I've been horrible about posting. Yes, the blog was really dying, and, no, this is not a guarantee of continued vitality, just a random post that may or may not be followed up any time soon. As consolation, here's an update on what we've been doing since I last posted at the beginning of what turned out to be a very long, cold, snowy winter that is thankfully now drawing to a close.
Graham learned to sleep! When he was still waking 2-3 times a night in mid-February and was only sleeping 15-45 minutes a day total (not a typo), would not go to sleep without being attached to my breast, and was crying in excess of 3 hours a day almost every day because he was clearly so exhausted, we decided to consult a sleep specialist at the hospital where Graham was born. She prescribed a course of action that involved Ben sleeping on a mattress beside Graham's crib for a week, then slowly moving out of his room. He did. Graham slept. It was amazing. There were a few tears--the first night it took about half an hour for him to calm down, though Ben was there the whole time so that Graham didn't feel abandoned--but overall the whole process was a great experience. Within three weeks he was sleeping 11 hours straight through the night very predictably, and napping at least 45 minutes each for two naps a day without any struggle to go to sleep. In fact, sometimes he now practically jumps into his crib from our arms when he's ready for bed!
The change in Graham's mood and ability to learn has been astounding. He is truly like a different child than the one in the last post from November. Graham loves to play peek-a-boo with anyone who will look in his direction, using any covering he can scrounge up, and his face practically glows when he's "discovered." He still has his serious baby moments, but he is happy. He is really a happy baby, which it has very much relieved me to discover.
Graham learned to crawl and to pull up all in a single weekend in mid-December. By early January he had started to stand by himself. Whereas Jack tried every possible new skill right away, Graham seems to wait until he's really ready to do things perfectly before he attempts something new. By the time he stood for the first time, Graham was already falling gracefully. Not a single bad fall yet. Jack, by contrast, had bumps and bruises almost constantly for the entire year between 6 and 18 months of age.
Jack has been very supportive and loving of Graham, despite all the attention a baby requires. At one point over Christmas Jack worried to Nonna about Graham being able to reach one of Jack's CDs that was nearby. Jack then explained that he was worried, not that Graham would break the CD but that Graham would try to eat it and would get sick.
Jack's teachers also tell us that he's just blossoming socially. And he does seem to be. Last week we spent almost every day at a playdate, and Jack just loved it. Saturday was a treasure hunt with Thomas and his parents, Sunday Maddie and her family came over to grill out, Tuesday we visited Ava's new house with Ellie and Walker, Wednesday we went on a picnic with Thomas and Colin and Leander, Thursday we went to Bible study with Gabriel and John Paul, and then Friday we met up with Gabe and John Paul again at the park. Only on Monday were we alone together, and even that is qualified by the fact that he had preschool that morning! Jack gets along with almost everyone, and is learning to be assertive when other kids do something unkind to him.
But the stress of learning new social and academic lessons daily, if not hourly, has not left Jack unscathed. He's had sleeping trouble, in particular some dreams that seem to have truly terrified him. Sometimes after having a scary dream (we started using that term instead of "bad" dream, because Jack seems to have thought that that adjective meant he was bad, not that the dreamwas unpleasant), Jack would refuse to discuss it. One time he even explained why.
Jack: Do you know why I'm not telling you about my dream, Momma?
Momma: Why not sweetie?
Jack: Because then you might be scared of it, too, and I don't want you to be scared.
One time, he described with a horrified look on his face what happened during the dream. But his explanation left us a little befuddled and really working hard not to smile/crack up laughing.
Jack: In my dream a mean Humpty Dumpty came in my room. And I said, "Boo!" And the mean Humpty Dumpty said, "[gasp!]" Then he said, "Jack, your red birdie is eating a lemon!" in a mean voice. And my red birdie doesn't like lemons!
Well. Okay then. Not sure what to say to that. I think we managed to mask the amusement with a concerned look and asked something like, "And that made you worried about your birdie?"
Then there were the trips to the doctor. We logged at least one a week from mid-December until the end of January. On December 29, as Ben and I were getting ready to go out to dinner with friends, Jack fell off the step stool in the bathroom. Though he cried for about five minutes, which is uncharacteristically long for him, he seemed to be fine immediately afterwards. Two hours later, however, when our friends arrived to pick us up and Jack was still holding his right arm at a strange angle and refusing to use it, we asked our friend Neesha, who's an internist, to take a quick look at it. Jack let her move his arm around a lot, so we decided to wait until the next day to take him to his regular pediatrician. It was then that we discovered he had broken his clavicle. A broken collarbone. On a three year old. Seriously? Yeah, that was not fun. Fortunately he didn't need a cast, but he was in a soft canvas brace for six weeks and needed three sets of X-rays. It healed relatively very quickly, though; in three weeks it was mostly healed, and by his six week checkup, he was back to a completely normal range of motion and strength.
Most of January was a complete haze. In addition to dealing with Jack's immobility from his broken clavicle, we had two straight weeks of all of us being really, really sick. First we all caught the flu. Jack went down on a Friday afternoon and had temperatures of 104 for five days straight. Ben and I started getting really sick on Monday and were completely useless until Thursday. It was the kind of sick where you don't want to leave your bed for a week. But when both of you are sick and you have children to take care of, that obviously just can't happen. It was miserable. Wednesday night Jack was starting to mend, but Graham finally succumbed. Graham's bout was a lot less serious than ours, but it was still not pleasant. We must have gone through 20 boxes of Kleenexes. Chills, very high fevers, coughs, congestion, snot, body aches. We had it all except digestive ailments.
Nine days after it began, we seemed to be all mostly clear of the flu. That night Ben developed a horrible stomach bug. The next night I got it. Two hours after I started getting sick, Jack got sick. After two days of that, I called my dad and begged him to come stay with us for a few days. He did. The day after he got home, he got sick. We were down for the count for another week. The only good part of that week was that Graham didn't get the stomach bug. It was miserable.
But there were some fun developments bookending our two weeks of confinement. On January 9, Graham first started clapping and Jack first started reading his BOB books. By February 2, Jack's phonics awareness had developed enough that he made this card by himself.
He put the letters on from right to left and didn't leave spaces, so if read backwards with spaces it says, "I hop yo feel bettr." My jaw dropped. I was sitting right next to him as he did it and helped him find the letter stickers after he had told me which letter he wanted, but otherwise I did not intervene at all. It was truly amazing to watch.
