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What happened to my baby? You know the one I'm talking about. The one who started sleeping through the night at 7 weeks! Whoever took him had better give him back dammit! He was doing so good until he caught a cold at daycare. Then we went from sleeping all night (from 8 pm to about 6 or 7 am), to waking up a couple of times each night. Kevin and I were counting the days until he got better so that we could go back to sleeping. Greyden had other plans. He has been getting up 1 - 2 times each night since, and only sleeping about 4 to 5 hours at a time. I'm blaming a growth spurt. Kevin is rolling his eyes because I blame everything on a growth spurt. I guess he might have a point. If it really was a growth spurt every time I blamed something on it, Grey would be about 6' 3" and 200 pounds by now instead of the 12 pounds he's barely pushing.
Last night was no exception to the Wake Up and Feed Me routine, aside from the fact that instead of going back to sleep after the second feeding Junior decided that he was ready to start the day. At 5 o'clock to be exact. We could hear him on the monitor just talking away to himself. I got up and fed him, but when he was finished and I laid him back into his crib, he just looked at me and started laughing. At the time I thought it was a cute little baby giggle and he'd drift back to dreamland so that I could squeeze another 30 or so minutes of sleep in for myself. Now as I sit at my desk with my eyes half closed, I see that it was actually an "oh mommy, you have no idea..." giggle. He lasted for about another 10 minutes in his crib, just talking and yelling away while I sat in the recliner and waited. I finally decided to just get ready for work, since I wouldn't be able to sleep with Junior talking my ear off via baby monitor anyway. I guess Kevin couldn't sleep with Chatty Cathy going on and on either, because not long after I went into the bathroom I heard him get up and head to the nursery. After listening to their "conversation" through the monitor it was pretty obvious that Junior was up for the duration.
Greyden: "GAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!"
Daddy (in a half asleep voice): "Really."
Greyden: "GOOOO-WAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!"
Daddy (still half asleep): "Re-hee-heeeeeeeeally"
Greyden: "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"
Daddy (in a now resigned tone of voice): You're really ready to party, aren't you kid.
Greyden: "GOO-WAH-WAH-EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"
Daddy: "Oh, lord."
All I have to say is thank goodness Kevin was forced willing to get up to help me. Most mornings he does, but today I discovered he's much more enthusiastic about it after 7 am. As am I. If anyone has any advice or suggestions on where to find my precious, sleeping baby, please, please let me know. And applications for a night nanny will be accepted indefinitely.
Checking In!
Weeks Post Partum: 16.5 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: I'm stuck. I have been 152 pounds for the last two weeks. That's 4 pounds over where I started when I got pregnant, and about 10ish pounds over where I'd like to be. I would like to think that most of the overage (or all of it if I'm being completely honest) is boobs, but I think I may be lying to myself.
Maternity Clothes: No, No, NO! They are GONE. Well, not gone exactly. They're still hanging in my closet because I'm too lazy to pack them up. But I'm in almost all my size 6 work pants and all but a few pairs of my jeans. Some are more snug than others. We're working on that part.
Sleep: I am DYING laughing right now. This is what I wrote last time I checked in: Sleep: Yup! As I said above, Grey is sleeping 8 1/2 to 9 hours a night. He usually wakes up around 4 or 5 am, eats, and is back down for another 3 - 4 hours. It's been heavenly. But I'm not counting my chickens just yet. I've heard the horror stories about how you'll just start to think that the baby is sleeping through the night and then BAM! They're back to waking every few hours. Um, yeah. I'm just going to come right out and say it - I WAS LYING WHEN I WROTE THAT!!! I was SURE he wouldn't do that. SURE I TELL YOU.
Best moment this week:
Milestones: He hasn't really hit any milestones that I've noticed. Of course I also don't know what the milestones are that we're supposed to be aiming for either. I will say he's becoming a LOT more interactive, as you probably noticed from the conversation above. He also HATES to sit and will cry until you let him stand up. I swear the kid will stand on your lap for hours if you let him. He may be teething with the amount of drool that constantly pours out of his mouth and the fact that if he gets his hands on anything, it immediately goes into his mouth. For example, his monkey. Which we desperately need to replace with a different stuffed animal since saying "Bubba, stop eating/throwing/smacking your monkey" while in public will earn you a few awkward stares from strangers.
Okay, his 3 month birthday was actually two and a half weeks ago. But Mommy is a little behind these days. I did manage to get some 3 month pictures, although admittedly even those were taken about a week late. Someday I will catch on to this parenting thing and figure out how to fit everything in while still being on time.
And here's a little known fact - 3 months is apparently the stage where babies (or maybe just Greyden) decide that they hate cameras. He will be laughing and smiling away at you, but the second you hold up your camera, he's done smiling and recently has even started putting his hand in front of his face as soon as he realized you're holding the camera. It's very rare to get a smiling picture lately! Here are some of the best we can do.
A few weeks ago, Kevin left me. Not permanently or anything, although I'm sure after enduring my pregnancy hormones for 38+ weeks then my post-partum hormones for 6 weeks after that it crossed his mind. Probably more than once. But he did have to go out of town on a business trip when Greyden was 12 weeks old. Now I had already been ditched left alone with Grey over night a few times. Kevin's usually out of town 1- 2 nights each week. But this trip was different. This one was for his national sales meeting, meaning he was leaving me for a WEEK. Yes, you read that right. For. A. Week. Monday through Friday. Alone with a 12 week old. And although I'm obviously looking for sympathy for me, I'm sure more than one of your minds is running down the path of "oh, poor Kevin, he had to leave his family and new baby for a week to go on a business trip!" I'll admit, I was almost thinking the same thing. That is until he called me that Wednesday on his way to his massage. Sympathy crisis averted, back to poor me now.
It actually wouldn't have been too bad if it weren't for the timing. Like I said I had been left alone overnight before so I knew what to expect. But the timing of this meeting couldn't have been worse. The Monday morning that he was flying out to Arizona just happened to be the same Monday morning that I was headed back to work. Which meant that it was also the same Monday morning that Greyden started daycare.
Needless to say, the weeks leading up to the trip held a slight amount of anticipation. I was dreading Kevin being gone for a number of reasons. Mainly because that meant that I would be getting up alone with Grey at night. You see we have this routine: Greyden wakes up, Kevin, Harley, and I all troop into the nursery. Kevin changes Greyden, Harley lays in front of the chair so that I have to move him to get to it, I remove the dog then get ready to nurse. Kevin sets Greyden on my lap and lays down on the nursery floor to spoon the dog sleep for 10 minutes while he nurses. When he hears me burping him, he takes him from me, swaddles him, and hands him back so that he can nurse on the other side. Kevin and Harley head back to the bedroom to sleep while I finish feeding and put him back down in his crib. (I think Kevin is actually trying to wean me of this routine, being as he used to lay back down on the floor for the second boob too. Now I'm on my own.)
Kevin being gone overnight means I get to do this routine on my own. Or something close to it. My "alone" routine consists of heading to the nursery (with Harley of course), changing Greyden, tripping over the dog while trying to get to the chair, holding the baby above my head with one arm while trying to sit down and position the Boppy pillow around me and under him, feeding him, standing up to go to the crib to swaddle him, tripping over the dog, swaddling (in under 5 tries if I'm lucky), tripping over the dog on my way back to the chair, and again doing the whole one arm hold above the head while also trying to get the Boppy off the floor from where it fell the first time I stood up so that I can feed him on the other side. Usually this involves removing the dog from on top of said Boppy. You can see why it is a little easier with two people.
Another thing I was dreading was taking care of Greyden by myself every night after work. Well, not the taking care of him part, but the part where I also had to take care of other things while taking care of him. Normally I can pass the baby off to Kevin to hold while I wash the bottles and pump parts for the following day and pack the bags (diaper, cooler, pump, work, lunch, and gym. So much for traveling light, right?) When I'm alone I get to do it by myself after Greyden goes to bed. It makes for an incredibly long evening and an even longer morning when I have to get all of those bags plus a car seat to the car, preferrably some time before I'm actually supposed to be at work.
And of course the thing that both of us were dreading (dum, dum, dum).....taking Greyden to daycare. At the very least Kevin was able to get on a late enough flight that he could come to drop him off for the first time with me. Regardless neither of us were looking forward to doing it. On Sunday night we even stayed up after Grey went to bed with the hopes that if we just stayed up, Monday morning wouldn't come. When it became obvious by the ticking clock and dwindling amount of alcohol in the fridge that Monday was indeed on it's way, we began to formulate Plan B, which involved us packing up the RV with all of our stuff that night and just leaving. I mean, we didn't do too badly when we did it that way over Christmas, right? In the end, we finally realized that we were going to have to suck it up and deal with it. And to be honest, it wasn't near as bad as we thought it would be. Greyden is quite a trooper. Mom and Dad, not so much. Especially after being up until almost 1 am the night before.
All in all I survived the week from hell. Barely. It just so happened that about 2 hours before Kevin was due to walk through the door, I got horribly sick. I managed to hold off the worst of it, but I couldn't stay vertical for anything. Poor Grey had to sit in his swing while Mommy lay facedown on the couch and tried to entertain him from there. I was able to hold out until Kevin got home, then passed off the baby and spent the remainder of the evening puking my guts out. The perfect end to the perfect week, right?
Barb is my boss. I'm sorry, Barb is the name of my co-worker as she insists on being called in front of my friends. She could insist on being called the janitor for all I care and it wouldn't change the fact that she's the one in charge. Therefore it is my sole purpose in life to make her happy. Lucky for me she's only made me pick up her dry cleaning twice in the 2+ years I've worked for her. (I kid, I kid!)
Back when I first began blogging, I had no idea what I was doing. Most days I considered myself lucky if I was able to type a paragraph, hit post, and have it actually appear on my blog. So imagine my surprise when Barb called me into her office one day and, after telling me how much she liked my blog, asked me why she wasn't getting an email notification whenever it was updated. I looked at her like she had two heads and told her that it was because I didn't even know that was possible. She told me of course it was possible and then proceeded to tell me that she got an email from Gwenyth Paltrow when she updated her blog and didn't know why I couldn't do the same. I told her it was because Gwenyth had "people" and that if Barb wanted to hire me some "people" then I'd be happy to make it happen. Don't worry, we have this type of relationship. (At least I think we do, since I haven't been fired yet.)
After she issued this challenge to me, I realized it was actually a pretty good idea. So I got right to work on it. I figured if that bitch (Gwenyth, not Barb) could figure it out, then so could I. So I Googled it a few times. And as it turned out, I couldn't figure it out to save my life. At least not in the 15 minutes that I actually tried before losing interest. (This all took place during my pregnancy when I had the attention span of a flea.) I promptly blamed my incompetency lack of technical knowledge on Gwenyth's "people" (or, more accurately, my lack of "people"), then forgot all about it.
Then last night I was reading one of my favorite cooking blogs (from way back yonder when I actually had time to cook), when I saw it. A little box in the corner that said Enter Your Email Address and a button that said Subscribe. Bingo! I immediately hopped onto the website and figured out how to add it to my own blog. Okay, that makes it sound like it was easy. Truth be told I still didn't figure it out right away. It took about 4 hours and countless texts to my sister asking "Did you get an email yet? No? How about now? Okay, now??? Are you sure? Well check again. NO I'M NOT SENDING YOU ADS TO ENHANCE YOUR MANHOOD!!! CHECK AGAIN!!!" Needless to say, all I'm doing now is crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. Although I'm not holding my breath, considering I (being one of my only 2 subscribers) received an email yesterday morning announcing that I had recently uploaded a new post! YAY! Unfortunately the "new post" turned out to by from June 25, 2010 and was announcing that we were having a boy. And I'm pretty sure we have already established that. However since I'm still in shock that I managed to get anything to show up in my email inbox at all, I'm not going to complain too much. So go ahead and subscribe to my blog. And if you suddenly get an update announcing my pregnancy, please, please, PLEASE remember to check the date before congratulating me. The last thing I need right now is a heart attack.
