Tuesday, January 17, 2012

A new year

Happy New Year! ...a few weeks ago! We had a great Christmas with our families and New Year's with our college friends! It was so nice to see everyone- it seemed like we'd never left :)
Above are all the guys.

Eliana practicing being a big sister (her little brother Isaac was born a few days later).

Desy the cowboy!

I wish we and our college friends lived closer together.


I got a fancy-pants new camera for Christmas (Canon EOS Rebel T3 if you care) so I've been having lots of fun with that! We went with some of our family to Cox Arboretum the first week of January and had fun walking around and taking pictures. It's really beautiful there- I can't wait to see it in the spring!





Last week (?) Nathan and I took the boys to the park and O had a blast! It was chilly but still unseasonably warm. As pretty as snow is, I'm honestly kind of enjoying the not-frigid weather.
I guess I haven't really written about Orion for a while. He talks all the time, often in phrases. His pronunciations are getting better so it's a little easier to understand what he's saying. He's still crazy about cars, and loves toy cars, the Cars movies, and real-life cars. Orion also loves letters and numbers. And running around like a crazy person, especially if he's being chased.

He's been inconsistent with naps lately- I'm worried he's trying to drop his nap already- but still sleeps great at night. We want to transfer him out of the crib soon, but I'm kind of dragging my feet on that one.

As for Desmond, he's sitting up pretty well, but not well enough to leave him unattended because he'll undoubtedly fall over. He's rolling over really well. He loves to play.

He's eating solids at every meal and enjoying everything I give him. So far he's had squash, sweet potatoes, peaches, pears, sweet peas, and carrots. We often mix in rice cereal. He's a good eater!

Sleep is NOT going well. At all. I'm trying to get him to take 2 naps a day instead of like 5, which seems to be going well except that the naps aren't as long as I think they should be. Night time has been terrible lately. He's been waking up every couple hours and crying a LOT. I am trying to do some sleep training because he's fully capable of going more than a few hours without eating at night, but it's hard. I'm going to read a book I haven't read before today/tomorrow, so hopefully it'll have some helpful tips.


I actually ran yesterday for the first time since October!! My running band was completely dead from disuse. Ha! It was so warm that I thought I better take the chance and get out there (and break in my awesome new running shoes!). I did pretty well- I ran about a mile with a short break toward the end. It was SO windy... oh my goodness. The last leg was INTO the wind and it was crazy hard. That's when I had to take a break and walk for a minute. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how I did.

I'm pushing myself to start running again because I think I've gained back a couple pounds :/ So I have 8 or 9 pounds to lose. I need to get myself organized and motivated to get this DONE!

5 comments:

Sadie VK said...

Your new camera takes amazing pictures! I especially love the one of you and Nathan.

What book are you reading on sleep training? Is it controversial? Is that why you didn't give the title? Haha. I hope it helps. Not sleeping at night is the worst!

Rachel said...

Hahaha, I think I'm going to read The Happiest Baby on the Block... which I don't think is controversial at all! Although I just pulled out another one I didn't know I had called "Take Charge of Your Child's Sleep" and I have no clue what that one holds. We'll see!!

Wendy Min said...

Okay, first, Des's hat is super duper cute!! And, hurrah for awesome cameras!

I'm sorry to hear about the crazy sleeping. Not sure how much this will help, but I am crazy blog reader when it comes to baby advise. Here is a blog that was posted on another blog that I follow...(I follow the other blog).. ok that is kinda confusing :)

http://www.mybabysleepguide.com/

also:
http://www.babywisemom.com/2010/10/sleep-hierarchy-3-6-months.html

And, I'm not sure if this helps either, but with Eva, we sort of paired nap-sleep-training (is that a word?) with independent play time in her crib.

Rachel said...

OK, I did some reading in both of the books I mentioned. I found "The Happiest Baby on the Block" to be very wishy-washy and not helpful (If you are reading this and it worked for you, that's great! Just not helpful to me).

"Take Charge of Your Child's Sleep" seemed to be a good resource and reinforced some of the BabyWise techniques, but was aimed at older children.

Wendy, thank you for the links! I read those websites for a couple hours and there were some really interesting tips (wake to sleep?! never would have thought of that). Pretty much I think I just need to buckle down with CIO during the night. His naps have been good the last few days... he's just waking up several times a night, and everything I've read says he doesn't need to. And he HAS slept through the night before, just not for a long time. One of the things I read listed predictors for sleep issues, and he matched up with a few: he's a boy, he sleeps in my room, and he's breastfed. I guess problems were bound to spring up; I got spoiled when he was such a good sleeper as a newborn!!

Amanda said...

Jake was the worst baby sleeper I had! But, he's in turn been the BEST sleeper once he hit 2! I know that's a ways off.. Lol.. But, thought Id give some good news to the bad sleeping. :) I seriously didn't sleep the first 2 years of Jakes life. Miserable. It's amazing I had more! Lol. He'll get it eventually..