10, 11 and 12 weeks

Note – too busy and tired to edit, sorry for any typos.

11 weeks (Sunday): Wow, another busy 2 weeks has flown by.  Logan is still really struggling with sleep (and that is how much I got done before he started crying, yay).

Alright, Wednesday now, trying again.  It has been another weekend and week of experimentation after we realized the last two weeks was going progressively worse.  It occurred to me, again, that we weren’t adapting to

Okay…12 weeks now (Sunday).  And he started to wake up as I opened my computer.  Logan is not a great sleeper during day and probably getting worse, but still doing okay at night.  We have tried all sorts of schedule adjustment and I’m not sure we have it all figured out yet but we are trying to give him a little more awake time during day.  We had success on Wednesday, failure on Thursday, success on Friday (and yesterday was just too messed up to tell).  I think we are getting a little better at interpreting his cues and keeping him up a little longer did lead to a few naps in the crib (without vibrator), though none more than an hour. 

He is changing so much now though and he is a delight to play with.  He loves to stick out his tongue, smile, and touch everything around him.  He is such a flirt (even when he is supposed to be sleeping).  At night when I change his diaper after feeding and before bed he will turn his head to the side and look out of the corner of his eyes up at me and shy-ly stick out his tongue.  It is so adorable!  He also is getting much more coordinated and likes to hold on to his baby tigger and push him into his mouth.  He will suck on nose, ears or eyebrows, but he prefers the ears and will squirm until he can make it happen.  He just started playing with his activity mat from great grammie and granddad Conover and he LOVES it.  There is a parrot and an elephant hanging down closest to the ground near both arms and he loves to whack at them.  He can self entertain there for quite a while.  It is fun seeing him staring at the parrot and concentrating on how to move his arm so he can smack it.  Even in the last week, he has gotten much better at it.  In general now, toys are more exciting to him and he is able to focus on them (or us) for long periods. 

We are figuring out that since he likes drives and walks, we can incorporate some errands with him into one of the cycles.  Although we have to be careful because we did it with two cycles yesterday and it back fired pretty big on us.  Oh well, you live and learn.

[another break to rock him back to sleep and move to crib] To get him to sleep, it usually entails a variety of methods (sometimes several in each nap, each working for about 30 min).  We use the crib vibrator, the swing, the bouncer (and of course car and stroller).  He only falls asleep in the car and stroller, otherwise, we have to rock him to sleep (and usually pat, sing, pacifier) and then transfer him.  Sometimes the only thing that works is sleeping on someone.  It can be really frustrating if he falls asleep easily on me (or whoever) then after being in crib for 5 minutes, wakes up screaming and never settles back again for rest of cycle.  You kick yourself that you would have rather just held him asleep rather than dealing with him fussy, but you would never get anything done. 

My sanity has been a little all over the place.  This baby stuff is hard.  A few things really help.  First, Charles is great and has been really helpful.  Although it is frustrating how Logan responds differently to us and it seems like sometimes only the cow (me) can calm him down, wonder if it is the whole boob thing.  Second, my backlit kindle came about 2 or 3 weeks ago and I have read 1.5 books since.  It has been great and really helped when I am rocking him a lot.  Julia enjoys it during the day as well.  Third, I have gotten out to see friends once each of the last two weekends.  It can be hard to choose socialization over getting things done or sleeping, but it is important. 

On the not so sane part, the breast feeding is really a mess some days.  If he doesn’t sleep well (common), he likes to snooze on me and getting him to eat enough can take an hour or more and that is time consuming and tiring.  I am constantly tempted to switch to pumping and bottle feeding but he still only sometimes likes bottles and then they have to be heated up which means you have to deal with a screaming baby while it warms up.  I am considering trying at night one of these nights though because being up for so long at night is really hard.  I also don’t want to totally stop because I know he gets a lot of comfort from me, and I like it (sometimes), and on some nights, the hour of him feeding is the only quiet and peaceful time Charles and I spend together!

On the 1st, Kevin and Tara will be here so Logan will get to meet Luke and Andrew.  I’m excited to see them all together.  Although everytime I plan an activity at a certain time, I get a little anxious because Logan has no schedule and who knows whether he will want to eat when it is time to leave or what.  Hopefully it will all go okay.  My plan is to have several bottles ready so that I can be flexible…