Unloading the dishwasher

Emmett loves helping me unload the dishwasher.  And by helping I mean pulling spoons out and chewing on them.  As seen here:

Everything he touches goes in his mouth.  Its frustrating sometimes, because there are so many more things we could let him play with if he just wouldn't chew on them.  All his toys have teeth marks.  This aspect of his personality helped us to choose his Halloween costume, which will be revealed later with pictures.  But you can probably already guess what it is.

Emmett took his first steps on Friday night!  It was so exciting!  We were loading the car to head to VA for the weekend.  Daddy was in the kitchen and Mommy was standing in front of the babygate leading to the kitchen.  Emmett was in the living room holding onto the coffee table.  When he saw me about to open the gate, he walked to the end of the coffee table and let go, took two steps, and fell down.  He wanted to get into the kitchen pretty bad.  I think I was more proud of that accomplishment than any other since he was born.  I was so proud!  He has taken a few steps since, but doesn't do it very often.  I'm sure he will be confidently walking by his birthday. 

I can't even begin to think about his birthday.  I'm just not ready to cope with it.  I'm gonna have to soon though in order to start making plans.  I'm giving myself until the first of November to be in denial.

Ick.

So the cold I thought was weak was apparently just getting started.  I feel like crap.  Good thing is Emmett seems fine.  His didn't get bad, and that's the importnat thing.  Enough about sickness.

So we are going to the game on Saturday at VT.  I am so freakin' excited!  Its been years since I've been to a game.  I just hope I feel better by then so I can really enjoy it.  And I sure hope we continue to play well.  I usually don't worry about Duke, but this year...

I am thinking a lot lately about when I want to have a second baby.  Financially we can't afford it right now, but I always thought I wanted my kids to be close in age.  Now I'm not so sure for other reasons as well.  I know that I won't be able to give a second baby the full attention that I was able to give Emmett, because Emmett will need my attention too.  You only have your first baby once.  It makes me sad that Emmett won't be a baby much longer, and I always made myself feel better by thinking about how I'm going to have another baby someday.  Well now I realize that having another one won't be the same.  I think maybe if Emmett is closer to 3 instead of 2 years old when I have the second one that I may be able to enjoy and dote on the baby a little bit more since he will be more independent.  But when they get older will they get along as well?  I just don't know.  I agonized just as much over the decision of when to have the first one.  I always just hoped I would get pregnant by accident and then the decision part would be taken out of my hands.  I find myself hoping for that again.  And frankly, this time around that's a lot more likely since I am not currently on birth control since it messes with your milk supply when breastfeeding.  I also considered going back to work for a year before having another baby.  I thought the idea of leaving Emmett would get easier as he got older, but it isn't.  I just don't see myself going back to work, at least not full time.  So...stalemate.

Weekend Fun

So Emmett got over his cold pretty quick, but it seems it has relapsed or he has a another one.  Friday his nose started running, and this time so did mine.  So I'm not sure if this is a new cold or just continued symptoms of the other one.  It doesn't seem as bad this time, and the one I have is pretty weak.  He woke up twice Friday night and once last night.  I'm hoping he sleeps through the night tonight.  He is also cutting a second molar, so I'm not sure if some of these symptoms are just from teething.  Either way, its not as bad this time.

We took Emmett to the pumpkin patch on Saturday.  We let him crawl around among the pumpkins and got some really good pictures.  He had a great time!  He stood up while holding onto the bigger pumpkins.  And of course he tried to eat some grass.  Everything Emmett touches goes directly into his mouth.  We didn't end up getting a pumpkin because at this point Emmett can't carve it or even draw on it, so we'll do that next year.  I will post some of the pictures later on. 

On a related note we still don't have a Halloween costume for Emmett.  I want to find something sort of original, but nothing comes to mind or stands out.  We'll probably just end up buying some kind of animal costume from Babies R Us unless I can think of something better.

This weekend we are going to my parents' house in Virginia.  We have tickets to the Virginia Tech vs. Duke game on Saturday and my parents are just an hour from Blacksburg.  Emmett is going to stay home with my mom.  I would like to take him to a game, but right now he would hate it because he doesn't like to be held for very long.  He would want to get down and crawl around and not sit on our laps, so he would be miserable.  We will be gone most of the day for the game, and that will be the longest that I have ever been away from Emmett.  I will have to get some breastmilk out of the freezer for him to drink while I'm gone.  I have rarely been away from him long enough that he has even needed a bottle.  I don't make as much milk as I used to, so hopefully I won't have any issues with getting too full during the game.  Its not like I can go pump or anything anyway, so I'll have to deal with it, whatever happens.  Hopefully he will go down for his naps ok for my mom.  Oh well, its just one day.  And he'll be fine because he loves Grandma.

As Emmett gets closer to walking and the weather gets colder we have been looking at getting him some shoes.  I was also told by a random stranger in the playplace at the mall that sometimes they start walking once they get shoes because it gives them foot and ankle support.  So we went to Stride Rite at the mall and got him sized.  He is a 4 and a half wide.  We tried a pair of really cute shoes on him and got him to take a few steps holding our hands.  I'm not sure I want to spend that much on a pair of shoes that he will grow out of so fast, but they really seemed to fit his feet well and didn't seem bulky like a lot of shoes can be.  I might have to fork over the money for them since they might make learning to walk easier for him.  And they will last him a while because they are made to fit sizes 3-6, so he will have room to grow into them.  Yeah, I'm thinking they will be worth the money.

And another weekend comes to a close.  Sunday nights always make me feel sad.

Sick and teething baby

Well Emmett has a cold.  He and Chris both do.  Luckily I don't.  Let's hope it stays that way.  Its keeping him up at night.  Tuesday night is when Chris starting feeling the symptoms.  Tuesday night is the first night in nearly 3 months that I've had to get up with Emmett.  He didn't seem to have any symptoms then, just was awake and upset.  I was up with him for about 2 hours before he let me put him down without waking up and crying.  Throughout the day yesterday he started having a snotty nose and sneezing and coughing, but he still wasn't too bad.  Last night he had trouble going to sleep at bedtime, which is not at all like him, so I knew he was really sick.  He also just popped a corner of a molar through the other day, which most likely has been causing him some pain as well.  He has been drooling a bit more than usual, which he usually doesn't do much.  Well we finally got him down by about 9:30 last night, after giving him some tylenol.  He would be completely asleep in my arms and then wake up and cry like he was in pain.  He just kept doing that, so we decided he needed some tylenol for the pain.  After that he fell into a pretty deep sleep.  He slept all the way until 4:00 this morning when he woke up crying and couldn't get back to sleep.  I went in and picked him up and he was burning up.  He's never had a fever before, so I didn't know what it felt like, but I was sure his face felt way hotter than usual.  I used our forehead thermometer that told me his temp was 100.  I gave him some more tylenol, nursed him, and got him back to sleep.  But again, every time I tried to lay him down he would wake up and cry.  I finally just resigned myself to holding him and spending the rest of the night in the glider.  About 7:00 he was done sleeping, although he was obviously still tired.  He was just too miserable to sleep anymore.  I checked his temp again and it was down to normal.  I nursed him like I usually do when he wakes up and we went downstairs to play.  He was ready for his morning nap a little earlier than usual, which I expected.  He slept for 2 hours and I slept for probably an hour and a half of that time.  I was pretty tired since I didn't get much sleep after 4:00 AM.  He seemed better after his morning nap.  This afternoon we even got out for a walk since it got nice and warm out today.  He just got up from his afternoon nap.  He slept almost an hour and half, but he still woke up crying so I can tell he's still not right.  Hopefully last night was the worst of it and he'll do better tonight.  I'm not sure which symptoms are from the cold and which are from the teething since the symptoms can be similar.  He's never had any problems cutting his other teeth, but I've heard the molars can be gnarly, so I kind of expected it.  So let's hope both Emmett gets a better night's sleep tonight, and maybe Mommy too.

This time last year...

I had a pretty big baby bump, being about 8 months along.  We knew we were expecting a boy, but boy did we have no idea what to expect.  You think you have the gist, you watch friends and family go through the new baby experience.  You try to prepare yourself, but there's really no way to know what it will be like.  I expected to lose a lot of sleep.  I expected the baby to cry a lot.  I expected to feel unsure of myself.  And most of all, I expected that I would experience a love unlike anything I have ever felt or could even imagine.

Well, I did lose a lot of sleep, but not as much as I expected to.  Emmett slept 4 hour stretches at night as a newborn, and in the first few months even slept 5 and 6 hour stretches, which is quite impressive for a breastfed baby.  During his 4th and 5th month we had some rough nights where he would wake up every few hours, sometimes every hour, but we got through it and by 6 months he was sleeping through the night quite regularly.  Now, at 10 months, I don't even wonder if he'll wake up, because I know he won't.  I can't remember the last time he woke up at night and required nursing or rocking.  And I'm going to take this moment to comment on sleep training.  There are various pediatricians and child development specialists who say that you have to teach your baby how to sleep.  I find the whole concept ridiculous.  These people say never nurse your baby to sleep, never rock your baby to sleep, because if they wake up in the middle of the night, they will not be able to fall back to sleep on their own without your help.  They say to put your baby in their crib awake and let them fall asleep on their own.  If they cry, don't pick them up, reassure them by talking to them or patting their back until they go to sleep.  Well first of all, if your baby wakes up at night and cries, there's a reason for that!  They need something.  Maybe they are hungry (most likely, when are babies not?)   Maybe they need a clean diaper.  Or maybe they just want to be held and cuddled and made to feel cozy and safe.  Why would you deprive them of any of these things?  Even after waking up every hour with Emmett during those tough months and nursing him or rocking him to sleep, he still learned to sleep through the night on his own.  I still nurse him at bedtime and then rock him to sleep while singing to him.  I wouldn't give up that experience for anything.  And when he wakes up at night (which is rare), he puts his pacifier back in his mouth, maybe cries for a second or two, and goes right back to sleep.  I also rock him to sleep before his naps and he takes naps that are an hour and a half to two hours long.  If he wakes up during his nap and he's still tired, he puts his pacifier back in his mouth and goes right back to sleep.  Sleep training is crap.  What it teaches your baby is that if they wake up at night, don't bother crying because Mommy and Daddy won't come, so you might as well go back to sleep, miserable or not.  This is just my opinion.  I am not a doctor.  I do have a Bachelor's Degree in Child Development, however.  But this is not based on that expertise, it is based on my experience as a mother.  Now, this not what this post was intended to be about, so I am going to get back on track. 

I am lucky that Emmett never had colic.  I have heard horror stories from mothers whose babies would scream and cry for hours and hours.  I still expected him to cry more than he did.  He has always kept his crying to a minimum, and when he did cry it was because he needed something.  When that need was met, the crying stopped.  I am glad that I decided to stay home with him, for so many reasons.  It definitely made breastfeeding easier.  I can count on one hand the number of bottles Emmett has had in his life.  And the funny thing about that is, I bought a bunch of bottles, thinking I would need to pump milk when I was gone and other people would need to give him bottles.  At that time I may have been entertaining the idea of going back to work.  But I have a bunch of brand new bottles that have been removed from the boxes and washed once.  I sure wish I could take them back.

At the beginning I definitely felt unsure of myself at times.  The first day that I was at home with him by myself while Chris went to work, I was quite nervous...for about 15 minutes.  And then I just got over it.  I found that being a mother really did come natural to me.  Not everything did.  Breastfeeding sure didn't.  He and I had to work hard to figure that out together, and we have had our ups and downs with it.  There were many things that Emmett and I went through in general that I wasn't sure how to handle.  I googled everything.  I would spend hours and hours on the computer doing research, trying to find the "right" answers.  If there's anything I've learned as a mother, its that there are no "right" or "wrong" ways to do things.  Just different ways.  Bottom line is you have to find the right answer for you and your baby.  That is when you will find confidence.

I knew I would love my baby more than my own life.  But I didn't know what that would feel like.  Now that I do, its the most powerful love that I have ever felt and will ever feel.  There is a plaque on Emmett's nursery wall that says "I love you to the moon and back".  That doesn't even do it justice.  My whole purpose for living changed when he was born.  I finally found my reason for being.  And I've never been happier or more content.

And my little reason for being just woke up from his nap!