Ethan’s sleeping and waking times continue to be random. One morning it was 7:30, another 6:30. The past two mornings he has been up at 5:30 am. George likes to wake up at five in the morning-I however believe that is a sin. I’ve read the bible front to back many times and though I don’t remember anything specific about getting up so early to be a sin-I am convinced it is. Perhaps it is buried somewhere in the Levitical laws, I shall have to check.
I can’t believe Ethan will be a year old next month. It seems like yesterday I was pregnant and running from hurricane Francis. The first six months went by very slowly-especially those first six weeks but the last six monts have zoomed by. Ethan is trying to stand by himself and has made attempts at walking but no success yet. He is happiest when he is exploring so I give him supervised visitation to the laundrey room and bathrooms. He found a hair brush in the bathroom this morning and it was cute to watch him try and brush his hair.
George was called into work because of the hurricane that looked as though it would hit close to where he works. Figuring we would experience something like a tropical storm, Ethan and I spent the night at a friend’s house. Well Ethan didn’t even get to experience a bad rain storm because the hurricane went further south and it hardly even rained where we were. No complaints here having gone through last years storms.
The nose continues to run. The doctor said it could be allergies or teething. I’m thinking maybe teething since he is biting everything in sight and whining constantly. He won’t let me leave his sight and cries when I pass him to George. His napping pattern is all over the place. Sometimes he will and sometimes he won’t. I think God is working on me learning patience (I guess I didn’t learn enough from working with psychotic adolescents).
Ethan has had a runny nose everyday for the past two weeks. He hasn’t had any other cold symptoms but I assume that’s what it is. We keep having to miss church and music class because no one wants to have their kid play with a kid whose nose is running. I know I don’t. I’m beginning to wonder if he has allergies unless this is normal for a cold. I’m not talking just a bit of conjestion but running so that he blows bubbles from his nose when he breathes. Very attractive.
Well the past two days I’ve put him down at his normal naptime and he has not napped. He played in his crib for an hour. So then we left to do our daily errands and appointments and he falls asleep in the car. Today I put him down about 20 minutes later than his usual naptime thinking that maybe he just needs to be awake a bit longer now before he is tired. He was yawning and giving all the signs that he is tired. He has been in there 45 minutes and is still awake and babbling. I’m suprised that this is happening and not sure what to do. It seems that he is definitely tired by 11am because he has fallen asleep in the car the past couple of days but since all of our activities occur at that time (music class, playgroup, etc) I can’t have him nap then. I suppose I could just do our normal routine and he can have a cat nap in the car and then take a nap in the afternoon. I know that two naps won’t last forever but I thought we would make it to a year and a half before this happened.
Ethan has been napping very well since about five or six months old. Since the pacifier has been gone it has been taking him a long time to fall asleep and he has been napping for shorter periods. (he had been doing two one and a half hour naps a day) Twice in the past week he has not taken his morning nap. He didn’t take one this morning and it was a struggle to get everything done before we left for play group. I don’t know if this is related to him having to relearn to sleep without his pacifier or if he is transitioning to only one nap. I am so used to doing chores and sometimes my shower during his morning nap that it will be a big change for me if he is now going to one nap.
Well I think we’ve done it. It can take about 3 days to modify behavior in a young child and today is the 3 day mark for saying bye bye to pacifier. The first day he cried a lot before falling asleep and today he didn’t cry at all. It is taking him longer to fall asleep than it used to-about 45 minutes but I am hoping that will improve. He is basically having to relearn how to fall asleep. This adventure may have gone even better had he not developed a cold after I had already started it but I couldn’t turn back. I wasn’t looking forward to working on this issue because I feared that he would never sleep but it wasn’t as bad as I thought-it seemed that nap times were the most difficult. I am glad that we worked on it now rather than waited because his memory is shorter. I was concerned that if I waited until he was 2, it would be difficult because that is such a difficult transition age and I didn’t want to add to the challenges that age already has.
