown “when babies who are routinely separated from parents in a stressful way have abnormally high levels of the stress hormone and lower growth hormone levels. These imbalances inhibit the development of nerve tissue in the brain, suppress growth, and depress the immune system.”
This subject was also brought up on a recent Dr. Phil episode that featured three of the Dr. Sears’s.
Dr. Bob Sears said this about crying-it-out on the show:
“When a baby screams for 10, 20 minutes, or a half-hour night after night, what actually happens to the baby’s brain?” asks Dr. Bob Sears. “The blood pressure goes up. The pressure gets so high, new blood with oxygen can’t flow into the brain. So the brain can be deprived of oxygen, you guys. And that’s not all. It gets worse. The brain can be flooded with stress hormones, and we know that stress hormones can damage sensitive developing nerve tissue. So, night after night, weeks and weeks of crying can actually harm a baby’s brain. That’s why we encourage you both to respond to your maternal intuition. Robert, develop your fatherly intuition, so you can both really thrive as a family. Respond to your baby. “
So back to Cole- in the few minutes before I could get to him, he had stood up in the crib, put his hands through the slots, and was feeling / squeezing my mattress. I knew he was trying to find me. Even though he is in his crib now, he knows where I sleep, and he was looking for me- he needed me.
I picked him up, and instantly the crying stopped. I sat down with him on the bed, and even though his eyes were closed, he started cooing. I nursed him for a few minutes to calm him down. Then the most amazing thing happened. His eyes were still closed, and he took his hand and started tracing and feeling my face, the way a blind person would. It was like he was trying to memorize my face by feel.
I am in awe on the way babies brains work, and I think there is so much we still don’t know about this. As he was feeling my face, I got a tear in my eye, and I felt so grateful that I have been able to follow my instincts on what feels right.
I couldn’t help but think, as my sweet baby was stroking my face, if I had gone against my instincts and had allowed him to cry-it-out, yes, he may have curled up and gone to sleep, after it was clear to him, his mama wasn’t going to come to him, but the way it was going, he would have just become more and more upset anyway. He would have been very distressed, and he was looking for me! Two, I would have completely missed this tender moment with him, that I will never forget.