Sleeping, Love Train and Down The Drain

Sleeping is one of the general areas of life that isn't going so well right now.

It seems you have - over the past couple of days - developed a 100% aversion to sleeping in your bassinet, the cradle or even your Little Lamb Swing for more than 10 minutes. This means, in short, that you must be held to sleep. This means, in shorter, that the adults in the house- and even the dogs, for some reason- are all sleep deprived.

Now, it's not that you have any difficulty sleeping when you're on somebody. In fact, this type of sleep seems to make everyone in the whole house very happy, because everyone can catch some shut eye. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. In fact, this sleep parade actually takes on some pretty dern' cute forms sometimes.

This one is called "The Love Train":

And a close up of the "Love Train" reveals the "Baby Butt Pillow" formation:

But nighttime, in-the-crib sleeping is still lacking. So, your Mom put out an SOS APB ASAP yesterday to all the Moms she knows and got some helpful advice that seemed to work marginally better for last night's sleep. Each night is a bit better than the one before it, and we're open to trying new tricks. So, we haven't given up all hope of sleeping going down the drain.

Speaking of down the drain (nice segue, right?), an oft-mentioned trick to get baby to sleep is to give him a soothing bath before bedtime. Up until your one-month-iversary, we couldn't give you a soothing bath...only a complicated sponge bath thing, because your umbilical cord stump hadn't fallen off yet.

But, when the cord went out the window (figuratively), we decided we could finally give you a big boy bath. And despite an auspicious start and some early crying...

...the warm water, and your Mom's bathing techniques slowly made you a little less wary...

And finally comfortable!

So by the time we were ready to dry you off, you were fully in happy land!

Well, maybe that's not the exact face of "happy land," but it's definitely "not crying land," so I'll take it!

Oh, and this whole soothing bath thing totally did NOT help you sleep any better on Sunday night. But, at least you're clean now, from head to toe!

We'll try the soothing bath in conjunction with our new night time tricks soon and see if we can't get you sleeping a bit more comfortably, so that not everyone's sleep will be slowly spinning down the drain!

Beat it

It finally happened last night!

After months of trying, and waiting patiently, and continuous effort, it finally happened.

No, your Mom's belly button didn't turn into an outie. It's still an inny. Although, it is a weird one...sometimes it protrudes more than others. But, overall, it's an inny.

No, you weren't born. It's too early for that!

Yes, "LOST" came back on, but that's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm all excited about went down like this:

After LOST was over, I tucked your Mom into her new bed (the couch) and sung you a lullabye. Then I put my ear to your Mom's belly to try to hear your heartbeat again.

After several ear placements (and several iterations of you pushing against my face), I finally heard a heart beat.

Convinced it was not your beat, but your Mom's, I started tap the rhythm out on your Mom's arm.

Not knowing what I was doing at all, she said "What are you doing?"

"Is that your heartbeat?" I asked.

She put her fingers to her neck to check her pulse.

"Nope!" she replied.

And with that "nope," I knew that the loud, strong heartbeat I was hearing was actually yours!

I've been putting my ear to your Mom's belly for at least 10 weeks- because the books all said I should have been able to hear your heartbeat. And for 10 weeks, I never heard it.

And finally, last night, I heard your heart pumping blood through your body. I've heard your heart many times on the Doppler, but to hear it with my naked ears- now that was something special. Even more special than the premiere of "LOST," if you can imagine that!

So, be warned, I'm putting my ear to the belly again tonight, for a chance of hearing your ticker tick once more.