Golden Pig Tales

Ezra fell asleep in the car tonight on the way home at about 5:05pm. I took him out of the car when we got home at 5:25 and he was still asleep. I laid him on the floor where he slept some more. I thought maybe at 5:45 when Kalab got home that maybe Ezra would just go to bed for the night, because he was still asleep, but when I started taking off his shoes, he woke up. He was fussy for a little while until he got some dinner in him. We thought maybe he was ready for bed at about 8pm and I tried the usual walking/rocking/singing/back rub to get him to fall asleep. He wasn’t interested in sleep, only in play. It’s now 9:25 and Ezra is still awake, and crying because we’re trying to get him to go to sleep.

Yay! Yay! Yay! Ezra is 15 months old today! And right now, he is crying in his crib because he woke up due to a stuffy nose, and I went in to check on him picked him up and gave him a hug, and now he wants me to nurse him, and I am trying very hard to work with him to give up the night nursings after he goes to bed. But he is very VERY persistent and stubborn and knows what he wants, so he pulls quite a screaming kicking crying tantrum in hopes it will make me give in (again) and give him the boob.   These night nursings have definitely become his comfort device, and I would like for Ezra to learn how to find comfort in other ways and other things aside from my boobs. I would like for him to be satisfied with a hug and cuddle when he wakes up at night for whatever reason.  Plus, I need Ezra to learn that when I say no I mean it so tonight I must not give in!

Ezra has begun Fall with a slight fever and a runny nose. The runny nose is what kept him awake last night. And it will be the runny nose that will keep him up tonight. I can’t wait until he can feel comfortable both with breathing through his mouth and blowing his nose, but until then there will be a few more long nights of Ezra waking with a nose to stuffed with snot.

Ezra went to bed at 7. He woke fussing from either teething or gas and poop around 7:50. Gas and poop we suspect because he was farting a lot after waking and he hasn’t had a big poop since yesterday. For whatever reason, he woke at 7:50 with tears that soon dried. Then he was full of fun and energy and excitement. SO, he ran here and there and there and here. He even pushed around his Baby Walker with shouts and laughter. He played the Soccer Ball Game. He ran through the kitchen. He laughed. He cried. He played.

Now we are tired. We think Ezra is finally ready for bed. We hope he is for we don’t have much energy left to play with Ezra and chase him around.

If -v- were to tell it, or write it, she may write of comparing the sleep noises that Ezra and I make. She says I make sleep noises. And I know Ezra does make sleep noises.

He talks some times. Some times he snorts. Some times he snores. Some times he mumbles. Some times he whines. Some times he shouts from pain of teething or confusion of sleep. He some times moves around making bumps in the night. Most of the time he is quiet.

There are nights when I hear these sounds, and I can’t get back to sleep because I don’t know if the sound is him being awake or sleeping, so I get out of bed and go check on Ezra and usually find him sleeping.

…All except the shouts of pain or confusions are sounds that -v- has told me are sleep noises I make, too.

We were climbing stairs. We were halfway up the stairs, and he wanted to nurse and a nap and wanted to walk down the stairs. I helped him walk down the stairs then he walked to -v-.

He is now napping between two square pillows on floor between -v- and me.

Ezra waking around 10:45 P.M., 12:45 A.M., 2:45 A.M., 5:45 A.M. last night/this morning has Ezra sleeping since 7:00 P.M. tonight. Either the heat or teething or both or something unknown made for irritable sleep for Ezra last night. He was a sleepy Ezra after 5:00 P.M. today.

Odd thing was around 7:45 P.M. tonight Ezra woke for a few minutes.

…He sleeps now.

Last night, after we returned from a BBQ at AA’s, I was getting Ezra ready for bed. I took off his pants and shirt, and he got all excited, like he usually does, at being mostly naked. So I decided that I would just take his diaper off and let him be naked for a couple minutes.

Just as I tossed the diaper in the trash, Ezra looked up at me with his cute little face, smiled, and proceeded to pee on the floor. Luckily, I was able to grab a cloth diaper and put it under the stream to catch about 1/3 of it before it could touch the floor, but there was definitely a nice size puddle before I got it covered.

This situation caused me to flash back to my babysitting days. When I was in middle school, I babysat for a couple next door that had a 3 or 4 year old son who would wake up in the middle of the night and need to pee, but he would just get out of bed and walk behind the bedroom door and pee, or sometimes just pee on his bed. I’m crossing my fingers that I won’t have to go through this with Ezra!

PS - last night, after peeing on the floor, Ezra slept all through the night, from 9pm - 7am! Not a peep from him the whole night!

Last night Ezra slept most the night only waking a few times for a few minutes to cry and shout. He woke long enough to wake -v- and me, so we would go check on him only to find he had returned to sleep.

Tonight, I expect he will be up around midnight then again around three in the morning. We put him to bed around eight, and he woke three times since.

It took -v- and me sitting next to him, keeping him upright, while we watched Twin Peaks to get him to sleep longer than twenty minutes. Now that we are going to bed, I doubt that he will be sleeping much longer.

…Tired. We all are. Ezra as much as -v- and me. We all want sleep. We all want his stuffy snot filled nose to go away, so he can sleep through the night.

So on Saturday night, the longest night of the year, Ezra went to sleep late. Then he woke up a couple hours later crying loudly. And again a couple hours after that. The same thing happened Sunday night, and looks like it will happen again tonight. The main reason, I speculate, is Ezra’s stuffy nose.

This stuffy nose is sometimes a runny nose, which creates its own issues. But it is definitely a stuffy nose when he lies down. While he’s sleeping (or trying to sleep) he makes all sorts of noise with this stuffy nose - like a cross between an elephant and Kalab snoring. I think it makes it hard for him to sleep because he’s not fond of breathing through his mouth, and there’s too much snot in his nose.

I guess it’s just a cold? He’s in pretty good spirits when he’s awake during the day, which is good. There hasn’t been a fever yet either. To top it off, there might be some teething going on, because he’s also been drooling puddles all over the house. Whatever it is, I hope Ezra feels better soon!

Hyper-Baby Ezra must have exorcized the Fuss from his body while crawling around the house and walking along the walls and standing up and down during the early and late day for Ezra slept all night long last night without a Fuss!

Ezra’s been up since 5:45 this morning. He has had a total of two naps that sum to an hour and a few minutes. It is 21:14, and Ezra is still fighting to remain awake even thought -v- and I are wanting for sleep, and though he has been to daycare, which usually tires him out, and though he has crawled around the house since arriving home, he is still awake. We want sleep. Sleep not just for Ezra but for us. Sleep so we can relax and wait for Ezra to wake, so we be rested and can follow Ezra  tomorrow as he crawls from the main living area, to the kitchen, up the stairs, to the dinning room table area and back again over and over and over and over…

What are we going to do about Ezra’s sleep? Kalab is a growing voice for the “cry it out” method, especially after the recent “mama’s boy” night. Kalab convinced me to let him cry because there was nothing wrong with him other than he wanted to be with me. I agreed, and in hindsight I wish I would not have. I think it was the most emotionally painful thing I’ve ever done. I felt like I was betraying his trust and breaking the bond I have with him. It’s safe to say I am not a fan of the “cry it out” method. I feel like there are too many reasons for him to cry to feel it’s OK to ignore those cries - a baby cries because he needs soothing from teething and/or illness, or maybe because he’s too hot or cold, maybe he’s hungry, maybe he’s got gas, maybe he’s scared of the dark or had a bad dream, maybe he’s got a poopy diaper. I don’t think a baby cries to be manipulative.

And Ezra is not a terrible sleeper, from what I’ve been able to gather by reading the Internets and random mama blogs. He’s also not a sleep champion, pulling marathon 12 hours stretches with no crying or waking to feed, like some of the babies we know (or at least the claims of the mama’s of the babies we know). But is he a not a good sleeper? I am not sure. Usually, he’s got a fussy spell anywhere from 2-4 hours from the time he goes down for the night. I think those fussy spells increase in intensity and frequency with teething, which he’s been doing more than the average baby his age. In general Ezra often will put in a solid 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night, many times even 6 or 7 hours, but will sleep a total of 9 or 10 hours per night. I do nurse him back to sleep when he wakes, more often than not, because Ezra will almost always go right back to sleep after he wakes up and feeds.

So what to do? I want to come up with a sleep plan that lets me (or us, depending on how Kalab feels) be responsive to his cries, but I also want Ezra to learn to self soothe and not always rely on nursing to get to sleep. If something could happen where he did become a marathon sleeper, I wouldn’t complain! I (we) need to come up with a good plan, and have a bit of a reprieve in that I convinced Kalab the plan shouldn’t be enacted until we get back from our trip to DC.

The snotty nose of Ezra is no longer lonely for there is a cough. Though his sleep last night for Ezra wasn’t deep causing sleeplessness for -v-, he appears to be getting better, but -v- is still sleepy. Fortunately, the nose of Ezra is not as runny with snot. However, the cough remains.

Unfortunately, -v- and I are having some of the symptoms of Ezra’s cold. -v- appears to be now more effected by the cold, but I have been feeling some of the symptoms. Symptoms that are becoming familiar once again after what feels like months since we all have had our last cold. I was almost beginning to think we had some how become more immune to all versions of the cold virus in our living area after suffering months of continuous sickness, but it seems just like Ezra finds every dirty spot on the floor while crawling that Ezra can also find a cold.

Ezra hasn’t been sleeping well the past couple of nights. And he just woke up a few minutes ago crying and screaming and doing everything he can to shove his whole fist in his mouth and bite down upon it in an apparent attempt to numb the sharp pain of teething.

At least, we suspect it is teething. There are no signs of ear infection, and his passion for wanting to bite hard on something is convincing enough that some sort of teething is going on in that mouth of his. He has also been drooling buckets today. And because teeth #5 and #6 are protruding enough that it’s unlikely those two new teeth causing the teething, so maybe teeth #7 and #8 are on the way?

Ezra and -v- are sleeping on the couch right now. Ezra’s back raises with each breath. He lay there still and calm.

It’s times like these that I wish Ezra would not grow up because he looks so much at peace and cute, but with life there is time and with time is growth. I suppose during times like this it is best to capture the moment any way one can.