This Is How I MomSolving the puzzle of motherhood one piece at a time

Logan has been sleeping elevated since he was a newborn. Back then, he seemed to sleep the best (and longest) in his rock’n'play sleeper, so we just kind of.. stuck with it. We’ve made several attempts to get him into his crib since, but they always failed. I think several factors played into that. For one, the crib was in his own bedroom, but he wasn’t really used to his bedroom. We’d go in there when he was already asleep or close to asleep, and he never got a chance to get comfy with it. Obviously, the elevation change takes a lot of getting used to as well. So, previous attempts to get him into his crib ultimately ended in hours and hours of crying sessions. We got a 40-minute stretch of sleep out of him, once.

So, through a combination of laziness and busy life, Logan’s been sleeping in his rock’n'play that he has long outgrown. I’ve been thinking that some of his sleep issues have to do with him no longer liking to sleep in it. Two nights ago, little man started wailing loudly out of the blue at about 8pm. I went upstairs just to find him on his tummy. In the rock’n'play. Not good. Not comfy for him, either. Or safe, for that matter.

That was the last straw. We set up the crib the day after, and last night was Logan’s first night in his crib. I want to say it went.. better than expected. I put two blankets under his mattress to help with the elevation change. At 7:40pm, after giving him his bottle, he pulled his lovie over his face and just kind of passed out without further complaint.

At 9pm, he woke up. Not unhappily at first, but eventually disoriented and unhappy about his change in circumstances. I was there to help him, giving him a little more milk, rubbing his tummy, but to no avail. Then, out of the blue, he figured out he can roll on his tummy. Cue instant sleep.

Dumbfounded, I went back downstairs. He slept until 12:30am (!), which is much longer than usual. However, at about 12:30am we hit a rough stretch where Logan was pretty convinced that it was in fact play time and not sleep time. He fell asleep once but woke back up quickly, and we did the whole spiel again. The whole thing lasted til about 3:30am. But, what baffles me is that he was not actually upset, he was just exploring.

He then continued to sleep til 5:20am.

On the whole, I was expecting much worse. I obviously was not happy about the 3-hour awake stretch, but I’m sure that once he really gets used to the crib, that won’t be an issue anymore. I am happy we finally took the plunge, since it’s been something I’ve put off for too long.

On an unrelated note, we also have… teeth! The two bottom front teeth came in, and little guy now has an actual chomp. He’s pretty fascinated by his new acquisitions, while I’m kind of scared of putting my fingers anywhere near his mouth now. Terrible picture – he doesn’t exactly let me get too close to them – but here you have ‘em.

Daytime is becoming really, really fun. Little guy has a blast exploring and playing and I only wish we had more nice summer days so we could go outside more. On the few occasions that it doesn’t rain, we’ve been making good use of the sun.

We’re back from our mini trip! It’s been quite an exciting, exhausting and fun weekend. We went to the Washington coast and stayed in a nice little hotel called Ocean Crest Resort. The view from our room looked quite like this:

In fact, this is the sunset that was going on when we arrived late Saturday night:

If you’re ever going up to the Washington coast, I greatly recommend it. The rates were cheap, the rooms were clean and spacious (with a mini kitchen!), and the view was priceless! We got really lucky with the weather too – there wasn’t a speck of rain until we left on Monday. In fact, we were so spoiled by the weather that our trip to the coast awarded us with this sky:

Now that I have you sufficiently jealous, let’s talk about how the trip actually went! This was our first time taking the bean on an overnight trip, and since we had been alternating sleep schedules up until that point, we also decided to put them back together to have more time together. I mean, who wants to be alone for 8 hours unable to go anywhere when you’re on vacation?! Besides, even though Logan has some night wakings here and there again, he sleeps decently well overall.

The car trip to the coast went pretty well. Logan took a 40-minute nap, and was awake and mostly amiable for the rest of the car ride. I had some of his favorite toys lined up in his reach, and he was content grabbing onto them.

We wanted to go out for dinner after we’d arrived, but as it turned out, most restaurants closed at 8pm. Thankfully, we found a grocery store that was on the verge of closing and ran in to grab a DiGiorno pizza and some drinks. Phew! Hunger crisis averted. We threw it in the oven and hung out with the little guy until his bedtime. He fell asleep pretty well, but he was up a few times at night – which isn’t a biggy, but since it was the first time I was sleeping in the same room as my baby since he was a few weeks old, I had trouble sleeping myself. I kept expecting him to wake up at any point, and I was wide awake with every tiny noise he made.

So in the morning, I was sufficiently dead, as well as my husband who’d just done a complete 180 with his sleep schedule. Still, we dragged our butts out of bed and went to a Casino Resort to grab some breakfast!

We’d actually meant to take a small stab at the slot machines, seeing as neither of us have ever gambled and it seemed like a fun way to pass some time, but it turns out you can’t go into a casino with a sleeping 5-month old strapped to your chest in an ergo. I suppose this is common sense, but we hadn’t really thought it would raise an issue. So instead, we decided we’d go check out the beach… but the breeze was strong and Logan was shivering in the ergo when we got close to the beach, so we turned around and instead decided to drive onto the beach so I could take some pictures, then go home to grab some naps.

That is to say, both my guys grabbed some naps and I held the fort. Logan was only out for about 30 minutes and, in fact, hasn’t napped well since then, even though we’re back home now.

Thankfully, we did go to eat dinner that night and had an enjoyable rest of the night together. Hubby turned in early and I brought the little guy to bed at his normal time, then hit the pillows myself. Surprisingly, he didn’t wake up at all that night until about 6am, at which point hubs was up to take care of him, so I could get some decent enough sleep. Once I was up, we packed our belongings and got ready to head home.

We made a few stops on the way home, including one at the State Capital…

And there you have it. Since then, we’ve just been adjusting to our new sleep schedules & Logan did an amazing job sleeping in his own room last night! I was so proud of my little guy. Speaking of, he just woke up from his nap so I better cater to his needs.

I’ll see you in the next few days with a 5-month update!

We’ve had some adventures in big boy land. We will stick to attempting to feed Logan solids, since his wake-up time keeps moving backwards and he’s starting to have night wakings for hunger again. It might just be a growth spurt since he’s eating like a truck in general, but time will tell!

I’ve also decided I need to be a little more vigilant about crib sleeping, so yesterday we embarked on an adventure. Since he doesn’t usually sleep in his own big boy room, it’s a completely different environment for him and I could understand his reluctance to want to sleep in his crib. He fussed for about 40 minutes while I tried to soothe him to sleep with minimal picking-him-up-moments, and then he just completely passed out.

We decided that once he wakes up from crib sleep, we’ll put him back down to sleep in his usual place – baby steps! I didn’t want to press the crib on him all night when I know he’s already going to be scared and lonely up there. But I’m happy to report that he did sleep for an hour in his crib. I’m going to keep putting him down in it and hope that eventually he’ll regard it as normal and wake up less (or put himself back to sleep).

My husband watched the whole 40-minute ordeal on the baby monitor and congratulated me when I came downstairs. “You’re SO patient!” I didn’t actually feel like I was, I really just didn’t want to give up on it again when I know he was really close to falling asleep. I was rewarded with this sweet sight:

And I have to say – even though we’re doing baby steps – I felt accomplished. I’m aiming to have him sleep in his crib for good by the time he’s 5 or 6 months old. I’m also very glad he wasn’t mad at me this morning, because my happy boy makes me feel so blessed to be his mother.

I love him.

My husband is a keeper. This arrived in the mail yesterday…:

Sadly, the accompanying vase arrived like this:

I attempted to superglue it back together, but when I went to prick open the superglue tube, half its contents decided it was time to go explore… all over my fingers. I spent the next hour soaking both my hands in warm soapy water and trying to rub the glue off. It worked well enough, but I still spent the remainder of the day rubbing leftover glue off. Oh, and the vase? Yeah, didn’t make it. Superglue worked well on me, less so on something it’s supposed to hold together. I guess I should’ve known.

Still, we had a great Valentine’s Day. My mother in law had the baby for a couple hours so we could go out for dinner. We also watched Twilight at home, which was… probably one of the worst and most messed up movies I’ve seen, ever. It was pretty bad. But we got to make lots of fun of it, so it had its own merits. When we picked up the little guy, he was in a really good mood. In a… chompy mood, I should say. Proof?

There you go.

We tried to have him sleep in his crib two nights ago (a package we received brought in a couple of fleas, so we were forced to deep-clean and use insecticide on most of the house, including his usual sleeping space), but he wasn’t having it. Since he’s normally pretty confined in his rock’n'play or his swing, he thought the big, wide crib was more of a play space than a sleep space. We’ll keep trying it though. This is what the 45 minutes he spent in the crib at 11pm looked like:

I think he was trying to do some advanced rolling. Sigh. We’ll get there, eventually.

Someone slept 9 hours last night! We actually wound up waking him up. He was good-natured, happy and hungry! Logan has been pretty sleepy these past two days.. I’m thinking it might be a growth spurt. Yesterday, for instance, he was awake 2 hours, had his 3-hour morning nap, was awake for 2 hours and slept another 2! Later on he got so sleepy again, but we didn’t let him have more than a few catnaps.

Still, this morning he was only up for an hour and passed right back out. Wowza.

We’re watching Beauty and the Beast today while my mother in law babysits the wee one. I’m excited!