Sunday, September 25, 2011

My Child Has Been Ferberized!

Warning - this post will probably be boring to those of you who don't have kids or who have kids who are great sleepers, but I can't help but share about the great things happening in our sleeping world.

When Liam was about six weeks old we started sleep training him with a cry it out method. I was already following a type of schedule where I would nurse him, he would be awake for a little while and then when he started showing signs of getting sleepy, I would rock him for a bit and then lay him down in his crib and he would usually cry a bit and then go to sleep. At this point he was repeating this cycle about every 2 and a half to 3 hours. I remember when we got home from traveling at Christmas he started going right to sleep without crying and I felt like we had finally arrived at parenting bliss. It was amazing. Then, he learned how to roll over and that made him mad because he couldn't roll over the other way and we had to keep working at things. This period only served to confirm what I'd already thought about parenting - it often feels like one step forward and then two steps back.

Springtime came and we started traveling and then traveling even more during the summer. Most of the time while we were traveling Liam did pretty well sleeping in the pack n play, but unfortunately I got into some bad habits (nursing him to sleep, rocking him, etc., etc.) because it was so important to me that he get a good nap rather than let him cry for a long time. The problem with these bad habits was that when we got home, we didn't work to break them and go back to letting him cry himself to sleep.

About a month or so ago things took a turn for the worse when it came to his sleeping habits and I was a wreck. I thought at first he was teething. Nope. Then I thought he was old enough to move down to one afternoon nap a day. Nope. We tried that one day and he slept for 45 minutes all day long and that was awful. He apparently hadn't gotten the memo that when you only take one nap a day, it's supposed to be a good, long one. So I started rocking him to sleep again, patting him, really doing anything I could do to get him to go to sleep. Then during naptime I would race around like a mad woman trying to get things done only to have him wake up again 3o or 45 minutes later. Nothing was working and he would wake up screaming and cranky all day. I was crying, Liam was crying, it was probably raining, etc.

Enter a friend from church who randomly gave me a book called, Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems by Dr. Richard Ferber. She knew I was having problems and was kind enough to share this book, which I found out later she had picked up out of a free box at a used bookstore thinking, "why am I getting this book? I don't need it." God works in mysterious ways is all I have to say to that because how could she know that I needed it?

I started reading this book and as I began to understand the nature of sleep and sleep cycles I learned that I was actually creating more problems for Liam by rocking him and assisting him to sleep. See, at about four months babies start having sleep cycles like adults and when they get into a lighter sleep stage they may actually wake up a bit and need to learn to go back to sleep on their own. Think about how many times a night you wake up and adjust your pillow or blanket and go back to sleep. Babies need to learn to do this too. However, when you give them any kind of parental assistance in falling asleep they will wake up at this time, realize that the aid that put them to sleep is gone and they will freak out. Dr. Ferber compares it to losing your pillow in the middle of the night. Instead of going right back to sleep you realize your pillow is gone and you start to look for it and thereby wake yourself up even more. Going back to sleep on your own is actually a skill babies need to learn for life.

Dr. Ferber's method for correcting this problem is letting them cry, but going in occasionally, patting their backs, soothing them, but not picking them up. Then the baby learns that crying will only get them a brief visit from you and they can go to sleep just fine on their own. The first day you start out going in after 5 minutes of crying, then 10, then 15 and so on. The next day you go in at 10 minutes, 20 minutes, etc. Each day has progressively longer intervals of crying until eventually they go to sleep on their own. You do the same process for naptime, bedtime and the middle of the night crying. Liam is long past needing to eat in the middle of the night so this method doesn't exactly apply to very young babies.

It was very humbling to learn that I was actually Liam's problem with sleeping, but the method also gave me hope that he could learn to go to sleep on his own again. I knew he could do it -- he's done it many times before. But he is very stubborn (definitely not a trait he gets from his father!) and I was doubtful that this could work. We've also been struggling with him standing up in his bed and having a hard time laying down on his own.

There have definitely been times when it was hard -- an hour and a half of crying at bedtime was the worst it got -- but overall, this method has worked better than I could have hoped. Within 3 days Liam was going to sleep on his own for naptime, usually with just one visit from me to lay him down and give him his Lil' Bow Wow dog. Even better, he has been sleeping for an average of an hour and half for each nap. The first day this happened I sat in the kitchen and honestly did not know what to do with myself! I wasn't used to getting all my naptime goals finished and actually having downtime for myself. He wakes up happier and is happier all around during the day. I am a much more patient, happier mama during the day too.

We had to make some pretty major changes, mostly dealing with when I was nursing him. Before I was nursing him to sleep right before bed and he was up to nurse at least once in the night. We switched this with reading books, so I am still nursing him, but it's not the last thing we do before bed. Now he is going to bed awake, falling asleep on his own and sleeping totally through the night. I am also not getting up with him if he wakes up at 5:30 or 6, Rob is instead, so we can try to break the early morning nursing habit we got in to. The problem now though is that he wants to be up for the day at 6 which makes for a long morning. Dr. Ferber says this is the hardest habit to break so we will keep working at that.

I will say too that I prayed a lot about this. It is so hard not knowing how to help your child, especially when you can see what they need - sleep in this case - but they won't give in and sleep. God was very merciful first to give us a good resource we could understand and follow, and then second, really be with Liam and help him learn to sleep.

I'm sure this method won't work for everyone, nor will everyone have enough patience to try it. But we were honestly on our last thread of hope and this did work really well for us. I am thankful that this method did work for us and we will hopefully continue to have more success with it.

I just realized how long this post is...sorry! I'm happy to talk more about this method if you have more questions. And I promise my next post will be a little more interesting... :)


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Hunter's Honey Farm

We spent Saturday afternoon at a local honey farm with some friends enjoying a gorgeous fall day and a fun fall festival. The honey farm is over 100 years old, so they have some lovely honey and obviously a nice crop of bees. (Can that even be true? A crop of bees? I may have just made that up...)

Anyways, at the festival we sampled various kinds of honey and other things made with honey - honey butter, honey mustard sauce, bbq sauce with honey, honey ice cream, etc., went on a tour of their facilities and took a hay ride. It's amazing how different honey from different plants -- wildflower vs. clover for example, can taste so different. Between the three of us we bought a gallon of honey to split, which I think will last us for awhile.

We all have boys who are all fairly close in age -- 16 months, 11 months and 2 months old. They had corresponding levels of fun at the festival, but I'm sure by next year they will think it is a little more fun. Liam's favorite part was probably tasting mama's chocolate honey milkshake. Of course, anything with food is his favorite part!

Liam was styling in his news boy cap. That stayed on about 2 seconds.

A demonstration on how the farm makes beeswax candles

Possibly one of my favorite family photos of us ever

"Oh look, a bee!"

Liam, Liam and baby Caleb. They're friends, they just don't really know it yet.

The whole gang, including the gallon of honey

Saturday, September 17, 2011

The Big 2-7

This time last year we were 24 days away from having a baby, but we didn't know that. We also didn't know the sex of the baby, nor much about being parents at all. This year we have an almost one year old and we couldn't imagine life without Liam. The Lord was faithful to bring me through another year that had a lot of change.

September 8th of last year

Now I have this cheeser face this year!

My birthday was a pretty normal day this year with a few adventures and highlights. Rob stayed home for an extra hour in the morning so he was part of the present opening festivities at breakfast. My parents always send the best birthday boxes so it was nice to have presents to open.

Later in the day a friend dropped off a gorgeous "happy birthday" banner her friend made. I'm sure you know the ones I'm talking about -- fabric triangles on a ribbon that you can hang up. It was such a sweet gift and one we will use for all family birthdays for many years to come. I also received phone calls, emails, cards, texts and more from many friends and family. You all know I love my birthday and it showed!

Every birthday should have an adventure and mine happened in the afternoon when I got a call from a friend who was stranded at Kroger with three kids, a cart full of groceries and her keys locked in her car. Her husband was teaching, so he couldn't come and get her. I left Liam with a friend, loaded her kids and groceries into my car and drove her home. Halfway home though she realized her house key was (duh) attached to her car keys and they didn't have a spare hidden anywhere. We prayed and asked the Lord to help us find a way into her house. When we got to her house I randomly found a screwdriver in my glove compartment which we then used to pry open an unlocked window through which she hoisted me and I unlocked the door. Whew! We did a victory dance in the yard and I went on my merry way.

All that rescuing made me hungry though, so Rob and I went out to dinner at our favorite Bloomington restaurant, Upland Brewery, in the evening and left Liam with a friend. Rob knows me very well and also knew that I would like a nap in the late afternoon (yes please and thank you) a chocolate milkshake on Thursday night and a bottle of wine on Tuesday night. He is very good at making a birthday week for me. Besides that he had Liam help him write a card and traced his hand in the card which is precious and bought me a necklace with a little "L" charm (for Liam) on it. I don't wear a lot of jewelry, but this is the kind of necklace that I could wear every day and it's very special and sweet.

We ended the evening with a large slice of chocolate cake from Feast, a favorite bakery. Liam even got to have a little bit and I think it got him excited for his first birthday cake in a few weeks. Not like he really knows, but he certainly inherited his father's sweet tooth.

Mama and Liam about to enjoy cake. (And you can see my birthday banner in the background)

Chocolate cake!

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Liam | 11 Months

This has been a really fun month. Liam is growing in leaps and bounds and is really becoming a little boy now. I'm not sure how much he weighs, but my guess is probably about 23 pounds. He is very tall and seems to be growing upward every day. I've started noticing it more as he can now reach up to take stuff off the table. He is definitely tall like his papa.

This month he also started to take a few steps every now and then. He is getting braver, but he still doesn't like to let go of something he is holding on to and walk. Usually we have to stand him up and bribe him with a toy to walk to us. But he is so proud when he does take a few steps and we cheer for him. His record number of steps is about 11 or so. If he approaches walking anything like he did when he transitioned from the army crawl to real crawling, I'm expecting him to one day just start walking everywhere and not look back. Then I'm sure life will get really crazy!

Liam has always been a champion eater and that is no different now. At the mention of food or if we do the sign for "eat" he gets so excited and literally bounces up and down. He loves cheese and can actually say something that sounds very close to the word cheese. If I give him cheese it has to be the last thing on his tray because he would not eat anything else if I gave it to him first. For the most part he likes what I put on his tray, but he clearly has his favorites. He has almost stopped eating baby food -- he doesn't seem to like the texture or the fact that he can't do it himself anymore -- so we're feeding him mostly table food now. It seems like I am constantly trying to come up with new and varied foods to feed him. We tried tofu last week and that didn't go over very well. Even when I scrambled it with an egg he seemed to know it was weird. He doesn't eat a lot of meat so I'm always trying to find ways to give him protein, but apparently tofu is not it. He would probably eat it if I melted cheese on it though!

We've adjusted our schedule now that Rob is back in school so I am home with Liam all day and we see papa for a few hours in the evening. It has worked out well so far and Liam is happy to see papa when he comes home at the end of the day. So far our days at home haven't felt too long, but ask me again in the middle of winter when we can't go outside. We will miss walking for sure. We are also slowly transitioning down to one nap a day from two and so far it is not going well. Liam is not a great napper and so even if we do one nap a day it usually only ends up being an hour or so which makes him cranky in the afternoons. It is a long time until bedtime when he wakes up at 2. Hopefully that will start to smooth out in the next few weeks as we make the change.

We have so much fun with Liam, especially as we learn his personality more. We are discovering he is more of an extrovert like Rob in that he enjoys being around people and gets energy from them. I'm trying to have him spend more time around other kids too as he seems fascinated by older kids. If there are other people to see or play with he doesn't mind at all if I leave him in the nursery at church or with a friend. It is interesting and encouraging to see more of who he is becoming.

Part of that learning too is understanding what he can understand and having reasonable expectations for him. It amazes me how much he knows and how many words he can understand even if he can't talk back yet. However, he often looks at us when he's "talking" as if to say, "come on guys, why don't you get what I'm saying to you?" We have taught him some sign language and he can do most of it, although his signs for "more" and "ball" look very similar! I have no doubt he will be a prolific talker when he can talk.

It's hard to put in to words what this munchkin means to us, but it's a lot. I can't imagine life without him and the little person he is becoming. We are looking forward to celebrating his first birthday soon!

For now though, here are some recent photos.

We have to be so sneaky with the sign these days

For obvious reasons - it's like a magnet to his mouth

Standing up and taking steps...

And falling into mama

A recent post-bath mohawk

A very typical scene in my kitchen these days. Cabinets are so fascinating, but even more so are boxes with plastic bags that can be pulled out and strewn around. So fun for Liam. Not fun for mama!

This is a very typical face, especially when he really wants something, in this case the camera. I promise, this is a very happy face, not an evil face!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Garden that Took Over the World (err, the Backyard)

Remember when our backyard garden looked like this?


Not anymore! The squash literally took over our entire backyard.


The summer is winding down and so is our garden. But it has been a great summer and Rob and I learned a lot about gardening in a small space. Namely, tiny little seeds grow into BIG plants! Squash especially like to crawl out of their spaces and almost invade the neighbors. We also had some bugs and invaders like bottom rot on our tomatoes, but we still got a fair amount of produce. We had beans, tomatoes, basil, zucchini and plenty of butternut squash. I also enjoyed my flowers - cosmos and zinnias.

Next year I don't think we'll plant so much squash and I'll make more room for herbs. But I think we will plant a garden again and maybe try some different kinds of things too. We had fun though and enjoyed watching our garden change and grow.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

The Help (Again!)

You may recall that months ago, maybe longer, I posted a review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett on this blog and highly recommended it. In case you just crawled out from under a rock (which I hope you would not be reading my blog if that was the case!) they made the book into a movie and it's been out for a few weeks now. The film has been getting great reviews, partially, as I understand, because the screenplay was written by a close friend of the author's so it stays very true to the book (it does). And, because the casting is so excellent (it is).

After jumping through what seemed like a thousand fiery, flaming hoops, my friend Julia and I finally got to go and see The Help on Thursday afternoon. Whew. We'd be trying to get a group of friends together to go and see it and plans kept falling through. Finally, it seemed like it would work for some others to go on Thursday, so Julia and I found a babysitter for our boys, planned how I was going to go and pick her up (she lives half an hour away without a car), have dinner at our house, etc. However, at the last minute one of the other girls backed out and threw our plans into confusion. It was stressful, let me tell you. The friend didn't know all that we had gone through to make this happen, nor is she a mom so she didn't understand how precious this time was for us. BUT, not to worry, we still went and it worked out great. Believe me, we felt very strange and a bit guilty for driving away on a blazing hot Thursday afternoon to go see a movie. But away we went. Julia even had a 50 percent off coupon for popcorn and soda and we ate til our bellies hurt.

I will say too that we would not have jumped through so many flaming hoops had we not been so hopeful about the film. We'd both read the book and couldn't put it down of course (stop reading this post and go read the book if you haven't already!) and were excited to see if the film lived up to our hopes. And it did. It may have even surpassed them. The book and the film walk such a fine line between hope and despair, the painful and the grotesque and both handle deep issues delicately, but well. Both make you think (and cry a little). If you are a mother and watch this film (or read the book for that matter, but it looks different on screen than in your head I think), be ready, your heart will break into about a thousand pieces and you will go home and hug your baby.

Which is exactly what we did. Our boys are both named Liam and are about five months apart so we have a special bond already. We walked in the door and they both came crawling as fast as they could to see us with big smiles on their faces. Just what we hoped to see!

Rob snapped this shot of the little buddies for us as they waited for their mamas to come home. He said he hoped they would still be standing like this when we pulled up, but right before we did he went into the kitchen and they followed. It was still sweet to see them come crawling to us though.

"Hi babies!"