Another first (sort of)

Tummy sleeping. Yikes. I've been putting Seth to sleep in the sleep sack as much as possible because I knew this was coming, and last night the inevitable happened. I laid him down on his back and he immediately rolled over. I rolled him back and he rolled over again. A third time I rolled him to his back and he rolled over. So I thought, okay suit yourself, and left the room. Within about 10 minutes the whining had escalated to outright screaming in agony so I went in and picked him up, calmed him down, put him down again on his back and said goodnight, again. Whine whine whine…. Silence. I peek in and he is asleep on his tummy, face smushed flat against the mattress, pacifier jammed in the mouth, one hand gripping the crib rail (we took the bumpers out a couple weeks ago), and the other tucked up underneath him by his chin.

Okay, so technically it's not the first time he's slept on his tummy. He actually slept that way quite a bit in the hospital. Not such a big deal when he's hooked up to all those monitors making sure he's breathing and his heart is beating. At home it's a little scarier, especially at bed time. So I reviewed my research, confirming what I already knew that once they roll over on their own you can let them stay there. And then right before I went to bed I went in and rolled him onto his back anyway, hehe. Not because I was really afraid he would suffocate, but because I figured that as soon as I fell asleep he would wake up and want to be on his back so I'd have to come roll him over then anyway.

I'm actually kind of excited that he's doing this because I'm hopeful that eventually he'll be more comfortable on his tummy and maybe sleep longer that way. We've been getting some pretty solid 4 hour stretches the last two nights so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Then again, next thing we know he'll start pulling himself up and we'll have to go in there and help him lay down again. Somebody hit the pause button!!!

Seth 23 Weeks

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Dear Seth,

You are 23 weeks old today. As you can see above, you were really interested in contributing to this post today. Quite the little computer nerd already I see.

Big accomplishment today - sitting up! I was posing you with the monkey and noticed you were hardly leaning on the chair at all so I thought, hmmm, let's see what he can do on the floor. You were a champ! You balanced on your own for at least 30 seconds more than once. One time you even toppled forward and caught yourself with your hands (instead of your face as per usual). On top of that, I held a toy out to you and you reached out and grabbed it without falling over, which is the most impressive thing of all. You've still got aways to go before you can just sit and play by yourself but you have made some huge strides.

Your grabby little hands are getting more and more coordinated these days. You see something you want and you just launch yourself toward it like a horse coming out of the gate. I'm not a huge fan of the vise grip you apply to my skin though, hopefully you'll learn to be more gentle soon. The cats will appreciate it too.

Well my little man... I have the opportunity tonight to head to bed a little early, since you are asleep and the dishes are done. So I'm gonna take it. I can't think of any other accomplishments off the top of my head anyway. You sure haven't managed to sleep any longer at night since last week. I'm gonna have to come up with some kind of night time boot camp for you because I'm getting more and more zombie like by the day and we all know that's not attractive.


Love you anyway! More later...

Love, Mama

Seth 22 Weeks

Dear Seth,

You are 22 weeks old today. You are truly the happiest baby on the block, and at least for the time being a tough little cookie. Nothing gets you down, nothing rattles you. Bright lights, loud noises, strangers, hot, cold, wind, rain, you take it all in stride. You're pretty easily distracted from hunger and about the only time you're really grumpy is if you're tired too. I try *really* hard to keep you well rested and I like to think that is at least part of the reason you are so delightful. The other part is just your natural sunny disposition and we are so blessed.


Last Thursday you came down with a little cold so you've been sniffly and coughing. But it was like you knew there were fun times to be had on the weekend so on Friday you power napped. Your three naps that day added up to over 6 hours - more than double your usual nap time quota. That plus a full night's sleep and you were in pretty good spirits on Saturday while we sat out in the yard and watched Daddy and Grandpa work on the deck.


You just love being outside (too bad I didn't get a picture of that). Yesterday we went up to the high school to run on the track, but I couldn't fit the jogging stroller through the opening in the fence. So I carried you through and laid you down on the grass while I folded the stroller up and carried it through. You just rolled onto your side and grabbed big handfuls of grass gleefully, like "oooh this is new!" I'm sure one day it will be big handfuls of mud and that won't be quite as cute.

You are really getting the hang of this rolling thing. We put you down on your back and in a flash you'll roll over to your tummy, and in another flash back to your back. Soon you'll be rolling right across the room, down the stairs, out the front door, and to the mailbox to check and see if the Netflix movie you've been waiting for has arrived. Ha! I am NOT looking forward to baby proofing. As I read through the safety checklists it makes me realize our whole house is just a big baby death trap. It might actually be easier to sell our house, move, and start from scratch.

You are just starting to sit up a little bit. You're strong enough to do it, you just don't quite understand how to balance very well yet. But I just have to have my fingertips against you and you will wobble there for quite awhile. If you have something to hold onto you'll stay up on your own too. And of course you can sit up on the couch just fine like a big boy, even with one foot in your mouth.



I love you buddy, but seriously, SERIOUSLY, I would someday like to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time. You are 5 months old now, it's time to man up and Sleep. Through. The. Night. I'm not asking for much here. I don't expect you to sleep 12 hours without eating, that's crazy. But 5 would be nice. Pretty please? If there's anything I can do to help you out, just let me know. You're doing really well with the one-armed swaddle right now, I think pretty soon you'll be able to graduate to the sleep sack full time. Then maybe we'll work on kicking your pacifier habit and/or introducing a blankie or stuffed animal for you to snuggle with. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Until next week.

Love, Mama

Big week for the record books

Lots of firsts this week for our growing boy! Yesterday he rolled over from his back to his tummy for the first time. He did it again today, so it wasn't a total fluke. Just put a toy over on his side and he goes for it. Then I started hearing him say "Mamama" a lot starting just yesterday afternoon. He also says "Papapa" but it's kind of a soft whispery 'p' sound. Very cute. And finally today he seems to have his first cold. :( Not so fun. He is coughing and has a runny nose, and sneezing more than usual. It doesn't seem to be bothering him in the least, so I'm not worried. Just doing a lot of wiping snot off his upper lip. Ew.

With the rolling over we really have to get serious about weaning from the swaddling blanket. I'm not sure any of us are ready but the day has come. So he gets one arm out now, and he uses it to whack himself repeatedly in the forehead. Which is okay with me as long as he's not pulling the pacifier out of his mouth. I left him to it for his afternoon nap and he still fell asleep so I guess it's just another one of his quirky ways of winding down.

*Yawn* Now if he would just start sleeping for 12 hours straight at night we'd be in business.

Here's a picture from a BBQ we went to last weekend. Notice what Seth has a handful of in his left hand. Ow.

Seth 21 Weeks

Dear Seth,

You are 21 weeks old today, almost officially 5 months!

So now that I'm back at work we finally have something loosely resembling a routine. So at long last, here's a little run down of a day in your life: You start your day around 8am most mornings - occasionally at 7am or rarely at 9am if you're feeling especially generous, but interestingly almost always at the top of the hour. You and daddy hang out and have breakfast and then usually take an hour and a half long nap starting at around 9:30-10am (or about an hour and a half after you get up). After that you wait patiently for me to get home from work so you can eat again, and by then you are pretty grumpy and frantic. But you give me the biggest gummy smile when I walk in the door. Maybe you're just thinking "yay, lunch is here" but it still makes me feel pretty good. After you eat you go down for your afternoon nap almost right away and sleep for about 45 minutes usually, sometimes more. While you're napping I try to get the diaper bag and car seat ready so that we can leave the house fairly quickly after you wake up (if we happen to be getting out of that house that day). After your nap we go run errands or go on a walk, or just play and sing songs at home. You still love your play mat and will lay there batting and grabbing stuff for like an hour on your own. If you seem to be bored with that I sit you in the high chair and we listen to music while I cook or tidy up the kitchen. You seem to prefer staring out the window at the trees to watching me do stuff, which is fine with me. Around 5pm you take another nap, usually a pretty short one. When you wake up you either get a bath or you hang out in the kitchen with me some more as I scramble to try and get dinner ready. You only get a bath about twice a week at the moment because I'm doing some experimenting to address the rashy rash you get on the backs of your knees. Bathing seems to make it much, much worse, so I don't know if it's the soap or what. You're still going to bed anywhere from about 6:30-8pm, depending on your mood and how your afternoon naps played out. Then you usually wake up once or twice over the next couple of hours, and then on a good night another once or twice before morning. On a bad night it's every hour and a half, uggghhh. That happens more often than I'd like. Daddy and I roughly take turns going to tend to you at night. The way it works usually is if I don't think you ought to be hungry I give your dad a shove and he stumbles in to shush you.

That's a typical weekday... weekends are still pretty random and unstructured. And it's summertime, so I don't expect that to change any time soon. You seem to be rolling with it pretty well though, so I'm not worried.

Feeding you is still pretty enjoyable for the most part. You love your food and you're so cute with your satisfied little sigh you make with every swallow. If I had to describe our style it would be more "on demand" than anything else, which I know isn't very Baby Wise/Whisperer of us. But it's working and I don't think either of us has any complaints. You often eat just before nap time or bed time, although you never fall asleep *while* eating (except during the night), which to me is the important thing. And you sleep better that way, so experts be darned.

You love music. The Itsy Bitsy Spider always gets a big smile out of you. Even daddy sings that one for you almost every day. I sing to you out of our lullaby book every night and you love it. I sing to you during the day as often as I remember.

Your grabbing skills have improved greatly the last couple of weeks, I'm sure because you get lots of practice. You grab your toys, my lips, the cats' fur/ears/tail, Natalie's hair, my boobs, to name a few of your favorite targets. You're also starting to bang on things. When you're in the high chair with a rattle in your hand, watch out! Bang, bang, bang! The best part is you flinch every time you hear the bang, like "ugh, what was that??" You also flinch on the clapping when I sing "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" (*clap clap*).

You frequently roll onto your side now if there is a toy over there that you want. It's only a matter of time before you end up on your tummy by accident. Once you get on your tummy you do some pretty serious scooting. Today you pushed yourself backwards a good 6 inches or so. You also do some army crawling from side to side if you're motivated. Yikes, I am not looking forward to baby proofing. Way too many stairs and sharp edges in this house!

Mmmkay, well I think I've more than made up for my short post last week. I'm sure you'll be waking up from your evening nap any minute now so I better go start dinner.

Love ya!

Love, Mama

Memorial "camping" trip

This past weekend Seth got to go on his first "camping" trip down at Hell's Gate State park in Lewiston, ID. First time out of the state of Washington! I say "camping" because while we were at a "campground," we slept in a little one room cabin and Grandpa T and Nana had their motor home. But aside from sleeping we spent the whole weekend outdoors and Seth absolutely loved it (as far as we can tell). Next year we will probably tent it unless we've managed to get ourselves a trailer by then, but that's doubtful.

Anyway, we arrived on Friday which began a 3 day marathon of Seth getting passed around from person to person.

I think he spent all of 5 minutes in his high chair and the rest of the time in someone's arms or lap. From the pictures you'd think only Grandpa held him but there actually were others. SO MUCH to look at, everywhere! The trees, the river, the dogs, the fire, the new faces. Pure bliss for a baby boy who's spent 90% of his life in his bedroom or living room at home with his mom.

We needlessly packed an entire bag full of Seth's toys which we didn't touch all weekend (aside from tripping over it).


Eric and I played golf on Saturday at Bryden Canyon, which was fun. It was my first time on the course this year and the first 8 holes were a train wreck. I was starting to think I just wanted to go home, but then I parred #9 and played the rest of the round fairly well. My excuse is the last time I played I was 20 weeks pregnant so it took me a while to get used to my new center of gravity.

Sunday morning Seth woke up bright and early at 6:30am. Grandpa T had said Seth could come hang out with him any time after 7am so Eric took him up on that and made a very special delivery to the motor home. I didn't think we'd be able to go back to sleep but the next thing we knew we were waking up at the late late hour of 10AM!!! I can't remember the last time I slept that long. After we got up and showered we sat around for awhile before loading up Seth into our beer holder and going for a walk.


When we got back Seth sat with Auntie Jen for awhile and got a little taste of my pasta salad. I stuck a noodle in his mouth and he drooled all over it while waving his arms everywhere. I think he liked it! He also got to suck on an apple slice for a minute before I got worried he might bite off a chunk and choke on it.


Seth slept amazingly well at night all weekend considering his nap shortage, later bedtimes, and our extremely creaky bed. Here's Daddy and Seth snoozing away after a 4am feeding.

For some reason he had a hard time during the day napping in the motor home with Nana and Auntie Jen cooing at him and making him laugh. I can't imagine why??? :)

He was pretty tired all weekend but he hardly fussed about it, he was too distracted. Finally Sunday afternoon Eric and I took him over to the cabin and he slept for a solid hour and a half, which is pretty rare for an afternoon nap.

Then he stayed up late by the camp fire until he couldn't stop rubbing his eyes so we whisked him off to bed. Eric had forgotten to bring the listening half of the baby monitor so I had to go with him.

All in all it was a great weekend, we had lots of fun. The weather was really nice up until the last day when we had to pack up and leave. This is one of my favorite pictures of the two of us outside watching Eric expertly consolidate two coolers into one.

Seth snoozed almost the entire 2 hour car ride home. But now I need a vacation from my vacation. My own bed never felt so comfortable. I've stayed up waaaay too late the last two nights catching up on Facebook and my tv shows. So tonight I resolved to get to bed by... well 8:30 sounds good. That gives me 13 minutes to get upstairs and under the covers.

Seth 20 Weeks

Dear Seth,

You are 20 weeks old today, and while that is quite the milestone... my novel about your latest achievements is going to have to wait for another day. Your mama has to get up for work tomorrow at 5am (if I'm lucky), and you took forever getting yourself down for the night tonight. So it's late, and I'm tired. But I will say that you are developing quite the personality, and your ever increasing number of distinct facial expressions crack everyone up, including yourself. You get cuter every day and I love you so much!

Love, Mama