Sleep Training Night 5

Daniel slept right through last night. He went down at 8 pm and woke up at 5 am. I'm starting to think that this was more of a parent training exercise than a baby training one. I am sure it was much more difficult for us to let him cry than it was for him. I know that Daniel would have slept better for those 40 minutes with us than in his bed, but we are all sleeping better now because of it. I guess like many things in life there are short term pains for long term gains. Hopefully we are past the point of giving daily updates.

Hello Zippy

Daniel's Halloween costume arrived today. We had a little fashion show. Here is Daniel with his first Zippy. Zippy was what his Grandpa Dan called his sock monkey as a boy.

Holding hands with Zippy.

All the Zippy's together.

The End!

Sleep Training Night Four

Last night Daniel went to bed at the normal time around 8 pm. He woke up as I was washing my face at 10:30 pm. Remembering the previous night's experience and knowing that he last nursed at 5:30 pm, I decided to feed him. He ate and was back down with minimal fuss. He attempted to cry, but that only lasted about 20 seconds before he realized that sleep was a much better option. He didn't wake up until 6 am this morning. Nice job Daniel! Hopefully I can say this without jinxing myself, but I think our sleeper is back.

Now the real question is what to do this weekend when we go out of town. We need to come up with a plan that will reinforce Daniel's excellent sleeping habits rather than sending us back to square one. I hope that does not mean that he needs to have well rested parents. That is quite the challenge at ND.

Halloween Playgroup

Well, if you were ever wondering what happens when you put four 6 month olds in a room together, here you go. If you ask me, this is absolutely hilarious. Maybe Daniel was a little intimidated by all the cute ladies. Thankfully, he was pleasant after the costume portion of the event. He has on his bear bunting here, but the real Halloween costume will be debuted later this week. His Aunt Katie has been hard at work on his very special costume.

Sleep Training Nights 2 and 3

Night 2

Went to bed at the usual time.
Up at 12:30 am crying.
Matt did the check, change, and leave.
20 minutes later, still crying.
Down before the 30 minute mark.
Up at 1:15 am according to Matt (I must have slept through this one).
Up at 3 am, I nursed him.
Slept until 6:30 am.

Not the best night of sleep if you ask me.

Night 3

Up at 12 am crying.
Matt went in to check, change, and leave.
5 minutes later, asleep.
4:30 am, I can't sleep because my boobs have taken on a rectangular form.
I toss and turn in my uncomfortable state.
All I can think is, I hope he wakes up soon.
6:15 am I finally go in just to check on him after my shower.
Thank goodness, he wakes up.

Maybe this is a sign of things to come.

Fall Fun!

Yesterday Daniel and I spent the morning together watching football on TV while Matt attended the UW game. Daniel was decked out in his ND attire, and I was trying to do a little brainwashing with our ND book.

He got a little hungry during the game, so we had a Cheerio break. Cheerio time has become one of his (and my) favorite times of the day. He will focus so intently on the Cheerios to make sure that he gets each one in his mouth that it will keep him entertained for what seems like a really long to me. The Cheerios disappear rather quickly, and I know he gets lots in his mouth, but there also seem to be many in the seat when he comes out. Practice makes perfect, right?

When Matt got home, I was starting to get a little stir crazy. I've been taking it easy a bit in order to recover from WEFTEC and reduce my expenditures. Seeing the market these days makes me nervous. I can only do so much hanging out around the house.

We decided to bundle Daniel up and head out to Treinen's farm to do a corn maze. It was totally another Rachel adventure, but it was such a lovely day, we needed to get out of the house. Matt was a little unsure about his enthusiasm until he found out that this year's maze was a dragonfly. Here are a few pictures of us on our adventure. I think Daniel had a great time. We dressed him up in the bear bunting that Peggy loaned us for our trip to Chicago. It was perfect. People kept saying, "There's the bear, we must be on the right track."

Lack of Sleep

Daniel has not been sleeping as well recently. He likes to wake up at some point in the night and stay up for a couple hours. Not the best habit if you ask Matt and me. We have decided to set some ground rules. Now, I can't say they are the best guidelines since we came up with them in the middle of the night while listening to a crying baby, but at least we have guidelines. Hopefully it will be better than our typical debate that we have when Daniel wakes up in the middle of the night.

Rule 1 - Daniel only gets fed once between the time he goes down and 4 am.

Rule 2 - Daniel has to sleep in his crib until at least 4 am.

Well, I started this post yesterday or maybe even Thursday. Last night we did some reading about sleep methods. We decided to use the method recommended in the book "The New First Three Years of Life" by Burton L. White. It is a pretty strict method, but I'm convinced that Daniel is waking up more for company than anything else. He recommends going in, checking on the baby, changing the diaper if necessary, and leaving for 30 minutes. If the baby is still upset afer 30 minutes, he recommends checking the baby again, and if everything is ok leaving and not coming back. As a parent, I can say this is not an easy thing to do, but after a week of spending much time awake each night, we needed to do something.

Last night Daniel went to bed as usual. But he woke up at midnight in a fit. Matt went in, change him, and put him back down. We sat there listening to Daniel cry for a little while, but I must say that knowing we were not going back in for 30 minutes let me rest a little. Daniel wasn't in any sort of distress, he just needed to get back to sleep. He finally fell asleep after about 20 minutes and slept until 6 am. After I fed him, he actually fell back asleep until 8:30 am. I guess he was tired, too. Last night was definitely an improvement on the sleeping front. Hopefully, he will get better at settling back down, but we need to be past the days of rocking to sleep at midnight, 1 am, 2 am, ...

We also have to work on him falling asleep unassisted at naptime. I attempted this a couple times today, but then I decided that he just needed a nap and rocked him to sleep. We will try self-soothing tomorrow.

Here is a little video of him moving around and babbling. "Dada" is a regular in his vocabulary these days.

WEFTEC 2008

Sometimes I have really great ideas, and sometimes I have not so great ideas. WEFTEC was a great conference, but maybe not the best idea for my family this year. I learned a lot, was able to see many collegues and clients, and generally had a pretty good time. But being out from 7 am until 10 pm for three days in a row is not a good idea for a nursing Mom. It might have gone better if we could have been in Madison for the event, but we were in Chicago.

It took an army to get through the week. Note to self, if something takes an army to accomplish, it might not be the best idea. This conference is something that I had been wanting to do since graduating college. Why was this my year to go? I just got it in my head that I was going, and there was no looking back. So we got through it. I am totally exhausted, and so is Matt. Maybe we will be able to take it easy for a week or so until we head to ND for the Pitt game.

So the general summary is - time at the conference was awesome, everything else in my life suffered the consequences.

Pictures

Daniel is doing great these days. He is loving eating solid food and mastering the army man crawl. He has been getting up on all fours, but can't go anywhere yet. I know that he will be crawling around before we know it. Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

So Daniel likes to chew on the furniture.

Catholic Vote

A non-Catholic sent me the link to this video, www.catholicvote.com. I thought it was a pretty powerful video and would encourage you to watch it. Matt really liked that Fr. Ted Hesburgh was in it, too.

Thoughts on Dairy Farms and Breastfeeding

After spending so much time at dairy farms recently, I've learned a bit about the business that is milking cows. Even though my project is a manure project, I've picked up a bit about the milk production as well. Basically it is all about cow comfort. They will do anything to keep these cows happy, well not anything, but many large expensive projects. They also very closely manage what the cows eat.

I never thought anything too much about all this before I had Daniel, but now that I'm breastfeeding, I think about it in an entirely new way. My only conclusion is that I need to be more comfortable for Daniel's sake, really. In fact, all breastfeeding moms should be more comfortable. We should all get new bedding and have optimal diets. Maybe we should add some brewer's yeast to our diets for the phosphorus and protein.

All this combined with the latest PETA request is really disturbing, http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=11993. I really can't get the image of the work it would take to do this out of my head. Also, I think this would be mighty expensive ice cream.

Blog Issues and More Rambling

So, I'm not sure how to get draft posts to post in the most recent slot. If any of you more experienced bloggers have any advice, please let me know. There is a new video and post that I just put up today, but it is shown 'before' the birthday post. Enjoy!

Also, this background thing is not working out. I was right, it looks like slime green instead of soft mint green. Maybe I'll have to try a blue or white.

Off to the farms today. I'm looking forward to it since the weather is going to be lovely! 65 degrees and clear. The farmer I met with yesterday offered to have Daniel out one day. He also offered to send me home with a kitty. I was tempted, but decided to pass. My coworker actually had to rescue the three little kittens because they were hiding under my car. Just what I would need to do, right? Run over a little kitten with the client in my car. That would almost be as bad as the time I got a speeding ticket with the client and my boss in the car.

Have a great day!

Happy Birthday

Sunday we celebrated Matt's 28th birthday and Daniel's half birthday. It was a relatively mellow day, but we squeezed in a few events. Matt's parents came over in the afternoon, and we went on a date that night. It is so nice to spend time together without Daniel sometimes. It is especially nice when we get to eat tasty food, too. We ate at Restaurant Muramoto in the newly opened location. It is one of Matt's favorites and it was fun to see their new location.

So I was not exaggerating when I said we had a mellow day. Here is a video from our morning. I kind of hesitated to put it up because there is not a ton of action, but since I am a new parent, totally in love with my boys, I decided to go for it. The video is 2 minutes long, and there isn't even any big payoff at the end like a spitup or Daniel grabbing the spoon and smearing baby food all over his face. One day he will wave bye-bye when we say so, but we aren't even there yet. However, he is being his usual cute self here.

Tuesday Ramblings

- I've been playing with the blog colors a bit. I always pick colors that look good on our home computer, but then they look scary on other computers. For instance, this color looks like a soft mint green on my home computer. It might look like green slime on your computer. I'm aiming for soft mint green.


- Matt took care of Daniel this morning while I did a talk at the BioCycle conference. He got a bit more than he bargained for because he had to take Daniel to get his 6-month pictures. They did great. Matt must have really worn him out because he slept for 2.5 hours when we got home. It is so nice to be able to go without worrying about them.


- Here is a little video of Daniel working on his army man crawl. He is getting more adept at reaching his goal as each day goes by. I'm thinking that it won't be long before he is on all fours moving across the room. In this video he gets one of his favorite new toys. It is one of those wooden puzzles with handles on the pieces. He really enjoys chewing on the pieces and waving the puzzle board around in the air. There is nothing genlte or delicate about this baby.

- Daniel always goes for the largest toys. I think he prefers the basket that we keep his toys in to the toys themselves. The other day in the doctors office he bypassed all the toys and went straight for the footstool.

- He is eating a ton these days. We introduced yogurt yesterday. He was a bit confused by the texture and temperature of it, but seemed to like it after a few bites. Then he grabbed the spoon and made a huge mess! He even had yogurt in his eyelashes.

- We started finger foods this week as well. The first time I gave him Cheerios, he looked at them intently for what seemed like forever. He was so quiet! I'm thinking that Cheerio time might be part of our daily routine from now on.

- He is still quite the sleeper. He has started going to bed in the 7 o'clock hour, so we get quite a bit of time in the evening. Even if he wakes up once or twice, it's usually before 11 pm. Then he will sleep until sometime around 6 or 7 am. I can't complain about that. Thursday update - Ok, maybe 5 am :)

A New Welcome

Here are a few before and after pics of our front door. The old door was ok, but had peeling paint and gold spray paint around the windows. The screen door was awful and all the mechanics were broken. I love the new window and the hiding screen on the storm door.

Busy Times at the Lee House - Conferences Galore

Life has been really busy this week. After returning from South Bend things did not slow down at all. Matt has been working like crazy, and I've had a ton going on. We got a new front door and screen door installed on Tuesday. It's a major improvement. I took before photos, so I just need to get the after, and you can see for yourself.

On Wenesday, I spent the entire day at the World Dairy Expo. It is a huge event held in Madison each year. I think there are about 1,000 vendors and 65,000 attendees there. I have been talking to about 10 of the vendors over the past year about my community manure digester, so it was great to get to meet so many of them in person. The nanny brought Daniel out for lunch. I thought he would enjoy the outing and seeing the cows. He was ok with the situation, but he was not having his best day. By the end of the day I was talked out. It happens occasionally. Too bad it was really chilly and overcast that day. I know Daniel will love it when he gets older. There are tons of cows and tractors, and some of the vendors have full milking parlors set up. As a bonus, you get chocolate milk when you leave :)

Thursday was the big day this week. I had a presentation to do at our state operators conference in Stevens Point (about 2 hours away) that I needed to be there at 8 am for. I was a little worried about doing the drive in the morning, so Matt agreed to watch Daniel overnight while I drove up to Portage and stayed with his grandmother. Great idea, right? Feed the baby, put him to bed, drive to Portage, Matt gets him in the morning. Well, Daniel woke up and cried for 45 minutes right after I shut the garage door. Being alone with a crying baby for 45 minutes is rough. Daniel was just not having a great day. I'm not sure if it's teeth or growing or what, but some days he is just generally out of sorts. I mean it's not like he's tripling his body weight and learning new things daily this year? Why can't he just be happy all the time ;) Anyway, Matt called Peggy in for backup, and they made it through just fine. My talk went great, and I had a wonderful time at the conference. Many of the people that I have worked with and for in the state were there yesterday.

****Warning, mommy stuff coming****

The most awkward part of the day was pumping. I ended up pumping in the handicap stall of the ladies room three or four times. They all blend together after a while. So I had my backpack pump with me most of the day. The guys I work with were quite curious, making comments like, "So, are you going for a hike?," "Headed to class today?," etc. All pretty friendly stuff, I just knew that they did not want the real answer. But after a few questions, you just answer. Whatever, it's part of the deal these days. Thankfully there were a few new dads in the group who were up to speed on things. It is such a huge part of my life now, I don't really care that they know, but I don't think they will ask many more questions :)

****Ok, done with the mommy stuff******

So Wednesday night to Thursday evening was the longest time I've been away from Daniel yet. Non, Matt's grandmother, asked me how I felt about everything. I was ok, but I really missed him. The only way to describe it was that it was kind of like I was missing a limb or a critical accessory like a wedding ring or watch. You know, something that you are constantly aware that you are not wearing.

The next couple weeks are busy, but nothing far out of town. I get to visit some farms next week, but they are all close by. The next big trip is the WEFTEC conference in Chicago. That is going to be big. Potentially, I could have things to do from 7:30 am until 10 pm. That will be rough. We will see how things play out.

Have a great weekend and Go Irish!

Playing with Daniel