Growing So Fast

I don't really have much of a report or update on Canon, but I thought that it was about time to share some pictures and videos of the cutie-pie.

These were on a walk to get dinner out as a family, and Canon was being extra adorable... good thing my phone has a camera!

Mark and I drove down to Maryland for a wedding this past weekend, and we stopped in New Jersey on the way there and back to stay with a friend to break up the long drive. Here are a few fun ones of Canon's first real road trip and the fun along the way.

Here we are dancing at the wedding...it was the Mother/Son Dance.

Canon was so pooped after the wedding, and you could tell!!


Canon did sleep surprisingly well on this trip. Each night he only woke up once and was really easy to get back to sleep. In fact, he slept better than I did for the first two nights. I couldn't seem to fall asleep within an hour of going to bed!! :) However, he's been waking up a bit more now that we've gotten home, but I think that's due more to pain than habit now. I honestly think he might be teething, but he could be suffering from indigestion too. I've been feeding him quite a bit of rice cereal, and his stool has changed because of it. I'm going to back off of the grains a bit to see if he sleeps better at night. Tylenol usually does the trick, so I don't really think he's sick, but he's definitely uncomfortable.

Here are a few clips of Canon. (Note: They may not be entertaining to you unless you just like to see baby cuteness...not a whole lot happens, just a chance for me to show off the adorableness that is my son! :D )

This one was taken after I had come home from somewhere. Canon was asleep in the stroller, so I left him there to finish his nap. I heard a couple chimes of the tune the giraffe plays, which would only go off if it was moved, so I figured Canon must have woken up. When I went in to check on him, this is what I saw! Sooo cute!

This one was taken this morning. Canon was being extra vocal all day, and he was playing with that same giraffe. You can tell he gets distracted by the camera, but he still loves to play with the giraffe. (Hey Tiff, check out the bracelets I'm wearing!!)

5 Months Old's Sleep Patterns

Canon continues to grow every day. All week I've been thinking that he just looks so big to me... especially his head. I think he gets more and more adorable...which is a good thing because in some ways, he's more and more difficult to tend. I need to be more careful about what I do with him because I can tell that he's learning more about his surroundings... and he doesn't really like to be alone very much. If I don't watch it, he'll be mobile before I really baby-proof this place.

With growing older, sleeping patterns change, and it's always a challenge to keep track of how he should be sleeping. That being said, I think I might have been doing something wrong this whole time in regards to Canon's nighttime sleep. Often people ask if he "sleeps through the night" as they would about any baby. For a long time I figured that since he was younger than 6 months, he was still too little for me to allow him to "cry it out." However, as I reviewed a handout from my pediatrician, I read that babies his age shouldn't be waking up more than once per night to feed. Well, there have only been a handful of times when he woke up only once. Most of the time he's up twice between midnight and 6AM, but it's not abnormal for him to still want to eat every 2 hours some mornings. For a while I would brush it off thinking that it was due to growth spurts. Then, when I mentioned that to Mark he said that meant that Canon was going through growth spurts every other week.

I've come to the realization that's it probably just all my fault. Canon does sleep through the night for about 11-12 hours at a time, but he wakes up 3-4 times throughout that span. When he wakes up, I go in and give him the pacifier. If he doesn't fall right to sleep, I pick him up to feed him, and he sleepily nurses until he's dead asleep within 10 minutes. Only recently have I considered that he might just need to be held for a brief moment before falling back to sleep. I always figured if I coddled him like that, he'd never learn to self-soothe. I have a hard time letting him just cry for 5 minutes (like my pediatrician suggested) because if it's such a quick fix to give him the binky, why would I let him cry and cry and wake himself up more? I know he needs to learn how to soothe himself back to sleep, but I really want my sleep too, and the binky works so well. Therefore, recently I've been waiting to go to him when he wakes during his daytime naps. That way I'm not so bothered because I miss sleep, but it also helps him to learn that it's okay if I don't come right away. I hope that this will actually help when it comes to night wakings, that he won't get as upset if I'm not there within 1 minute, like usual up to this point. *crosses fingers*

Well, now that I've started him on rice cereal, he's been getting more full at night (generally), and last night was the best night he's ever had. The first time he awoke was after 4:30AM. S-W-E-E-T!!! I think I did attempt to allow him to cry longer before going in to get him, and it turned out that I didn't even need to go in at all. I can say that this better sleep is associated with eating rice cereal, but I believe it's actually more related to the fact that he's transitioning to only 2 naps per day. As he refuses to sleep when I expect him to be sleepy, he stays awake until he's practically cranky, then he crashes for a nap. On these days he seems to sleep better at night. Although, this hasn't been going on for very long, so I think I need about another week to determine how true that statement is. I'm trying to find time to read more of the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth because I've found it very helpful so far. Are there any tricks or bits of information that you've found particularly helpful when it comes to helping your child sleep better through the night? (I am really looking forward to sleeping through the night again because these months of sleep deprivation have finally caught up to me. The first couple of months I was able to make it through because of a rare nap and because I simply just had to do it. Now, I feel tired more often...now that the novelty of having a baby to tend has worn off.)

Here are some fun shots of the growing cutie-pie!

This started as just a fun time playing with baby, but ended with something a little unexpected!