Sleep update

On Christmas night, Luca slept through the night. He did it again the next night. He did it again last week. This week he has his fourth molar coming in, so it's back to super sad baby, day and night.

But we have seen the light at the end of the tunnel.... and it feels good.

Daddy has completely taken over nap duty... he puts Luca on his shoulder and walks him for less than 5 minutes and he's out. He will sleep for 1-1.5 hours alone, or 2-2.5 hours if we are with him. I just walked him to sleep tonight, while listening to a record, which is his favorite (and my favorite) way to go to sleep. Gives my poor nipples a break!

My favorite part of the day is first thing in the morning. When all three of us are in bed together, it's so nice. He's usually in a great mood when he first wakes up, and either starts playing silly games like "I see you...BOO!!" or giving us lots of cuddles. We keep books in the bed at all times for family reading time, and a couple of cute stuffed animals to practice giving hugs and kisses to.

Now that post partum depression isn't completely over-shadowing my life, I can actually enjoy breastfeeding a little bit. It's amazing how much easier life is when you aren't depressed every day.

I'm still moving forward with my gentle night weaning program... he was down to nursing every 4 hours until his tooth which put him back up to every 2 hours. I gave him ibuprofen tonight to see if it will help him sleep.

He's such an extreme child! He's happily playing for 5 minutes and then all of a sudden- WAAAAAAHHHH this scream that sounds like he lost his leg, but he only can't get the lid off of a jar. He's at level 0 or 100, no in between! If only I had known this about his personality when he was little, I would have understood his cries a lot better, and maybe not panicked so much about them. I have to raise my voice quite a bit- not because I'm yelling at him (ok, sometimes I do), but because he can't hear me over his own crying unless I do. He's whining and whining and finally I'm like "WHAT IS IT LUCA?? I CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOU!" And he gives a more quiet whine, and then we say "use your words, tell mommy what you want" and he says very loudly "UP!" or "TITSY" (thirsty) or makes the nursies sign. All day long, my poor ear drums are subject to that WHINE WHINE WHINE. It drives me batty. Every want and need is this huge emergency to him. And mostly, he just wants to be held all the time so he can see what is going on up on the table, the counter, etc. And then he cries when he's not allowed to play with knives, or the hot stove, or whatever else it is that he's obsessing over.

I'm so excited about our tiny house. ALL of our possessions are in boxes in my mom's dining room or in the spare bedroom where we are sleeping. I'm proud to say a good 25% of my boxes are full of books!! I can't wait to move in the necessities and THROW AWAY all the rest of my crap. I always feel so good when I get rid of stuff.

Here is Luca and Leo playing together at the build site:



Sadly, this is the most recent family photo, taken by my sister:



I remember making him that bib when I was pregnant!