Pet Peeve

I have a lot of pet peeves, but I will limit to this post to the one that is bothering me the most at the current time. Joseph hates running errands with me. He really dislikes being strapped down in his car seat and being dragged in and out of lame places like the post office or the pharmacy. Therefore, we limit the amount of needless running around we do, but let's face it, sometimes groceries have to be purchased, packages have to be mailed and at the rate Joseph goes through diapers, Target trips happen pretty frequently. When we do run errands, we try to do only a few at a time and keep them quick. Inevitably though, Joseph always gets cranky towards the end of these excursions...no matter how fast I get through them. So my biggest pet peeve is one that slows us down...

People who are still writing checks!!! I mean seriously people, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE get a debit card. There is nothing worse than being in line at the grocery store with a fussy baby about to lose his mind and the person in front of you whips out the checkbook. I am a pretty patient person, but the time it takes for the cashier to ask for the phone number, ask to see the Driver's License and then verify it in some fancy machine they have, drives me crazy! I don't get it. (My apologies to anyone reading this who is still writing checks at retailers - but seriously, think about the debit card).

This happened yesterday at the grocery store, but the guy writing the check was none other than Ric Flair (a.k.a Nature Boy) of WWF fame (which is the WWE pre-World Wildlife Foundation lawsuit). I have never been a wrestling fan, but my brother was pretty into it when we were little. My lucky Dad got to pay money to take my brother and his friends to the awesome live events. Below is a picture of Nature Boy in his glory days. He is sort of infamous in this city since his road rage incident where he assaulted someone after they were driving too slow and apparently lives in our area of the city since I see him all the time.

He took forever to write the check, but I hid my annoyance because messing with Ric Flair, who is know for his rage, wasn't on the top of the to-do list for the day.

In Joseph news...

Joseph has started this new thing...grunting to let me know he is frustrated and annoyed. This started in the last week or so. If he is in my lap and wants to be on the floor rolling around, he just grunts and throws his head around until I get the message. If he has had enough of the Bumbo seat, car seat, stroller (basically anything where he is constrained), he arches his back and grunts until I let him loose. He is much happier just rolling all over the floor - from one end of the den to the other. He pretty much hates having his diaper changed or clothes changed because it means his rolling has to cease for a few minutes. He grunts the whole way through, flips himself over 10 times, until finally, I manage to get a diaper on. Diaper changes have become a 5 minute process, minimum. I have a wild child on my hands. In the spirit of the fall holidays and Rich's Kentucky bourbon roots, we have taken to calling him "Wild Turkey". Here is a picture of my little wild turkey eating some peaches. We get about 4 spoonfuls in his mouth before he decides to feed himself. By feed himself, I basically mean jamming the spoon in and out of his mouth until he gags.

He just has that little devil look in his eyes in this picture. He is soooooo much like his father. He is going to be a two year old someday - god help me!

Trip to Kentucky - Part 3

I know I promised you all this post days ago and I know you all have just been going crazy with anticipation waiting for it, but time got away from me this week. I realized after getting home that I had to pay the bills due at the end of the month and I didn't think AT&T or Verizon would care if I was late paying because I had to update my blog. Now I know you are all thinking "Why does paying the bills keep her from blogging for 4 days?" Ha Ha...if you are thinking that, you really don't know me well.

I am a CPA (certified public accountant). CPAs have a reputation for being anal retentive but even on the CPA scale of anal retentiveness, I rate really high. Ask the people who worked with me - sort of have a little problem with perfectionism it this area of my life. So my bill paying process semi-monthly isn't just an exercise in logging into my online banking system and paying a few vendors. Nope, I have about 6 spreadsheets that are involved in this. A budget spreadsheet, a spreadsheet to reconcile the checking account, savings accounts and our investments accounts (which I will note are really depressing to reconcile these days). All of these fun little spreadsheets automatically filter into our family's monthly financial statements. Yeah, that's right we have a family balance sheet and income statement (year to date and one for the one month period) that I produce monthly. No, I'm not joking (even my fellow CPAs are thinking I am crazy right now). So my bill paying process takes about 4-5 hours twice a month. So after bottle washing, disinfecting toys and folding laundry, I sit down and work on it a little bit each night and it takes me about 3 nights to get through the whole process. So sorry, the blog was put aside for my crazy financial organizing this week.

This obsession with organizing my life on spreadsheets started early on in my life. Somewhere around 7th or 8th grade, I developed a database system to organize my brother's baseball cards. I spent a lot of time one summer entering his hundreds of baseball cards into a spreadsheet. I also organized Miss. America and Olympic results in spreadsheets. Not surprisingly, I wasn't the most popular kid in middle school. Don't feel bad for me, I achieved some level of coolness by about 10th grade (well at least as much coolness as a kid in the accelerated advanced placement classes could achieve). I even managed to be captain of the cheerleading squad three years in a row. I strived for Kelly Kapowski levels of coolness...probably didn't quite get there.

Ok...so on to the real point of my post. More pictures from our trip to Kentucky!!! On Saturday, our last day there, we had a post wedding brunch at Rich's grandparents house. The whole family was there, and its not a small family. All of Rich's aunts and uncles and cousins and cousin's children. I love Rich's cousins, they are a lot of fun to be around, so we had a good time. Here are some family pictures we took.

All of Rich's immediate family:

From left to right is Papa Joe & Grandmommy (his grandparents on his Dad's side), me, Richard with Joseph, my mother-in-law Priscilla, my father-in-law Rick, my sister-in-law Kipling, my future brother-in-law Jason with my niece Kairi, and my sister-in-law Devon.

The 4 generations of Joseph Richard's:

Joseph having fun with Grandmommy:

Joseph and Kairi with Grandpa Ricky:

Joseph and Kairi with Grandpa Ricky and Cilla:

And last, a cute picture of Richard playing with Joseph:

We left on Saturday afternoon. We did not attempt another through the night drive. Instead, we made it about halfway by 7 pm and got a hotel in Knoxville, Tennessee (a nice suite room so we could stay up and watch TV past Joseph's 7:30 bedtime). We made the rest of the trip home on Sunday morning.

We had a wonderful trip home and look forward to seeing everyone again at Christmas!

Trip to Kentucky - Part 1

We are back from our trip to Kentucky and I have lots of pictures (and videos!!!) to post. I am going to have to do it in several parts as it would make for one VERY long entry to put everything in one post.

During our time in Kentucky, Joseph had a great time hanging out with all his family. He especially enjoyed his time with Cilla and his only cousin, Kairi. Cilla is Rich's mother. Her full name is Priscilla and since children have a hard time pronouncing that, they have always called her Cilla - which she decided she wanted her grandchildren to call her as well. Joseph and I spent lots of time doing fun things with Cilla and Kairi. Rich's mother watches Kairi during the day, so the four of us spent a lot of time together while the rest of the family worked away! We went and visited the stables where my sister-in-law, Kipling, used to take riding lessons and fed the horses peppermints and carrots. Joseph didn't know quite what to make of these big animals!!!

Joseph also really enjoys swinging on the porch swing with Cilla. Sometimes he and Kairi swung together. In the picture below they are swinging away and Joseph struck his model pose as I took the picture. Note also that I am the lazy mother with my kid still in his PJs, while Kairi's mother (my sister-in-law Devon) actually dressed her child that morning.


Joseph also had his picture taken with Nana (Rich's grandmother on his mom's side) and Kairi for Nana's Christmas cards. Here is a cute one with Joseph laughing. Kairi is 10 months (4 1/2 months older than Joseph) but Joseph is heavier. The first time I picked up Kairi this week, I felt like I was carrying a feather. Joseph is a complete lug compared to her. She is so tiny and petite and sweet! She has a very easy going temperament and just goes with the flow. She loves music - the minute some music comes on, she is kicking her legs and bopping up and down. She is ridiculously cute and I really enjoyed spending so much time with her and getting to know her little personality!We also took some with Nana outside. In this one Joseph suddenly takes an interest in Kairi's face and is touching her mouth. Right after the picture was taken, Kairi took Joseph's thumb near her mouth as an invitation to suck his thumb. He happily obliged and let her suck his thumb for a few seconds.
We also grabbed a couple shots of me with Joseph and with both babies.

On Friday we had a birthday party for my future brother-in-law, Jason (Devon's fiance and Kairi's Daddy). Happy 29th birthday, Jason!

We had birthday cake, but my contribution to the big party was some Obama cookies. My very Republican in-laws actually ate them (and found them delicious!).

While the rest of us enjoyed birthday cake, Kairi dined on some baby food - peas to be exact. Yum!

Well that pretty much sums up the week in Kentucky up to Friday evening. On Friday evening we attended the wedding of Rich's cousin, Lauren. I have some great videos and photos from a very non-sober evening. Stay tuned for "Trip to Kentucky - Part 2" for all the details!

***Note that Part 2 actually appears before Part 1 due to the fact that I uploaded the videos in Part 2 yesterday, so its recognizing the post as being before Part 1.

Trip to Kentucky - Part 2

As I mentioned in the previous post, on Friday night, we attended Rich's cousin Lauren's wedding. If you know Lauren and that part of Rich's family, you would have known it was going to be a FUN wedding. We had heard they had brought in a fantastic band from Nashville so we were prepared to be out on the dance floor most of the night. Rich and I are pretty shameless dancers. Neither one of us are very good dancers...but neither one of us care...especially if a few alcoholic beverages are consumed. We drove to the wedding with Rich's sister, Kipling, and we got Rich to practice some of his dance moves for the camera. The best part is when Rich calls his sister and I "biotches". Please note that there was no alcohol involved at this point.

(To get the full effect of the video, you need to turn on the sound - make sure you pause our playlist below so you can hear it!)

The goofiness continued at the church. Kipling got the whole family to put on her sunglasses and took pictures of us all. The best one was my father-in-law. When we showed this picture to Rich's grandmother (my father-in-laws mom), who is a staunch Catholic, she was not happy to see her son goofing around in church.

The wedding was gorgeous and the bride looked beautiful. Here is her walking down the aisle!

The reception was held in a large tent on the lawn of a historic mansion in Kentucky. It was decorated beautifully. Here is the new couple dancing their first dance.

We snagged a picture of Rich with his cousin.

Rich's grandparents live right near the reception site and we hijacked their golf cart to go back and forth. There was definitely drunk golf cart driving going on that night. Can you get a DWI for that? Rich's parents got yelled at by some old cranky neighbor for driving on his lawn.

By the time the dinner was over, things started getting messy quickly and Rich's dancing started. When we noticed Rich's Nana was starting to fall asleep at the table, he took the opportunity to bust some moves right behind her. She had no idea...(sorry the pic is a little blurry).

Here are some more pics of Rich's dance moves.

And best of all, a video!!! This video includes classic moves like "The Sprinkler", but also moves Rich invented such as the "Cocaine Snort" and "The Stroke". (The video starts out sideways but I turned the camera the right way a few seconds in!).

There is video of me dancing as well but since I control the blog, it will not be posted. Rich either does not know how to or does not care to post, so I think I am safe.

By the end of the evening, every time I took a picture, everyone would be like "Is that going to be on your blog?"

Unfortunately, both my camera and Kipling's camera battery died during the wedding, but I wish we had some video of the ride home. Kipling, the sober one, had a fun time driving two drunk idiots back to Louisville for 45 minutes. I know the ride involved me insisting a mailbox was a pillar and not a mailbox, me spilling Coke all over myself, Rich falling asleep only to have me stick my feet in his face from the backseat to wake him up. It was awesome!!! Rich and enjoyed an adult evening out while Joseph was well cared for by a very competent babysitter.

Part 3 coming up tomorrow - pictures of the wedding brunch with the extended family on Saturday!

We got a makeover!

If you are reading this, you have noticed my blog got a makeover! With the help of Rich, we actually made it pretty. I added the background...which has a very pretty bow. This is not a surprising selection for me. As anyone knows who was involved with my wedding planning, everything had to have a bow. Our invitations, the programs, the dinner menus for the table, the flower arrangements, the chair covers, the favors...EVERYTHING had to have a bow. At the end of planning, we would walk into a store to select something and Rich would be like "Can you just show us the options with bows, please?". I sort of re-visited my bow obsession with all my baby purchases as well. Did anyone notice the very pretty bow on the birth announcements? Be on the look out for our Christmas cards this year - they have an excellent bow!

Rich crafted the photo collage at the top of the page. These are some of our favorite photos of our happy little boy. Doesn't everything look better in sepia or black and white too? Rich also added the play list at the bottom. I selected the songs, but he did all the work to actually get it on the page. The songs we selected all have a reason for its inclusion on our blog.

Beautiful Boy by John Lennon - I think this is self explanatory, especially if you listen to the lyrics.

Lullaby by Billy Joel - I LOVE this song. I remember hearing it for the first time in college and thinking I would rock my baby to it someday. Now that day is finally here!

Home by Michael Buble - I LOVE Michael Buble and I LOVE this song even more. Its definitely one of my top 5 favorite songs, ever! I love the lyrics "I feel like I am living someone else's life. Its like I just stepped outside when everything was going right." I remember hearing those lyrics at a wedding in the Summer of 2006 and thinking it pretty much summed up how I was feeling. I had a great husband with a great career, a beautiful house and we were about to start trying to start our family. Well, little did I know we were about to embark on the most difficult two years of our lives. Between my having a severe reaction (anxiety attacks and depression) coming off birth control, the difficulty we had getting pregnant and then our miscarriage, it was not an easy few years. We finally feel like we are back on track and everything is going right again!

Remember When by Allen Jackson - I like this song because I like to imagine Rich and I being 60 years old, looking back on our life and feeling the exact way that Allen Jackson describes.

At Last by Etta James - The song that started it all! This was our first dance song at our wedding. I still make Rich dance with me to it every year on our anniversary. Our CD has made it to San Diego, St. Lucia, DC and the North Carolina mountains (all the places we have travelled for our anniversaries). This year, Joseph was only 5 weeks old on our anniversary so we stayed home and danced to it in our living room. We are corny!

We hope everyone enjoys our newly designed blog...and the pretty bow!

Our worst idea EVER

We are currently in Louisville visiting Rich's family for a week. His cousin is getting married on Friday and we took the opportunity to spend time with Rich's family and let Joseph get to know his extended family better. We'd been planning the trip for awhile and debated the best way to travel up here several times. Given the price of flights and the amount of stuff we seem to travel with these days, we opted for driving. Joseph likes sitting in the car for extended periods of time about as much as he likes his vaccinations. As the trip is 6 1/2 - 7 hours, Rich and I came up with this brilliant plan to drive at night. We figured if we headed out around 6 pm, we'd stop around 7:30 pm (Joseph's normal bedtime), go through the whole "goodnight" process in the back of the car, plop him back in his car seat and he'd be off to dreamland for the next 6 hours. We'd arrive around 1 am, which isn't ideal, but better than the thought of driving with a fussing 6 month old in the middle of the day.

So the plan went into action last night. At 7:30 pm we stopped, gave him a bottle, changed him into PJs and rocked him until he was sleepy. He fell asleep pretty quickly in the car seat and we settled in for the long, tedious drive (the fact that we had the radio on so slow we could barely hear it and had to talk in whispers made it even more fun than usual). Everything was going as planned until about 45 minutes later when Joseph wakes up and is fussing. He can't really seem to settle himself into sleep and we decide all the headlights and lights on the highway are the culprit. So I throw a blanket over the seat to darken everything up, which seems to help matters....until Rich decides to say "Do you think its hot under there? What if he suffocates?". Now, if you know me, you know that is all that had to said for me to go into panic mode. So now I am lifting up the blanket every 30 seconds to see if he is still breathing. Even with the blanket, Joseph just can't seem to sleep. He'll drift off for 15-20 minutes, only to wake up and fuss for 20 minutes. We play this little game until about 10:30 pm, when we start to worry that he is just not going to sleep. And if Joseph doesn't sleep....watch out!

So at this point Rich and I are clearly thinking the same thought because suddenly Rich says "What should we do?" and I respond "I am thinking its time for a hotel room". Of course by this time we are in nowhere land Tennessee and our hotel options are few and far between. Finally, around 11:30 pm, we find an exit that has several less than stellar options. Most of them are motels, which freak me out. We finally find a little local hotel that looks bright and clean. Rich checks in and starts pulling out the necessary items from the car (all of which were conveniently located at the very back of the trunk). By some stroke of luck we had decided to bring the Pack N Play at the last minute (even though my mother-in-law has a whole nursery with crib and everything set up at her house) and I am suddenly thankful for my horrible habit of over packing.

Preparing Joseph's night time set up is no easy task. We come packing about 3 monitors and the motion/breathing monitor is no small job to set up. It has to be set up just so and I require Rich to test it a minimum of about 5 times before I am confident it will actually go off if Joseph stops breathing. So Rich goes up to the room to start in on this process while I give Joseph a bottle and try to get him sleeping in my arms. Did I mention its about midnight at this point? Luckily, Joseph falls asleep in my arms and once Rich is done, we bring him in (blanket over his head) and he goes right to sleep in the Pack N Play. As we are putting him down Rich looks at me and says "In the eight years we have been together, this may be the worst idea we have ever had."

Of course, there are like 10,000 things we have to do before we can sleep. I am still breastfeeding (but pumping and bottle feeding Joseph) and its been about 7 hours since I last pumped, so I am feeling it. I get out my pump and I am hovering with the tiniest little light we can manage to get set up to pump. We are in the bathroom trying to put all his milk on ice without making too much noise to wake him up. I could go on and on...but needless to say its straight out of a sitcom. Around 1 am, we finally fall into bed in the clothes we were wearing all day and no brushed teeth or anything. This is highly unusual for me...I have about a 30 minute bedtime routine that I undertake every night and if I don't do every last thing, I usually have a hard time going to sleep. But last night I was way too tired to even worry about it. I guess I am lucky because Rich admitted this morning that if at 1 am, I had started running a bath, he probably would have killed me...or taken the car and left me in rural Tennessee alone...not sure which would have been worse. I should also note that at around 10 pm, Rich had downed the largest can of liquid NoDoz I had ever seen. As I am drifting to sleep he says "I am so hopped up, I can't sleep"...to which I respond "Good, if he wakes up you can deal with him and let me sleep."

Surprisingly, Joseph slept well the rest of the night and tolerated the remaining 3 hours of the trip well today. Rich and I on the other hand, are pretty darned exhausted today. So the moral of the story is...do not travel at night with a 6 month old...it will not end well. We are still trying to figure out our options for the return home, but I can guarantee we will be searching for flights for Christmas.

We're sorta a big deal...

Yeah, that's right...Joseph and I are kinda a big deal these days. We are soon to be local celebrities. Our neighbor, Kay, works at a very posh toy store here in Charlotte. Every month they advertise in the Junior League of Charlotte magazine. The advertisement includes a picture of a League member and their child at the toy store. Next month, yours truly and her son will be gracing the pages of this magazine.

We had our photo shoot today. As this is a posh store (like every Mom in there is dressed to the nines and of course has the smartest child ever to grace the store with their presence) and it is going in a Junior League publication, I dressed Joseph in his preppiest outfit (a cashmere one piece outfit with an argyle print on top) and actually got myself dolled up for the occasion.

We discovered today that Joseph is pretty much in love with the camera. He smiled and cooed and was thoroughly interested in why so many people were sitting around watching him. We posed in front of a rack of books and I pretended to read to Joseph, although I was really just trying to keep him from eating the book the entire time. At the end, the photographer asked if Joseph had ever done any child modeling before....I guess he is a natural!

So when I say we will be local celebrities, I may sort of be exaggerating. The monthly magazine goes out to about 5,000 league members in Charlotte. Honestly, I spend about 5 minutes flipping through it before it goes in the recycling bin. In the last year I have been receiving it, I have never once noticed there was an ad for this toy store. So I am guessing like 10 people will actually notice me and my kid.

I will try and scan the actual ad when it comes out, but the photographer did e-mail me some of the untouched photos this afternoon, so I have included those.

Update to Prayers Needed

A few days ago I asked everyone for prayers for a Nest friend and her husband who were preparing to meet their son who would likely not survive after birth. Their sweet son, Isaac Timothy, was born yesterday and lived 16 minutes before becoming an angel. Details are on her blog (link below in the post from October 6th). She has posted a picture and I think he is beautiful beyond words. I am so happy that they had those sixteen minutes with him.

I do not know this family well, but I have cried many tears for them over the last two days. Every time I think of them, I run to Joseph and smother him with kisses. More than once as I have been holding him or rocking him yesterday and today, tears have fallen down my face and I have held him a little closer (sometimes a lot closer - so much that he squirms to get away from me). I am so grateful for my beautiful and perfectly healthy son. I could never ask for anything more.

Please continue to pray for this family in the days ahead. And if you should think of them and their story weeks or months from now, please remember to say a prayer then too.

Happy Baby!

When Joseph is well rested, he is one of the happiest babies I have ever seen. He smiles, laughs and giggles at just about anything. He finds me brushing my teeth quite entertaining, especially when I give him a big toothpaste foam filled grin. If a stranger even looks his way in the grocery store, they are rewarded with a smile that lights up his entire face. Strangers are constantly telling me he has the most beautiful smile they have ever seen on a baby.

But what really gets Joseph going is his Daddy. He is sort of obsessed with him lately. He walks in the door at night and he just gets so happy. His eyes follow his every movement. He loves me and I get some good giggles out of him everyday, but there is something about the way Rich interacts with him that is just different. Maybe its part of the father/son bond...or maybe Rich is just really goofy. Lately, Rich just says some silly phrase like "boogers and snot" or "What you talking about?" in a silly voice or just makes some strange sounds loudly and Joseph loves it. If he combines these noises with some large movement or getting right in Joseph's face, it's all out laughter. We had one of those moments tonight. Richard came home early and while playing with Joseph, got him really laughing hard. I grabbed the camera and caught video of it just in time.



We have noticed in the last week or so that Joseph's laugh has become more like a shriek or squeal at times. Sometimes we wonder if he's actually getting angry because its such a loud shriek, but we are pretty sure he is happy in this video as this laughter was not shortly followed by a meltdown.

Prayers Needed

I have a request for thoughts and prayers for someone I know on The Nest. Her and her husband found out at their 13 week ultrasound that their son had a chromosomal condition that would most likely make his survival outside the womb impossible. Despite urgings by doctors to terminate the pregnancy, they decided to carry to full term in the hope that a miracle might happen. Since that time, the possibility of their son, Isaac, surviving after birth has become increasingly unlikely. She is now full term and they are having a c-section tomorrow. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers as they prepare to meet their son tomorrow. They are hopeful that a miracle could still happen but are preparing for a different outcome. Please pray that a miracle may happen but that if it doesn't, their family will have the strength to get through these next days, which will surely be the most difficult of their lives. If you would like to put a face to your prayers, below is link to her blog.

http://sgirl79.blogspot.com/

We cried it out...

The last few days have been a mix of emotions regarding Joseph's sleep problems and the best way to deal with them. His sleep has been a roller coaster of ups and downs (mostly downs) since very early on but I had just accepted the fact that he was a bad sleeper. Until a few weeks ago, we could count on him going to asleep easily in our arms around 7:30 pm and sleeping decently until 3 am or 4 am. After that, all bets were off but we could live with that. But then, a few weeks ago he decided he wanted to wake up at 10:00pm, 12:00am, 2:00am, 4:00am and 6:00am to be rocked for 15 or 20 minutes every time. Sometimes even rocking him in his nursery wouldn't cut it and I would sleep with him in my arms in bed or on the couch.

I was exhausted, Rich was exhausted and most importantly Joseph was exhausted. The poor child couldn't last more than 45 minutes after getting up before getting cranky, yawning and rubbing his eyes and needing to go back for a nap. Our days together consisted of me constantly rocking him to sleep, followed by 20 minutes of sleep for him, and an hour of me trying to figure out ways to keep him from screaming his head off. The process was exhausting. Combine that with the lack of sleep and I was on the edge of sanity.

It all came to a head on Friday. I was tired beyond belief and Joseph was cranky beyond belief. In the afternoon we headed to Target to get out of the house and kill sometime between naps. I got all the way to Target and was walking in when Joseph lost it...a complete, full on, screaming his head off meltdown. I REALLY needed what I came for, so I attempted to take him back to the car and rock him until he could calm down. After 10 minutes of screaming and no signs of slowing down, I lost it right along with him. I am sitting in the backseat of my car with a screaming infant and crying hysterically. I am looking at my son, who I love more than anything in the world, and saying over and over "I love you so much but sometimes you are just so difficult." Finally, he stopped crying, looked at me crying and literally started giggling. We went in to Target, where everyone commented on how precious he was (would they have said that if they had seen him 10 minutes earlier...hmmm?) and got what we came for. I got him in the car and we hadn't left the parking lot when he promptly began to scream again. Luckily when I got home, Rich was waiting and whisked him away for a walk so I could nap and unwind.

We decided we had to address his sleep issues and someone on the Nest suggested he book "Sleep Easy Solution". It's a modified version of "cry it out" or the Ferber method. You go and check-in with them every 10 minutes while they are crying to let them know you are there, you haven't abandoned them and you love them. I had always been resistant to this method as I couldn't imagine how letting a child cry could ever be the right thing to do. But alas, we had run out of options and after reading the book (which is written by two child psychologists and pediatric sleep experts) I decided this was actually the best thing I could do for Joseph. I also know many friends who are amazing parents and had let their children cry it out. I won't act like I was 100% behind it, I still had major reservations, but Richard really convinced me we needed to do this.

We started Saturday night and it was horrible. He cried for 50 minutes before going to sleep. We gave him his night feed (which we are in the process of weaning him off of) at 2:00 am and he promptly put himself back to sleep. At 5:00 he woke up screaming. I was not surprised as this is the time of night where he is used to me taking him into bed. He cried for almost an hour until he fell asleep again and slept until 8:30 am. His naps that day were iffy...he'd usually cry for 10-15 minutes and then only sleep for 25 or 30 minutes. I was hopeful that night #2 (last night) would be better. We put him down at 8:00 pm and he fussed and moved around for about 20 minutes. He never cried and suddenly we realized he was asleep. At 2:00 am we had to wake him for his night feeding and he put himself back to sleep within 5 minutes afterwards. We never heard another peep until 7:30 am this morning. It was amazing. I woke up with a renewed sense of hope that Joseph in fact can sleep well and I am not destined to years of sleep deprivation and fussiness.

I know there are many people who are VERY against crying it out and I can understand their reluctance at using it. I wish that we never had to do it but in the end it's going to be a good thing for us and Joseph. There were days before when I woke up at 4:30 am to Joseph crying and just dreaded the day that was ahead of us. I spent many days watching the clock and just wishing for Rich to get home and take Joseph from me. And every time I had these thoughts, I questioned whether I just wasn't cut out to be a good mom. I logically knew this was just the exhaustion talking but thoughts like that will eat away at you. I am finally optimistic again and am really excited about a lot of fun days with Joseph in the future.