When the Baby Naps

My goodness was today a good day! It may have been because Baby Charles, bless his heart, went down perfectly for all his naps. He still takes about 3-5 naps a day. I think today was a 4-nap day. He only sleeps for about 45 minutes, and can only handle playing for about one hour. That equates to a lot of putting himself to sleep. I sing him a song, swaddle him up, and lay him in his bed. Sometimes I squeeze his little monkey so he gets distracted by its glowing cheeks and Twinkle Twinkle song (that way he is not as sad about me deserting him). And, on the good days, he just kinda babbles or groans for a while and falls asleep (on bad days he screams and screams until I come in, then he laughs at me; hard to be frustrated at that happy face).

This is Baby Charles sleeping.  I made him this swaddle strap thing. Sometimes we feel bad because it could be compared to a straight jacket, but he just hits himself in the face without it. We would feel more bad about that. I was pretty proud of my creation. I used receiving blankets with super cute dinosaur patterns. I stole the idea from these people, but i didn't want to spend $30. Actually, I still need to put some finishing touches on it. Maybe tonight . . .

Baby C is a gooooood night sleeper. We have never had to stay up with him at night. If he wakes up, I feed him, and he goes right back down. Even if he doesn't fall asleep nursing, he smiles when I put him down, wiggles a little, and then falls back asleep. So, so nice for us. After a few months I got brave (and I was reaaaallllyy tired); my motherly ear would listen to every little wiggle and squirm and cough and moan my sweet darling made. So, we moved Baby C into his own room. He has the biggest room in the house! We put him down for the night in our bedroom, then, when we are ready for bed, we carefully roll his pack and play into the living room. Joshua and I are so good at it now that we don't even knock the door frame. And the babe just keeps on sleepin'. Thank you, little man.

Poor bebe, has to wear a ginormous cloth diaper at night to keep all the peepee in, hope it's not too uncomfortable.

Lately, however, Baby C has been waking up a little more often at night. He was doing really well, sleeping for many hours, almost 12 (that is a little wishful rounding, usually it's 6-9). But then he got sick and maybe that is why he started waking up a little more often. Hard to breathe when your nose is all stuffed up and you are an "obligate nasal breather (re. the linked Wiki article: we are glad to say baby C does fine breathing when his nose is plugged, or at least waking himself up when necessary. . . . and we try helping him out a few times a day with the afore blogged about snot-sucker)." Anyway, another reason he could be waking up more frequently is because he is hungry! He's  just over 5 months, and really interested in our eating habits, so we thought maybe he could join in.

So far he loves banana-breastmilk smothies, mashed sweet potatoes, and drinking out of dad's water glass. He also drinks milk from a sippy cup. It's kinda fun to give him food. Good job, little man!