Happy Halloween!

Fun in Grandpa's Boat

9 Month Update

Justin in Daddy's First Football Jersey

Justin and Mommy in a Petting Zoo

Well, Justin turns 9 months old next week! I can't believe it! Here's what we've been up to:

1) We've finally worked through some major sleep issues. As soon as Justin learned to stand up in his crib about a month and a half ago, he would get up over 3 times at night and wanted us to come see him practicing his new skills. I also got into a bad habit of nursing him to sleep, so he would scream hysterically when I would try to lay him down fully awake. For anyone struggling with sleep issues, here's what worked for us!
* Make sure everything is a good temperature. For us, this meant putting Justin to sleep in his sleepsack so that his cold sheets wouldn't wake him up. Yeah, he has some high maintenance tendencies. :-)
* Follow the same sleep ritual every night. For us, this meant starting nightly baths, but it's been soooooooo worth it!
* Put the baby to sleep half an hour earlier. I was amazed at how magical this was for us! I hated to do it at first, since it meant less time him. But, now I get the same amount of quality time, but less screaming.
* Put baby down awake, and with no pacifier. I think this was the other thing that got us into trouble. We relied on the pacifier for months, and he'd go to sleep almost immediately! But, he began to look at his pacifier as a teether/toy and ended up chucking it out of his crib in the middle of the night. Then he'd wake us up to come get it for him and the cycle would start over again.
* Instead of walking away during the screaming, it helped us to just sit on the floor by his crib so he knew we weren't abandoning him. Sometimes this meant sitting there for an hour or longer!
* Don't pick up the baby during the screaming. However, rubbing Justin's back and patting him on the head were okay for us.

So, after about 5 days of horrible nights, things turned WONDERFUL. Justin will sleep from 7:30PM until somewhere between 3 and 5AM, eat, and will then sleep again until 6:30AM (when I have to get him up to get ready for daycare). We're going on about 2 weeks of great sleeping, and now he doesn't even whimper when I put him to bed! But, I'm not naive enough to think this will last forever. I'm sure a day will come when he learns how to climb out of his crib, and a new sleep adventure will begin (if not before then).

2) Justin now likes walking along the furniture, and can stand unassisted for about 8 seconds now. This is exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time.

3) Justin loves watching toys fall. This can be dangerous! One night he was in the tub and his toy turtle fell overboard. As I was reaching down to get it for him, he literally slipped out of the tub trying to get it and was stuck upside down in a heap of towels! I was laughing so hard (does that make me a bad mom?). Good thing those towels were there!

4) Justin thinks animals are hilarious. He giggles like crazy around them, and is really getting into books with pictures of animals. Bill's parents have a black cat, and whenever I open his animal book he reaches right for the picture of the black cat and starts laughing. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to understand that animals don't like their ears, tails, or hair pulled very much. :-)

5) Justin is slowly starting to link different sounds to different objects. He crawled over to Bill's desk chair and guitar today saying "da-da". But, he never reaches for Bill saying "da-da". Maybe it's all coincidence, but it's fun to think he might have a better idea of what's going on than we adults think.

6) Justin loves balls...especially tennis balls. He rolls them and chases them and it's a good half an hour of entertainment.

7) Justin believes he lives in a Willy Wonka world where everything he is able to pick up is edible. I've caught him lately with pennies, dust bunnies, shoes, and paper. At least he shows me what I need to clean. :-)

Baby You Can Drive My Car

Oh Wait, Not for 15 More Years

Getting a Different Perspective on Life

My Current Favorite Toy (the VCR Flap)

With Freedom Comes Pain

For some reason, Justin has decided that the only things worth pull himself up to standing on are the ones that are the most unstable. Think laundry baskets, his car seat, a box, etc. This always ends badly. It's hard, because I want him to experiment and learn which things are sturdy. But I also hate to see him get hurt! Of course I don't let him experiment with anything too dangerous. Bill and I have been practicing our poker faces when he does crash. On the inside we're freaking out, wanting to run to him to fix his pain make sure there's no permanent damage. On the outside, we're trying to be calm, rational, and smiling. They say babies sense stress, so I don't know if we're fooling him. I just know he stops crying a lot quicker when we put on the poker face instead of the "Oh my poor baby! Are you okay?!!" face. Here's some of the latest pictures.

The Best Toys Are Free

Happy Crawler

Big-Eyed Boy in the Bjorn

Uh-Oh!

Well, it started out as getting on the hands and knees and rocking back and forth. That graduated into crawling with just his hands, and then with just the knees, but never at the same time. Next came crawling about 2 "steps" and then launching himself at whatever object he was going for, or sitting back on his bum. Then, last night came. And we officially have a crawler! Oh no! Bill and I sat and were having him crawl to each other. He can get about half way across his bedroom now before taking a break. It's so funny to see how hard he concentrates on it! All the babyproofing I had hoped to get done last weekend never happened. But, now there's no more room for procrastination. It's funny because although we were dreading the moment he would start crawling, we were also celebrating his new accomplishment at the same time. I think this is going to be a main theme in parenting.

Cloth Dipes

Just wanted to throw in a quick plug for cloth diapers. We have to admit, our reasons for choosing these diapers were more selfish than "green"...we wanted to save money. Most people thought we were crazy when we told them of our goal. But, 7 months later we're still using them as our primary diapering solution! Of course when we're running errands we choose disposable. But, it's so nice when we see the diaper stash running low knowing all we have to do is throw them in the wash and not make an emergency trip to the store.

Our brand of choice is Happy Heinys (http://www.happyheinys.com/) and we use the one-size version. This style fits a baby from 8-35 lbs, so there's no need to buy a bunch of different sizes (also helps our cost-saving goal). These are not your parents' cloth diapers...they have elastic and velcro and are super easy to use. Our daycare providers had no problem putting these on Justin for us once we showed them how easy they are. The other nice thing is that you can adjust their absorbancy, unlike disposables. Just stuff them with better cloth (like hemp) or more layers and they can handle a lot. We just have to stay on top of the diaper changes. Some other great brands (gotta love the names) are Fuzzi Bunz and Bumgenius. Check out www.diaperpin.com for more info on product ratings and cloth diapering. One other benefit is that children who wear cloth diapers usually potty train faster than others, since they know when they are wet. Please let us know if you have any questions if you are contemplating cloth dipes! It's always nice to have an advocate in this arena.