boys will be boys

Hendrix is always dirty.  

Sometimes I wonder why we bother with baths, because he never stays clean and fresh smelling for very long.

He loves playing with rocks.  He loves being outside.  

He loves throwing the rocks.  He also still loves to eat the rocks. (really? I thought you were over that, little man.)

He watches Gabe and really likes to take his lead.  Whatever Gabe does is apparently super cool.  

Gabe tosses rocks?  me too.  

Gabe walks down the path and wants to take my hand?  ok.  

Mom wants to hold my hand? no way.  

I see where I stand.

I think that Gabe is really enjoying Hendrix now too.  
He can teach him things.  
He has a little follower. 

Who doesn't like that kind of attention?

One of their newest favorite things to do together is wrestle.  Actually I think it is a form of tackle football, but all I know is that they both end up on the ground, rolling around, with lots of giggling and laughing. 

On the carpet inside?  sure.  

But on the cement outside?  not so sure it is a great idea.

They are good pals though, and I am so glad that Hendrix is getting to have an older boy mentor to hang with.  I think they both get a lot out of their interactions with each other. ;)

Following Gabe's lead on other favorite toys, Hendrix really likes balls of any kind and recently picked up tossing around a baseball.

They also share a common passion for cars.  Gabe has lots of trucks and trains that he shares with Hendrix, and Hendrix has just picked up making 'vrooming' noises while playing with them.

He got this car play set for his birthday and recently figured out how to send the cars down it all by himself.  He loves it!

He also prefers not wearing clothes.  He has always been pretty happy when he doesn't have pants or even a shirt on, but recently he has even started trying to pull his diaper off.  He wants to be naked.  Is that a boy thing?

oh my sweet little boy.

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  Hosted by Cecily and Lolli

wordless wednesday {my little pumpkin}

i sure miss the days when he would stay where i put him for photos.....

his patience with my camera lasts all of about 4 minutes....i gotta work quick!

and he's done!

linking up with naptime momtog, project alicia, the paper mama, tara's view of the world, mom vantage, and mom to 2 posh lil divas. 

the iGeneration

my son loves gadgets just like his daddy.  his new favorite is our iPod.  He gets really possessive of it and wants to run around our upstairs holding it and dancing to the music.  

he looks at the screen and pushes the touchscreen on it with his little finger just like he watches us do.  if for some reason he manages to pause the music (this happens alot) he wants us to fix it, but give it right back. 

he seems to have such an interest in music - between listening to it, dancing to it, trying to play it (on the piano, drumming on anything and everything, and now clapping).  do we have a future musician on our hands?

give him just another few years and he is going to be teaching me how to use my own technologies. 

how early is too early to start limiting 'screen time'?  lol

if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands

Hendrix has just figured out how to clap, and he loves to show us how he can do it!  He claps when we ask him to, and anytime any sort of celebration occurs (like when we say hooray, yeah or good job).

He got to tag along while I did a photo shoot for his little friend Abigail and her family yesterday, and he was cheering for her.  It was super cute, and slightly distracting as I wanted to take pictures of him too ;)

Unfortunately he started running a temperature last night, and this smile is temporarily missing ....

I hope he starts feeling better soon!

sleep, sweet, sleep

This is what my son looks like when he wakes up from a well rested nap.  I should have flipped the camera around and taking a picture of what I look like when I go to get him after a nice long restful nap.  It mirrors the joy on this little guy's face. ;)

Our journey through parenting definitely took a few hard bumps and turns when it came to dealing with sleep issues with our little guy.  

I am pleased to say that we have now gone through a successful month of him sleeping all. through. the. night. In his own bed.  It is amazing.

We owe a big part of this accomplishment to the helpful tips in the book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and another big part to the encouragement and reinforcement of several respected friends.  

I never thought that I would be the kind of mom who would let her child "cry-it-out" at night, but then again I also never thought that I would be the kind of mom that would let her baby boy sleep wedged in between her and her hubby night after night; and that was exactly what was happening before we decided to take some drastic measures and instill a "sleep training" in our home.

Let me start this by saying, I loved rocking my baby boy to sleep.  

Especially after he stopped nursing I really cherished that time.

The problem was that he was so used to that routine that when mommy was gone at bedtime, daddy would spend hours trying to get him to sleep.

The other problem with that was that if he woke up in the middle of the night he wanted mommy to rock him back to sleep.  When he was 8 and 9 months old I was okay with this.  It seemed pretty normal for babies to wake up and want their mommies.

  

Then gradually it seemed like the rocking him back to sleep didn't work very well anymore, and he wanted to lay in bed with me to fall asleep.  At first we would move him back to his crib after he did, but then after a while we were too tired to care, and just let him stay there.

And then we would cut him some more slack when he was teething and didn't feel well....

and then we went on vacation and the whole sort-of-routine flew out the window.

Before we knew it, we were tiptoeing around, going to bed at 8 pm just so our kid would sleep, and waking up with aches in our necks because our lumpy kiddo was forcing us to contort our bodies around his.

So we did some research and decided to try letting our baby 'soothe himself to sleep'.  The basic premise here is that if you let him put himself to sleep in the first place, he will be able to put himself back to sleep if he wakes up in the middle of the night.  Sounds simple enough.

We worked on a bedtime routine that included bath, snuggles, reading books, songs and then a smootch and that's it.  Goodnight baby boy.  See you in the morning.  We laid him down in the crib while he was still awake but sleepy with his blanket and paci, and let him do the work of getting to sleep.

It was hard work.

Both for him and us.

It is really hard to listen to your child cry.  I don't care how many times I read that it would not hurt him, it still hurt me to listen to him.  His little voice was hoarse the next morning, and I was dreading starting this all over again the next night.  I also wanted to "cheat" and rock him to sleep at naptime - sort of as an apology, crazy as that sounds.   

But from everything I had read, consistency was really the most important step, so we tried to follow through with what we had started.  Those first three nights were hard.  Really hard.

BUT....

there was light at the end of the tunnel.

On the fourth night we did our routine and after we left his bedroom he only fussed for the amount of time it took us to walk out of his room and down the stairs.  And then. silence.   I even replaced the batteries in the monitor because I was certain that we couldn't possibly be that lucky.  But we were.  He had put himself to sleep. 

We poked our heads into his bedroom that night before we went to bed to see him sleeping on his tummy snuggled up with his blankie and it was sooooo adorable!  I had never seen him sleep on his tummy before that, so it was amazing to see that he just had to work harder to find what made himself comfortable and feel cozy.

Now our little dude is going to bed at 7 pm and sleeping until 6:30 am or until we have to wake him up to get ready for our day.   He recognizes the bedtime routine and actually goes to find his blankie when we start singing one of the sleepy-time songs.  He is napping without a fit both in the morning and afternoon, even when he is at the baby-sitter's house.  

And most importantly both he and his parents are well rested and able to function during the day.   ;)

I am really thankful for this new bend in our sleeping journey and would advocate to anyone that working towards a sleep routine is most definitely worth it!

Disclaimer:  I think that each and every child is different and I would recommend doing your own research about what would work for your family.  I just wanted to share about our personal journey. 

school of hard knocks

hendrix has had his share of bumps and bruises, but now he has had his first real scrape.  the kind that draws blood and gets puffy and swollen (i think they are called strawberries) and it is right on his face.  

the culprit was the concrete front staircase.

hendrix has gotten really good at stairs, he can crawl up them so well that i don't really worry about him too much anymore.  but now he is trying to get all fancy, and thinks that he should hold onto the railing and walk up them.  i get it.  he is watching us and trying to imitate us, but that is not nearly as safe.   

as you can see from his forehead.  

oh but it makes him so proud of himself to try and be a big boy.  

i finally understand now why there would be some moms out there who feel the only way to keep their child safe is to completely wrap them in bubble wrap. i get it.  

i think my son would find a way to still get hurt.  

he pinches his fingers in cupboards and doors....

he runs too fast that he trips and falls....

he bonks his head on everything.  i don't know if he has had a hard time adjusting to being twice his original height (going from crawling to walking) because he is always trying to walk underneath things (like the dining room table) and finding that he is too tall.  he also cuts the corners in the doorway too close and rams into the doorframe. 

his newest adventure, which has been mostly successful, is coming back down the stairs.  he refuses to turn onto his tummy and crawl back down; instead he sits down (while forward facing) and scootches down them one stair at a time on his bottom.  

it looks kind of scary, but it really does seem to work okay.  

i bought this shirt for him several months back (before he was walking) and i chuckled all day about it while he wore it yesterday.  

i had NO IDEA how many stunts he would do, or how many near-heart-attacks i would have on a daily basis.  i want my child to have a healthy dose of adventure and exploration, and i don't want to smother him, but it is hard to watch him fall down again and again.

and i still have the 'bandaid-fixes-everything' stage to look forward to. 

oh joy!

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fall is here

this morning when we left the house it was only 34 degrees outside.  

that is chilly. 

that requires layers.  

unfortunately hendrix is not a big fan of the 'hat' layer. 

he took great pride in being able to rip the hat off his head.

he couldn't do that last fall.

how am i supposed to keep him warm?

while we were waiting outside for daddy to get home from work tonight, he found this itty bitty pile of dried leaves that crunched when he stepped on them.  he walked on them back and forth and back and forth, fascinated with the sound it made...... and then he found a stick to play with!  lol

i am really looking forward to seeing this change of seasons through hendrix's eyes.  i have always loved this time of year and now i have a new reason to appreciate it even more.

now i just need to find some time to get out my box of fall clothes.  those tank tops and shorts in my drawers are just not cutting it.   

i'm glad that i made time to sort through hendrix's fall stuff over the weekend.  i love all the little sweaters lined up in his closet.  i can't get over how grown up he looks in the little zippy pullovers.  

so much attitude.

hello fall!

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Hosted by Cecily and Lolli