16 Weeks, 2 Days/ 2Y, 3M, 2 Days

We're moving right along here at little-boy Central. Sharp eyes may have noticed that Silas slept for 11 hours (read truly through the night!) a few nights ago. Unfortunately he developed a little cough that kept him up the next night, so now we're working on a) getting him totally better and b) getting him to where 11-12 hours is routine. The fact that we made progress so quickly without too many tears (on either side) is encouraging and really makes me think i'll have a full night's sleep before you know it. Of course when he slept 11 hours i was up wondering if he was still alive and in general not sleeping myself.

I've changed the sidebar to reflect Henry's continuing language development. It's less about new words and more about new phrases and how he's learning to put words together. He's very much into directional concepts right now; front, back, above and under are things he's constantly doing with his toys, utensils, Ralphs, you name it. He likes to talk through what he's doing as well which is super cute. I've noticed him doing more pretend play lately and making noises to go along with what he's doing.

He was playing in his play room the other day and he didn't hear me coming down the stairs. I paused and watched him pretending to heat water and pour a cup of tea and he was quite precise with all the different noises involved. He's also taken to toting a plastic iron with him to Brenda's after he saw me ironing clothes for one of the first times in his existence. It was like a light bulb turned on in his head when he realized he had his own version of the very same thing. Of course he makes his iron fly around and hides it behind the window shade, but still it's the toy of the moment.

Playgroup Pictures!

To address Kai's request for pictures from our weekend, i'm posting a few of Maia, Eva, Henry and Silas:

15 Weeks, 6 Days/ 2 Years, 2 Months, 4 Weeks, 1 Day

What a nice relaxing weekend! It flew by even though we were largely hunkered down at home, but it was so nice just to hang around the house and chill out. Saturday we enjoyed having one of my friends' from Guam over for a bbq. She and her husband have been in the Chicago area since college and have two girls very close in age to Henry and Silas. Henry and Maia had fun playing, but not really together-- they were pretty much the definition of "parallel play."

Sunday Henry took a power nap and i managed to get the mountainous pile of laundry all done and even ironed a few pieces. This caused Henry to figure out what his plastic iron is for and led to him toting it along to daycare this morning.

Silas has continued to make progress on the sleep front. Last night he woke up at 3 (before the 4:30 allowed feeding time) but once i got him back to sleep he didn't wake up to eat until 5:00. So, that's the new feeding time, which means tonight might be a rough one for me. 3 nights of 8+ hours for Silas have definitely helped me feel like i can handle it though!

I mentioned that i had finally gotten all our old photos moved over to Picasa. In the process i was able to go through and make some comparisons between Henry's baby pictures and Silas'. Here's the first in a couple looks at the two of them.

Photo Update

Just wanted to let you know that i finished the laborious process of transferring all of Henry's 0-6 month photos to the Picasa photo site. Everything is now in one place, so you can reminisce to your heart's content!

15 Weeks, 2 Days/ 2 Years, 2 Months, 3 Weeks, 4 Days

Now that i'm back to posting more regularly i'm trying to capture the little details that happend on our trip. One thing that i believe ranked right up there was all the new toys that Henry received. He was particularly into trucks (still is really) and was overjoyed at the "My first remote control car" that he received from Aunt Tammie. Henry had a great time with it and even got decent at figuring out how to make it go forward or back up when it got into a tight spot. One of his best new words was "my mote" which he would yell whenever he wanted to play with it.

Henry also got to enjoy "treats" much more with Nonna than at home. He helped Aunt Tammie bake a cake for the fourth of July and got to have a piece (which honestly lasted about 3 sittings), sampled popscicles and sno cones for the first time, and had his share of animal crackers.

I didn't witness it but by all accounts Henry helping decorate the cake was a hoot. They had frosted it and Tammie was trying to teach Henry how to shake sprinkles all over it. He would shake, shake, shake his head and them just dump the sprinkles all in one place. It actually wound up looking kind of like fireworks, and Henry was very pleased with his handiwork.

Silas had his best day yet with Brenda. She said she thinks it took him a few days to get used to all the noise and kids, but today he was just happy as a clam, didn't cry at all, and slept a lot and soundly. I'm hoping if he can get into a good nap routine during the day it will help our case at night.

He's moving along pretty well at night though. We're down to only one 4 am feeding, and i'm in the process of reducing it by 3 minutes every 3 days. He's still been waking up around 2, but last night after i gave him the pacifier he went right back to sleep and slept until 4 when he woke up to eat. Once we've eliminated his night feedings, i'm going to sleep downstairs and JT is going to soothe him when he wakes up during the night. Sweet uninterrupted sleep, you're only 10 days away!

15 Weeks/ 2 Years, 2 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

Today was my first day back at work and Silas' first day with Brenda. I think we both did pretty well. It definitely helps knowing that Silas is with his big brother at a place he loves and that we know provides good care. I still missed being with him all day, but it was definitely nice when i was getting Silas and Henry into the car and Silas turned and flashed me a huge grin. I guess he did just fine with naps, but he resisted taking his bottle for a little while. We haven't had any problems giving him a bottle so that surprised me. He got hungry enough eventually and hopefully won't give her any more trouble.

We made some good progress with Silas and his sleep last night. He fell asleep by about 7:15 and slept until 12:45. I'm following a plan where you keep moving their sleep and eating forward, but don't let them fall back. For example, Silas had his first nighttime feeding at 2 am the night before, so even though he woke up at 12:45 he couldn't eat until 2 or after. It took a little doing, but he went back to sleep after i gave him the pacifier and he slept until 4. That was great, but it also really ups the ante. Tonight he fell asleep by 8 but i can't feed him until 4 regardless of when he wakes-- i'll let you know how tired i am tomorrow!

Henry has been getting "tougher" the past month or so. He's still a sensitive kid, but he doesn't get scared when he hears the dogs barking next door, just talks about the "big rain" when he hears thunder, and laughs off minor falls. I think it helps that he's able to communicate so much more because he can talk through things and we understand what he's saying. In fact it's less about new words at this point and more about how he's combining them into little sentences.

We arrived home yesterday from vacation and i remember why i started trying to post frequently-- catching up when a lot of time has passed is very daunting!

I believe i last posted when we were heading to a baseball game. It was a minor league game about an hour away from my parents beach house-- the Shorebirds. Henry could have cared less about the baseball, but the big orange mascot bird (Sherman) was a huge hit. Henry was enamored with him and talked constantly about him when he wasn't in sight. "The Big BuBu" as Henry calls him was definitely a highlight of the trip.

A few days later we went to a model train show that was being held at the local fire department. They had several vendors selling things, and an extensive set-up of multiple tracks and all kinds of little things you could make light up and go like a ferris wheel, or the circus tent, or a water tower, etc. The last train Henry watched go around the track actually had smoke coming out of his stack, so he also talks a lot about the "hot choochoos."

For all the highlights of Henry's trip, Silas had several low points-- including two weeks of 4 hour max stints at night and excessive fussiness. Now that we're back home i've been working on putting him to bed in his crib for naps and nighttime and getting him to bed earlier. I'm also working on getting him on a feeding schedule so that hopefully all these things will feed into getting his nighttime sleep back on track. I'm not going to do anything too drastic since he starts with Brenda on Tuesday, but at least we'll be working to get his new routines established and hopefully go up from there.

JT also didn't have the best trip in that he got sick the second day he was at the beach and as of today he's actually worse that he was a few days ago. It started out as some kind of flu and then it seemed like it had turned into a bad head cold, but tonight he's been nauseous and having all kinds of stomach upset, so now it seems like the stomach flu. We're all doing our best to sanitize our hands because it will be a national disaster if i come down with it as well.

We had a chance to see JT's parents and some of our good friends the one afternoon we were in VA before flying back to Chicago. The Bane kids were there and although it took them all awhile to actually warm up to each other, they were having an amazing time running around the backyard collecting acorns by the time bedtime rolled around.