Jadens Journey

Today we celebrated Grandpa’s (Neville’s dad’s) birthday since Grandpa and Grandma will be at the NCAA Women’s basketball “Final Four” games on Grandpa’s actual birthday (lucky dogs!). 

We faced an interesting dilemma with Jaden’s sleep schedule and our travels. Now that he’s on one nap a day, he usually sleeps from 1-3 in the afternoon. We usually start getting him ready for bed around 7, and at 8 we hope he’s asleep. The complicating factor is that Grandma and Grandpa are an hour or so from here, so timing our visit in between sleep periods was a challenge. We finally decided to put him in for his nap a little early, drive to the next state to have dinner around 4, then leave around 7 and put him to bed when we got home. 

Well, that didn’t work. He was fine for the visit, but then he slept all the way home in the car, and after that hour or so nap he wanted to stay up and play, even though it was now his normal bedtime. We just now got him to fall asleep, and it’s nearly 10 p.m. I think we’ll need a new plan for our next visit. Maybe we should just skip his nap, hope he sleeps in the car on the way there, have our visit, then get him back in the car before 6 p.m so we have plenty of time to wind him back down once we get home. 

Who knew sleep schedules could be so confusing and time-consuming.

Now- you’re probably wondering why I titled this post “Ceiling fans.”  There is a good reason for that. Jaden has taken a sincere liking to ceiling fans. It started with the one in our family room. Before he was crawling he would enjoy watching the fan go “round and round” while he played on the floor in the family room. Then it got to the point where, if the fan wasn’t on, he would point to the switch on the wall and  grunt “uuuuh-uuuuh…” until we figured out that he wanted the fan on. Now he just looks up at the fan, then looks at us, and repeats, until we flip the fan on. When the fan goes on he gives this little, contented laugh. I still wonder what he’s thinking when he gives that little giggle. It’s quite cute and I should try to get a video of it (and then I should try to figure out how to post videos to this website— but that probably won’t happen until Jaden is 18 or so…years, not months).

The funny thing about the fan-fetish is that now, no matter where we go, if there is a ceiling fan he expects it to be turned on at his requisition. In the gym/studio there are 4 or 5 ceiling fans, which he stands under one by one, pointing and grunting, insisting they be turned on.  I find myself dragging him away and explaining that the fans cannot be turned on until later. Quick – find a toy to distract him until we can close the door to the baby sitting room….

This comes up tonight because he managed to find two ceiling fans at grandma and grandpa’s and then finagled to have them both spinning. It was dizzying watching him look back and forth from one fan to the other. Sorry, baby — we only have one ceiling fan. You’ll just have to figure out your sleep issues so we can visit grandma and grandpa’s more often to get you your fan-fix.

Everything else ceiling fan, driving, napping, sleep

I really need to start collecting my thoughts on my little recorder. I carry one around with me all the time – but at this point it just takes up space in my purse (or diaper bag, these days) since I never pull it out to use it. Although I have pulled it out to replace the batteries a few times. The point is: today we were driving in the car on the way to “Mommy and me” class and I thought of a few things I’d like to blog about, but of course now I cannot think of what they were. At the time I thought “I should really pull out the recorder and get this down” and then laziness got the better of me and the subject of my blog is now lost. It was pretty funny too – so you’re really missing out. 

So Auntie Tina enjoys the pic of Jaden in his hat-shorts, shorts-hat. I have to admit it makes me giggle every time I see it too. We have so many great pictures of Jaden, but a lot are either on Grandma and Grandpas camera, or on Auntie Tina’s camera, so a lot of them don’t get posted. The other complication is that it takes me FOREVER (am I the only one?) to upload pics to snapfish and slide.com, so I have to either wait until Jaden is napping or until he is asleep— and as anyone with a 1-year old knows, once they’re asleep, it’s party time, not snapfish time.

We had a relatively rough day today – following a relatively good night. Last night we had the usual 2-3 awakenings between bedtime (8:30 these days) and midnight – generally we deal with night terrors or nightmares in these hours. Last night it was only nightmares. Then we had a partial awakening around 1:30 which was easily remedied by a few pats on the back and “shh-shh-shh’s”. Usually around 3:00 we’ll then have a wakening where we have to do a diaper change and a bottle (believe me, you do not want to try to change Jaden’s diaper at 3:00 a.m. without giving him a bottle to focus on). Some days that lasts 20 minutes, other days it can go as long as 2.5 hours — OH yes, those are the fun nights.  However, last night was not a usual night.

After the “shh-shh-shh’s” I went to sleep again, fully expecting to be awake again in 2 hours, only to wake up to Neville holding Jaden over me at 6:50 a.m. saying “Mommy, wake up.” I was a little disoriented momentarily, thinking that I must just not remember the diaper change, the bottle, the 5:30 a.m. waking where Neville tries to get Jaden back to sleep and fails and then takes him downstairs while I go back into the sleep zone until he wakes me up so he can get ready for work. So it took me some time to realize the reason I didn’t remember the diaper change and bottle was because there wasn’t any. It took me another moment to realize that Jaden just woke up – Neville hadn’t yet dressed him. Halleluia!! Sleep, sweet sleep!!!!!!

And then….

Once the day began, I started to wonder whether a (relatively) full night’s sleep was worth it. Jaden was super-super clingy today. He didn’t want to let go of my pant leg. Very unlike him, usually. He was super-super cranky at “mommy and me” and now I wonder whether I should have taken him. I did try a different time since I’ve been trying to push him to only one nap. Some days he makes it, some days he doesn’t. Yesterday he didn’t (hmmmm….). Today I pushed him to it, but he was over-exhausted by bedtime, and driving me absolutely crazy long before bedtime.  

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I think Jaden was cranky because now he sports a new bruise on his forehead from a spill he took at the aquarium on the concrete-covered-in-thin-carpet floors (hey Dad- it’s on the same side as the scratch, so it the scratch isn’t as visible anymore!) and a bloody lip from some lady that purposely tripped him. 

Okay so that’s a little severe. Maybe it wasn’t on purpose. She was sprawled out on the floor and saw Jaden coming, and seriously if you see a 1-year old coming straight for you don’t you do your best to move your legs out of the way? Well, she didn’t. He fell over her legs (c’mon – her body was a loooong way away from her legs, if you’re looking from the vantage point of someone who is only 32 inches tall). He took a bad face-plant and started crying (another unusual reaction from Jaden) and she said “Oh I guess he’s still learning to walk?”

B!&$%. 

So I’m going to keep writing because it’s Friday night and it seems these days I’m either all or nothing with the blog…

This week I hooked up with a babysitting gig at a local workout studio in return for my membership there. YAY! Remember how when we brought Jaden home I had lost about 10 lbs? Well I gained it all back and then 50% more. Yes, 15 lbs since October. Hard to believe, since I don’t think I ever gained 15 lbs in my entire life. If only the market were gaining that quickly.

So this is the most I’ve ever weighed in my life and it is really driving me insane. The problem is that I’ve become super lazy too. I have a million excuses for why I cannot work out at home – asthma being the first (it’s too dusty in the basement where all the workout gear is!) – TV demand being the second (how can I pop in a workout video and appease the Elmo-monster all at the same time?!) — and procrastination being the third (no comment). Working out outside of the house becomes just as problematic – the weather during 80% of the year in northeastern U.S. is not conducive to outside workouts (with a toddler in tow), and any gyms would have to have hours that are flexible enough to fit with the “who has the baby?” schedule. Yes, I am the 2009 QUEEN of excuses.

SO – While I was watching Elmo last week I did some research and found this local place that provides free babysitting AND they were looking for a babysitter. I looked into it and the bargain is that if I babysit for one class per week, my membership is gratis. Well, DEAL, I’m IN.  I go tomorrow to fill out some papers and I’ll take a class while I’m there, and then I start my baby-sitting on Monday. I’m really, really excited about this. It’ll get both me and Jaden out of the house  a few times a week. My goal is to workout 3x per week (Jaden will be there with the sitter for 2x) and then I’ll have my one baby-sitting session which Jaden will join me for. So Jaden will get to go someplace different 3x per week, and Mommy will get out of the house 4x per week. And no concrete-covered-in-thin-carpet floors. Ahhhh!

I really should write more often so I don’t write 1202 words at a time, eh? 

Cheers~!

Everything else babysitting, Pictures, sleep, thoughts, weight gain, workouts

There must be something in the air recently. I’ve been digging up old, faded, dusty ‘to do’ notes and starting to actually DO some of the items on them. Like get the blog going again, and get some of the latest the pictures posted to the website. Today I hooked up my speakers to the wireless network – something that I should have done over a year ago but just could never find “the time.” I started cleaning out my desk (eeeeeek!), I finished decorating Jaden’s room (’bout time!), and I went through my kitchen and tossed any food items that had I could no longer identify. Now if only I can bring myself to make the dozen or so phone calls I have to make — I hate phone calls. If anything gets pushed to the bottom of my to do list, you can bet it has something to do with the phone.

Before the tornado of to-dos today, Jaden and I went to our 2nd “Music Together” class. It really is a lot of fun. He enjoys it; at least it seems that way. When we arrive he turns to each kid there, one at a time, and yells out his hellos – “eeeeiiiiaaa.” Once he’s finished saying hello to everyone he opens it up to the teacher who starts us out with a hello song. He sits in my lap and watches everyone singing and clapping. Today he actually picked up a little drum and played with it for a while. Probably only because it had a red string attached to it, but hey, it’s a start. By about the third song, he put his head on my shoulder and started falling asleep. Of course perpetually sleep deprived Mommy thinks: “So this must be the trick! I’ll just sing to him, and dance with him, and tap out songs on his legs until I put him to sleep.”

If it were only that easy.

I have to say things are getting better even though I still complain. We’re about 50/50 now for good/bad nights. He slept through the night again last night – I think. The nights get blurry after a while.

So — does anyone remember what their New Year’s resolutions were/are? It’s only been a few weeks and I’m already not sure what mine were.

Everything else music, sleep, time, todos

Jaden actually slept through the night last night — hives and all. I’m not sure what happened. I was shocked when he woke us up at 6:30 a.m.. I immediately started running through my mind everything that I did yesterday with him – maybe I can repeat it?

What’s different? Well- I’ve been trying to get him down to only one nap a day since he was fighting the second nap for the past few weeks. He was taking his usual morning nap and then fighting me tooth and nail in the afternoon – until I’d finally give up. I figured if he only takes one nap then it should be an afternoon nap (according to Dr. Ferber), but he wasn’t making it through to the afternoon without difficulty. Yesterday I just went with the flow. He fell asleep on my lap around 10:00 a.m. for about 40 minutes. I watched Elmo by myself because I was afraid to change the channel. LOL. It worked, though. He made it through to his afternoon nap, and slept about an hour in the afternoon. So maybe that’s the trick… I’ll try it again today.

Who am I kidding? There’s no way to know what the heck helped him sleep through the night. It’s like trying to figure out what is giving him hives. The problem is — now my hopes are high that he’ll sleep through the night again tonight; but I know darn well the chances of that are slim to none. Ahhhh… motherhood.

About Jaden's Journey, Everything else sleep