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Photos by Flossy Mae Photography
Dear sweet Graham,
So I never wrote your 12 month post…and now you’re almost 15 months. Time flies when you’re having fun!
And boy – have we been having fun! We’ve finally gotten into a great groove. Here’s what our schedule is like now:
Mondays – We grocery shop and plan play dates.
Tuesday – You go to Mother’s Morning Out and I work in the morning. After your nap, we hang out at home, go for a walk or run errands.
Wednesday – You go to Mother’s Morning Out and I actually have my morning out! This is the day I run errands that would be annoying to take you to (like going to the doctor, getting my hair cut, etc). The afternoon is similar to Tuesday’s afternoon.
Thursday – Grandparent’s day! My parents watch you most of the day while I work.
Friday – Another chill day of errands or play dates or hanging out at home.
The weeks fly by and I love spending time with you – you’re my little sidekick. I love to dress us alike. (I know you’ll think that’s super lame when you’re older, so I’ll do it now as much as I can!)
You love “school” (the MMO program). You almost never cry when I drop you off. You’re usually already playing with some of the toys when I walk out the door. Your teacher says you like to copy the other kids and you bring me the cutest art projects that I proudly display on the fridge and at work.
Most days you just take one big afternoon nap – sometimes up to 3 hours! The days that you get two naps in, you usually take about a 30 minute AM nap and an hour PM nap.
You’re becoming a picky eater. I try to roll with it. You LOVE peanut butter and jelly, mandarin oranges and bananas. Really anything sweet you love. You’re not a big fan of vegetables and meat. And you don’t like pasta! Crazy kid.
You’re still drinking out of a bottle 2 or 3 times a day. Everything I’ve read says you should only be using sippy cups now. But really, what’s the harm? You don’t drink as much milk out of a sippy cup and I want to make sure you get the minimum 16 ounces a day you’re suppose to have. You love to sling your sippy cups around and bang them on the floor, the table, the tv stand…so milk ends up everywhere. So I think we’ll keep the bottles around a little longer.
You’re a great sleeper. Your Dada does your nightly routine – brush teeth, pjs, diaper change, read, sing, bed. You go down drowsy, but awake and put yourself to sleep. You still use a paci and you have chosen a lovie – a yellow Dr. Seuss stuffed animal we’ve named Mr. Yellow since we have no idea what his real name is. You usually sleep 11 to 12 hours a night.
You recently cut two back teeth and were waking up a few times at night for about a week. But you put yourself back to sleep every time except for twice. I rocked you one time until you fell asleep. I didn’t mind one bit! Loved snuggling with you in the middle of the night like we used to. Every now and then that’s ok, but let’s not make it a habit! The other time you ended up in bed with us. The 5am wake up call we got that day reminded us why you don’t sleep in our bed. You were babbling on and on, smacking us on the back and crawling all over us…at 5am…
You’re in size 4 diapers and are wearing 12 month and 18 month clothing.
You’re still not fully walking. You are perfectly capable of it – you take 4-5 steps on your own all the time. But you can crawl faster than you can walk and you still don’t have enough confidence to walk on your own all of the time. So you still crawl 90% of the time.
You are talking like CRAZY! You basically try to repeat everything I say. You can communicate really well too. You ask for your baba (bottle), wawa (water), and bite (a bite of something). You say dada, mama, ball, tree, leaves, shoe, nose, eye, teeth, Jack, two, TV, rock, hi, bye-bye and a lot of other words I can’t remember right now. You can point out a lot of body parts (eyes, nose, teeth, ears, fingers, toes and belly button) and you say choo-choo when you see and train and beep-beep when you see a car. On command, you can clap your hands, wave, and start “itsy bitsy spider” (you put your hands together). You point the remote at the TV and say “TV!” You also put phones up to your ear and say “Hi!”
You’re so smart and talkative and cute and funny. Love you so much!
babies | baby | family | Uncategorized
Graham is (was) 11 months!
By sunshineandholly on October 10, 2013Dear Graham,
You’re actually 13 months! Where has the time gone?! Here is your 11 month post.
You’ve been on the move. Crawling, pulling up and cruising all over the place. You love to walk back and forth holding onto the couch. And we take laps around the house with you holding my hands. If I try to let go with one hand, you stop and squat. You’re not brave enough yet to try it one-handed.
You are absolutely in love with Lacey and Jack. They, however, are not so enamored with you. They try to escape you by jumping on the couch, but you just pull up and reach over to get them. You love touching Lacey’s feet and letting her lick you in the face. (Gross.) You actually lean over her with your mouth open until she licks you. I try to stop it, but I know she gets you when I’m not looking. Jack is still afraid of you and never lets you get close to him.
As far as sleeping goes, this month has been a roller coaster. But I can say now that we’re back on track and you are consistently sleeping through the night once again.
You’re rocking your 12 month clothes and are in size 4 diapers. We’re doing 3-4 bottles a day of formula. And you’ve been eating any food you can get your hands on.
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| I gave you some mac and cheese and the first time you had it you loved it. Ever since then you haven’t liked it. I think we need a maternity test. Not sure you’re my son…. |
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| You ate an entire slice of pizza at Mellow Mushroom. Where are you’re putting all of that food?! |
The sweet director of our local Mother’s Morning Out program let you start a month early. You go two mornings a week and you LOVE it! You never cry when I drop you off and couldn’t care less when I arrive to pick you up. All the other babies that cry must love their mommies more… Seriously though, I do wish you cared just a little bit when I left you. But it would break my heart if you cried, so I guess it’s a good thing you’re Mister Independent.
Love you so much big guy!
babies | baby | family
Our Experience with the Cry-It-Out Method
By sunshineandholly on September 23, 2013I think breastfeeding and sleep are two of the most debated and controversial topics out there for moms. I want to support all moms in all of their choices. What we do in our family is what’s best for us, and I don’t judge others for choosing different routes.
Graham has always been an awesome sleeper and I think it’s because he came so early. We would usually have to wake him up to feed him when he was an infant. He was sleeping almost 6 hours during the night by one month. And by 2 months, I think we were up to 8-10 hours a night. 3 months and on was 11-12 hours a night. God bless that little baby!
But…all good things must come to an end. And around 9 or 10 months, we really started to have some sleep problems.
I blame breastfeeding. Well, not really breastfeeding, but the end of our breastfeeding relationship. Around 5 months when Graham decided he liked the bottle better (click here to read about my entire breastfeeding experience) I was so upset. I missed all of our snuggle time. So I started to rock him to sleep at night. (Before this we could just lay him down in the crib and he would put himself to sleep.) In fact, I turned into that “creepy mom” that would go into his room after he’d been asleep for a while and pick him up, rock him, snuggle him and kiss him. (I’ll admit, I was an emotional, hormonal mess.) I know now that we really screwed up a good thing by rocking him to sleep.
Rocking worked for us for a while. But around 9 months (when Graham started to get really active) he started fighting sleep. It would take almost an hour to rock. And even then, once you stood up to lay him down he would wake up. It got to be a pretty miserable cycle. AND he started waking up in the middle of the night. Sometimes even 4 or 5 times. Then it was super hard to get him back to sleep.
We tried a lot of things, like having a routine and a consistent bedtime, but nothing helped. I even tried letting him sleep in our bed…but between him kicking me, sitting up, rolling over, talking and smacking me – I knew that co-sleeping wasn’t for us.
I never wanted to let my kids cry-it-out, but nothing else was working for us. We tried modified cry-it-out first. (Where you stay in the room with them, but don’t pick them up.) We gave that about a month before we realized it wasn’t going to work.
So I started doing tons of research on cry-it-out. And man, some of the stuff that’s out there will make you feel like a terrible mom for even considering letting them cry. There was one article in particular I read when we were in the trenches of the first week of cry-it-out. The article was so bad that I cried for hours that night – worrying that we were doing the wrong thing and permanently damaging our poor son.
The website that I found most helpful was troublesometots.com. Lots of great information and stories from moms.
So we decided to try it for a week. The first night was absolutely awful. One of the worst nights of my life. Graham cried for 45 minutes. I cried for FOUR HOURS. I think cry-it-out should actually refer to what the moms have to do – not the babies. And sleep training refers to training parents to be able to listen to their babies cry and learn to accept it and not run to their rescue. But the next night was better. Only 30 minutes of crying. The next night was just 10 minutes, and the next was just 5.
I remember thinking, “Damn it – it works…and I HATE that it works!” It goes against everything I feel and everything I wanted to be as a mom. But…it worked for us.
Now when we put Graham to bed, he fusses anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes. But he does go to sleep. And I’m not cruel – if he’s sick or we’ve had a rough day, I’ll still rock my baby.
AND he’s sleeping fully through the night again. No more waking up multiple times. 🙂
We’re all more rested and happier!
Have you had sleep issues with your baby? What methods worked for you?
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