Monkey House

So,

Hard to get in time for updates lately! Holiday season? Maybe in part… Cole’s new sleeping habits… yup, to a degree! But it’s actually mainly a technical issue:

Whenever I do feel like just sort of rambling, I remember that posts won’t make it to the front page (“featured”) unless I put an image with them. I couldn’t be arsed to find or create a new image every time I come up with an idea. Solution? For the time being, I have reverted back to a “blog” style.

Frankly, it makes more sense anyhow. The slider is a cute gimmick once or twice, but then readers (ie. my friends and family) just want a quicker and easier way of seeing “what’s new, if anything?”

I plan to revise the blog style at some point, but time hardly permits. We’ll get there.

Most of you probably want to know what’s up with the little guy. The truth is, not a whole lot! In terms of mobility, he’s still mainly rolling around. He can do a double-roll whenever he feels like it, but usually runs out of runway to do a third. Not crawling just yet… although when he’s on his tummy, he seems to think that extending his arms and legs a la Superman will get him mobile. And then he gets frustrated when it doesn’t. It’s pretty cute.

Teeth-wise, nothing yet. He’s exhibiting teething behaviour, but no little white things starting to poke through yet.

Vocally, he’s making more and more interesting noises. His cooing and babbling is starting to take on new pitches and syllables (though, “Mem mem mom mom mmmmmmmmm” is still his favourite!), and his laughter is starting to sound like a hearty “big boy” laugh sometimes. It’s so cute!

Sleep wise, it’s tricky. Not for lack of trying. It’s just that he LIKES to be awake. He’ll be nodding off, bone-tired, and then start making noises just to keep himself awake. Apparently my wife did this, too. It gets annoying, but not as annoying as people who think their suggestion on how to “fix it” will be the cure-all. (And then the rant starts…!)

I’m sorry, but this is not your child that you live with 24 hours a day. What worked “perfectly” for you will not work for us (though we’re quite happy to try out any suggestions offered in a kindly way). There’s no magic formula for what will make a child behave a particular way or sleep on demand. If you were fortunate enough to have a more cooperative child, or routines worked better for you, that’s AWESOME for you! We can only wish…. No, we don’t want to throw him in a crib and let him cry himself to sleep no matter how much you are stuck in your “crib and ignore” ways.

Yes, there might be a formula that we’re missing out on, but more likely it’s that the formula is impossible to execute. Let me explain: his naps tend to be 45 minutes if we’re lucky. He probably needs 1.5 hours to 2 hours. But the second he wakes up after his first “sleep cycle,” he reverts back into “I like to be awake!” mode. You can SEE that he would be happier with another sleep cycle. You KNOW that the evening sleep will be better for it, too. But no. The second he wakes up for whatever reason (surprise loud noise, desire for boobage, or God knows what other reasons there might be), he’s up. You can see it in his red-rimmed little eyes that he needs more, but he’ll have none of it.

If anybody has a suggestion on how to change his hard-wired desire to be up and mobile, I’m all ears. But until then, we’re pretty sure we know what our son needs, and unfortunately it’s beyond our power to always provide it for him. We’re certainly trying.

I suspect the teething might be something to do with it, too, since he’s sometimes pretty aggressively interested in chewing stuff. But since he can’t talk, it’s hard to say (and teething gel isn’t doing jack!). If teething is a factor, you can count that as something else that’s out of our control.

In any event, my little whine isn’t really for our readers (friends and family). You guys are generally pretty much wicked-awesome at letting us be the parents we are, and offering us nothing but your support. Trust me, your occasional suggestions here and there are not the (sole) cause of my grumbling. Nobody said anything specific that I’m responding to here. We love you guys.

I’m sure you would all agree that it would be a herculean chore to find a parent that’s never felt like telling someone, “Excuse me? You think you can do a better job? Be my guest!” This is just me feeling the way every parent has felt at some point in time.

If you read this far, there actually IS one other update!

Food: we’ve officially started letting him put some food in his mouth. I would like to say “eating,” but he’s not really sure what to do with it yet. He swallowed a bit of toast today, but not much of it. Mainly he played with it and the dogs ate the pieces that fell to the floor.

I think Cole will be very popular with our dogs from now on!

So yeah, solid food. Should be fun and messy times ahead.

Greg