The past couple of weeks have been very rough in the sleeping department. Which leads to a very strained relationship between Liam and myself, at least in the middle of the night. Seriously sleep problems seem to be the kryptonite to us supermamas. It all started with my desire to start weaning. There are days when I am just like I am done with this. I want my body back to myself. Then there is the other side of the coin which is breastfeeding is so easy! I dont have to take snacks or bottles, and if I feed Liam he is magically asleep. So that is hard to give up. Plus Liam will NOT take a bottle, even a sippy he isn't a huge fan of, he likes a normal cup. Anyway I decided to try to cut out the night feeding for Liam, and then sleep fell apart...he would wake up every hour, and would not go back into the crib. I've tried co-sleeping several times, but Liam is not really good to sleep with. He likes to be sitting up in the chair rocking. So I've given up on the weaning for now. All the reasons of wanting to give up are just selfish personal reasons on my part, and he finds it comforting and I dont want to take that away. During the day he only nurses once usually. After this we had just started getting back and then Liam got sick...curses. He had the terrible cough, fever, lethargy, etc...I was really close to taking him in to instacare. So this lead to a few more sleepless nights. Then I felt what I think to be his molars coming in...never ends. Last night I only got about two hours of sleep. I made the mistake of reading an article that says the average mom loses at least 2-3 months of sleep in their baby's first year. The thought of it saddens me when I think of how magical sleep is. So if this post is full of typos and poor sentence construction please excuse me.
So these difficulties have lead me to examine my philosophies on parenting, or my lack thereof. I've researched all the different sleep training methods, cry it out, baby whisperer, etc...I don't know. Since Liam was born we have always had the established bedtime routine. Bath, lotion massage, book, bed. Overall I tend to lean to the more baby led parenting I guess. I decided to keep breastfeeding since it stressed Liam out when I tried to stop, so I decided he is probably not ready. Then there is sleep training. The other night I was so tired I just said that we had to try letting him cry it out. Yeah did not work. I did the whole thing where you stretch the times that you go in, but everytime I went in he would get more and more upset. So we did this for over an hour and he just stood in his crib and cried. It's not in me to do it. I'm a wimp. I guess in the end every kid is different and I will just do what works for master Liam. I want to keep bedtime and sleep a positive experience and not something stressful, but again every kid is different and no judging how other parents do it.
The other sad thing is Liam will only do one nap now. Sigh. I tried and fought it but now I've given in. The odd thing is that he wants his nap in the morning not in the early afternoon which is better for timing out waking up and bedtime. So we are slowly working on that.
Anyway on to his cute stuff. He is a lot of fun, and super cute. He is a very straightforward kid in that he will just do things when he is ready right on track. He never really showed interest in crawling and then suddenly was like ok it's time to crawl and he did. He has been the same way with walking, which he now does very proficiently. He walks everywhere, and he wants people to be watching him and he will smile at them and look so proud of himself. Still such a ham.
So language wise Liam does say mama, but still usually just when he is in his crib and wants me. Its more a whine then a happy word. He also says baa, moo, ruff, and quack with his animal see and say. Also when we are out walking and dogs bark at us he barks back. He also will say uh huh when we are talking to him.
Socially he still loves attention, and loves to perform his stuff for everyone
Motor as I said he is walking, he turns around, stands up on his own from the floor. He also dances. Baby dances are so cute. He loves to turn our keyboard onto the automatic drum beats and he just sits there and bobs to the beat. Then to music he'll stand up and do his little squat dance.
Wow it's been quite a post. How am I? Alive, I guess that's whats most important. TTFN (tata for now)
