Things I Love

Every day I realize there are new things that I love about my life, especially my little boy. Here are some of my favorite things:

• The way Jake smiles and stretches when I wake him up.
• When I'm feeding Jake, he puts his under-side arm in between my arm and my side. While he's eating, he rubs my side and it's so sweet. With his other arm, he rubs it back and forth across my chest until he finds the perfect place to grab onto my shirt. He'll hold my shirt and try to pull it toward his face. Granted, these things only happen when he's calmly eating, which isn't every time. But, when he's calm, especially with his dreamfeed at night, it is pretty much the sweetest thing ever. 
• Jake is a master manipulator. When he's going to sleep for naps he usually cries. He just doesn't really like going down for them, but he's getting better at it. I'll let him cry for a few minutes before going in to check on him. I sssh him and sometimes give him his pacifier and about 75% of the time, he'll look up at me with these tired eyes and give a big, sweet smile. It makes me want to get him out of his crib and just squeeze him instead of making him sleep. Manipulator. It's a good thing that mommy knows that he has to take naps or else he'll be a crank. 
• How there are new and exciting things that Jake discovers every day. Yesterday, it was his feet. I put him in his bouncy chair while I was taking a shower, hoping he would fall back asleep. Instead he stared at his feet while kicking them around. He also tried to bend down to grab his feet. It was a good thing he was strapped in or else he would have easily been on the floor. 
• When he cuddles up to me and/or Bryce when we hold him. 
• Our grey cat, Will, sleeps in the baby's room while he's napping. He'll curl up on the recliner, on a blanket next to the crib, or in the baby's bouncy chair. If the baby starts crying, Will comes to find me to make sure I know Jake's upset. 
• I LOVE nap times. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with Jake when he's awake, it is one of my favorite things. But, when he takes a good nap (which is getting to be more and more often) and I can actually get things done (like the laundry or dishes) or waste some time catching up on my TV shows and pinning on Pinterest, it is the best. Being a mom has this way of making you feel completely inhuman and definitely not like your previous "pre-mom" self. Having this little bit of time to be human again and not just a mom makes me feel more normal and like myself again. 
• Weight Watchers. I love it. It is the only diet that I know of that is readily approved for nursing moms because its not really a "diet". It is more about eating well, which I should be doing anyway. But with WW, there is a points value associated with every food and depending on your height, gender, and the fact that I'm nursing, I'm given a certain amount of points to eat for the day and then a number of cheat points for the week. Just having points associated with food makes it encouraging to eat fruits, veggies, and lean meat and discourages against eating junk. I'm one week in and I've lost those last 5 stubborn pounds of pregnancy weight and 4.5" total from my various body measurements.
• I really love dressing Jake up. I am a girly girl. If I have a girl next time, you can guarantee she will have matching bows for every outfit and she will probably wear cute, frilly dresses every day. But, I had a boy first (which I have always wanted) which means that I have to dress him up in cute boy clothes. He wears plaid button downs, striped thermal onesies, jeans, matching shoes, and so on. There are such cute boy clothes out there and you better believe I love dressing my boy up every day. Some days he just wears pajamas all day, but if we go out you better believe he's dressed up. 
• Holidays. I am so excited for the holiday season. I got my Halloween decorations out the other day and can't wait for Thanksgiving and especially Christmas. Fall and the holiday season is my favorite time of the year and it will be even more exciting to experience it with a baby.

Sleep

Now that we're on a schedule, we decided to let baby Jacob "cry-it-out". He is more of a whiner (or fake cryer) and we were letting him go with that before, but every once in a while his whining would turn into crying. So we would go in and console him and he would stop crying... until Bryce or I would put him back down and leave the room. Without fail, he would start crying again within 5-10 minutes. The worst was the night before last. He woke up at 5 and I fed him, burped him, and changed his diaper and put him back to bed, pretty much asleep. He was quiet for a few minutes and then started crying again. We let him cry for a few minutes, until it turned into basically screaming, and then went back in to him. There was nothing wrong--diaper still dry, he wouldn't burp, not too cold or hot--so I fed him again and he ate until he fell asleep. I put him back in bed and the same exact process took place (for the most part) every hour until about 11am. I was exhausted. He finally went down for more than 30 minutes and so I decided to get us back on schedule for the day. His next feeding was at 1pm, so I woke him up, fed him, did the whole routine and put him back down, right after he started yawning and fussing. He cried. It seemed like he was crying forever, but in reality he only cried for about 10 minutes and it wasn't even full-out crying for more than about 1 minute. Then he stopped crying and slept. During that nap he had 2 more short crying spurts, but when 4 pm rolled around and it was time for him to eat again, he woke right up with no crying and stayed alert during his feeing. He had his wake time and then I put him down and he didn't cry nearly as much as the time before. He slept well, woke happy, and ate really well. This has continued since then, with him waking up only once during the night to eat (5 hours after his last feeding). He woke up about 45 minutes before his normal morning wake time, so I moved his next wake time up a half an hour and this next wake up (in about 20 minutes) will be right back on schedule. So here's the breakdown--

BEFORE:

• Jacob was waking up around every 3 hours, but usually woke too early from most, if not every nap
• At night, he would only have one long spurt between feedings, somewhere around 4-5 hours and then was up every 2-3 hours after that (if not every hour)
• He would cry at every wake up and usually through his feedings as well
• Had to eat or be rocked/held to sleep or use his pacifier to sooth himself in the crib

AFTER: 

• Jacob has to be woken up at 3 hours, or is lying in his crib, just opening his eyes when I come in
• At night he goes 5 hours between feedings (only waking once)
• He wakes up happy (no crying) and eats extremely well (no crying) and is alert during eating
• Goes down and cries less each time. This last nap he only whined for about 5 minutes, no actual crying

All in all I think this is very successful for my little boy. I understand that not everyone can do that with their child, nor do I think they should, and each baby likes different things. My child is very much my child and he likes the structure and, so far, the independence. Things are going well and the sleep I got last night has made me a new woman. I think I'm going to go clean my house now.