Sleep Roulette

These past two weeks have been different in trying to get Ollie to sleep than any we've had up to this point. Ollie has started to want to stay up more. He's fighting his sleep harder than before. So the usual tricks have not worked as well.

Last week, I could put him on my chest with a binky and pat his back and he'd fall asleep, if I caught him at the right time. It seemed to work quite a bit that week. Then this week came. He didn't want anything to do with me this week. He didn't want to be on my chest, he just didn't want me. The vacuum cleaner has even begun to fail unless he's really tired. Last night he wouldn't nap around 7pm. So, we put him in his swing. He played for awhile and we gave him a rattle toy. Of course he chewed on it. I started saying prodding him with mamamamamamama. He got sleepy and fell asleep while swinging, eating his rattle and me saying mamamamamamama. Strange, strange boy. The below links are Ollie getting frustrated playing in his exersaucer and trying to eat his toys.

Ollie Frustrated 1

Ollie Frustrated 2

Sleep

It's been strange the last couple of nights. Ollie has been skipping his ride home nap and going to bed earlier. Sunday it was 8pm, he slept 'til 2. Monday it was 8 and he got up at 10 and 2. Last night it was 7. He got up at 9 and 2. He woke at 5am for another bottle and then took a cat nap in bed with his dad while his mom got ready for work. I hope this isn't changing his current sleep schedule. I just hope he gets a nap on his way home tonight. Maybe his sleeping patterns are beginning to change. He's supposed to start sleeping longer at night...without interruption. He hasn't conquered that part yet.

Strength

Ollie has become a rather strong boy lately. Last night while playing, his momma and I were able to set him in a crawling position. You know arms fully extended, legs under butt on his knees. He wasn't able to hold this position long, but long enough for us to recognize it. He also is getting better at sitting on his own. He pretty much held himself up during his bath last night. Granted he grabbed the sides for stability, but he did it on his own. He does not like to be down much anymore. He also LOVES watching the fish in the fish tank. He keeps pulling himself as close to the tank as he can when he's in his high-chair. It makes for a good distraction for him. The cats on the other hand, don't want a thing to do with him, just his bed. I found Splatter taking a nap in his bed the other night, she got thrown out in a hurry. Any time he's near them and he can grab the cats, he tries...and they run. I don't blame them though, if someone grabbed my hair and pulled as hard as possible, I wouldn't want to be around them either. Oh wait Ollie does that to Tresa and I too. As well as pinching our skin, eyes, mouth, ears and anything else he can get a hold of. If you have sparkly things on, you are his favorite things to grab. I guess this year, we'll not only have to keep the cats out of the Christmas tree, but Ollie as well.

Waaaaaaaah!

That's pretty much what Ollie sounded like yesterday. He was crabby almost all day. He couldn't get a good nap in for anything. So, he would wake up crabby. Then we'd have to attempt to entertain a crabby boy for 2 hrs. until his next nap. Luckily he went to be about 8pm and slept until 1am. Then from 2-6. He was tired. He woke up happy and all smiles, which always makes up for all his crabbiness the previous day. They say if your first baby is easy the second will be difficult or vice versa. Well, I'm hoping he's on the difficult side.

He's also becoming more mobile and interactive. He regularly rolls his way to things without hesitation. He also likes to play peek-a-boo sometimes. His favorite new thing is to get raspberries on the side of his stomach instead of his belly. He laughs and giggles like crazy. Then of course he pays you back with raspberries during feedings. His white high-chair looks like the food dejure after some feedings. Ollie has to help clean up the high-chair by gumming the plastic. What a messy boy!

Strange

I was looking through who had visited Ollie's page and someone got to this site by typing in the following "a picture of a bottle of prune juice". Granted I've mentioned prune juice before, but I guess Google isn't perfect.

Yes he's still only getting up once a night! Yea! He's also not becoming more vocal and more active and LOVES to stand and sit. He sat yesterday by himself, but it was a slumped over sit. We all gotta start somewhere. Besides he was too interested in his feet to straighten himself up. He had on colored socks, don't you know they make great play toys! And I thought I'd have nothing to write today.

Routine

Ollie seem's to have gotten into a routine lately. At least sleeping routine. It has been great to get a normal amount of sleep again. He usually falls asleep between 9 and 10. Then gets up only once during the night and again about 5 or 6 when we usually get up for work. It probably won't be much longer and he'll sleep through the night. Then of course his teeth will start to come in and we'll start all over. Sigh

He is also becoming very adept at sitting up and standing and loves both. He is almost able to sit on his own, but he'll have the occasional jerk reaction and go flying. We still have our hands on him, so he doesn't get far. He can't stand on his own, obviously, but he's gotten tot he point that we can hold his hands only and he can stand with that little bit of help. I bet he'll be sitting by himself by the 6 month mark and start standing on his own a bit after that. He also loves playing peek-a-boo...sometimes. Growing and changing it seems almost every day. He's going to be a really big boy soon.

Ollie's First Picture

It occurred to me the other day that I had never posted a pic of Ollie's first professional picture. So I'll post a link to it, since a huge pic! It does contain some graphical content and those bits are labeled, so you've been warned!

Ollie's First Picture

Who's the sleeping baby?

This weekend Ollie slept in his own room, in spite of our trepidation about it. He did extremely well. Especially last night. Friday he had 2-4 hr. stretches. Last night he got up once. ONCE! My body is in shock from so much sleep! It turned out better than we thought. We are guessing that us moving, the cats running around in our room (they have bells) and our floor boards creaking was waking him up. He has a nice quiet serene room. He also took naps and went to sleep and back to sleep without the vacuum cleaner. Maybe we won't burn the engine up on the thing. Hopefully his sleep habits will continue to improve.

He also played more with other toys. His exersaucer got a good workout. His swing (which he's almost too big for), his bouncy seat (he can now grab the rings on his own) and of course his toes are competing for his attention. We got some good video of other strange Ollie occurrences over the weekend. He also like his back pack. He got strapped to dadda while they took the cats outside and seemed to enjoy it, even laughing a few times. He is also big into standing and sitting on you. Still can't sit on his own, but he's getting there. I guess next will be his enjoyment of this:



1 weekend - POOF - new baby. I hope it continues.

Moving on Out

This weekend Ollie gets to sleep in his own room for the first time. Tresa isn't to sure about this. I'm still wondering if we'll here him with the baby monitor on. I'm used to getting up every 3 hrs, so maybe we'll be up out of habit. Hopefully he'll stay asleep, like in the picture, for a longer period of time.



I doubt we'll get this lucky, but at least we'll get our bedroom back. We changed his schedule a bit last night, he did go 5 hrs without a bottle, though it was 8pm to 1:30am. Not exactly peak parents sleeping time. Especially since he was up until 10pm! Though it was better getting up just twice instead of 3 times a night. Now if we could only get him to soothe himself back to sleep without a bottle. Better yet, soothe himself at all! Jamming your whole hand down your throat and rolling isn't very soothing.

Hungry Hungry Ollie

Ollie has become an avid eater, though not perfect. He recognizes when bottles are coming, when jars of food are being opened and when we aren't feeding him fast enough. He makes all kinds of noises, raspberries (with food coming back at you), squeals and a few grunts. He also tries to help you feed him. He lunges for the bowls, spoons and jars. He usually ends up a giant mess. I can't wait until he feeds himself. He'll be an even bigger mess.


YUM!

Shiny Happy Baby

Oh how I wish he would sleep through the night! Oh how I wish he would be able to soothe himself back to sleep! Oh how I wish he wouldn't be so crabby all the time. No matter what, you just can't help but love the little booger when he's like this.

That's Entertainment!

There are many things that entertain Ollie. The usually things like his toys, mirrors, balls, shiny things and recently his own feet! His feet entertain him so much so he always has had them in the air quite a bit to get a good look at them. He also loves to play with balls. These frustrate him to no end. Since his fine motor skills aren't the best yet, he usually ends up batting them away. When he does get a hold of them, or anything else for that matter, in the mouth it goes. Luckily, they are all too big to fit in his strained squash hole! We also bought one of those giant bouncy balls in the store for him. The thing is bigger than him! Of course he has to use his arms AND his legs to deal with it. Just like everything else, in the mouth it goes. Which means he sticks his tongue out and licks it!

As his parental units, we must also entertain the little wonder-boy. We make the strangest sounds, funny faces and do silly things. We also have the photographic evidence to prove it!


Now if we only could stop doing the same thing with the cats!

Weekend Update

What a crabby boy we had this weekend. He didn't nap well at all on Sunday. His feeding schedule was a bit wacky this weekend as well. We are guessing it was another growth spurt! Unfortunately for his momma, she got to deal with him on Sunday while I put in the screen door. He did sleep fairly well last night and put himself back to sleep at around 1am. That's a new one. No parental intervention necessary. Too bad it didn't work at 4am. We are attributing all of these changes to the appearance of this little fellow.



DuckBoy to the Rescue!

Weekend

This weekend is going to be the great Ollie experiment. We are going to try and get him out of his old car seat and into his new one. He has gotten too long for his old one. We tried it earlier this week, without great results. So we will try againt his weekend when we have more time to do it. We are also going to try and get him out of his carrier to sleep in. We kind of got him back in the habit when we went out of town. We tried putting him back in his bed when we got back to bad results. So we are going to start all over this weekend. Hopefully it'll be better. Here's what Ollie looked like dressed for the wedding.


It won't be too much longer and Ollie will crawl. He's picking up his butt, getting his knees underneath him and pushing forward. Of course he didn't use his arms, so he looked a little funny. He's doing better sitting up, but no dice yet.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Ollie did it last night. He rolled front to back. Back to Front, Front to Back over and over and over until he covered about 5 feet! We had to move our footstools out of the way so he could keep going and wouldn't bump into them. We are going to have to keep a better eye on him from now on. Next up - sitting up!

Ppfffffhhhhtt!

This is Ollie's newest favorite activity. Ppfffffhhhhtt! He does this all the time. Ppfffffhhhhtt! When he's playing. Ppfffffhhhhtt! When he's rolling. Ppfffffhhhhtt! Especially when he's eating. Ppfffffhhhhtt! Last night Tresa was feeding him carrots for dinner. Ppfffffhhhhtt! Before, during and after the spoon went in the mouth, we got a Ppfffffhhhhtt! Ollie's chair got a Ppfffffhhhhtt! Mom and Dad got a Ppfffffhhhhtt!

By the end of the feeding Ollie's white bib, white chair, clothes and skin were a nice orange. Ppfffffhhhhtt! He had previously done this with his green beans last week. Ppfffffhhhhtt! Tresa was laughing so hard at him she couldn't feed him. Ppfffffhhhhtt! We are not going to be good at discouraging bad but funny behavior, he's just too darn cute! Ppfffffhhhhtt!

Big Boy

Ollie has gotten long. Too long, in fact, for his current car seat. He's a bit ahead of the growth curve. So this week he gets to start riding in his upright car seat. We had a stationary test run in our bedroom last night and he seemed to enjoy sitting up rather than laying down. It's still a bit big for him, but he'll grow into it. Probably faster than he is supposed to, but that's not a bad thing.

Pictures are coming later this week, maybe next Monday. We won't get them back until Thursday.

P.S. You can print the pictures on this site! Email Ollie if you need help.

Travel travails

Traveling in a car with a almost 5-month-old. What's there to say? Lot's of sleep for Ollie IN the car, not a lot out of it. Ollie set a few records this weekend. He slept probably 3-4 hrs of the travel time both ways, but he also set records for staying awake, Sat and Sun when we got home he had 4 hr. awake spells because of all the sleep he had gotten. Basically he was all out of whack! Running around, getting to rehearsal Friday, and Wedding and reception Saturday. What a mess. He wouldn't fall asleep when he as tired, so we had to carry him around and entertain him. He entertained himself for awhile during the rehearsal dinner. He played with a coke can and seemed to be the center of attention for awhile. He just wouldn't sleep.

The wedding Saturday was ok for Ollie. We got seated and just as the wedding was to begin he got fussy and crabby and hungry. Since his mom was in the wedding, I took him out and fed him, burped him and then the fun began. By the time we came back into the wedding they were already down the aisle. So in case Ollie got fussy we stood in the back. Ollie sucked his fingers since he didn't want his binky. Then he grabbed my finger, as babies do, and shoved it in his mouth! So for most of the ceremony Ollie had a dadda finger snack! My finger was wrinkly from being so wet for so long. Luckily they had pictures to take before the reception, so I took Ollie out to the parking lot and put him in his stroller and strolled him to sleep.

He woke up when we went to put him in the car to go to the reception. Then his 4 hrs marathon started. He was up until about 8pm when he got REALLY crabby so we took him back to the house and got him his bath and food. Eventually he went to sleep, but woke up a bit later and dozed off again for the night.

The ride home was horrid. He slept for at least 3 hrs. on the way home, but we were all exhausted physically. At one point, we stopped at a rest stop and no one wanted to get back in the car. Luckily we made it back in one piece and tired. Then Ollie started his 2nd 4 hr stretch. He eventually went to bed. I hope he gets back to his normal schedule. I didn't realize how much I missed peace and quiet for an hour every 3 hrs.

On the plus side, he's gotten over his cold, so it's back to training Ollie to sleep in his crib. FUN!

I'm not looking forward to Christmas, it's going to be very exhausting, just with the travel by itself. Plus Ollie will probably be sitting by then, so more work for his momma and dadda. Not ready for that at all.

Going on a Trip

Ollie is going on a trip this weekend. His first long car ride - 5 hrs each way! His uncle Travis is getting married and his momma is a candle lighter, so Ollie gets to sit with his dadda and maybe his uncle Frankie and Aunt Annie. He'll update this blog with information on the weekend and if his dadda gets on the stick, maybe some pics of the event.

P.S. He slept ALL night long! Shh, I don't want to jinx it!