Baby School and the Lawn Man

Allie is such a great big sister to Lincoln. She wants to help take care of him all of the time. In the evenings when Jack is in the bath Allie usually plays outside until it is her turn. Lately she has been asking if Lincoln can come outside and "play" with her. It is so cute. I put him out there in his bouncy seat where I can still see him from inside and she reads books to him and they go "camping" or have a "picnic". The other night I heard her saying "Lincoln, now we're going to have baby school and I'm going to be the teacher." She came in and told me that she was going to be Meena, her preschool teacher. She then went on to teach Lincoln all about the stick that she had found. Pay no attention to the fact that it looks like she is about to poke his eye out with it. She is actually very careful with him.

Yesterday we came home from dropping Allie off at lab school and Jack went into the back yard to play for a few minutes before nap time while I fed the baby. All of a sudden he heard some lawnmowers start up behind us. The family that lives there has a lawn service that comes once a week. He loves watching and listening to the sounds of the lawnmowers and blowers out there. He seriously sat on that swing for about 30 minutes until I finally had to bring him in for a nap. We used to have some neighbors who owned a very successfully lawn service of their own. In fact, it was so successful that last year they moved on up and out of our neighborhood. The husband had a very large truck with a license plate that read "lawn man". I wonder if Jack was contemplating his future as a lawn man.

Notice the cool shoes he is wearing. He is quite fashion forward.

Lincoln's new room

The only problem with Lincoln's new and amazing sleep schedule is that he was sharing a room with Adam and I along with Adam's office/music room. I think I'll just start calling our bedroom "the multipurpose room". This meant that Adam wasn't able to be in there to get his work done at night which he really needs to do if he's ever going to graduate. The obvious thing to do would be to put Allie and Jack in a room together and Lincoln would have his own room. The problem with that is when we have tried that (and we have tried it several times now) the kids don't go to bed until midnight because they are to busy being crazy in there together and then they wake each other up at 6am. Let's be honest, I need sleep and that is about the only need that I have in my life, so Allie and Jack sharing a room doesn't work at this point in the game. Adam and I decided last night that since we don't have a walk in closet and our master bathroom is too small for Lincoln's bed, his new room will have to be the pantry. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I guess at least he'll never go hungry. Luckily his bed (it's not a crib or pack-n-play, it's an Amby Bed) fits perfectly in there. That bed has really come in handy. We got it at a consignment shop for Jack, to help with his horrible reflux and now Lincoln is making great use of it. It's a good thing that even though I didn't get as much cleaned/organized during Spring Break as I wanted to, I did get the pantry cleaned out.

Oh Sweet Baby Sleep!

I feel like a new woman. Lincoln is finally on a sleep schedule. Mind you that in no way means that he is sleeping through the night without waking up, but he is sleeping at night. He has been a fairly decent sleeper since he came home. The problem was he would scream every night for about 2 hours straight (we figured it was just colic) then fall asleep for an evening cat nap. Then he would wake up after about 45 minutes and be awake until around midnight. The other problem was that he would wake up in the middle of the night and want to play for a couple of hours. His sister pulled this trick on us until she was about 8 months old. It was exhausting even back then with just one child. Of course right about the time Lincoln was ready to go to sleep, the other two kids would wake up and it was time to start the day on very little sleep. Oh, I hate that feeling of needing to wake up to be with the kids, but feeling like you would give anything for just for 1 more hour (or even 5 more minutes) of sleep.

A couple of friends (thank you Sarah and Melodi) told me about a book called Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. What an amazing book. It is so right on, at least for our family. Basically what it says is that your baby should never be up for more than about two hours. At first I thought this was crazy, but I noticed he was right. At about 2 hours Lincoln would start getting fussy and then would get overtired and have a problem sleeping. He also says that after I think it was the first 3 months you should be able to put your baby to sleep around 7pm and have them sleep about 12 hours only waking for feedings. Then they should go back to sleep about 2 hours later for a morning nap, take an early afternoon nap, and a late afternoon nap and back to bed at 7pm. "Yeah right" I said. "our baby won't go to sleep until about 11pm and then has to wake up in the middle of the night for play time". Lincoln was right on target for his morning naps, but I didn't think that bedtime would ever work out. In order to get him taking the regular daytime naps I did find that I had to let him "cry it out" a little. I know that this method doesn't work for everyone, but it works like a charm for me. If I didn't let him cry for ten minutes or so to fall asleep on his own, he would end up crying for hours while I held him. That didn't make any sense to me. Daytime naps were working so well that I decided to try his method in the evening at 11 weeks (a little earlier than the book says, but what the heck). Basically all I did was when he starts getting fussy in the evening which was around 9pm the first night, I put him in his Amby Bed and let him cry/fuss until he fell asleep. It took about 15 minutes the first time, but again that was better than the 2 hours he usually spend crying at night. It worked. Now I needed to keep him asleep. I decided that when he woke up to eat I would feed him and put him back down even if he didn't seem tired. I would let him cry for about 20 minutes and then take him out if he wasn't asleep by then. I tried it and within 1o minutes of crying he was back to sleep for 4 more hours. That has been the last times he has cried or tried to play in the middle of the night. Even if he seems pretty awake after a nighttime feeding, I just put him back down in his bed and he may fuss a little for a couple of minutes but that is it. Our little guy is so much happier now that he is sleeping well (and so am I). We don't have the 2 hour crying sessions every night and he doesn't need to be held all of the time anymore. Life is good and I am starting to see the light at the other end of the loooong baby tunnel. So, a shout out and big thank you to Marc Weissbluth who wrote the most useful parenting book of them all.

Lincoln's Birth Story

I typed up Lincoln's birth story and attached it as a link rather than post the entire thing on the blog. Be forewarned that it's pretty long and includes most of the gory details (it's really not that bad). Click on the link below to access a pdf file of the story.

Lincoln's Birth Story



We sure love the little guy.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Since this is our family journal as well as a blog to share with our friends and family, I have decided to share a couple of stories that may not paint the prettiest picture of family life. I was inspired by my friend Emmy's blog where she posted a story of her son (about Allie's age) leaving the house unnoticed (by Dad) and then being spotted (by mom) running across 5 lanes of traffic on a very busy street. Luckily he made it across unharmed and ran right into a police officer on the other side. I'm sure I'll have plenty of stories like that one to tell soon enough.

But for now here are some fun ones from several weeks ago.

Story #1
When Lincoln was born we had some friends stay with the kids while we were at the birthing center. When we got back with the new baby, the husband was concerned that Allie and Jack might really hurt the baby because they were being a little too rough with him. He told the kids that if they weren't careful with Lincoln they could kill him. Ever since then Allie has been obsessed with whether or not something might kill a person.

During my mom's stay with us, after Lincoln's birth she came up with the idea to put him in his bouncy seat and then put the seat inside the pack-and-play so that the kids couldn't "accidentally" rough him up too much. It was a great idea until "the incident." I had Lincoln in the pack-and-play asleep in his bouncy chair. I was sitting in front of the pack-and-play on the couch with my back turned to it. Allie was also back there playing. All of a sudden I heard a weird noise and turned around to find that Allie had fallen into the pack-and-play on top of Lincoln. I ran over and pulled her off of him and out of it and then sent her to her room so I could make sure that Lincoln was OK. After all, he did just have over 40 pounds of big sister on him. Interestingly enough Lincoln was still dead asleep and had no idea what had just happened.

Allie on the other hand was in her room screaming "is he killed, is he killed?" I felt bad for her and told her that he was fine but that she needed to be more careful. It turns out that she was climbing on some couch cushions next to the pack-and-play and fell into it. All day she kept checking on Lincoln to make sure he wasn't "killed."

Story #2

Allie has recently learned how to name call, but not very well. A few Saturdays ago I was about to take the kids for a car ride to put the baby to sleep and Allie did something she wasn't supposed to do. At this point, I don't even remember what it was. After I told her that she needed to go for a time out she yelled at me "mommy, you're stinking." She ended up not being able to come for the car ride and had to stay in her room while Jack, Lincoln and I were gone (Adam was home with her, of course). Oh, the joys of now having a four-year-old. They are so mouthy.

What do kids do when mom & dad aren't watching?

Sometimes, when parents aren't watching, kids will have a little fun of their own. Such as...

Create things to stick on the wall.

Dismantle gingerbread houses.

Eat all of the candy from a bowl.

Pull bags of sugar off of the counter and dig in.

Dump a whole bag of Chex mix on the floor (once again, from the counter).

Smear lip gloss all over yourself.

Throw stickers, paint, and bananas in an old box (from the counter, of course).

Drag Race!

This is a little bike ride from last month. I like Jack's choice of a hat.

Three kids under four

Today is the last day that we will be parents to three kids under the age of four. I don't think that things will magically get any easier tomorrow when Allie turns four-years-old, but it has been a little crazy these last 12 days with three kids so close in age. I often think to myself "what the heck was I thinking". Adam, I take full responsibility for the craziness that is our life. After all it was my "master plan" to have these kids so close together. It does give me some peace of mind to think that the closer together we have them, the sooner we will be done with diapers, wipes, finding pacifiers and sippy cups that have been dropped and lost, middle of the night feedings, sleep deprivation, bottle washing, diaper bags, strollers, infant car seats (I guess we still have to deal with other car seats since kids these days seem to need one until they are in high school), high chairs, and the ever dreaded potty training. I'm sure there are many more joys of having little ones around that I've forgotten to list-feel free to add them to the comments to remind me. The down side to this is that all of our children will be in college and/or on missions at relatively the same time. I guess we better start saving now. Talk about empty-nest syndrome. I'm sure by then it will be a much needed break. Four years down, only eighteen more to go. Despite all of the insanity in our house right now, we really are having a great time with all of the kids, especially watching them be so sweet to their new baby brother.

5 vs 5

Try to spot the similarities and differences between the two families of five (one when Adam was just a new infant in 1978 and the other when Lincoln was just a wee little infant in 2009).

Introducing Lincoln!

Lincoln was born on January 16, 2009 at 1:27pm. He weighed 7 lbs 7 oz and was 20 inches long. It was a relatively short active labor, but I am sure Jen would say that it was not really that "short." I'll let her fill you in on the details. Now on to the pictures.

Here we are at 5:45 am before leaving for the birthing center

This is the room where Lincoln was born

Lincoln was born at 1:27 pm

Jen and Baby Lincoln about 3 hours after his birth

Little Lincoln Logs

Link-a-doo


Already asleep before even getting in the car


West family of five