Month 4, Week 2

It's been a rough week. My parents headed out on Tuesday and I think I was a little shell-shocked. My "here-can-you-watch-him-while-I..." option was gone. Long gone.

I think parenting is a little like operating in a fog. Every once in a while the mist lifts and you see things for what they are. For me, the boys' sleep schedules (well, lack of them) came into full view this week. We used to follow the sleep-eat-play method where you feed them right when they wake-up. This works great because they don't associate eating with sleeping, so in theory anyone can put them to sleep. Then they started crying when it was nap time. The easiest way to quiet a crying baby? Feed him!

From there things just snowballed. I found myself pinned to the bed Tuesday. One baby was literally on top of me, nursing while sleeping, the other at my side, doing the same thing. They had been nursing for an hour, with 45min of that on auto-pilot while they snored softly. Cute? Yes. Painful for me? Also yes. I tried unplugging one boy. He immediately started rooting around with his eyes still closed. When he couldn't find his human pacifier, he woke up screaming. This woke up the other boy. The crying got so loud that I had to get them up and focused on something else, even though they only had half of their nap. The constant nursing needed to stop. I wanted my sleep-eat-play back.

I spent Tuesday evening reading a book Jim got me about sleep schedules. I felt trapped, not only by the excessive nursing but because they require me to sleep with them during the day. So I decided to try to get them to sleep in their cribs with the Cry It Out (CIO) method. It sounded easy the way the book put it. I don't know what I was thinking, trying to make two major changes at one time...

Wednesday morning Jim gets a call at work from me. I'm bawling. I made it through 15min of CIO before I broke down. It wasn't the crying that bothered me. Zach was giving us his angry/stubborn cry and that doesn't phase me at all. I can do stubborn, being good at it myself. It was Alex. He was just laying in his crib, giving me a heart wrenching sob. When I bent over to comfort him, the little boy tried his hardest to smile at me, even with tears running down his face. He just wanted held and loved. I burst into tears and didn't know what to do. The book doesn't want you to pick them up. Jim, the voice of reason, told me to forget the book and get those boys to our room for proper holding. Tired from the crying, they almost immediately went to sleep. Alex was sure to give me more smiles and some snuggling first, though.

I'm still working with them on the no nursing to sleep thing. There's lots of crying involved for naps, but it's all the angry type which is loud, but ok. We've also started them on vitamins for vitamin D. Zach makes a face but eats them. Alex cries and tries to spit them out. He'll also cough them in my face, so I'm covered in yellow goo. More tummy time is on my agenda, but I think I'm already at my quota for crying.

Wednesday night was also miserable. The boys were exhausted so we tried to put them to bed earlier. You'd get them to sleep, put them down, and their eyes would instantly pop open. Then they would start crying. After the 2nd attempt at putting them down, we couldn't find anything to calm them. Not even walking them around the house would help. Alex ended up crying himself to sleep in his crib. Once they finally passed out, Jim headed for some wine while I hit the ice cream pretty hard. We had aged about 10yrs in the last half hour.

So... Add to the list establishing a bedtime routine! Thursday I was supposed to go to a Mom's Night Out and Jim's mom was going to come over to help watch the boys. With what happened the day before, I didn't think it would be the best thing for the boys if I was gone for bedtime. Jim's mom still came over, though, and brought his sister and her son with her. It was nice having the company but I was still in my PJ's and hadn't found the time to shower yet - at 5:30pm. Luckily the boys were all about the grins and babbling, so they were distracted.

The bedtime routine is a work in progress. The idea is to get them calm and sleepy so the crying is minimal. Combined with the amount they spit up during the day, I thought a nightly bath might be a good option. They'll tolerate the bath but get upset once we take them out of the tub. Their hatred of clothes is well known, and it doesn't get better when you add in being wet and cold.

Today went fairly well. Alex has accepted that there is no more nap time nursing. Zach has not and cries every time. I've been trying to pay closer attention to when they should go down for a nap. According to the book, if you try to put them to sleep when they're just getting sleepy, there's less crying. Apparently if they're rubbing their eyes, they're already overtired. I look for that kind of staring off into the distance thing, then I take them to bed. This happens about 45min after they wake-up. That's not much time to change, feed, and play with them.

They've really started getting into their toys, especially any that rattle or have crunchy fabric. They'll grab the toy with both hands and try to stuff it in their mouth. Jim calls it Dino Chomp. They'll also wiggle and squeal with glee when they get excited. Zach was practicing his outside voice in the van tonight, while Alex is working on his yelling. Both boys have become expert grocery store babies. The last two trips have been cry free, even including the van ride.

I had to adjust the straps of Alex's car seat today. He's gotten taller and they needed moved to a new shoulder slot. I guess he has a longer torso than Zach since they're the same total length.

I have prints of the boys' 4mo pictures. I just need to meet up with everyone to pass them out. There wasn't a good (i.e. both babies smiling) shot of both of them, so I combined two individual pictures. That's what you get with one being grumpy.