6 months

Guess who is 6 months old? Boy, am I happy to see that smiling face. It disappeared for a while, antibiotics and Advil are my new best friends. They gave me my happy baby back.

I can not believe we are halfway to a year. The second child sure does fly by. We wont have his check up until he is off medicine but I believe he weighing in around 16lbs and I'm not for sure about he length. He can still wear 3-6 month clothes but is also wearing some 6-9. He still adores his big brother. His smile is priceless when Cooper walks into the room.

Not too many new things since 5 months except he is sitting up on his own for short periods of time, which I mentioned in the previous post. He can also take stroller rides sitting up instead of in the car seat. He likes this much better. He is also eating meals three times a day. He loves squash and sweet potatoes. I found he prefers Gerber to Beechnut on green beans. Also, if I mix peas with some rice cereal he doesn't seem to mind that either. At this point I think he have tried all fruits and vegetables and no bad reactions.

Hopefully this month we can get him healthy, for good and I can keep that smiling baby around.

Movie Night

We had a movie night last night. Movie nights aren't too uncommon in these parts but the next two pictures are something new. Check out Cameron.

He has been sitting up for short periods or with some assistance for a couple weeks now but the past few days he has gotten really good at. I had to keep him away fro Cooper a bit so he didn't steal any popcorn from him.

Once the popcorn was gone the movie became uninteresting. Cooper could care less about the movie, it's all about the popcorn,

Nights 1 and 2

Just when you think it is safe to do some sleep training, your child gets an ear infection. Of course he would.

Night 1 (Wednesday), went fairly well. Cooper stayed with his mamaw and papaw just in case Cameron cried all night. He woke up at 9:10, 45 minutes after going to bed, and cried for maybe 10 minutes. Woke up again at 2:30, which is when I would usually feed him, and cried for about 30 minutes on and off. Then woke up at 5:45 and cried for about an hour on and off. I let it go so long because I knew he wasn't ready to get up for the morning and I wanted to break the habit of holding on to him in the morning for 45 minutes before he gets up. He finally woke up at 7:30 all smiles. We didn't scar him too bad.

Night 2 (Thursday) Cooper stayed all night with Steve's parents again. I don't think this night went as well. He woke up 4 times and cried for about 30 minutes each time. We held our ground though and never once went in there. Maybe Friday will be better?

This morning he took an early nap and I went to pick up Cooper and go to the grocery. I came home and Steve said he had been hysterical for the past 45 minutes, maybe it's his ear again. At first I thought he may be jumping to conclusions but it is the weekend and I can't let him cry it out if his ears are hurting so we headed to the doctor. Of course he is happy as a lark in the office and after waiting for more than hour to get called back, we left. Cameron gets a great nap, wakes up happy, then starts acting hysterical again. This time I am convinced it's his ears. We make another appointment and guess what, we are right. Another ear infection. Seriously, really? You have to be kidding me? He just finished an antibiotic less than two weeks ago and last week his ear looked fine. Ugh!!!!

I am looking at the silver lining in all this. I knew he would get one sooner than later so I guess it's best he does before we get him sleeping all night and it means a trip to the ENT to schedule tubes. Most doctors would probably have us wait another infection or two but with Cooper's history we are doing it now. They have to call me back Monday with an appointment time for a consultation. I hope we can get this done by the end of the month. Poor, poor guy. I hate it that he is miserable. Hopefully we are on the path to recovery.

The time has come

to get my baby to sleep. Let me back up a bit, back around late November I thought I was the luckiest mom on the planet. Yes, I had an extremely fussy baby, but a baby that slept. I did a good job, I'm patting myself on the back, of practicing the eat, play, sleep schedule. I got Cameron on a great nap schedule MUCH earlier than Cooper ever was. He quickly got on night time routine and as he was nearing the 2 month mark he began stretching out the first feeding later and later and later. Before I knew it he was only waking up around 5, then the next night 5:30, then before I knew it he was pretty much sleeping all night long. Then something went terribly wrong. Winter colds, ear infections, 3 rounds of antibiotics in two months. More than 3 months have gone by and I am now getting up sometimes 5 or more times a night. The kid is spoiled with a capital S. He is 6 months old and weighs about 16 lbs and I am done. Some babies come out of the womb sleeping well and some babies you just have make sleep well. We did it to Cooper and now it's your turn little guy. I know it sounds terrible but the only way he is going to sleep good again is to not go in his room. It's something Steve and I have been talking about and we needed to mentally prepare ourselves. It could get ugly. Tomorrow is the night. No more feedings, no more rocking, no more patting. I know you are technically supposed to start slow, but we have been patting him back to sleep for months. Wish us luck, I will give an update later in the week.

ps- it took Cooper two nights, 15 minutes each night. Been a great sleeper ever since.

The Department of Defense should hire me

Robert Gates should hire me! I have found the perfect solution to getting information from terrorists. Take them to McDonald's and have them sit and watch everyone else eat and smell the delicious yummy goodness of fried food, and tell them they cannot eat until they tell everything the know. It will work, I promise.

Cooper just started Storytime at the Charlestown library on Tuesdays. It runs from 10-11. Tuesdays also happens to be speech day, which means early lunch and early nap. Today I just wasn't feeling the need to rush home and make lunch so I got him some McDonald's. The temptation was at an all time high. I manged to walk away with nothing. Well, I can't say nothing, I did get a Diet Coke in a styrofoam cup. I'm not that crazy. I came home and made myself a turkey sandwich on a bagel thin with mustard and lettuce for about 160 calories. Are you proud? I also added some Special K cracker chips for a grand total of about 240 calories. I'm becoming a tad obsessed with this calorie counting thing. I even totaled up Cooper's. If you eat the entire kids nugget meal it's 395 calories. I don't think that is too bad considering some of the other options out there for kids. He left a nugget uneaten, so that took away about 47.5. Yes, told you I was obsessed.

So, Mr Gates, if you need some interrogation techniques, take em to McDonald's.

Week One

I just finished week one of Jazz it Off and I am proud to say I lost 3 pounds!!! Pretty good for a week if I do say so myself. I must admit it can be difficult to stay under 1200 calories for the day. I'm doing my best. I have went over, no more than 100, a few days. Once I calculate my workouts in I am under by a couple of hundred, but I want to get in the habit of eating like I'm not working out. Make sense? I can't go consuming mass quantities of chocolate just because I work out. That only worked before two kids.

I also started running, doing the couch to 5k workouts. You may remember I wanted to do a 5k last year, I'm not going to mention any names (Cameron) got in the way of that. Darn kids! Just kidding :) Once I found out I was pregnant I thought it would be best to put it on hold, I didn't want to start something new while pregnant. Steve and I bought each other iTunes gift cards for Christmas this year so the first thing I bought was the Couch to 5k app for my phone. It has been there everyday for over two months waiting for me. Last week Steve decided he wanted to go running, have no idea why, that hasn't happened in the 6 1/2 years we have been married, but more power to him. He came back and I thought, why not me. So off I went. I started week one. It's a nine week program, running three times a week. Week one has been pretty easy so far. You alternate 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking for 20 minutes. I think week two is 90 and 90. I still have to do day 3. I was going to today but I decided to Jazzercise instead. I will probably stretch it out 10 or 11 weeks since I want to be sure to get Jazzercise classes in. My goal is to do the Charlestown Founders Day 5k. I might cry if I finish it without walking. I know that sounds silly, but I'm the girl who got made fun of in school for not being able to run a mile in the physical fitness challenges in gym class. I couldn't even make it one lap around the track. So this is huge for me!

I'm going to try update each week. Forgive me in advance if I forget, I still have a child that wakes up every couple of hours. Hopefully that is about to change, more on that later this week. Mommy and Daddy are getting strict! Wish us luck now.

Favorites

I thought I would capture a few of my kid's favorite things. Cameron's favorite thing at the moment is to be held or watch and laugh at his brother. He also likes to roll ALL over the floor. He is a rolling machine. There is one thing he does lay still for and this is the wipe refill bag. He loves this thing.

Cooper loves to dance and play instruments. The drums are his favorite. My oh my they can give one a headache. He also likes to watch youtube videos. Today as we were leaving for Jazzercise I asked him what he wanted to do when we got home and and he says watch Chris Tomlin videos on computer. How can I deny that? He wanted to me take some pictures of him dancing. He was getting down. I blame it on all the Jazzercise he did while in the womb. I took my last Jazzercise class with him at 40 weeks and 2 days!

He also loves puzzles. He pulls up his chair and works on two or three at a time.

Here are the one he worked on yesterday. He does them all by himself now. Does that make you jealous, Gretchen?