It's picture time!!

Rhys is 9 months old already! I can't believe that in only a few months, he will be 1 year old! Time seriously flies. It was like yesterday when we brought him home and put him in his crib that looked like it was just so big for him. He is so big now. Whenever I tell people how old he is, they say that he is so big! I still remember spending my days sitting on the couch with him in my lap and watching TV. I can't really watch TV while he is awake these days because you will see his eyes glaze over and he will stare at it for a while. I still manage to watch my Long Island Medium episodes on Mondays though...I can't miss that. 

I can't believe I've been unemployed for so long. I was so hoping that I'd be able to find a job by now, but things just haven't worked out for me. It's come to the point where I think I may have to take a refresher course so that I am even eligible for these positions. But on the plus side...I don't miss a single moment of Rhys growing up. I don't have to get a report of all the wonderful new milestones that he is meeting from a nanny/babysitter. I get to see it all and record it all. These days, his thing is clapping. He is starting to clap when he is excited. It is just about the cutest thing in the world!! He is also blabbering a lot more these days. His favorite word these days is "Daddae". He makes poop faces like a real human being, making grunting noises that go along. Rhys is also very much interested in food. I've been feeding him Cheerios and freeze dried baby yogurt chips so he can work on his fine motor skills. In about 2 weeks, his ability to transfer food from his hands to his mouth has increased drastically. He's figured out that in order to get the food in his hand into his mouth, he has to open his hands to release the food that he has just grasped. I've also been feeding him more foods that the whole family can eat. I've given him Chicken Pot Pie and Meatloaf. Of course, it is baby friendly with very little salt. But I have to admit...it tastes pretty good! 

He is also very interested in whatever I am eating. If he spots me drinking a glass of water, he will stop what he is doing from across the room and quickly make his way over to me and try to grab it. He is getting pretty good at drinking from a straw these days...although most of what he sucks up ends up on his shirt and his pants. I figure it is good practice. I can hear loud GULP noises when he drinks and I am so sure that he is drinking way more that he can handle. You know that feeling when you drink too much in one gulp and it hurts your throat...that happens to Rhys often. After a few sips from his cup, his face gets red and he lets out a loud grunt. It's quite funny. 

I'm so blessed to be able to be there for all of these precious moments. 

Anxiety Attacks!!

So an update on the Sleep Training. He's sleeping 6-7 hour stretches! But he wakes up and cries for 15-30 minutes on some nights because he still doesn't like his crib that much. So after he goes down which is around 7:30 ish, I START to make dinner and eat by 8 or so and once dinner is done and I do some dishes and try to drink a cup of coffee, it is already close to 9:30. I wait until 10 pm to pump and then go on the computer for a little bit before I shower and get ready for bed. I'm in bed by 11:30 or so and then as I begin to close my eyes, I hear him wake up and start to cry. The sleep book that I bought told me not to go immediately into his room, but rather wait for 5 minutes of crying before stepping in to reassure him. The thing is...he will cry for 4-5 mins, and then try to go to sleep and then wake up again...even more furious and cries again for another 5 minutes and then tries to go back to sleep. This sometimes goes on for 30 minutes to an hour at worst! All I can do is sit/stand in my room and watch and pray that he falls back asleep. My heart starts to race and I can feel the vein in my head start to pound....but I must wait. Is he hungry? Is he cold? Is his diaper full? All things I can't check while I am in the other room. But I can't go in because it would ruin the training. The book says that as long as he tries to soothe himself, I have to start the timer all over again. I restarted the timer about 15 times last night around 3 ish. He cried on and off for 1.5 hours! I get so much anxiety because I have no control over how he goes back to bed. I can't just go in there and nurse him because it would ruin all of the progress that we've made so far. So I have to watch and hope that he sleeps. I don't rejoice when he puts his head down because I know that in about 1 minute, he will wake and cry even louder. I even get mad at Brian for saying things like, "that was easy" or "he went down pretty fast" because the baby always wakes up when he says that.

I get so sad for making him cry so much, but the book tells me that babies need to learn to soothe themselves back to sleep. I have a very persistent baby...and that means that I am getting even less sleep than I was getting before. And what's worse is that now I have insomnia and anxiety to add to the list. I'm lucky if I can get an hour of sound sleep at a time these days. I wake up in the middle of the night to the baby crying, almost like someone would wake up if they heard, "FIRE!!!"

Rhys fell asleep 2 hours past his normal bedtime. I hope he sleeps in...

<Yawn>

Sleep Training, Take 2

Sigh...I actually broke down and cried in front of Brian this morning as I was holding the baby and rocking back and forth on my knees around 6:30 this morning. Rhys has been sleeping very poorly ever since I have been back to exclusively taking care of Rhys. I think back to the days when Rhys would sleep 4 or 5 hours on his own. These days he sleeps 2-3 hours when I first put him down for bed, but afterwards, he wakes up every hour pretty much the rest of the evening. I take him to bed with me around 1 or 2 am when Brian finally stops playing video games and gets into bed. We fall back asleep just fine after the move to our bed, but Rhys wakes up quite frequently because he is either in need of my boob or that the bed is too small for him to really move around in. He gets stuck in a position that has become uncomfortable and when he tries to move, he realizes that there isn't that much room to move. I've actually fallen off of the bed because Rhys basically rolled his way to the edge of the bed and I try to make room for him to roll as he pleases so he would go back to sleep. I fold up in these weird positions and I wake up with such a soreness in my ribs of all places.

This morning was not any different from other nights, but I think I was at my last straw. I think I may have scared Brian a little with my crying in the morning cuz he called around 2pm today to check up on me. So, I bought the Cry It Out book by Dr. Ferber. It isn't what you think though. It is not put your baby in the crib and leave and not come back til the morning. It's a progressive wait approach where you wait progressively longer intervals before you go in and check on your baby to reassure him that I am still near and reassure myself that he is okay. I waited 2 minutes, then checked up on him. He cried to be held and taken out of the crib, but I laid him down instead and told him "night night". He did NOT like that. He cried even louder and was not going to be consoled by my rubbing his back and patting his butt. I did that for about a minute and then I slipped out of his view and waited for 3 minutes this time. It was so hard watching him cry and look around for me and try to climb the bars of the crib. When I went back to check on him, he actually got his little self up to a standing position and wailed for me to pick him up. I rubbed his back and then put him back down in his crib and continued to listen to an even louder protest from him. I waited another 4 minutes and then...he kinda looked like he was gonna go to sleep, but after about 20 seconds, he woke back up and cried even more furiously because he realized that he was alone. After another 4 minutes, I went to check up on him and reassured him that I was not totally gone. Finally after about 15 or so minutes of crying...he went to sleep on his own. I waited another few minutes to make sure that he was really going to stay asleep and then walked to the kitchen to get some water and repeated over and over that I was sorry I had to do this to him. Hopefully he will get used to this without too much trouble.

I think my biggest battle will be when he wakes up again and I have to do this all over again...


Wish me luck.

Evenings to myself...and Brian

I am starting to actually enjoy some time to myself in the evenings. Rhys has been getting a little bit better at sleeping on his own these last few days. Last night he slept for 3 hours straight and that gave me time to eat dinner with Brian, take a shower, enjoy some coffee and some Korean television. I think he was sleeping well when I was in LA with him, but back then I was too busy trying to get some studying done that I wasn't able to enjoy this free time that I had. But I should probably be using this time to catch up on sleep instead of wasting time going on the internet. But I love this time to myself since I am basically stuck to a baby during the day....or more that the baby is stuck to me. He is crawling these days and most of the time, he is crawling to me. Crawling on me like I am some mountain he needs to get to the top of....haha my boobs are the mountains that he needs to get to...haha.

Today was actually not a great day for Rhys. I was trying to read him the Go the F**k to sleep book this morning and he ended up falling on one of the corners of the book and put a gash right under his right eye. I felt so bad! He cried like when he got his immunization shots. I think I say "I'm so sorry Rhys" about 100 times as I cleaned his wound and put some A&D on it. I had planned on going to Target today, but after this accident, I seriously started rethinking my plans. I didn't want other people thinking that I did this to my kid on purpose. The wound made kind of an exclamation mark in red so he almost looked like a clown from afar with a teardrop under his eye. I decided to still go to Target because I didn't do anything that I was ashamed of...I just felt bad that it happened. Right when I get in, I overhear a man walking with his family saying something about the status of Rhys' face. I try and ignore it and carry on with Rhys in the ergo. We look at all of the aisles and end up at the toy aisle where I picked up two toys for him. I picked up a remote control and a Lion King toy push car-ish type thingy. He definitely likes the remote control, but I'm not sure about the other toy. We'll see. On my way out, I picked up a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino for 50% off because it was a Frappucino happy hour! Yay! Anyways...I think I drank that drink in like 10 minutes because I was done by the time I got back home.

The house smelled so yummy because I had a pork roast slowly cooking in the crockpot. MMMMmmmmm. The roast just melted in my mouth cuz I had it in there for 8 hours. Minimal work for me, but I get such wonderful outcomes. Love the crockpot!

I'm watching Rhys sleeping on the monitor and he is starting to move around. I partly think it is cuz he is cold. I think I'll go in and put a blanket on him or something. Here is a pic of him kinda curling up a bit...

Hanging out with Dad

I took my mom to the airport last night for her flight to Korea. She is headed there for my cousin's wedding and also as a religious ambassador for my aunt who is fighting colon cancer. She will be there on a 10-day trip. I'm hoping that everything goes smoothly and she has a great time and returns home safely. So today is day one of a mom-less world. I woke up at 7 in the morning and usually I would saunter over to the living room to see what my dad was cooking up for breakfast...but today...no one... I figured that without mom to relieve me of my baby caring duties, I would probably not be able to shower unless I did it before Rhys woke up. So I took my tablet and turned on the baby monitor and went into the shower with my door open a crack so I could check up on Rhys. He luckily stayed asleep the whole time I showered and got ready. He slept for a good hour after I got out of the shower. I had time to clean my mom's makeup counter and start heating up water so I could have a little oatmeal. Rhys and I played and then napped around 11 am. I was a lot more tired because it was just me taking care of him, so I decided to take a mid-morning nap with Rhys as well. We slept for about 2 hours and then headed over to dad's store to eat lunch with him and hang out with him. Rhys played really well with the customers, especially this big black lady who called Rhys a "healer". She had ginormous boobs and Rhys was patting them...probably thinking about all the milk that could be in this set compared to mine.

The next day...

I woke up again to an empty house...well Rhys was with me of course. I really started to miss mom today. I didn't realize how lonely it is without her. Well Rhys was a bit cranky this morning cuz he decided he wanted to wake up EVERY HOUR last night. Sigh... I punched the bed because I was so tired of waking up and putting Rhys back to sleep. Anyways...since he was cranky and needy in the morning, I just ate some eggs that I hard-boiled the day before. To sum up my morning...Rhys slept for only 30 minutes and wanted to be held by me the whole time. I decided that I couldn't spend the whole day with him in a cruddy mood, so I made some omrice and headed to dad's store. Dad gobbled up my lunch that I made for him and I saved him $10! Rhys is quite the socializer. He was happy as clam once we were out and about. We took a stroll around the block and I got some coffee from Tom Tom's or whatever. I had him in the front carrier and walked around the store and next door to the cafe where dad tried to get us some free drinks...fail...haha.

I got Rhys to sleep another 20 minutes around 4 ish when I took a stroll, but that was it...no more naps until 6:30 pm when we went home. That's when he decided he was gonna go to bed for the night. That gave me and my dad time to enjoy a nice and quiet dinner. We had an el pollo loco-like dinner...but this place is Korean so they gave us the sweet pickled radishes! Yay! (....Rhys is fidgeting.....please go back to sleeeeeeeep....)

I think I will stay in LA until Saturday morning if Dad doesn't have any plans for dinner without me. I should keep the man company since he will be alone for a week without anyone at home. Poor daddy. He fell asleep earlier this evening with hair dye still in his hair. I had to wake him up twice before he got up and showered. Love my dad. He sleeps so early...hehe.

Busy Monday Morning

I woke up today at 4:30 am to pump and leave for SD. I dropped Rhys off at his Grandparent's in Camarillo for the week. I'll be seeing him this Thursday. Good thing he's not with me right now because I came down with a cold today. I was feeling quite stuffy in the nose yesterday afternoon and kinda had a feeling that my body wasn't 100%. I think I may have overdone it with a hike at Griffith Park and a trip to Costco...all while carrying Rhys on my back and on my front, respectively. I think I hiked for a good hour. I was feeling actually quite accomplished that I did so much with a baby on my back...but around 4 in the afternoon that day, I realized that I lost my driver's license. I put it in the zipper pocket of my Ergobaby carrier on Friday when I went for my 1st hike with Rhys...but on Sunday, I also put my phone in there and when I went from behind to grab my phone out of the pocket, I imagine that's when the license fell out without me knowing. I looked high and low for it, but it was nowhere to be found. I think that was a bummer and all that searching probably stressed me out a bit too. What was worse was that I had to drive an hour in LA traffic (come on...traffic on a Sunday?!?) to drop Rhys off in Camarillo. Luckily Rhys fell asleep and stayed asleep throughout the whole trip. So around 7:45 pm, I drive back down to LA, pump and begin to pack my belongings to head back to SD. I was going to take a short nap and then just decided that I would wake up early on Monday morning. So I get in bed around 10:45 and ask my mom to wake me up at 11:30 so I can pump again and then went right back to sleep. Luckily the drive back down to SD was fairly easy. I arrive in SD around 7 am and frantically look for my passport thinking that I would need some form of alternative identification...but darn it...I can't find it. So I head over to the Poway DMV, ready to be sent back home without proper alt id, but apparently a fingerprint is more proof of identification than a picture! That makes sense. So around 8:30, I get outta there and decide to deposit some money at the bank. But poo...the bank doesn't open til 9 am. So I sit in my car for 30 mins until it opens and then deposit money. Then I was off to Trader Joe's to hopefully buy some veggies and fruit to make food for Rhys, but there isn't that much of a selection there today. I come home, PUMP, eat lunch, and decide to take a nap. I think this is where my cold really decided to kick itself in. I couldn't sleep for the first half hour because I couldn't stop this throat-itching cough. My feet were also unusually cold. I just couldn't warm them up. Woke up at 3 pm to feed the dogs a little early cuz I couldn't stand Julian whining at me...and then pumped again. So here I am...settling back down in bed to start studying before Brian gets home at 7 pm. Sometimes I feel like I don't do anything because I'm not working...but sometimes I think I'm pretty darn busy. I often think if I'm making more work for myself by insisting on continuing to breastfeed until a year, but at the same time, since Rhys was a preemie, I feel like he should get the best nutrition that he can get from me. I'm religiously taking my prenatals still and trying to eat healthy. I just wish this weight would come off!!! 7 months and I've still lost none of my pregnancy weight besides what I lost in the 1st month after delivering. I saw myself on video that my mom took of me changing Rhys' diaper and I was like..."Woah! Who is that chubby lady that sounds like me?!" Camera adds 10 lbs and I can't afford to look another 10 lbs heavier. I also found myself fibbing a little on my driver's license renewal form. I said that I was about 8 lbs lighter than I really am cuz I just couldn't bring myself to putting down my actual weight. Hopefully in the future I'll look at my license and go, "wow...I can't believe I weighed that much back then!". For now, I'm just gonna sit in bed and try to get some studying down.

Rhys with Big Gomo.

Sleeping through the night?

I bought this sleep training book called The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley in hopes of getting Rhys to sleep better because lately he was waking up every hour during the night and only taking measly 30 minute naps during the day. I was seriously going crazy and taking it out on Brian and also getting very frustrated at the baby, sometimes forcing my boob on him so he would just eat and go back to sleep..(which he did not appreciate). After about a couple weeks of constantly waking up every hour or so, I decided I needed a solution. I wasn't about to try the Cry-It-Out method so I found this book that claims you can get your baby to sleep better and longer without crying. I bought it, read it and really didn't find it that revolutionary what they were telling me to do. I really thought that it was going to be a step by step guide to help me, but it was more guidelines and various ideas that I could pick and choose from based on what kind of baby I had and what kind of method I used to get the baby to sleep normally. But in any case, I had to try something. So Monday night, I tried it out. I fed him, played with him in the dim room, had daddy play with him, came back into the dim room, put him down, pick him back up because he cried, nursed him again, put him down, picked him back up and rocked him, put him down, picked him back up and rocked him....I think I picked him up like 5 times. Every time I tried to lay him down, he would startle and cry and be angry. Finally after the 5th time, he was so tired that he went to sleep!!.....But only to sleep for 30 minutes and cry again. So I nursed him, rocked him and put him down and he went down again after a couple attempts, only to sleep for 45 minutes and then again later for 53 minutes. Needless to say, I was exhausted come 1 am...so I just picked up the little guy and moved back into bed and nursed him back to sleep and called it a night. He must have been tired because he slept for a 3 hour stretch after he came back into bed with me. Still, baby was cranky once morning came.

    I considered not doing the sleep training the following day, but I read a lot of positive reviews for keeping consistent and persistent with sleep training and that in the end, the baby and I would both sleep better. So I tried again to disassociate my boob with him falling asleep. I took the nipple out of his mouth when he looked like he wasn't sucking much to eat, but just to suck. I did as they told me and kept him mouth closed with my finger under his chin...and it worked! Although he slept for only 40 minutes, I was so happy that I got him to sleep after I took the boob away. 

   When the evening rolled around again, I decided we try this sleep training thing again. We fed him some carrots (he just started on solids last week) and I nursed him, burped him, held him, took him to daddy to play a little, looked around and said good night to the various things around the house, and then I took him into the room when he looked tired and put him down in the pack n play. He fussed and started to cry, so I picked him up, then I put him down and then picked him up again, and then put him down. I put a fuzzy blanket over him and then he started to fuss and pull the blanket over his face so I just watched him to make sure he didn't do anything dangerous. He started kicking both his feet up into the air and banged them down on the bed over and over, all the while he looks as if he is trying to smother himself or eat his blanket. I just kept an eye on him to see if his crying/fussing would get worse....but it didn't! He fussed with the blanket and his feet for about a couple minutes and then his fussing got slower and slower and finally, he stopped moving! His hands relaxed and he twitched a little, but it looked like he was actually drifting to sleep! It was aroud 9:15 pm. I made sure that the blanket wasn't covering his face and watched him....and watched him....and watched him. I was in my room watching Rhys and catching up on Downton Abbey until about 12:20 when Brian came in to sleep. He slept for 3 hours on his own! He fussed and shifted and kicked a few times during those 3 hours, but overall he was able to get himself back to sleep without much trouble. I was so shocked and delighted, but skeptical that it would happen again. Tonight is Thursday night, the 4th night of sleep training and he went down without much fuss. He was pretty tired though. I gave him 3.5 oz of breastmilk from a bottle, then rewarded him with my boob, and then I put him down in the pack n play and he just went down...no fuss! 

Here is a pic of him sleeping. 

The only difference with tonight is that he didn't get solids at dinner. It's my little experiment to see if it was the solids that helped him to sleep for 4 hours last night or if he is just maturing as a baby. 

Now, how to deal with him screaming his lungs out when I'm not around...hmmmm...I guess we'll have to deal with that when the time comes. I already feel bad for my mom...I better get her a nice gift.