Oh the Sleepless Nights

Will they ever get better? I know eventually they will, but I guess I just assumed it would have happened by now. I know I said I wasn't going to blog about Alex again this next time, but I got quite a few comments saying how much everyone loved reading about him, so I figured it was okay :)

For those of you who don't know, let me give you a little background info on how Alex has slept since he was born. When he was first born we co-slept. I know a lot of people have a lot of different views on this and it doesn't always work for some, but it worked for us. We made our bed as safe as we possibly could. I did tons of research on safe co-sleeping and we made every necessary adjustment to our bed. Scott & I each used our own blanket and tucked it around us so it could not cover over his face. I could go on and on defending our choice to co-sleep, but I'm not going to. It worked for us at the time and all was well.

When Alex was around the age of 5 months, we started the process of moving him to his own crib. It was a hard process. Mainly because he was still nursing at night. He would sleep in his crib but I was up almost every 30 min-1 hour. Around 7 months I stopped nursing him all together because I went back to work. He was still up a lot at night even when he wasn't nursing. I finally bought a book called "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" because I knew I couldn't handle letting him "cry it out". I read the book and we implemented the plans outlined in the Sleep Solution book. It took a few weeks, but eventually Alex was sleeping in his own bed all night waking only 1-2 times a night. He was even taking good naps at this time.

I know Im missing some things along this "sleep timeline" because his schedule has changed so many different times, I can't even remember all of the changes. Then came the cutting of the molars. For the past 4-5 months or so, he has been waking every 1-2 hours again. It isn't just as simple as laying him back down and giving him back his binky and he will go back to sleep. No he wants to be picked up and rocked. I know so many people have told me, don't give in, don't pick him up he will eventually get the picture. Okay we tried that. MANY times. And each and every time he will get himself so upset that he ends up throwing up all over his crib and himself. So we tried every time he wakesup and wants to be picked up, we pick him up, rock him until he is almost asleep and then laying him in his crib to fall the rest of the way to sleep on his own. DOESN"T WORK!!

The last month or so I have been so worn out from not sleeping, that I've given in and let him sleep with us again starting around 1 in the morning. I just can't keep going getting up every 1-2 hours and having to rock him for 20-30 min to get him back to bed. It was starting to affect my daily life and attitude. So needless to say for the past month or so he has been sleeping in our bed again. I know what you are thinking...I've let us take 100 steps back. I just don't know what to do.

Right now he is sick so I'm not trying anything new until he is all better. He was up until midnight last night coughing and just unhappy and eventually coughed so much he puked all over our bed. Luckily he slept til 10am so he was able to get some much needed rest, but now his nap schedule is all messed up today. Its a never ending cycle! :)

I love my son more than anything in this world, but I guess I just assumed that by 18 months, he would be sleeping through the night. I know it's mainly mine and Scott's fault for giving in and letting him sleep with us again, but we were just desperate to sleep! I guess this post was more of just me ranting and getting it all out. Thanks to those of you who have read this far!

P.S. I apologize if I rambled or totally lost my train of thought a few times on that blog..I am running on a few hours of sleep. Although Alex slept from midnight to 10am, I sure didn't! When he sleeps with us he tosses and turns and kicks and punches us :)

A Year is A Long Time

Scott should be leaving anytime now. We still don't know an exact date and that is very frustrating. We would like to at least know how many days we have until he leaves, but we don't so we are just spending every second we can as a family. I still don't think it will completely sink in until he is gone...a year is a LONG time to be gone, but he is doing it for us, for our family, to better our future. All of the sacrifices will be worth it in the long run.

As for everything else, it is all going pretty well. Except for the face that Alex is sick. He has had a very loose cough for a few days now. Poor little guy just doesn't feel well at all. I hate seeing him not feeling well. He is sleeping worse than normal...which for anyone who knows how poorly he sleeps in the first place, can imagine how little sleep we are all getting right now. As soon as he feels all better, I am going to stick with a plan to get him to sleep better and sleep in his own bed. We have always let him go back to the old habit of sleeping with us and I know it is only going to make things harder, but I know I have to do it.

We took him to get some professional pictures done for his 18 month milestone. He is normally such a ham when it comes to the camera at home, but the photographer couldn't seem to get the best smiles from him. However, the pictures still came out great!










His new favorite thing to do is color. I got him some Tadoodle crayons and a coloring book and he loves to draw pictures for Mommy & Daddy! I have a feeling he is going to be very creative and love arts and crafts. I plan on starting a new project every week with him once he is feeling all better. Right now he doesn't want to do much, except lay around. He is also really big into reading. He has about 30 books and we read each one about 3-4 times a day (at least!). I am so glad that he loves reading so much. He is so smart. And boy does he have a personality! What a ham he is! He knows how to get a reaction out of people so he is constantly "performing" for us. I can't wait to hear the things that will come out of his mouth once he is really "talking". He is such a crack up!

I know my blog is always about Alexander, so I think my next post, I will try to post about something else. Maybe. :) After all he is the most important thing in my life!

It's been a while...

That seems to be a theme with my blogs doesn't it? I go weeks without blogging and then I remember that its been weeks so I get online to blog and realize I have a TON to write about! I guess we should start off with the holidays since I last left off at Halloween.

Thanksgiving was great. I ate A LOT! So I went off of my diet for the holidays a little bit. Honestly, who doesn't?? Who can tell me with all honesty that they stuck to their diet 100% during the holidays? Well I sure couldn't! I did get very lucky though and I only managed to gain back 1 lb of what I had lost. I don't have any idea how I only gained back 1 lb, but hey I'm not gonna argue with my scale! Alex loved Thanksgiving dinner. His favorite was the fruit salad that I always make. Go figure! He loves his fruit. After Thanksgiving dinner, we all sat around and relaxed and watched a Christmas Story. Its usually a tradition. Then the next day, we decorated for Christmas.

Christmas was wonderful too. I did uphold all of the traditions I wanted to with Alex. We looked at Christmas lights on Christmas Eve and opened up one present before bed. Alex loved it!


Then we got ready for bed and I let him color or "write a note to Santa" :o)


And then it was time for bed and we read "Twas the Night Before Christmas"



The next morning when Alex woke up, we opened presents and then had breakfast. The rest of the day was spent enjoying time with the family and watching a Christmas Story and other Christmas movies. Here are a few pics of opening presents.


The holidays were great and I'm kinda sad to see them gone.

Alex has been chatting up a storm. He has been saying new words like crazy. He can make the sounds for a cow, duck, and sheep and dog. He has a book of "first words" and he can say a few, but he can point out everything in that book. He is so smart! He does a whole dance to the Blue's Clues theme song too. Its so adorable! I have yet to get that on video the whole way through though because every time I bring out the camera he stops dancing. :o)

Last Saturday night he had a little accident. He was running from the living room into the hallway and right where it turns to tile in the hallway he fell and he bit all the way through his bottom lip. It was awful. There was blood everywhere and he was screaming so much. I felt horrible and all the blood really freaked me out. I immediately wanted to take him to the ER, but we were able to get the bleeding to stop within 5 minutes. I called the ER and they said there probably wouldn't be too much they could do for it, but if we wanted to bring him in we could. We decided against it because it wasn't bad enough to need stitches. In fact its almost healed already. I do have some pictures of his lip the next day, but they are still on my camera. I will post them soon.

Scott found out on Monday that he may be losing his job. The company he works for is contracted through the Marine Corps. Well because his company bought out another company, they are now considered a "large" company. The time came at the beginning of this month to renew their contract with the Marine Corps. But because they are now considered a "large" company, they have to be in the contract with a smaller company. In the end Scotts company only got a small percentage of the contract, whereas another one got the majority of it. Scotts place of work will be going from 36 positions to 14 and they are going to be keeping the people that have been there the longest. I was defintely freaked out and scared at what would happen if he were to lose his job. However, things are starting to look a little better. The other company that got the contract will have 60 new positions open up-16 of which are what Scott does (flight line mechanic) and he has a pretty good chance of getting a job with them. We won't know the final outcome for a couple of weeks because there is a probationary period or something with the contract to be completely finalized. Its so confusing! But everything with the military is :o) I should have known that from when he was enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Anywho, that about sums up the last few months for us. I hope to do better about updating this. We will see how that goes :)

A little bit late...but so worth the wait!

I have been horrible at posting about Halloween and what fun we had Trick or Treating with Alex. I wasn't sure how well he would do since he refused to take a second nap that day, but he did wonderfully!

Alex & Daddy Getting Ready to Go!

We went up to a neighborhood right near us that is a little bit quieter. It has 3 cul-de-sacs right next to each other and there aren't really cars driving on them unless the people live there. They also do a big Christmas lights display on all of these cul-de-sacs every year called Candy Cane Lane. Its wonderful and I can't wait to take Alex around to see all the lights this year. But back to Halloween (one holiday at a time!).

The cutest Pug doggy ever!

Starting to get sleepy

Having so much fun!

He did so well and had such a great time. He caught onto the concept of Trick or Treating really well. After a few houses he was knocking on the doors himself and sticking his hand into each bowl that someone held out to pick out his own piece of candy. We did have a few people who I could tell were a little upset that we were at their house trying to get candy since Alex is so little. They probably figured we were doing it just so Mommy & Daddy could eat the candy. That was never my intention at all. We were just trying to create memories for us with Alex and letting Alex have a good time. In fact most of his candy went to his Aunt and Uncle since Mommy & Daddy are on a diet.

All in all the night went great and Alex had a wonderful time. Now I can't wait to see his reaction to all of the Christmas decorations and events.

My New Adventure

Well, since yesterday, I am officially "dieting". I gained 40 lbs when I was pregnant with Alex and right after having him about 25 of that went away very easily. Well the other 15 lbs has stuck around. I kept hoping that if I just ignored it long enough it too would go away. Boy was I wrong! For about the past two months I have tried to get the weight to start coming off by eating better and walking daily. I lost a couple of pounds, but seemed to keep putting it back on. After a few days of doing well, I would fall back into a rut and go back to eating whatever and drinking soda (my big downfall). This was all until a friend of mine introduced me to SparkPeople.com. It is a wonderful website that has TONS of tools to help you lose weight and maintain your weight loss. Its basically the same "diet" as Weight Watchers, however you are counting calories instead of using points. It has a nutrition calculator where you can put in everything you eat and it totals your calories, fat, protein, carbs, etc. It also has an exercise calculator where you record everything you do to workout..you can even count playing with your children or housework :o) When you first sign up it asks you how much you weigh now and what your weight loss goals are and when you want to be at that goal. It then creates a "program" for you to help you to know how many calories you can eat in a day and how many you need to burn throughout the week in order to get to your goal. They provide meal plans if you want them, but you do not have to use them. It is teaching me portion control and that way I don't have to give up the foods I love..I just have to eat them in smaller portions. I definitely think this is going to be that extra motivation I have needed to get those last 15 lbs off. Scott has joined forces with me and is working towards his goal as well. He put on a few pounds-I think it was sympathy weight-during my pregnancy. We both want to get back to where we were when we met and we have a goal to do that by our 4th Anniversary in February. We said if we both make it to that goal we are going to reward ourselves with an Anniversary weekend away.

So I guess this was my way of promoting SparkPeople.com at the same time. :o) No seriously though, I think everyone should check out their site. They have so many tools and things to help you along your weight loss journey! Even if you are just looking to drop a couple pounds. They have great recipes and tons of articles, videos, blogs. Go check them out and if you join..add me as a friend..my username is Sarahmay143.

I have to watch what I say from now on

Alex is becoming so independent. He is turning into a little person. Now I know he has always been a little person, but with him now walking/running, understanding the things we say and talking, he seems more like a little person now. Alex's first word was "dada" and has now progressed to "Daddy". His second word was "mama" but he has yet to say "Mommy". His favorite word is "doggy"..it comes out more like "dah-gi", but we know he is saying doggy because he says it and points to the dogs. He loves dogs. I definitely think he is going to be an animal lover just like his Mommy! He loves watching the birds fly around outside with Grandpa and when we took him to Sea World last month he couldn't keep his eyes off all of the animals there.

Now the reason I titled this blog "I have to watch what I say from now on" is because he has also entered into a mimicking phase. Anything we say or do he tries to say or copy. For instance, yesterday I yelled "No!" at the dogs and Alex proceeded to chase the dogs yelling "no!". Also he learned from his Daddy how to wave his hand in front of his nose saying "stinky" when he has pooped. Could this be a step towards potty training?? :o) Some of his other favorite words or sayings include: "stop it", "moo" for what a cow says, "shhh" for when he is telling the dogs not to bark, "that"-comes out more like "dat".

My little boy is growing so quickly. I am trying to cherish all of these times when he is little because I have learned how fast time flies. Before I know it, he will be talking all the time and potty trained and going to preschool. Gosh I feel old!

I'm officially..

in the holiday mood. The holidays are my favorite time of year. As soon as Halloween rolls around I start to get very excited because that means it will soon be Thanksgiving and soon after that Christmas!!! I LOVE CHRISTMAS! Just all the pretty lights and decorations and wonderful music and cool weather and well just everything about the Christmas season warms my heart. I get it from my Mother. My childhood has the best memories of decorating the house the day after Thanksgiving...a tradition that still stands to this day. We always listen to Christmas music and eat leftover pie from Thanksgiving and sip hot chocolate (with marshmallows) while we decorate. Another memory is decorating the Christmas tree. This was my favorite part! Then when it was all decorated we would always layout our sleeping bags and pillows and sleep by the pretty Christmas tree that first night. Baking Christmas cookies is a fond memory as well. Also going to look at Christmas lights on Christmas eve. There are so many I just can't list them all. I can't wait to carry on these traditions and also to create new ones with Alex. Last year at Christmas time he was only 3 1/2 months old so he didn't really know what was going on. This year is going to be so much fun. He is going to love all of the lights and the tree and everything. I'm going to have a fun time chasing him away from the decorations and the tree!

But I also want to talk about Halloween since it is only half-way through October. We got Alex's costume last weekend and we also went to the Pumpkin Patch. He had so much fun running around touching all of the pumpkins and trying to pick them up and carry them. Here is a picture of Alex in his costume..hes going to be a Pug dog:

And here are a few from the Pumpkin Patch:

Helping Daddy carry his Pumpkin

I want this one!

The pumpkin was bigger than him!

Finally got him to look at the camera!

Here is a video of him walking around getting excited about all of the pumpkins. Him and the little girl at the end kept running to the same pumpkins and they would just stare at each other. He already attracts all the ladies :o)

So with only 2 months and 2 days left until Christmas....I better get shopping!