I have been blogging in my mind so much lately that I feel fulfilled, all the while I haven’t written a thing. I will think of something I want to write about or share, then mentally walk through what I would say, how I would phrase something, and what the title of the post would be. Then I file it away in my brain to type out another day…Well, as you can see that day hasn’t come yet.

Instead, today I want to share a few great things about my son-before they disappear from my terrible memory all together.

He goes in for his 9 month appointment this week, and I cant believe how much he has grown. He is developing an amazing little personality-after witnessing my own kid I am a firm believer that children are born with their own personalities, and that while we may be able to nurture some aspects of it, they are hard wired. Luckily, he is a pleasure to be around with smiles abounding. While he still hasn’t had any inclination to crawl, pull himself up, or walk…he is very curious about things around him and is often craning his neck from side to side to make sure he isn’t missing anything. He is extremely expressive both with his facial expressions, bodily gestures and vocal sounds. He sits up like a pro and rarely falls over-he is also rolling around from side to side, and he pivots is a full 360 degree circle on his tummy.

He is still nursing often, upward of 5 times a day, if I am home with him. However, he still wont take a bottle from him daycare provider, and he wont take one from his Dad very often either. He is particular about the source of his milk; I guess he wants it straight from the tap. I dont worry since he is certainly not wanting for calories, and if gets thirsty enough, he will drink from a bottle.

Also, what seems like all of a sudden his appetite has dramatically increased. He was eating 1-3 jars of food a day, and now is eating twice that on most days. I try and make most of his food, but I still end up buying jarred food for many items. There are some things that just don’t turn out the same as jarred food.

Looking back over the last month I was trying to analyze why I haven’t written to much and I realized that I was tired and drained. Beginning on March 5th, Elliott started waking up with more frequency. He had contracted Bronchiolitis on Super Bowl Sunday and was sick again after that for a bit, and he was getting tummy aches from eating dairy (which we have temporarily eliminated). Come to find out he was also getting his two bottom front teeth simultaneously. The night waking’s were just the start, as then it turned into hourly night waking, then shorter day time naps, cranky baby all day, and then outright nap refusal. The only way either of us could sleep is if I slept with him on the couch all night. Which, of course, for all of our own sanity I did for many nights.

Then, to my own horror and shock…I picked up the Dr. W book which suggests that to ‘help’ your child learn to sleep independently you need to let them cry it out. I had never entertained this idea in the past. I thought it was cruel, unloving and mean. I looked down on people who suggested it, and I sneered under my breath at those who espoused it as bad parents.

I didn’t know what else to do, though. We had tried everything on the Internet to soothe him and to help him sleep, all ending in sleepless nights and horrible days for all three of us. So, after some careful (albeit sleepless) thought, I decided to give it a try. It was only a couple of days that he would have to suffer and I felt that a few days of crying were unlikely to cause him long term emotional damage.

Well, let me say that my son is nothing if not persistent. The first night, he cried for 2.5 hours before falling back asleep for a few hours only to wake and cry again for 2 more hours. This pattern went on through the night. The next night was similar, but less crying and so on. By the time we left for our trip 6 nights after starting the CIO, he was waking less and sleeping more. On the 7th night we put him down at 6:30pm and he sleep solid through until 5am!!!! (I will not make a joke about how on the 7th day he rested…)

Our entire vacation consisted of him sleeping soundly (with a few stirs in the wee hours lastly 5 minutes or less). The best part of all was that in addition to him sleeping superiorly at night, he also took marathon naps during the day-most days consisted of a 1.5 to 2 hour morning nap and a 1-1.5 hour afternoon nap! Hubby and I still aren’t conditioned into sleeping through the night again, but hopefully soon we will back into our own sleep groove too. Although, who knows how long this sleeping bliss will last! If there is one thing I have learned about parenting it is that nothing stays the same for long.