Salad Days

These are, as they say, the salad days.

Now that Jack’s sleeping has improved so much, things have been going great.  I think we’re in a real golden age… Jack is so much fun right now.  I love to watch him play.  He spends a lot of time taking his toys out of the ottoman where we store them.  His favorite right now is a big yellow school bus that I think belonged to my nieces.  He LOVES the cats; if he sees one, he screams and chases after him.  Max wisely runs away, but Jemba is actually quite tolerant of Jack’s pokings and pullings.

Every morning after I nurse him I lift him up to look out of his window and he smiles.  He’s just generally good-natured these days.  (Not ALL the time, but most of the time.)  His naps are still a bit hit or miss.

He’s still doing great with his eating.  The past week or so he’s eaten dinner at the same time as me and Chris, and I give him a share of what we’re having.  Tonight we had pasta with mushroom sauce, and sauteed chard, and he wolfed them down.  (I don’t know how I got so lucky with his eating, but I know it might change when he hits the toddler years.)  He’s starting to use a spoon, though it usually ends with food all over him and the floor.

I usually nurse him four times a day.  I think when he turns 1 I’ll probably go down to twice a day.  I haven’t decided what’s best for the other two times after that… cow’s milk?  Soy milk?  They both seem to have their controversies.

He likes to be “chased”.. he crawls a little ways away and I come after him and he screams with delight.  He likes to cuddle his stuffed animals.

He’s going to be one year old (!!!) in three weeks.  I love seeing him grow up, but at the same time this is a place I’d like to hang on to.

Progress Report

Soooo, who’s dying to hear about Jack’s sleep?  I’m sure it’s ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT!  When is Cathy going to tell us more about Jack’s sleep!

Well, your wish is my command.  I don’t want to jinx it, but Jack’s night sleeping has suddenly become AWESOME.  I do not know how this miracle happened, but I do not question it.

He usually sleeps now from 8 PM to 6:30 – 7:30 AM, with no dream feed.  I discovered he didn’t need the dream feed any more quite by accident, when we were dealing with his jet lag in England.  The first couple of nights I made the mistake of picking him up at 11:30 for his normal dream feed, and he would be wide awake and upset for a couple of hours afterward.  Finally I decided to skip it, and he could wake me up around 2 or 3 and I’d feed him then, and he’d hopefully go back to sleep more easily.

Well, he didn’t wake me up!  It wasn’t like that the whole trip, since he was sick, and then when we got back it took about a week for him to readjust to the jet lag.  But after that, his sleeping just got better.  It’s not like that every night; once in a while he’ll wake up at 3:30 and need help getting back to sleep.  Also, he often makes a few noises during the night that wake me up, but he goes quiet immediately after.  And sometimes he wakes up earlier.

But it’s made such a big difference in my life.  I’m still not getting 8 hours of sleep because I just can’t go to sleep at 10:30, no matter how hard I try, but it is SO MUCH BETTER.  I wasn’t sure this day would ever come.  And I know it may change again, but for now, each morning when I wake up I am so grateful.