Sleep Update

Well, as you can see there is a pattern to my blogs, sleep or lack there of... It consumes me and frustrates me and I try not to let it, but it does. I have good days, where I say, the heck with it, and days where I am determined to get my kids to sleep.

Noah update.
Noah has good nights and ok nights and crap for naps. He is still pretty much only taking 25-35 minute naps. For his first nap, I try to extend it in the crib. It is still not working and I usually end up getting him up. For his second nap, depending on my attitude for the day, I either put him in his swing after he wakes up or get him up for 30 minutes and try to put him back down. It is frustrating. I don't think he will ever sleep in his crib. What will I do when he is too big for his swing???? Hopefully this nap thing starts to figure itself out. I am hoping by 6 months it will. Which is still a LONG. WAY. AWAY!!!

His nights are getting better. He actually slept in his crib from 6:30pm to 5:30 am on Thursday night (4/28/11). I was shocked and did not sleep well all night because I would hear him and kept thinking he is going to start fussing soon. He never did, he always put himself back to sleep. He had been stuck on a 12 am wake up too, but I am hoping that is gone. I figured the sleeping through the night was a fluke. Last night he slept from 6:30pm-1:30 am in which I fed him and then he woke up again at 4:15am. Not sure why, but I put him in his swing and he slept til 6am. So I can take 1-2 wake ups. He has been really good about going down to bed for naps and bedtime and after I feed him. I used to hold him 30 minutes until I knew he was asleep and then put him in his crib. Now that he can go back to sleep on his own, feeding him at night is only a 20-30 minute ordeal. I can handle that. I am hoping that he will consistently start sleeping through the night soon.

Ava on the other hand is having a rough go at her big girl bed. Not sure if I have updated you all on this or not (too lazy to go back and check), but she is now waking up 2 times a night. It is either 20 minutes after we put her down. She will call for us to get her up. She says," mommy I am ready to get up now" and if I don't come, she calls for daddy. Then she has been waking up around midnight or close to that. Sometimes we only have to go in once, but sometimes we have to go in a couple of times. I knew there would be growing pains with this transition,but we haven't had good sleep since Noah has been here, so it isn't a big shock to our systems.

What I DO love is having my room back. I can go in and watch TV and have MY time. I love, love, love it.

Noah had his first laugh this week (4/29/11). It was super cute. It is harder to get him to laugh then smile, but I love his laugh. He is overall a happy baby and you would never guess that he doesn't sleep. We are practicing rolling over with him. He seems to be content just being on his belly or his back. He is showing some signs that he wants to roll over, but nothing concrete yet. Ava didn't start rolling over until 6 or 7 months. All she ever wanted to do was walk. She was late on everything except walking. She went from crawling at 9 months to walking at 10 months.

Noah likes to hold onto his spit up rag and put it in his mouth. (gross, I know, but there is no harm). He is grasping onto to things good now. He will even put his hand on his bottle when I feed him. Ava never held her bottle until it was almost time to give it up.

We just got our double jogging stroller yesterday. I ordered it online and it came in. We took it out for a walk today and I love it. I am excited to start walking with the kids every day until it gets too hot. Since Noah doesn't nap in the morning, after he wakes, I will put him in the stroller and go. Today, he napped during our walk which was good.  It has speakers on it that I can plug my MP3 player into and I can listen to my music without one earplug in. (Mike didn't like me having them in because it is hard to hear things around you,but I need music to get a good walk or run in).

I started back up on Weight Watchers this past week. They have changed their program, so there is a little bit to get used to. I am excited to get my old body back. I am sick of not fitting into my clothes and with summer and pool parties, I really need to kick it into gear. Plus it is one of my New Year's Resolutions. I also started a Post Natal Boot camp video that I have. I am going to try to stick with it. It is a 12 week video and then you can pick and choose what segments you want to do. It starts out easy. The first 4 weeks are only 18 minutes long (warm up, core/abs, intervals, and cool down). I was sooooo sore the first day because I haven't worked out in over a year. I should post a before here, but I really don't want to yet. I will start posting "after" pictures once I get there, which is going to be a couple of months. This past pregnancy didn't treat me well or you could say, treated me too well...

We have been busy in home improvements here. We got new sink faucets for our master bathroom. I am really excited. The reason we got new ones is because on our old ones, if you didn't shut them off all the way, they would drip water down the shaft (for lack of a better word) and it would make a puddle on the counter top and then start dripping on the floor. We usually didn't catch it until there was a huge puddle on the floor. It was annoying. Here is a picture of the new ones...

We are installing a new fan in Noah's room that will have the remote control so I can dim the lights and can turn the fan on high when we are not in there to keep it cool.

Other than that, we have been just chugging along in this world trying to enjoy these moments with our kids as they do go so fast. Noah is almost 4 months old and Ava is 26 months going on 16...

With that, I leave you with a picture of my boy. (He is definitely not suffering from second child syndrome of me not taking pictures, that I now Ava..)

Noah's Room

We moved Noah out of our room into his room on Easter as well. It had been 15 weeks in our room. We mostly kept him in there so long because he woke up so much at night. We were down to 2 wakings a night, once to feed and once early in the morning, but lately he is waking a little bit more. It was actually harder on me that first night than it was for Noah. I thought I would be totally ok with it, but I guess I miss having him near me. I will get over it, just like I did with Ava and I will now be able to watch TV at night or talk in a normal voice with Mike...

Here is Noah's Nursery....



That is Noah's swing. It is our savior. I just hope he doesn't outgrow it before he learns how to sleep.

 He also slept in his room for his 2nd nap of the day on Easter. He did what he usually does, sleep 30 minutes and then I put him in the swing. I gotta stop doing that. Usually the first nap I will try to get him to go back to sleep and the 2nd nap will be half in the crib in half in the swing. That night he woke up 4 times. Once about 45 minutes after I put him down, once to eat, once at 2:30 and then again at 4:45, in which I put him in the swing until 6am.

When I put him down after his bottle, he talks himself back to sleep.It is the cutest thing. It makes me wonder why he can't do that other times he wakes up.

Speaking of talking, he is talking so much more now. If you make his cooing noise, he mimics you back. 

He has started to hold onto things, his spit up rag or a toy and really look at it. He also likes to put his hand on his bottle. I am hoping he learns how to hold his bottle earlier than Ava did. It will free me up a bit more because he is a lollygagger when it comes to eating. It takes him about 25-30 minutes to eat a 6 oz bottle.

Ava's Big Girl Bed!

Ava made the transition to a "Big Girl Bed" on Easter Sunday. (I don't know what we were thinking moving the rooms around Easter morning, but we did). It was time for Noah to go in his own room, which meant that Ava had to give up her crib. I was really nervous about how it was going to go. We got her mattress a week prior and I bought some bedding for her.We put the mattress in the office/guest room/craft room. She played on it all week and LOVED doing so. She would say, "follow me, I show you Ava big girl bed".

Here is a picture of her new bed in her room.

She slept in it for the first time at her nap time. I didn't want the first time to be at night because I was really not sure how it was going to go. I told her that she had to call for mommy when she wanted to get up. She is going through a "climbing/Ava do it" stage so she was climbing in and out of this bed at the head of it. We put a stool there to help her out. She still sleeps in a sleep sack and her nap time, one that doesn't have feet, so I really didn't want her getting out on her own. As I was reading her books before bed, I could see her look over at her bed a couple of times. After I was done, I put her in her bed, told her that I loved her and would get her up in a little bit and that she should call for me when she was ready to get up.  I turned off the lights and left the room. An hour and 45 minutes later, she was done napping and she called out for me. She did perfect. Nighttime came and again, I was nervous, but she did great. She called out for me as I closed her door and I went back in and told her that it was ok and that it was night night time and that I would come and get her in the morning. About 15 minutes later, she called out again and Mike went in. After that she slept through the night and called out for us in the morning. I hope that this is what it will be like going forward. Yay! yay! for Ava.

Easter 2011

Happy Easter 2011. Above are Ava and Noah's Easter Baskets! Noah didn't really get anything this year, but Ava made out like a bandit. Not a lot of candy, mostly toys and clothes. Holidays are so much more fun with kids. It just has new meaning and is so exciting to watch them. Each year and each holiday gets more fun too. Ava is able to understand things more and do more. She loved all her new toys and love hunting for eggs. We had the family over at our house. It was a beautiful day outside to boost.

Daddy and Ava checking out her Easter basket.

Noah sitting next to his Easter basket.

Ava hunting for Easter eggs. She could have done it all day long.

Ava and her cousin Sophie playing in the sandbox.

It was a great Easter and can't wait until next year when Noah is older.

Snowman & a Face to Love.

For Ava's birthday, she got a magnadoodle. She LOVES it. The only thing she wants you to draw on it is a snowman. She is very specific about it. She will tell you that it is a boy, so you have to put a hat on him. He has to have stick hands, you have to put dots all over it for snow and draw the ground along the bottom. Here is her snowman....

Now not to neglect Noah. How can you not love this smile.

1,2,3.....14

Ava is learning her numbers. She has a hard time with remembering 6, but she can get up to 14. Here is the video.

Ava Grace Leptuch VonTickle

We have many nicknames for our children. One of Ava's nicknames is Tickle. It somehow managed to morph to VonTickle, so her name is Ava Grace Leptuch VonTickle. Here is the video of her saying her name.

Sleep Today, Gone Tomorrow.

Today.
Noah is getting so big. Ava is growing too fast :(  Here are some pictures from the other day. It is Noah's smiley face and Noah's serious face.

 

Here is Ava, all smiles and not her cheesy smile.

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This is Ava playing with her blocks. It is her new favorite thing. Her and daddy like to build BIG towers. She also has some bristle blocks, thanks to Aunt Nancy and Uncle David, that she LOVES to play with. She always wants to build houses or airplanes

Hi mom.... What's not to love.

Love this picture. I have one posted in an earlier post that is similar. I love when Ava watches Noah or tires to help him. She will also show him things as well.

What have we been up to?

Noah's Sleep:  We are getting better night sleep out of Noah. He seems to be responding well to his new formula. It isn't as expensive as I thought it would be. Our insurance pays 80% of it, so that helps. It is probably a little bit cheaper than buying Similac. We are putting rice cereal in his bottle to help thicken them up. Not every night is perfect, but we are getting better chunks of sleep at a time and he is really only waking once for his bottle and then he is an early morning riser, so sometime between 4:30 and 5 am and that is when I usually put him in the swing to get another hour out of him. He pretty much is up by 5:45am. He is still sleeping in our room, but that is about to change. Next week, he will be in his room. I am ready and not so ready at the same time. I am ready because I hear all his noises and I want my room and my time back. I also want the fan on high so I can stay comfortable. We keep it off because we run the AC fan at night for the white noise for me and that keeps him pretty cool in our room. I am not so ready because when he does wake up and I put him back down, he does cry for a good 10 minutes until I can get him settled. His room is right next to Ava's and I don't want to have 2 kids awake at night, but I guess that is part of the growing pains.   

His naps are still tragic. He can't seem to get from the first sleep cycle to the second one. He wakes up anywhere from 25 mins to 35 mins after I put him down. I usually go in and pat him back to sleep, for him to wake up 4 minutes later (not sure the significance of the 4 minutes, but it is always 4 minutes later). I can spend an hour to an hour and a half going back in to try to get him back to sleep. OR I give up and put him in his swing in which case he will usually go back to sleep and I then have to wake him up for his next feed. He can sleep forever in that thing. I like it because he gets sleep,but he can't sleep in it forever and when he finally out grows it, I am going to have to help him learn to sleep, so I struggle with this all day long. I also worry that he will then have night sleep issues again. So some days, I give in and some days, I just get him up for his first nap and then move him to his swing for his second nap. Once he moves into his room, I will have to use the swing for sure for his second nap because it is the same time that Ava naps and I can't have 2 kids up. I NEED my time!! I always just hope that each nap is the nap  that he will finally sleep and each time it isn't. Someday soon, I hope!!

On a positive note, he has been without his paci for a week now. That is part of the reason I think his naps are hard. He was used to having them to soothe himself. He is trying to find his fingers, but he can't quite get it so it isn't as soothing as a paci, but if I try to give him his paci, he was always pushing it out. Why should I force it? I really didn't want him getting used to it anyway, because I remember with Ava, I had to go into her room a couple of times a night when she woke up and realized she didn't have it. That went on for a good year.

Ava's Sleep: Well, with Noah getting ready to go into his room, it means that Ava is going to have to give up her crib and move to a big girl bed. YIKES! I am really nervous about this. Ava isn't great at listening to us. (i.e telling her she can't get out of bed until we come to get her). I don't know how this is all going to go. We currently have her mattress in our office and it has her new bedding on it and we tell her that it is her new big girl bed and we play on it for her to get used to it. We even tell her that she is going to start sleeping in her big girl bed and no more crib and she says "ooooo, i like big girl bed, mommy", but I don't think she really knows what that means. We are going to ease her into it. Starting with a couple of naps. Noah will move into his room with his pac'n'play for a week until we think Ava is ready. I will update you on how it goes. Pray for us. But, I guess we are already sleep deprived, what is a couple more weeks of no sleep to get through this growing pain.. 

                                                    



Ava Sings her ABC's

Ava just learned her ABC's. Just one day she started singing them. It is too cute! She misses some letters espeically when she goes fast.

Noah is 3 months old.

I just love his smiles! He is such a calm and happy baby when he is awake. He will sit on my lap and just look around. He definitely knows his mommy and gets a little bit cranky when other people hold him that he is not used to. If I can reset him, he is ok after that.

We had a follow up with our GI specialist on Wednesday. Since we have seen a small improvement, but not a 100% improvement, she has him on a special formula to rule out any milk/soy allergy. He is on Elecare, it is a prescription formula that is amino based. The proteins are completely broken down and easy to digest. He has to be on it for a week to see if there is any change. He still wakes up quite frequently at night and that is really all we have to go on at this point, although, the night of the wedding, he slept 8 hours before he woke up at 5 am and I just gave him his paci and he fell asleep until 6 am. The only reason he slept is because I put him in the swing. (At least that is what I am going with). I had vowed to not use the swing, but at this point, I have to do what is going to make our family sane and get us the most amount of sleep. Last night he actually slept 6 hours in his crib and around 4 am, I put him in his swing and he slept until 6am. Maybe the formula is working or maybe he is just coming around. Anything is better then him waking up EVERY. SINGLE. HOUR! We have been busy the past couple of days, so maybe he is exhausted. We will have to see how this week goes with sleep. His daytime sleep hasn't changed, but I heard that nighttime sleep comes first. He still only sleeps about 35 minutes. I will spend about 15 mins trying to get him to go back down and when he doesn't, I put him in the swing and he will sleep until I wake him or else he would sleep forever. I am hoping that one day, I will look at the clock and realize that he has slept an hour and then two hours. I don't want him to get used to the swing, but we need some sanity here and as long as I can get some good stretches of sleep at night with him in the crib, I will let him nap in the swing.

He weighs 14 lbs 9.2 oz and is 25" long. He is a growing boy. He is still in 6 months clothes and size 2 diapers. He has discovered his hands and will lock them together and look at them. He has started to bat at the toys on his play mat too. He doesn't really enjoy tummy time anymore, but we do it often anyway. He has rolled over a couple of times, but I know it is by accident, so I am not really counting it.He generally wakes up happy. I have to really listen into the monitor, because he will sit there just sucking on his hands for a while before he starts to fuss. I can't wait to see more of his personality as he seems to be the complete opposite of Ava.

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Walters

On April 8, 2011, my little sister, Jaclyn married Nick Walters. It was a beautiful ceremony. Here are some pictures from the evening in no particular order.



Candy Table.



Ava and her Auntie Jackie and Bobo, of course.

The happy couple and the bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girls and ring bearer.

Ava, Gramme, & Papa Dee.

The Leptuch's





Nick, Jaclyn, Dad and Patty

The first dance

Father/Daughter Dance

Jaclyn and her mom and dad

Ava and mommy. She did not want to wear her dress. We had to bride her with candy. After she had her first tastes of the candy, she wanted it all night long, which lead to sugar high meltdown and early departure from the wedding.

Mike, Noah and dad



Grandma/pa DeArmond, mom and us.

The Cake

Jaclyn's beautiful hair.

It was a beautiful wedding and the place was gorgeous. Unfortunately my kids were over sugared and over stimulated that we had to leave really early. We wish them a lifetime of good fortune, happiness and love.

Ava and Noah.

Ava.

Ava's new favorite saying is "I go outside now". All she wants to do is play outside, specifically in her sandbox. She loves her sandbox. We don't love all the sand everywhere.

She is so vocal about telling us what she wants. She tells stories even though sometimes the words are out of sequence or the pronouns are wrong or she says what we would say to her. For example, when a picture is taken, she will say "I show you now," because that is what we would say to her.

She is in a climbing, jumping stage. She wants to get on her stool and jump off of it and when she is does it, she says, "I did it." My thoughts are "yes you did, now let's hope this doesn't land us in the ER"
Here is Ava jumping off her stool...

Ava walking to her stool

Ava standing on her stool.

Ava jumping off her stool.

She loves to watch TV and I have to admit, with Noah not sleeping, she watches WAY more than I would like to admit. As soon as we get Noah's sleep thing down, she will be limited on TV watching or brain rot as Mike calls it. Calliou is still her favorite show, but she also likes Curious George, Chuggington, Barney, Peep and Sesame Street.

She has a stellar memory. She will remember things from weeks ago and talk about them.  We have taught her that Gramme lives in the mountains and Grandma Nini flies away in a plane.

She is becoming more adventurous in her food, but she will let you know if she doesn't want it.  If we don't put it on her plate and ask her to try mommy's and daddy's food, she is more open to it.

She still battles washing her hair. I hate to admit it, but we are only washing it once a week because she ALWAYS cries. I have at least gotten her to let me, not Mike, brush her teeth with the bribe that she will get some floss. She loves floss. One day, I was flossing my teeth and Ava wanted to do it, so I gave her a piece and she put it in her mouth as if she were flossing. She soaks up everything. 

She loves to go for car rides, but I don't think she would like it if it were a "real" car ride. When I drive, she says "go fast". She likes to say it when I am at a stop light.

We are still amidst the "me do" or "Ava do it" stage. She wants to try to do everything. I usually let her try and then once she can't do it, she will ask for help.

Noah.

Well, Noah is having a hard time with his sleep. I made the mistake of letting him sleep in his swing too many times and now he doesn't know how to settle himself when he wakes up. I have vowed to not put him in it again for sleeping and work on getting him to sleep in his crib. It is not an easy task. It takes a lot of time and energy. I started this weekend because I have some help. I have to spend a lot of time in there, holding his hands down and keeping the paci in so he doesn't wake up. It usually takes about 30 minutes to get him through the first light sleep cycle. Then I have to go back in. If I can't get him to fall asleep on his own then we will continue to have nights like the other night where he woke up every hour from midnight on. I am exhausted. We only get 25 minute naps now and then he wakes up. Some days, I just have to get him up for an hour and then put him back down.

When he is awake, he is all smiles. Here are some pictures I took the other day.

He is very calm too. He will just hang out with everyone. He doesn't really get fussy unless he is really tired.

He has discovered his hands. He will lock them together and look at them. It is amazing to watch him discover things.

He will be 3 months old on Saturday, which is supposed to be about the time babies "figure it out" in terms of sleep or that is what everyone keeps telling me. I will believe it when I see it!

I love both these kids regardless of the sleep problems and the "two's". I feel very blessed to be able to be home with them daily.