Lots has changed

I've been having trouble finding the time to write. Taking care of 2 kids is busy! But there is a lot to report from the last few weeks. Will continues to grow - not sure his height or weight but he is wearing 3-6 month clothes and he doesn't have a lot of room in them. Leah has definitely grown too - her friend Avery is 39" and I think she's at least as tall - we'll find out when they both have check-ups on July 9.

Leah has also gotten 2 more teeth - her bottom 2 year molars are almost all the way in and her top left has just begun to break through. The top right is not yet visible but I think it's getting close as well. Luckily her night wakings from it seem to have subsided. We did have a period of several nights a couple weeks ago where Tylenol or Motrin were necessary to get her to sleep.

Will is starting to play a little, which makes Leah very happy. He does a little tummy time without a fuss. He looks at things in the activity gym. Today I thought he might be batting at things too - but I'm not quite positive. He definitely follows a noisy toy with his eyes, so Leah can enjoy moving rattles around in front of him and watching him react. She's been showing him some of her toys and stuffed animals and seems to believe me when I tell her how much he likes them.

But the biggest news is that they are now sharing a room. A couple weeks ago I decided to experiment with that at naptime. We had one really successful nap where their naps coincided but didn't quite start/end at the same time - and neither woke the other up. A couple more days of trying that were not quite as smooth, but the important discovery was that Will sleeps better in the crib than the bassinet. Not sure if it's the mattress or the space or what - seems silly since he is sleeping in a swaddle, but I don't think the experience was pure coincidence. So since we wanted to stop having him sleep in the carseat at night, we decided to bite the bullet and try it out. We started it last Friday - a day after his 6 week birthday. Overall it is going very well. He has woken her up several times, but about half of his wakings do not seem to wake her at all, and only a handful of times have we had to really work to get her back to sleep. Usually I can just tell her I'm going to feed him and she should go back to sleep and she does. We have had a couple mornings made earlier by him waking her at 5:30 or 6 and her not really going back to sleep. Now we've decided that if he has a feeding after 5 a.m. or so then he goes into our room - either in the carseat or our bed - to avoid waking her at a time that she thinks is morning but is much earlier than her day would usually start. She has also woken him a few times. A couple nights ago she woke up with a nightmare and we were able to get her back to sleep relatively quickly, but the commotion was too much for him, and once he was awake he was not going back to sleep without a feeding.

For the most part we seem to be on a decent schedule, although of course I'd love for him to sleep longer at night - or to sleep through the night. He's usually having a last feeding around 8 p.m. We do his bath and then top him off and he is asleep somewhere around 9 p.m. Once we are sure he is asleep we put him in the crib. Leah has been going to bed between 8 and 8:30, so she is asleep before we put him in the room. The one time that we brought him in and it turned out she was still awake we just told her to be quiet because we were putting Will in the crib. She was quiet...and went right to sleep as far as we could tell. Will usually wakes up around 2 a.m. for a big feeding. Then he is up anywhere between 4:30 and 6 a.m. for the next feeding. He will go back to sleep at that point, but he's usually up again around 7 a.m. - not that he necessarily needs to eat then but I guess he wants to get up for a little morning activity.

During the day Will is still sleeping most of the time. He has brief periods of awake/alert time before or after a feeding. And his naps are anywhere from about half an hour to about 3 hours. He seems to take his longest naps while parked in the stroller at the playground - as long as it's not too hot out. He's also starting to be able to hang out on his own for a bit. He will lie on the couch or in the crib or on a blanket on the floor for up to 20 minutes now - although sometimes much shorter. That does give me time to do things like make lunch (although not enough time to also eat it). I have still been having to hold him or wear him in the Bjorn at dinner time, but occasionally he'll nap for part of it. Unfortunately getting naps to coincide is still hit or miss. Today it looked like it was going to work out and then Will woke up about 15 minutes after Leah went to sleep.

Will has been having some gas issues. He kicks his legs and screams in pain. Usually I can help him work out gas/poop by pushing his legs up into his belly or rolling his lower body up to above his head - like a roly poly. But sometimes it takes awhile to help him get through it. Poor guy. It seems to be worse lately, and we're not sure whether there is a cause other than just an immature digestive system. Hopefully it will begin to subside soon. We think it's likely to resolve on its own by the time he is 3 or 4 months old.

And last but not least, we've been encouraging potty training more with Leah. I have asked her several times if she wants to try wearing her big girl panties and using the potty. Today she actually said yes. She peed on the potty around 8:30 a.m. and again at 9:15 a.m. But then around 11 she had a big pee accident all over the couch, despite my having asked her approximately every 15 minutes if she needed to use the potty. We cleaned up and put on clean undies - along with some rubber pants. About 15 minutes later she told me she leaked. I tried explaining to her that a diaper leaks but without a diaper it's called an accident. Luckily it was a small one and the rubber pants caught it all. At that point she was as frustrated as I and she told me she wanted to wear a diaper. After naptime we tried again. She picked out some Dora panties and tried using the potty around 3 p.m. (no success). Then around 4 p.m. she told me she needed to poop on the potty - but in fact she had already pooped. Luckily it was fairly solid and I was able to clean her up fairly easily. But I was out of patience for it for the day - so we put on a diaper. Next time we will be spending some time at home we will try again. I think she knows when she needs to pee/poop, but I'm not sure she quite gets the whole potty usage concept.

No time for pictures today - see Picasa for lots of those!