January 17, 2010

• Jack's first girlfriend (and other kid-related updates)

  It's been a while since I really wrote about how the boys were doing -- I've mostly just been posting photos -- so I here I am with a more in-depth update! But first, I want to share a video of Jack talking about his first girlfriend, a girl named Karis in his preschool class.

  I'm pretty darn sure he doesn't know what a girlfriend is, but this all came up because the other day, I asked Jack if he had any friends at school. He said, "Yeah. Girls!" My mom and I thought this was hilarious, and we asked, "Oh! You have girlfriends?" And Jack said, "Yes. Four!" So we asked him for a name, and after some consideration, he said, "Karis!" I think he was just saying any girl's name that he could remember. But, it was pretty cute, and when I picked him up from school on Thursday, he babbled on about how he shared his blocks and cars with Karis. If that's not love, I don't know what is.

  Other Jack Updates

  Jack is really growing up fast. He's talking nonstop, he really does understand everything we tell him now, and he's less prone to tantrums. I'm amazed at how quickly he learns new concepts. Yesterday, Johnny was reconfiguring the tracks on Jack's train table, with Jack's "help." Jack was particularly interested in the big piece of paper that came with the train table, which showed all the (thousand) pieces of track, each labeled with a letter, and how they go together. At one point, Johnny and I couldn't find one of the stations on the track. Johnny asked me, "Have you seen the little station? Not the big station, but the one with the orange pole thing?" I said, "No, I have no idea where it is. It was there this morning." A few seconds later, Jack walked up to us, waving the giant diagram around, saying, "Need a T! Need a T!" and pointing to the paper. We looked down and saw that he was pointing to the illustration for the component labeled "T" -- which was exactly the little station we had been talking about. It doesn't seem like much, but we were impressed that he had a) paid attention and understood what we were describing (we hadn't been talking to him), b) identified the little drawing of it in the diagram and c) gotten the concept that the letter was a label, and referred to the little station as "T." Pretty cool!

  Although I'm always happy to see Jack picking up new skills, I'm most proud when he shows kindness and consideration toward Derek. It is really neat to watch Jack exhibit caring behaviors without our prompting. Whenever Derek cries, Jack will drop what he's doing and say, "Oh, no! Derek crying! Help him!" Often he'll run to try to get a bottle, or to find a pacifier for Derek. He'll also request to hold his brother, and he loves to press the buttons on Derek's exersaucer, then dance in a circle as music plays, to make Derek laugh. We like to tell Jack that he's a great big brother, and that he and Derek will need to watch out for each other and take care of each other their whole lives.

  Aside from his emotional/intellectual growth, I think Jack must also be experiencing a physical growth spurt. The boy has been an eating machine lately. Tonight for dinner, he ate an entire adult-sized portion of udon noodles stir fried with baby bok choy, enoki mushrooms, green onion, chicken and fish. He followed that with eight orange wedges (a whole navel orange's worth) and washed it down with eight ounces of milk. And that was less than two hours after eating a whole cup of animal crackers and two tangerines at the park. Jack's always been a good eater, but for the past two weeks, he's been eating us out of house and home! After his preschool mornings, he's especially ravenous. The other day while I was warming up his lunch after preschool, he sat there and ate half of a raw green bell pepper. He then went on to eat a whole chicken drumstick, drink nine ounces of milk, and devour two tangerines and half a banana. We have an appointment for his 2.5-year check up this coming Wednesday -- I'm eager to see how much he's grown. He's also been sleeping a ton -- two-hour naps (sometimes three), and sleeping at night from about 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. (I shouldn't say that out loud -- as soon as I do, he'll start waking up super early and skipping naps again, I'm sure.) Jack still seems skinny as ever, but he has gotten taller. I guess I should get used to all this eating. Someday we'll have two teenage boys around, yikes!

  Derek Updates

  My baby is growing up! It took a couple of weeks, but just within the last two days, Derek has really begun to like solids. He can't get enough of zucchini, in particular, and he's also a fan of bananas and butternut squash. Tomorrow night I'm going to make a batch of "Trio of Root Vegetables" (steamed parsnip, sweet potato and carrots pureed together), more zucchini, and pears and apples with cinnamon.

  For the last couple of weeks, we'd been having a really tough time with Derek's daytime schedule and nighttime sleep. Since he was two months old, Derek's pretty much been sleeping through the night, but since he turned six months, he started waking up at least two to three times a night. To get him back to sleep ASAP, I would pick him up and feed him, but that never kept him asleep for longer than three or four hours. During the day, he'd get fussy and need to eat (or so I thought) every couple of hours or so, but refuse to take more than a few ounces at a time. It was also really hard to get him down for naps.

  I know there are lots of schedule-disrupting events around six months, because babies are gaining so many skills (sitting up, really grasping with accuracy, etc.) and possibly teething. I can deal with daytime wackiness, but I cannot deal with messed-up nighttime sleep. Obviously, with babies (and young children in general), you're going to have the occasional bad night, and almost always you'll have an early wake-up call, but I really need my babies to sleep well on their own for the entire night. It's one of mine and Johnny's non-negotiable issues when it comes to parenting. We never had to deal with much sleep training for Jack -- he also started sleeping through the night around two months, and except for the periodic nighttime waking during teething or developmental milestones, he pretty much kept it up. So this was the first time we'd run into nighttime sleep issues. I was emailing Donna about our woes (her baby, Josh, is the same age as Derek), and she told me how they had successfully dealt with similar issues with Josh by letting him cry it out (CIO). I know CIO isn't for everyone, but it's always appealed to me (obviously only when the baby is old enough) as a way to train a baby to fall back asleep on his own if he wakes up in the middle of the night. And, like I said, sleep is just about the only area of parenting in which I'm a "tough-love" kind of person. So, after asking Donna a ton of questions, we started CIO on Wednesday. After Derek's bedtime routine and bottle, I put him down awake. Lo and behold, he fell asleep on his own, without rocking. If he cried in the middle of the night, I'd go and peek in to make sure nothing was physically wrong, and then leave him to cry for five minutes. If he was still crying, I'd go and pat him and put in the pacifier, then leave again and go in five minutes later, if necessary.

  It was hard to hear him cry, for sure. Wednesday night, after an hour of this cycle, I chickened out and picked him up, thinking he must be hungry to cry for so long. Well, the little imp took only three ounces before zonking out and snoring away for the next five hours. Thursday night, I was wiser. He woke up at 2 a.m. and cried for almost 45 minutes (with me going in every five minutes), and then slept for the rest of the night, waking up cheery and bright-eyed shortly after 6 a.m. Last night -- wait for it, wait for it -- he slept through the night again for the first time in two weeks! Tonight, he again fell asleep on his own, and so far, so good. He's been happy in the morning, and (I don't know if this is connected), he's been a lot better about eating during the day. We've been able to (for the last few days) stop the constant eating and instead do four big bottles, and solid breakfast, lunch and dinner. I'm really happy with the progress we've made, and I feel like Derek's been in a much better mood during the day, too.

  Finally: Am I the only mom out there who doesn't feel like her baby's growing up too quickly? I just can't wait to see Derek and Jack really playing together, and for Derek to be able to join in the fun for real. Plus, I'm eager to be done with bottles and drooling and all the baby stuff. As trying as toddlers can be, what I've learned since July 2007 is that as much as I love kids, I'm not really the biggest baby person!  With that being said, I do love hearing Derek's baby belly laugh, and seeing his whole face light up and his body wriggle with excitement whenever I come back into the room, even if I've only been gone for a few minutes. That's something you only get from babies, and I will miss that when he grows up. It's also heartwarming to see Derek watching Jack's every movement with an expression of utter admiration. I really hope the boys are best friends (or at least very close ones) as they grow up.

  OK, I'll stop writing my novel now. I hope everyone's having a great weekend!

  • 1:45 am
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