snow, sweet potatoes, and sleep

Boston's first snow of winter 08-09 was also, of course, Elias's first.


It wasn't much of a snow event - a half inch, if that, of slushy white stuff that had melted by the afternoon, but it looked lovely on the trees when we woke up this morning. Neal took him outside all bundled up. He didn't seem terribly impressed.


Otherwise, it's been a busy week for Elias. After taking a break from solids for a few days, I offered him a little sweet potato alongside his rice cereal and he seems to be enjoying that combo and getting the whole eating from a spoon thing down.


Okay, so much of it still ends up on his chin but we're making progress. It hasn't really helped with the spit-up yet. On the contrary, what we have instead is sweet potato stained spit-up, but that might be because we've been finishing off our modest tablespoon or so of rice cereal and half-jar or so of sweet potatoes with a few ounces of formula. I think I'll try to time the cereal/veggie meal deal between bottles and see if that helps.

We're also making, dare I say it, slow, slow progress in the land of swaddling and sleep. Last weekend or early last week - I forget now when it was exactly - Elias kept waking up every 20 to 30 minutes, screaming at the top of his lungs after we'd put him to bed for the night. When I went in to get him back to sleep he seemed so agitated by his confinement. So after a few attempts at getting him back to sleep fully swaddled, I re-swaddled him rather lightly, with one arm free, and didn't hear another peep...I want to say for the rest of the night, but he may have woken up once to eat. It's amazing how quickly you forget the details. Which is why I'm writing about this now. I'm not going to wait until he's falling asleep, unswaddled, on his own, in his crib, in his own room like a perfect little angel because I'll likely have forgotten how we got to that point by then.

Anyway, there've been a few naps in the sleepsack, even, but for the most part, that's as far as we've gotten in terms of breaking him (or us) of his swaddle habit. He seems to want to roll on his side when both arms are free, which is fine, except he wakes up crying after a couple of hours when he rolls onto his back. Last night, for example, he started out in the swaddle but with both arms free. He woke up three or four times between 7:30 and 11:30, at which point I re-swaddled him with one arm in. He slept pretty soundly from then until about 5 a.m., when I heard him stir a bit but he fell back to sleep until about 6.

In addition to working on the swaddle situation, I began to actively try to eliminate the night feeding(s). I don't mind feeding him in the middle of the night if he's truly hungry but when he wasn't taking much of the first couple of bottles of the day I felt confident in decreasing the amount of formula I was giving him at night. In addition, I think purely out of exhaustion, I started waiting a bit before I'd get up and go to his crib when he stirred or whimpered, and to my surprise, he actually settled himself down and fell back asleep after a couple of nights of this. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or perhaps as a result of all this but Elias has slept through the night (and by "through the night" I mean much like how last night played out, with some minor maintenance, sometimes just once, some nights every few hours...this is still major progress as far as I'm concerned) the past few nights, from about 7:30 in the evening until about 6:30 in the morning. And then this weekend, both yesterday morning and today, he woke up at 6 and then fell back asleep within an hour of having his diaper changed and being fed, sleeping until about 8:30 yesterday morning and until almost 9 this morning. Is that his morning nap? Should we try to get him to bed even earlier (currently around 7:30, but it varies greatly)? Since it happened on the weekend we slept in with him so it'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow morning.

Maybe he's catching up on sleep now that he's finally figured out how to roll over on his own (that's the theory behind the Wonder Weeks). I'll post video to that effect shortly. For now, I should probably catch up on a little shut-eye myself. We put Elias to bed in the sleepsack this evening so we'll see how the night goes...