Sleeping update

When we returned to the doctor for little man's shots we discovered that he had a mild ear infection - so that could be the cause of all his crankiness in the middle of the night. It seemed like something more than usual. Yet again - somehow I picked the one week that he's sick since he's born to try and do something new. I have moved his yogurt meal to the evening and I am now just doing what the Baby Whisperer calls a "dream feed" around 10:30 pm or so. I still am not sure if it is working - he slept until 5:30 yesterday and was up for the morning. This morning he did his "normal" wake up around 3:45 or so - but he did go back to sleep. Who knew this would get so complicated?

My whole life does not revolve around sleep (okay, well, it almost does). We are getting things ready for the co-op. That's actually my goal for the next few days (and has been for the past few days) to figure out what lessons and materials we will start with and go from there. There are soooo many! We plan to start in less than 2 weeks.

Warning - do not try this at home

Recently I got in my head that little man is a year old and I should probably wean him. I had read about this once upon a time - but not recently. He was already down to about two feeds a day anyway. Of course, last week, when he was sick, I fed him four times a day. In my brilliance I decided that right after he started feeling better I should go cold turkey! What a fool! Feeding him four times a day for two days of course increased my milk supply and then I was in pain and huge. I decided I should probably read up on this again so I pulled out my copy of "So That's What They're For". I glanced over the section and found key phrases like "don't go cold turkey", "consider why you are stopping" and "breast infection". So, I decided to reassess my strategy.

So now I am going to move to one feeding a day. Lots of people talk about their children having a favorite feeding. Well, little man doesn't care about the day feedings and the two days we went cold turkey he didn't miss the bedtime feeding. The only one he seems to care about is the 3:30 - 4:30 am feeding that I started before summer camp this summer. We tried to break this habit on Saturday morning - 2 and 1/2 hours he was up and MAD. Finally, we fed him - with a sippy and milk - and he went back to sleep. So, I guess this is my next issue - how can we get him away from getting up so early in the morning? The Baby Whisperer talks about accidental parenting and I think I have fallen into a bad pattern here.

Success!

Yesterday was the big fundraiser. Although I have had my doubts that this would be a success since March - I have to say, somehow - not by me - it all came together. We ended up with 30 silent auction items (as of Wednesday I knew we had about 12)! We served about 75 plates or so (as of yesterday we had 36 confirmed attending). So once again God was bigger and brought it all together. I actually took little man with me to help set up for a while in the afternoon and he stayed in his stroller for about 2 and 1/2 hours just watching us (and eating pasta some of the time). He barely fussed at all - although he was looking pretty tired at some points. His chill attitude is SO helpful to mom.
So now we are on to the next adventure - the preschool coop. It actually is scheduled to start in about 2 weeks so I need to GET BUSY! I think we will have about 8 kids to start with which is a pretty good number. We'll see what happens from there. I was able to purchase some curriculum materials this week. From the little I've read they are wonderful and exactly what we need. However, I was busy gluing fish nametags together so I didn't have much time to browse through them. That's my goal this week. One of the albums has over 40 lessons on "grace and courtesy". Who can't appreciate that?

Murphy's Law

Well I think someone gave little man a very nice birthday gift - a little virus. So he has had a high temperature for the past few days. No other real signs of sickness - a little lethargic but other than that he seems okay. This of course is his first real illness - which messed up our well baby appointment today (it became a sick baby and we'll have to go back for the shots). The other issue is that tomorrow I am helping to host a fundraiser. Well I had planned to draw on the generosity of my friends to watch little man while I took care of business - but I can't do that when he's sick. So, here we are. His first real illness comes in the midst of a key time. Dad also isn't available because they are down two or three people at work. So, that's the way it goes. I do hope he gets better quickly for his own sake. With some tylenol in him he barely acts sick at all (although his temp is still around 101).
Such is life with a small child - never on your schedule are they?