7 Months, 14 Days

Henry had a strange evening. JT's parents (Oma and Opa) are visiting for a long weekend and we all piled in the car, picked up Henry, met JT and headed out to dinner. Henry was okay, but seemed lethargic and acted a little drugged-- definitely sleepy. After trading off holding him he managed to fall asleep on my shoulder with nary a peep. Henry doesn't do that. We were wracking our brains to figure out what might be causing this strange behavior on his part. He slept until we put him in the carseat when he woke up and fussed a bit and then quietly looked out the window on the ride home. He had a light fever when we checked it at home but by then he was awake and as smiley as his usual self.

I went ahead and got him ready for bed and he went to sleep easily. We're hoping to keep our record of sleep-filled nights intact.

Here's a picture from our post-turkey walk that was cut short by Texas-sized mosquitoes on Henry's face.

7 Months, 13 Days

Baby it's cold outside... and yet Henry complained loudly this afternoon at Brenda's when she tried to get his coat on. I was worried he hadn't slept much because he was fussy on the way home too but once home he was a barrel of laughs and happily played with his little people house until it was time for dinner and a bath. He fell asleep just before 7 but has actually woken up crying twice since then (it's 9 pm now). Hopefully this isn't what the rest of the night is going to be like.

I'm getting more congested by the minute so i'm off to bed with some cold medicine. Hopefully the early night will do me good.

Today's picture is Henry in his first piece of sports-paraphernalia enjoying some post-turkey play time.

7 Months, 12 Days

I've taken to sitting Henry up in the bathtub sans bath-chair in just a few inches of water. He can sit up well enough now that he's free to play and grab at toys without fear of a face-full of water (which thankfully, he's weathered quite well in the past). Tonight after he finished playing with his crab, he began splashing his hand up and down in the water. This caused tiny bubbles to form which absolutely captivated him. He would try to pick the them up with his fingers and then get so excited he'd splash and the whole thing would start again.

7 Months, 11 Days

Henry adjusted well back at Brenda's today and the other kids hailed him heartily when i dropped him off this morning. She said he didn't skip a beat and settled right back into his nap schedule.

We enjoyed an early dinner and now we're off to start to put the house back together. JT's parents come to visit this Wed and i'm a little under the weather so i'm planning on doing a little today and a little tomorrow.

Today's picture features Henry playing with his Great-Grandfather.

On the seventh day...

Travel is something that both JT and i enjoy and something we felt would be a marker for our parenting style. We weren't going to buy into the conventional wisdom that you couldn't travel with children and i was determined to disprove the notion that child as traveling companion necessitated mountains of luggage.

If it was just the logistics of travel that turned out to be difficult i wouldn't even be writing this. Unfortunately, as with most things parental, the difficulty lies in the areas i can't control.

I am a ruthless packer and an efficient travel planner. I can winnow Henry and i's belongings to a single roll-aboard and schedule flights so they coincide with nap times without a second thought. I can keep Henry on his general routine, bring Ralph and his other sleep accoutrements, and generally try to provide him the same environment he's accustomed to at home. I can not however figure out, let alone solve, the reason H can be super-baby all day (charming everyone with his continual smile) while his sleep quality begins to erode and then unravel.

At this point Henry is averaging slightly over one trip per month since he first traveled at 2 months old. I think our solution is cutting back on his travel schedule until he's a bit older. At this point we need to pick and choose his trips carefully so that the benefits of visiting family and friends are not out-weighed by the temporary damage to his sleeping. I think i might just start treating this as an experiment (albeit not a controlled one) to see if certain variables make things better or worse. Look for the results of my study in a Pediatric Sleep Journal in a few years...

We'll see what the night holds, but i think after a day filled with many, many naps, we may have little Henry back on his routine. After finally falling asleep at 7 last night he slept until 7:45 this morning with only one brief night-waking. I was so dead i didn't even know he was crying until JT got back in bed from checking on him. His day started out with a brief 20 minute nap, but after pretty short awake periods i just kept putting him back down for increasingly longer naps. By tonight he seemed to be getting back to his smiley self.

Here's a picture from the second full-day of our trip. Showcased is the entire Thetford cousin and second-cousin gang.

7 Months, 9 Days

We enjoyed seeing all of my family in Oklahoma and Texas, gathering with the second cousins, meandering around the family farm, and getting back home. Henry was super-traveler baby and truly amazed everyone with his generous smiles. I really worked hard to keep him on a pretty good semblance of his schedule but his most sensitive feature-- sleep, was still affected. He did pretty well until the last few days when his naps shortened to 30 minute stints and he was waking 4-5 times at night. We put him to bed early tonight because he was falling asleep in his milk but it took him quite awhile to truly fall asleep. I knew coming home that this would take a few days to sort out but it's just so hard to bear the crying after we suffered through it so many months ago. Thankfully JT is able to keep reminding me that he'll be the same (happier) smiley Henry tomorrow once he gets back on top of his sleep needs.

I'll post more about traveling and the details of our trip in the next few days. For now i wanted to let you know that i was home and that we have lots of fun pictures to share over the next several days.

Here's one from our first stop-- Henry hanging out with my paternal grandparents!

7 Months, 1 Day

What a fun milestone to report! Last night i heard Henry waking up around 1:00 am. As i was lying there listening to his waking-up noises, i was dreading having to get up and see what was wrong. Instead of crying though, he talked to himself for about a minute and then just went quietly back to sleep. Up until this point, if he woke up in the night he would automatically cry, or at least cry out, before getting himself back to sleep. What a sweet minute this was to just listen to him babbling a bit and then quietly drifting off to sleep.

He continued to wow me as we hosted neighborhood playgroup at our house this evening. Last time Henry was the oldest baby, this time he was squarely in the middle with a 16 month old at the top and a 4.5 month old bringing up the year (well there was a 3.5 year old as well but she practically seems like one of the big girls.) With the older mobile babies it was less talk and more refereeing between little ones and choking hazards (and the kitties). Henry sat on his quilt for most of the evening playing with his toys and watching all the activity while i helped head off the kidlets. Everyone commented on what a good content baby Henry was and i was right there saying, "i know, he *is* good!"

I can't wait for my whole family to get to meet him and know him better over Thanksgiving. I've been dropping hints, but this is offical notice that i'll be on vaction next week from Monday-Friday as Henry and i will be traipsing through our heartland (OK) and Texas. Hopefully i'll have a trove of pics for when i return but probably no posts in the meantime.