Quick Catch Up on the Last 5 Months

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.

I Can't Believe

how big our boys are getting.

Just after he got out of the bath tonight, Graham took his first real steps! He didn't stop walking until we put him in his crib. The light in his eyes clearly revealed that he was thinking, "Oh, ho, ho! Now what can I do with this new way of moving!? Any new things I can get to?" Quite pleased with himself, and very steady on his feet. As well he should be--he's been cruising for over four months now! He just had not yet seen any value at all in walking independently since he could do everything he wanted by cruising or crawling. But this walking thing, he seems to realize now, is a game changer.

Then at bedtime Jack showed us how incredibly well he can read. He sounds out 3-4 letter words and has great comprehension. He can read just about any word with traditional letter sounds and short vowel sounds, along with blends (sh, ch, th) and a few double vowel sounds (ou, oo, ee). I suppose this means we'll be skipping the spelling-out-words-we-don't-want-Jack-to-understand phase.

Both of these developments call for serious regrouping on the parental front. Brace yourself--we've got quickly growing boys here!

Practice

Graham is practicing chasing after cans (and pretty much anything else that moves) in preparation for crawling. He's sitting up very securely now. I'm still hoping for teeth to pop through any day, as his sleeping (lack of) and crying (abundance of) are starting to drive us all a little batty. Graham rarely sleeps more than a total of an hour and a half during the day, usually in one catnap of 15-30 minutes and one 1-1 1/2 hour nap. According to all the sleep books (and a cursory measure of what nap patterns 1) result in less Graham fussiness, 2) give Jack and me a little time alone each day, and 3) leave me feeling sane), Graham should be taking 1-2 more naps and sleeping a total of 3-4 hours during the day. We're working on sleep so that future videos will have more examples of cooing and less of crying.

Despite teething pain, Graham still frequently rewards us with fleeting but adorable half-smiles that he immediately hides by burying his face into the nearest shoulder a la Harrison Ford with separation/stranger anxiety (which Graham is exhibiting in spades).

Jack said to me tonight as I was tucking him in, "Momma, after you go downstairs and after I read my book and the light goes out, I'm going to practice singing 'Hush Little Baby' for when I'm a daddy someday."

Also attached are our Halloween pictures. We went as a pirate family, with Graham playing parrot. I was quite proud of myself for throwing together Graham's outfit especially.

Every Day in Lots of Ways

That's how these boys amaze me.

Graham? Sitting up. All by himself. And he loves it--I've seen more smiles from him in the past 2-3 weeks since he's been able to stay up by himself than I've seen in his entire previous six months combined. It's completely changed his world view--literally. His experience of sitting up wasn't quite as dramatic as Jack's. I didn't realize until Jack was six months old that he was capable of sitting up, but when we first tried it, he immediately sat. With Graham, I knew how much more fun a sitting baby can have/be, so we started propping him to sit several weeks ago and gradually pulled away the supports. So there's no exact time I can put on the "First Date Baby Sat Up" line in the baby book, but he definitely has the hang of it now.

Graham also seems to be getting his first tooth. I haven't had any official sightings of it yet, but I can feel a bump on the right side of his mouth, and we've had more than a few rough nights in the past few weeks, with lots of crying, gnawing, and drooling. All of which adds up to a likely tooth.

And Jack? Well, two things. Yesterday morning we were at a Bible study and Jack was playing in an adjoining room with two other little boys while the mommas talked God. One of the other boys was having a bit of a rough morning (sharing was hard for him and shoves were more plentiful that day), and Jack dealt with it soooooo well. A few of the snippets I overheard Jack saying:

Can I help you with that puzzle? Maybe I can put together the James pieces and you can do the Thomas ones. Would that be okay? [It was, of course, a Thomas train puzzle, though oddly enough we weren't the ones who brought it.]

Ouch--that hurts me. [when the other boy was tackling a little too hard. Note the lack of accusation. Just the statement of effect was enough to get him to back off. Makes me wonder if Jack's noticing and imitating Ben's and my conscious efforts to try to use statements instead of demands/accusations a la "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk"]

It's okay. You did not break my train. It's supposed to be that way. You have been playing very gently with my trains. [the other boy thought he had broken a wheel on a train, but it really wasn't broken.]

[when the other boy was sitting on all the trains so that his two friends couldn't play with them]: Jack: Why don't we all play with trains together?

[when the other boy didn't respond to that after several tries] Jack to me: Momma, should we all get to play trains together?

Me: Yeah, that sounds like a great idea!

[other boy, hearing this and seeing that his mom was noticing, though hadn't had to say anything yet, started to get up]

Jack: Yeah, I think we should all have a train to play with.

And that was the only time any parent needed to get involved with their interaction. The rest of the time the boys solved issues by themselves. Everything Jack said was very judicious, with no blaming, no whining, no tattling. And yet it was also very assertive; he wasn't going to let anyone steamroll him. Preschool has given him great opportunities to use his emerging social skills. I'm constantly grateful for his fantastic teachers there and amazing to see him bloom into such a thoughtful, fair, kind little boy.

And the other thing that just floored me today was when Jack read a word I didn't know he knew. He's known how to read/spell Jack, Momma, Daddy, and, the, and maybe a few other words I'm not thinking of now for a while. When he was interested in letters last spring and had just learned all the letter names, I got some small foam letter stickers from a craft store and we used them to "write" words on paper by sounding them out and sticking them on. I didn't want to put too much pressure on Jack learning to read by himself at an early age, because he's got decades of reading ahead of him, and right now I'd much rather he learn the imaginary play, social interaction, and creative thinking skills that are already becoming important to getting along with a group of his peers--things that aren't taught directly in school. But he kept persisting in wanting to learn about letters, so whenever he showed interest, I talked about it.

So at noon today we were at the drive-through (teething nights leads to Momma outsourcing some of the cooking) when Jack pointed to a sign and said, "Momma that says 'dog.'" Surprised, I looked up, and sure enough, there was a sign that said "Dog Wash." No identifying pictures or symbols--just "Dog Wash." So I stammered, "You're right, Jack--it does say 'dog!'" Then asked how on earth he knew that. Jack responded, as matter-of-factly as if every 3 year old knew these things so surely every momma should, "It says D-O-G. Duh-AW-guh. Dog." My jaw dropped.

Judge Not...

In contemplating whether having both boys asleep by 6 p.m. tonight makes me a good momma or a bad momma, I realized several things:

1. I have got to find a way to get Jack to take the naps he still so desperately needs but is refusing so obstinately, especially on his most tired days.

2. I am a bit to involved in reading Wicked, as I thought of that opening sentence in the same cadence as, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?"

3. Who cares, when it means I'll have time for a treadmill workout to replace the jog that had to be aborted this afternoon due to a baby who didn't want to ride in our awesome new double jogger in my hour of need today?

4. I really have to stop judging myself so much...