Now that you’ve mastered that, try this!

Life is moving along her faster than it should.  I feel like Jude grows and changes everyday!  I get home from work and go, “whoa, did you grow while I was gone??”  His new skill this week is lots and lots of really loud talking.  He just talks his babytalk to me, Liz and his mobile or his toys.  It is so cute!

We keep changing things up for him lately.  He is doing really well with it all.  First, we have put him on a 4 hour schedule.  He eats, naps, and plays within the 4 hours and then starts again(except for at night).  We did this in hopes of him sleeping thru the night.  The first bit, he kept sleeping later and later until her slept from 7pm until 3:30am which was great!  Since he was doing so well with that, I decided last night to not swaddle him.  It was a rough night, but he did well considering.  We just had to go in there quite a bit to soothe him.

The schedule is making for a really happy baby.  He was such a good baby before, but would cry thru the day on and off.  Now, he is all smiles, coos and laughs when he is awake.  He has not only doing well on the schedule, but he also now sleeps in his crib unswaddles for his naps and at night!  What a big boy!

The schedule is really a learning tool for us and we realized some things.  1. He was eating a few ounces here and a few ounces there every hour or two.  I think whenever he was fussy, we stuck a bottle in his mouth and he learned to soothe that way.  Now, he takes down 8 oz bottles 3 times a day, some at 7am, and a 5 oz at night and is happy as can be.  We are working on weening him off of the 5 oz at night and right now his finiky about his 7am feeding, so I think once we take away the night bottle, he will drink the 7am down with no problem.  2. We can tell his different cries now.  He really likes to know when he is going to nap and sleep.  He goes down so easily when before he would cry because he was so tired. 3. He is much better about not getting overstimulated now.  I would play with him until he got fussy before and now with good sleep and big bottles, he love to play like a maniac during his play times.

We are not too strict about the schedule currently.  He sometimes is off by 30 mins with naps and sometimes we feed him outside of it if he is obviously hungry.  However, doing it has made him a better communicator and us better at picking up on what exactly he needs instead of just trying the usual 4 things.

He plays so hard now.  He bats and things and grabs things and chatters and coos and is so darn adorable.  We love to watch him change and grow all the time!

I have a hard time with cry it out, so Liz has accomidated me and we have not done that part of the sleep training.  She says that we are doing it in a month if he as not adjusted, but he is doing so well I don’t think it will be a problem.

He still HATES tummy time.  I call it tourture time and he screams at the top of his lungs for 3 5min intervals of it a day.  It is torture to all of us.  I know it is important, so we do it, but I just wish he would tolerate it more.  He still has not rolled over more than halfway because he hates is so much.

I love all his smiles and laughs.  He thought putting on pants is hilarious once or twice.  He knows Liz and me and will give us a smile just because we are there.

I have always wanted to be a mom, but I had no idea how much it would just fill me up and give me new purpose and joy.  Even when it is a bad day, it is still so amazing to have Jude in our lives.
-S
PS- Liz’s 30th b-day is Saturday, so wish her happy birthday if you get a chance! ;)