Ollie Update

The Miracle Cure for getting your kids to sleep

/ Shane / 2 Comments

When we last saw our heroes, they had completely given up on getting Oliver to sleep. Boy how two months can change things!

After the last post, it got worse if anything. We had him back in our room, but it was unpleasant for everyone. At night he would be tossing and turning in bed like a maniac, punching me in the face, and just generally keeping us all up all night. It didn’t help that he happened to be getting 3 molars at this time, but I remember there was even one night where he was awake for 4 hours right in the middle of the night. Brutal.

The worst part is, the 6 weeks we spent trying to get him to sleep on his own in the other room seemed to have done some permanent damage. He was very, very suspicious that we were going to leave him, so every little sound would bring him instantly to his feet, screaming. Since we would wake him up whenever we went into the room, Sara and I took to sleeping on couches in the living room every night until he woke up the first time. Putting him to sleep was a challenge as well, since he was suspiciously alert for any kind of attempt to leave the room. So turning the pages of my book would wake him up, to say nothing of actually trying to creep out, open the door, etc. My only recourse was to wait for at least an hour until he was deeply asleep before I could sneak out. This was a very frustrating hour! We got used to walking on eggshells to avoid waking him.

Now, we put him into the crib in his bedroom with Evie and he quietly goes to sleep by himself. A couple of times he’s slept through the entire night.

Believe me, being able to type that sentence is more flabbergasting to me than anyone. So what was the miracle cure? Waiting until the time is right!

It’s very clear to me now that there was nothing we could have done to make him go to sleep easily back then. This time it went so smoothly and easily, that it was clear the time was just right. Why was the time wrong before? Who knows. Maybe he just wasn’t old enough to have the skills to be able to do it. Maybe it was the molars. Maybe he was in too much of a “mommy” phase. Every kid is different, and every kid is in different situations at different times.

The first time we tried to let him “cry it out” for over an hour multiple nights, and it didn’t work. This time it took 20 minutes the first night, and that was it. The first time it went on for 6 weeks. This time it was over in a matter of days.

It still hasn’t been perfect. The first few days he was getting up at 4 a.m. But that is a different problem, and that problem we could work on (we’ve had some success in the past with this issue). He’s still waking up a time or two some nights. But again, this is vastly better than it was. And sometimes now he can even put himself back to sleep! Also, his awakenings are increasingly after 4, so I think that it is all related to him wondering when we are going to come in and get him. Hopefully the “ghost light plan” (a lamp with a book in front of it in this case) will solve this issue.

I have to say, the whole thing makes me feel so much better. You hear these stories about parents who let their children cry it out when they’re 10 months old, and it only takes 5 minutes and then they sleep blissfully through the night. I used to think that these stories weren’t true (lies, all lies I tell you!) because the alternative was that I was somehow a bad parent. Now I think they might be true after all. Your kid is ready when he’s ready. Maybe for some kids, that’s 10 months. For Oliver, it wasn’t.

So, just like all Miracle Cures, it’s not as easy as it sounds. You have to determine when the “right time” is for your child. That part has no easy answers. But the good news is you have permission to stop and wait if it’s not working. I wish we would have done that the first time, instead of trying to force it for 6 weeks.

But when it finally does work, boy is it fantastic! Sara and I feel like we have a new lease on life. The sun is brighter, flowers smell better, food tastes better. We even had two nights in a row where we played board games, since the kids were asleep early at the far end of the house. Board games!

It’s almost like I’m human again.

Learning at the speed of light

/ Shane / 2 Comments

It seems as if Oliver’s knowledge has just exploded in the past few weeks. After sticking with a few good words for so long, he is suddenly acquiring language so quickly, that it is hard to keep up. I’ve tried to compile a list of all the words he currently uses, but it seems like as soon as I put the list down on paper, he learns a few more.

So I tried to be very conservative in my list, and only include words that he uses often and obviously understands completely. He has a lot of words that he has said just a few times, or that he repeats after you, but has not used independently. So those I didn’t include. He also understands about 100 times more words than this, but I think that’s pretty normal.

So, the list as I currently know it:

  • bottle
  • watch
  • tractor
  • tent
  • night-night
  • uh oh
  • bye bye
  • tickle
  • hello
  • mama
  • dada
  • ball
  • (ba) nana
  • wow
  • yay
  • cheese
  • more
  • Nala
  • go go go
  • shoes
  • f (an)
  • bug
  • ow
  • door
  • up
  • elmo
  • woof woof woof woof woof (dog)
  • bike
  • f (ountain)
  • clock
  • bubbles
  • hot

I almost want to count “hot” twice, because he understands two separate uses of the word: when he ate something spicy, he pointed to his mouth and said, “Hot!”, and also said it when I took something out of the microwave.

In addition, he has 4 new teeth, 3 of which are molars. His other molar is looking like it won’t be far behind. Having a molar come through seems like it would be so painful, but he doesn’t really seem to be bothered much by it (other than potentially causing some sleep issues, but that’s another post altogether!). He doesn’t even seem to want to chew on things, other than food, which he has always chewed with abandon.

As a side note, he must be the only kid in the world who won’t eat cut up fruit, only whole fruit.

He’s sitting in the booster seat at the table now, instead of in the high chair, and took to eating with utensils pretty easily. Although he hasn’t exactly mastered it, it seemed to go much better with him than Evie. Maybe that’s just because he loves to eat so much, especially compared to her. They both were pretty good at using a regular cup.

He looks so grown up sitting there in the chair with a spoon in hand! He’s our little polite boy, wiping his face after a bite, and wiping any drips up from the table. On the other hand, he still inexplicably dumps his milk in his lap, just to see what will happen, and he loves to put his fork or his food in his milk cup. Still, overall, pretty good for a one year old!

Admitting Absolute Defeat

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Remember that super optimistic post I wrote about Oliver’s sleep schedule only a few months ago? Well, what goes up, must come down.

Boy, where to even start.

It all started when we got back from vacation. He had been sleeping so well before that, so we already had the plan to put him in his own room when we got back. We totally failed to see how vacation had changed everything, and did not adjust our plans accordingly.

As vacation had worn on, he was crying more and more and having more and more trouble going to sleep. So when we got back and I confidently put him in the crib, he just sobbed and sobbed. All of my enthusiasm and back-patting for how easy things were going to be went right out the window. We tried letting him cry, but that got us nowhere. He sobbed and sobbed and never stopped.

Now the plan was to put Evie and Oliver in the same room, but it wouldn’t really be fair to dump this problem off onto her. So Evie started sleeping in our room, and I started sleeping in her bed in Oliver’s room (with earplugs to get through all the nightly crying!) Every night he would just wake up sobbing and sobbing, and just unable to go back to sleep.

After a week or so, I took a breath and said, “Wait a minute, let’s reset.” I thought about where we were before vacation, and how to get back there, or what I did in the first place to get to the point where I could leave and he would just go to sleep. So we started over. Eventually, we got to the point where I stayed in the room, but I just sat on the floor until he went to sleep. He didn’t cry, just went to sleep. So we were at least back to square 1.

So this seemed like progress, until we had a really bad night, where he just wouldn’t stop crying. Eventually, Sara had to come in and sleep with him. This was very discouraging for me. He ended up being sick, so I think maybe he just wasn’t feeling that well that night.

The following night, miracle beyond miracles, he slept through the whole night!

So it seemed like we had finally made a break through. However, I think that was the last time he slept through the night. Every night after that was a little bit worse. And even worse than that, Evie had been sleeping in the bed with Sara for about 2 weeks at point, and she was losing the ability to sleep by herself, always wanting company. So not only were we not solving Oliver’s sleep problems, but now we were creating sleep problems in Evie. I certainly didn’t want to get Oliver sleeping in his bed, only to end up with Evie in ours instead.

I had resorted to sleeping on the floor, since the creakiest bed in the world would wake him up whenever I climbed into bed, or shifted in the night. I was really on pins and needles in there, trying not to wake him up, since it could bring on an hour long sob-fest. The floor seemed like the lesser of two evils.

So finally we decided to put Evie in the bed in there, with me continuing to sleep on the floor. Best case scenario, her presence would help him sleep, worst case, we wouldn’t be any worse off with Oliver, but at least we could try to keep Evie from getting used to sleeping in our bed. Unfortunately, it ended up being the later case.

Furthermore, a new problem started to develop. Having Oliver and I in the room with her was too exciting for Evie. So she started to revert to her customary awake time of 5 a.m., which would of course wake Oliver up. So we eventually fell into a sort of rhythm of the 3 of us sleeping in there, with me on the floor. Oliver would wake up 1 or 2 times a night, and Evie would wake up 1 or 2 times a night, finally culminating in a 5 a.m. wake up. Weeks went by.

Finally it just became obvious that, at almost 6 weeks, things were not going to improve. I started beginning the night in my bed until the first time Oliver woke up, and then sleeping on the floor after that, but even still the whole thing was taking a toll. I was so exhausted from waking up so often and so early, and so sore from sleeping on the floor, that I was really starting to get frustrated.

Even the things that had been working were starting to erode. It was obvious that my presence in the room was keeping him awake, and yet, if I tried to go out, he would get so upset. Some nights I would resolve myself to let him cry until he went to sleep, but after literally more than an hour, I couldn’t take it anymore. At that point, he was usually so exhausted, that all I would have to say was, “Oliver, lay down.” and he would go to sleep. But it was like I had to do that, or else he would never be able to go to sleep by himself, no matter how long it went. He just was not able to calm himself down or go to sleep without at least *something* from me.

The final straw for me was one night when he had been sobbing for going on 45 minutes or so and Evie started sobbing herself saying, “I’m tired but I can’t go to sleep when Oliver is crying!” I felt so bad about that. I had always been very sensitive about not putting any of this on Evie. She mothers him so much as it is, and I felt like it was shifting the burden from the parents, where it belonged, to her shoulders. That didn’t seem right. One night she even tried sleeping on the floor, to comfort him that da da was there. It was sweet, but made me feel bad.

So we’re taking a break. 6 weeks is too long for the house to go without sleep. Oliver and I need a break from each other, so Sara is taking over as Sleepmaster General. Oliver is back in the travel crib in our room. If he howls all night long (and believe me, so far he has…Sara hasn’t had any more success than I did), at least Evie can get some sleep (although she still complains that his crying from the other room keeps her up). There have been some ups and downs (one night I was sleeping until Oliver decided to try and bite a significant chunk out of my back, for no reason… unpleasant way to wake up, let me tell you!), and we’re not exactly sure where to go from here. All we know is that whatever we were doing before wasn’t working.

And to think I was SO SURE it was going to be so easy this time around!

Holiday Weekend Wrapup

/ Shane / 3 Comments

First off, happy belated 4th of July to everyone, and happy belated anniversary to Sara and I!

We continued the tradition we started last year, and headed up to Michigan for the 4th. We again stayed at Lisa and Orlan’s house, and Evie again had the time of her life. Sara and I had a good time too, but there’s something about watching your kid have a great time that just makes it impossible for you to not enjoy yourself. Evie loves playing with Kaycee, who never seems to get tired of playing with her (I hope…and if not, sorry Kaycee!). Randi, on the other hand, has to do practically nothing to gain her adoration.

Oliver was sort of terrified, sort of curious about their dogs. I would say he wasn’t as terrified as Evie used to be about them, because whenever they weren’t looking at him, he wanted to go investigate and keep an eye on them. So he was very interested in them. But if they showed an interest in him, he would run screaming and sobbing, as absolutely terrified as anybody could ever be about anything. 10 seconds later the dogs would be off somewhere else, and he’d be begging to get down again.

Evie warmed up to the dogs quite a bit. The turning point was after she got out of the pool and was shivering cold; “The dogs have very warm tongues!” After that she seemed to have no problem with the dogs at all, and she was only really scared of them when Oliver was getting a lot of attention for being scared of them. She even mentioned on the way home that she likes their warm tongues. This is a complete 180 reversal from her previous stance on dogs, which was that she wants no smooches from them under any circumstances.

We ended up at the lake both Sunday and Monday, which worked out good because there wouldn’t have been enough time on Monday alone to satisfy all of Evie’s lake demands. She had such a great time! We couldn’t keep her off the lake: if she wasn’t in the boat, she was on a tube. If she wasn’t on a tube, she was swimming in the water. This is all fairly surprising, since she freaks out if any water gets on her face or head (especially ears!). So I’m kind of impressed that she enjoyed the water so much.

Oliver thinks the boat is a magical sleeping machine. 3 rides on the boat, 3 naps. Every time, he was out almost as soon as we pulled away from the dock. He was sort of obsessed with the lake, and keeping him from running over and diving in was sort of a full time job. He did take some breaks to play in the wading pool, where he mostly enjoyed watching the water drip out of his swimming trunks.

Evie also insisted that Aunt Pat take her for a ride on the “other boat” (a.k.a. the wave runner). She enjoyed that just as much, taking the driver’s seat. She has no problem being in charge of driving either of the boats. The only mishap was that one time her hat blew off into the lake, but they were able to retrieve it before it sunk.

We spent a lot of time “tubing”, or foolishly being whipped around at high speeds behind a boat on a flimsy inter tube. Evie thought it was the best thing ever, even though the boat was going as slow as it was physically able to go while she was on there. Even Sara went, which really surprised me. That was probably the highlight of the weekend for me. It seemed somewhat out of character, but she was grinning her head in two the entire time, and it seemed like she was really enjoying herself. That makes me happy. 🙂

As for myself, I tried tubing as well. What I learned was that tubing is not for whiners. Well, guess what? It’s my blog and I can whine about whatever I want to. Tubing is harrrrrd! My arms huuuurt!

Look, in my defense, even though I wouldn’t consider myself old, I was at least twice as old as anybody who was out there tubing with me, and probably weigh twice as much as well. My arms are definitely not used to hauling that kind of weight around!

I was on the side of a 3 person tube, and I felt like I was practically falling off the tube to begin with. When we got out there and really started whipping around in the chop, I was holding myself on with sheer arm strength (what precious little I have) and will power. I can’t even count the number of times I thought to myself, “Oh, man, that’s it, I’m going off!” but I never did. At one point, towards the end, I slid almost all the way off the back of the tube. Orlan said he felt the boat slow down like he was dragging a big-fat-pasty-white anchor (those weren’t his exact words). I knew I had to pull myself back onto the tube, but my arms were so tired, I seriously considered just letting go. So maybe that final pull-up was when I pulled a muscle in my arm.

That night and the next day my right elbow was so sore that I had trouble shaving. They kept trying to get me to go again, but I’m telling you, I was physically unable. And I admit, I felt kind of silly complaining about it, since there were about 8 other people who went a lot more times than I did, and *they* weren’t complaining. I have to assume I was doing something wrong, though I’m not sure what. My arms are still sore today!

So that was pretty much it. I can only think of three things that were even remotely bad:

  1. There was a lot of construction both ways that added some significant time onto our trip,
  2. We bought hamburger buns from the bakery on Friday and they were moldy by Monday, so that was a big fat waste of money,
  3. My phone fell out of my pocket, and we left Lisa’s house without it. Luckily I realized this and we were able to stop by and get it on the way home (it was in between the couch cushions, under the giant stuffed frog of course)
If those are the only things that went wrong, then I think it was a fairly successful trip!

Now begone! Before somebody drops a house on you!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

This morning I had a bit of a rude awakening.

I was sleeping on the floor under Oliver’s crib. When he woke up, he decided to try and reach the enormous duplo house on the book shelf. He had…just…managed to reach it when *BOOM* he dropped it on my face, where it shattered into a million pieces (or 20).

There are probably worse ways to wake up than a duplo house exploding on your face from about 6 feet up, but not a lot.