For those of you that have been reading for a while, you may remember that Jasper has a bit of a shy streak.. ok, a BIG shy streak. Or maybe it’s more of an independent “I don’t do what I’m asked” or participate in group activities kind of attitude (or just Jasper being Jasper = difficult!).   It was most obvious when we were at gymboree and he would practically CLING to me the entire time, and when he did run off and play it was never to do any of the guided activities, or -god forbid- to tap the airlog like everyone else was doing!

It’s taken him three semesters to slowly warm up to the whole thing, only this past semester has he deigned to tap the airlog or go under the parachute but he still steadfastly refused to ride ON the parachute.. until yesterday!

One of the other moms was commenting on how much he’d come out of his shell the past few weeks and I said we would know he had really improved if he ever rode the parachute.. and then, as if to prove me wrong he climbed on the parachute and went for the ride without so much as a whine!

Yay, he’s not the sociopathic/misanthropic kid I was worried he was headed towards being after all.

As if to further prove the point, yesterday he met the little six year old boy who moved in accross the street who has two ride on cars. The boy (Joey) asked if Jasper wanted a ride and I was pretty sure Jasper would be much too shy to oblige. And at first he was, but within ten minutes he was riding around in the passenger seat next to his new friend.  An hour later the two of them were playing together so nicely.. Joey would make a pretend hamburger to give to Jasper to eat and Jasper would pretend eat it and ask for more!!  It made my heart melt.. and even more importantly, Joey’s mom and I got in at least 30 minutes of nearly uninterrupted discussion while the two of them played.

It was like a glimpse into the distant future when my mommy friends and I will sit on lawnchairs sipping cool drinks letting our kids play together in the back yard for hours.. vs the current “playdate” scenario where we are usually chasing after our toddlers who are running in opposite directions and yelling to each other what’s new in our lives.

So that’s the good news..

The bad news is that Jasper is still crying himself to sleep on the floor at night :(  We had a complete step backwards the night before last when Jasper figured out how to open his bedroom door.  We had no choice to bring him into bed with us pretty much the whole night which meant no body got a good night’s sleep.. last night Jeff installed a latch on the outside of the door so it was back to crying alone, sleeping on the floor. Thank god it was only about 5 minutes last night, but I really wish he’d get into his bed after he’s done protesting!

Have a great weekend everyone..

Then came the cape cod trip where he was unconstrained by a crib and we didn’t want him wandering around a strange unbabyproof room screaming so I would lie down next to him, rub his back and wait until he fell asleep to sneak out.  This actually worked ok because he wouldn’t wake until around 5am at which point  I would bring him in bed with us to sleep for another hour.

I’m sure you can see where this is heading..

When we got back home he would demand “Mommy lay down!” at bedtime and then once I was laying down he would say “Mommy lay down back!” which means mommy lay down and rub my back. Which of course I did, never mind that all the blood was draining out of my arm from holding it above my body and that I would have to twist it at the most awkward angle to get it through the crib bars.  Honestly, I’m so exhausted by 8:30pm that I don’t even mind being “forced” to lay down and take a cat nap while Jasper falls asleep at night, but this is clearly an untenable situation because a) The whole sleep routine time more than doubled and b) he completely lost the ability/willingness to fall asleep without someone in the room with him which of course started to extend to middle of the night wake ups.

So we knew we would have to referberize, but it wasn’t so easy because his crib bolts are stripped so can’t be lowered all the way.  His crib sides only come up to his lower chest which is way too dangerous. Our only other option was to convert the bed to a toddler bed which is what we ended up doing.

Because the mattress can’t be lowered all the way, the toddler bed is still a tad higher than it should be so I lay down blankets on the floor in case he somehow rolled out or stood up in bed and fell out.   We rigged his door so he can’t open it and shut the baby gate in the hall down the stairs just in case he DID somehow make it out. And then, we put him in bed and left.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH. Mommy Lay Doooooooowwwn! Mommy’s Bed… Mommeeeeeeeeeee lay dowwwwwwn!

Pulling on the door and screaming the whole time. Totally heartbreaking :(

Thank GOD he only has the endurance to be at this routine for about 10-15 minutes before he zonks out, the problem is that with the exception of the first night when he crawled back in to his toddler bed, he somehow ends up sleeping on the floor (with his butt in the air.)

This happens for naps and bedtime and I really don’t know what to do.. usually one of us goes in there and puts him in his bed, but I’m really hoping that eventually he will start going back into his bed.

For those of you that have made the toddler bed transition, did you have this problem with them not getting back into bed? If so, how long did it last? Also, did anyone else notice a sleep regression around 20-22 months?? I don’t understand why suddenly falling asleep became such a lonely/scary/traumatic experience for him when he used to just let it happen!

Sleepy tired cranky eyes say buh bye!

When Daylight Savings ended last November I cursed the person who thought it was a good idea to CHANGE TIME.  Obviously this person was not a parent of a toddler.

Before that fateful day in November, Jasper had no problem sleeping until 7:30 am…It was blissful.   Eventually he did get used to the time change and we had a good run for a month or two, but over the past few months Jasper’s wake up time has slowly migrated back towards 6:30.

First it was 7:15, then 7:oo, then 6:30 and on some bad days it’s 6:00-6:15 and it’s KILLING ME! The problem is that I was used to going to bed at midnight, which allowed me enough “mommy time” to get a few things done for myself, not the least of which is photography and blogging.  Midnight-7:30 or even 7 was more than enough sleep for me, but six hours is just not enough, so I’ve had to grudgingly resolve to put myself to bed an hour earlier than I want to go.. often leaving projects half way done or barely started.

So I have high hopes for this weekend, the weekend that the rest of the country dreads  as the one in which they  “lose an hour of sleep.”   If I am lucky and all goes according to plan, Jasper’s wake up time through the magic of DST will become 7ish instead of the ungodly hour of 6ish.

If you  have a similar mission, I wish you good luck and godspeed.  And if all else fails, lots and lots of caffeine!

Cockadoodle doo!

Today’s mommy SOS comes from JBhat’s friend Shannon:

A. has decided that she is getting up at 5.  That means leaving the room, running around trying to find me – which most days I am in bed – or up exercising.  I calmly but sternly tell her it is not time to get up, put her back into her bed and leave the room.  That is not good enough.  She continues to get out.  Or she will climb into S’s bed and wake her up, thinking it is really funny.  Poor S!

Other relevant info:

A. currently shares a room with S. – which will change after we sell our house and buy a new one.  She is not potty trained – that process is starting in March.  I have not tried letting her entertain herself yet…in another room.  I have tried giving her books in bed but that doesn’t seem to work.  I worry about her being alone in the living room while I shower – as she tends to be on the naughty side and I worry she will get into something and hurt herself.

This SOS is actually quite timely coming hot on the heals of our  transition to big kid bed dicussion last week  – it’s just the sort of thing that I fear when we transition Jasper who like clockwork wakes crying at 5:30am every morning. Currently I go in and comfort him and he usually falls back asleep for an hour and a half, but I don’t know how this would all play out should he have the independence to get out and roam about on his own upon waking!

But more than just the issue of a toddler roaming free, is there hope to solve the root of the problem i.e. getting the little one to sleep later in the first place?  Later bedtime, shorter (or no?) nap? Any other ideas? If anyone has had any success, please share your methods!

Jasper used to always cry when I put him down for naps and at bedtime. Usually not more than a minute or so, but still, I wanted to try something to make the transition to the crib a little smoother.

One thing I think we all instinctively feel is that cribs aren’t particularly cozy – a cold sheet, no pillow and blanket – it’s no wonder the transition isn’t so easy!  So I decided to add two things to Jasper’s crib, a soft blanket (a lovey really) and a Carter’s velour crib sheet (also available at BRU).

The lovey blanket we also picked up at BRU, though I don’t see it on their website.. the colors matched Jasper’s nursery perfectly!

CoCaLo Emory Sherpa Blanket

Obviously the exact blanket doesn’t matter, just that it’s soft and cozy!  Of course toddlers sleeping with blankets can be controversial and you must feel comfortable with this – if you are not, just the velour crib sheet will really make a difference.  How much you ask?

The day after I put on his new crib sheet he started playing this “game” with us when we would go to get him in the morning where he would lay down, and just look at you.. like he didn’t really want to get up!

These changes alone didn’t imake going down for bed or nap a completely tearless afair until I started saying “Good night Jasper” after his last book and then holding him and singing 4 short songs while I rock him in my arms. If I do this, there are no tears at all!

I think the little extra step in between books and bed really helps transition him into sleepy time.

It seems strange rethink something so simple at his age (like shouldn’t I have figured this out a long time ago?) but sometimes little changes can make a huge difference and a welcome change!

How did your little one adjust to the time change? (I should say that we kept him up an hour later Saturday night to no avail.)

On to more pleasant topics: Halloween!!

Here’s Super Jasper..

Shot with my Canon Digital Rebel XSi and Sigma 30mm f/1.4 Lens at 1/100th, f2.8 and ISO 400 – natural light.

Too bad he wasn’t Spiderman, look at that pose with his hand – I could have photoshopped in a web shooting out from it!

The H&M boots ended up working out great as part of the costume – so glad I picked those up. It wouldn’t have been the same in stride rights ;)

I had a hell of a time getting him to sit on the Plexiglas in front of the backdrop stand for this shot.  What finally worked was allowing him to play with a toy he liked for a little bit and then grabbing it and holding it up in front of me at which point I had a brief second to shoot before he’d get up and come after it.  Always a challenge at this age..

I hope you have some pictures online of your little ones all dressed up so you can post a link in the comments – I can’t wait to see all the cuties in costumes!

Before I show you my two favorite images, I have to tell you that I was totally out of my groove photography wise.. she had to leave before the light was at it’s best and that was part of the problem, but I could have posed/handled the tricky lighting a lot better than I did.  I think I had her turned the wrong way pretty much the whole time! I also realized two things:

1) Photographing adults is challenging. Yes, they sit still, and yes they listen to you when you ask them to do something. But as Spiderman’s gran used to say “with great power comes great responsibility”. Which is to say that because your subject actually LISTENS to you, you have to be much more responsible for posing them in contrast to waiting for your toddler to strike a pose almost by accident as they are running around.

2) Photographing friends can be a bit awkward!  With strangers I can sort of pretend I know what I’m doing more than I do, and sound more authoritative when I’m posing them.. and the friend might play up being a model a bit more with a “photographer” behind the lens. But when two friends get together there’s a bit more of an awareness that each is playing a part.   Obviously there are also advantages to photographing friends (less pressure!)  but this is just something that I hadn’t really thought about before.

OK, preamble, here is my favorite image:

Shot with my Canon digital rebel xsi and Tamron AF 28-75mm f/2.8 Lens, at these settings:
f4.0
SS 1/125th
ISO 400 (this should have been lower!)

And a close second featuring adorable soon-to-be big sister Daphne:

4.0
SS 1/50th
ISO 200 (this should have higher so shutterspeed could have been higher!)

On to the nap discussion…

So, many of us are at, near or just beyond the first year mark, a time some babies start to drop their second afternoon nap. I actually think MOST babies drop it closer to 14 months or so, but as he has proven time and time again – Jasper doesn’t do ANYTHING like most babies (sigh.) For the past two months or so he has been fighting that second afternoon nap tooth and nail at home. At daycare (of course!) he will still take a decent hour or so nap at 2pm after his morning 10-11:30 morning nap.

At home it’s a completely different story.. he takes that same 10:00am morning nap but 2pm rolls around and he shows NO signs of stopping. So I started pushing it to 3:00pm hoping the extra hour would wear him out. Nope.

What had been happening is that he gets EXHAUSTED by 4pm and takes a 30 minute cat nap around that time.. until the last week or so when he hasn’t really shown signs of being tired until 5pm at which point it’s really too late to take a nap before bed!

Saturday he actually napped from 10-12:20pm.. the longest nap on record for non frebrile Jasper. I thought that maybe this extension of the morning nap meant that he truly is ready to consolidate the two naps into one longer one and that I should just go with it. So Sunday, even though he seemed pretty sleepy at 10am I decided to try to push his “one” nap later in the day so that he’d have less awake hours in the afternoon before bedtime.

But then I caved at about 10:30 when he seemed really really sleepy. So I put him in his crib where he proceded to play with his bear, take his socks off and just walk around his crib for 30 minutes. He ended up not going down until about noon, at which point I thought he would take a marathon nap (he’s never stayed up that late in the morning!)

But no. Our little energizer bunny slept for a total of 45 minutes. ALL DAY. ARGHHHH!

So now I’m just really confused. Is all this schedule changing because he’s in that transition period between still needing two naps but also getting ready to drop to one? Or maybe it’s because he’s getting one of his top teeth (though he wasn’t exceptionally whiny at all.)

Those of you with babes around the one year mark – have you seen signs of the dissappearance of the second nap? And those of you with older kids do you remember at what age they dropped down to one nap and was there a lot of variablity in nap timing?

Or am I just the “lucky” mom of the baby-who-needs-no-sleep?

Why would that not surprise me!

After reading your recommendations on play yards and doing some research, I decided I wanted to get the L’il Playzone, mostly because it doesn’t look like a dog kennel.  Not so much for us, but so that Jasper would hopefully be fooled by the primary colors into thinking it was more toy and less jail cell!

The amazon reviews were very positive, but nearly everyone said to order two to make the area larger. Ouch, 2 would equal $200!  So off to craigslist I went.. and I found a nice couple only 20 minutes away selling their playzone plus 8 extensions for $110.. the extensions run $30 each, basically it was like getting two for one so I jumped all over it.

I was just about to leave to go pick it up when  Jasper started crying HYSTERICALLY in his room about 45 minutes after he’d gone down for the night.

Since we Ferberized a few months ago I’ve NEVER had to go in except for his middle of the night feeding. He might wimper or even weakly cry for a minute or two, but this was totally different and after a moment or two of indecision I went in to rescue him.  My immediate thought being that it was a crazy hot night and we hadn’t installed the A/C yet, maybe he was either hot, or couldn’t fall asleep with the windows open because of the kids making noise outside.

But it was the weirdest thing, when I went in to his room it was like I wasn’t even there at all.. in fact he crawled into the side of his crib as if he didn’t see it there. My presence was of no consolation to him, he continued to cry inconsolably flailing in my arms with eyes open for another 5 minutes until he finally settled down in our bedroom while Jeff installed a window unit in his room.  When I went to put him back down I expected a fight, but he went down as if nothing had ever happened.

The whole thing was so bizarre that I brought it up to the mother of the family that I bought the playyard from. She told me how her twin boys suffered from night terrors that began around Jasper’s age. Bingo!

When I got home I immediately looked it up online and that is exactly what happened.. even down to the timing (45 minutes after falling asleep).  Even though I felt awful that my poor little guy had to go through this, I was relieved to know WHY and WHAT was happening. It was really a horrible experience that I hope doesn’t happen again, but if it does at least now I’ll know what’s going on.

I also feel awful admitting this,  but I was relieved to know it wasn’t just a “sleep protest” that I responded to thereby potentially throwing Ferber out the window. (Once you’ve successfully sleep trained, it’s hard NOT to consider the future consequences of any disruption when it might mean that you have to start from scratch again.)

If they haven’t already, I hope that none of your babies ever have a night terror – but if they do at least maybe now you’ll remember this post and know what it is. I honestly don’t think it would have occured to me if the mom hadn’t mentioned it!

So have your little ones had night terrors? If so, when did they start?

Mom, you suck.

Today was an all time mommhood low.. I locked myself out of the house with Jasper inside!!!!

Words cannot even describe the panic I felt as I returned from the car I had just started and turned the doorknob and..nothing. Ohmygod this can’t be happening.. I was totally panicked, I only remembered I had my cell phone in my pocket when I was half-way to the neighbors house.. yes, that would have been embarassing.

“Um, hi.. you don’t know me, but I locked my baby inside the house and I really need to use your phone..and if you don’t call Child protective services when I leave I’d really appreciate it. Yep, ok thanks.”

Thank GOD my parents live about 7 minutes away and have a key to our house. Thank GOD Jasper was in his jumperoo and couldn’t get into harms way while we waited for Grandpa. Thank GOD he likes his jumperoo and didn’t even cry the whole anxiety ridden 7 minutes that seemed like an eternity until my dad arrived… I would have totally lost it if he had been in there crying and I couldn’t get to him.

Yes, we will be making a key and hiding it somewhere so this never happens again. (The reason it happened in the first place is that my mom locked the bottom lock on her way out last night that we never use so I never thought to check it this morning.)

And that ladies and Gentlemen, was the crappy start of what should have been a celebratory morning because….. Guess what??

Jasper STTN!!!! (That’s Slept Through The Night for you non-messageboard folks.)

Yes, the elusive holy grail of parenting has finally occured in our house.  And I don’t even mean the “medical” definition of SSTN which is 5 hours. I mean he slept from about 7:30pm to 5:15 am without needing to eat. But it gets even better because he also didn’t wake crying!

Granted, he did cry for almost 20 minutes last night when going to bed.. and 5:15am is an ungodly wakeup time. But hey, this is a huge milestone and I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Now let’s only hope this isn’t a freak occurence and we have many more nights of unbroken sleep before us.

Now, back to the unferberization..

Aparently this is a common phenomenon.. at least I’ve heard that from other parents on blogs and messageboards but I can’t find any information when I google search “Ferber relapse”. Perhaps I’m searching on the wrong term. But he is most definitely back to almost where we started in terms of the crying when put down and it’s horrible. It’s actually a bit worse now because he’s at the poin’t where he gets upset if we even go to his room to change him because he’s so afraid we’re putting him down for bed or a nap.

I’m at a loss, hopefully someone has some insight they can post??

Last night at bedtime it was the same thing! Well, he cried for about ten seconds and then rolled all around the crib for 20 minutes trying to find a comfy position. But he then fell asleep.

I’m still in shock -  this is like the holy grail of parenting. We’ve gotten bedtime AND naps going well. I couldn’t be happier!!

When Jasper wakes up we go to the pedi for his 6 month visit. I can’t wait to see how much he’s grown in the last two months…

Back with his stats in the afternoon!

UPDATE:

Back from the pedi. Jasper is 16 lbs 14 oz and 26.25 inches which aparently makes him…. average! But after the short femur scare, I’ll take average any day! It also confirms the instinct that I’ve had all along (despite Jeff telling me I’m making Jasper fat!) that even though he’s eating every two hours during the day and every four or so at night he is not being OVER fed or surely he’d be more than just average right?

Jeff and I had a bet going that if Jasper was under 20lbs I get to buy a new camera lens.  So it’s just good news all around :)