.:Meet the Ritchies:.

Sunday we celebrated with family and friends that one year ago our lives were blessed with this little munchkin!

THANK YOU for those who attended, it was such a special day! I hope to do a larger post with pictures in the next couple days for those who are interested in the details!

Until then, enjoy the above video, it seemed that Enzo knew he was going to have a party yesterday so he woke up ready to smile!

xoxo

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xoxo

I’m incredibly late with this post – it seems that the past couple weeks have been super busy and my to-do list just keeps getting bigger and bigger!  So let me do this so I can cross it off the list!

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Our big boy is a month away from turning ONE YEAR OLD!  Holy cow, time fleeeeeeew by.  Everyone says it does, and everyone is right.  I am way behind on his baby book, I don’t believe I have written an entry since 9 months?  Maybe 8.  Ugh.  And I have big plans for putting together a photo album in time for his birthday bash, but it’s coming up on me quickly so I’m not sure I’m going to have time.  It’s a goal, we’ll see.

He looks worried

Enzo is really starting to be interested in walking.  He will walk all over the place and lead the way if you are holding onto his hands.  And he is also comfortable with standing for a few seconds on his own!  I try to place him against things, like the couch or chair or recently the plastic storage bin my dolls are in, so he can hang on to it unassisted.  Tonight he was standing against the box and then started to walk around it and reached out his arms to come towards me.  It almost worked.  He plopped on his butt and then was mad.  Speaking of mad, he wasn’t really in the mood for the photo shoot the other day, here is his mad face…

Grrr!

He is eating lots of different things now, trying new flavors and textures.  He likes to do it himself, finger foods, so I try to think of things that he can easily get into his mouth.  Like bananas, easy.   But little macaronis, not easy.  I’m learning.

Most importantly, he’s SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT.  I know.  It’s amazing, and I’m so happy it’s finally happened.  I really think Mark taking the lead and getting up with him those two nights started him on the right path.  And then we let him cry it out and he does so good.  For example, this evening we put him down at 6:30pm and he cried for maybe a minute.  And he will sleep now until about 6am.  I KNOW, RIGHT!!  He does whimper and fuss every now and then but he’s able to soothe himself back to sleep with no help or interference from us.

Now naps, that’s a different story.  He won’t do it.  We used to put him in his swing and he’d be out within five minutes.  Two naps a day, for at least an hour and a half each.  Now, he fights it hard, he refuses to lay back in his swing, he starts crying as soon as he knows you are putting him down for a nap.  But today he really needed to sleep, so I literally drove him around for two hours, parking every once in awhile, just so he could get some rest.  We are both fighting colds right now, so I knew it was important that he take a nap.  Otherwise I would’ve done like every other day and deal with the 40 minutes (maybe, if I’m lucky) he’ll nap.  Ah well, I guess we traded one for the other.  So I’ll take the 12 hours at night, and keep fighting to get the naps back on track.

He’s such a fun and happy little boy, and every day he makes me gush with love.  I am so excited to celebrate his first birthday with our friends and family.  It will be a great party!

Hope you are well!

xoxo

Have you been wondering how our adventure in sleepland is going with Enzo?  Well, allow me to update you! 

On Saturday Mark suggested that he be the one to get up with Enzo all night, so that he didn’t have the option to nurse.  So we gave that a shot.  Mark spent most the night walking a crying baby around the house, and they spent some time in the recliner watching Blue Planet on the TV.  He put him to sleep in the swing every time he got him to doze off.  I didn’t get much more sleep than they did, doing my best to follow them around the house without letting Enzo see or hear me.  There were several times when I just wanted to give up and say “give him to me, I’ll nurse him!”.  But somehow I managed to stick to the plan.  And he went all night without nursing, and was happy to have his Mommy back when he woke up at 5:30am.  At that point I nursed him and put him back to sleep for a couple hours.  That was Night #1.

Night #2 went a little better.  He still did some walking and this time they watched Disney’s Oceans, but Enzo cried less and was able to go without nursing all night again.  But he slept in his swing again, which wasn’t a habit we wanted to start forming. 

So Monday I was determined to do some sleep training with him laying down for naps, in the hopes that it would transfer over to his nighttime routine.  So I moved the co-sleeper into his room, next to his crib (it’s getting a little cramped in there with all this furniture, but whatever).  I tried to let him “cry it out” with the first nap and surprisingly he only cried for about five minutes and then he laid there quiet for another twenty minutes before falling asleep.  I was so happy!  Unfortunately though he only stayed asleep for a half hour.  Boo.  So I tried putting him in his swing and he slept again for an hour and a half.   I tried the co-sleeper again for an afternoon nap but he was scream-crying (as I like to call it, you know, the kind of cry where if you didn’t know better you’d think he was being tortured?) so I promptly picked him up.  Which meant no nap for baby. 

At bedtime we were determined to make this happen.  I did the normal bedtime routine, bottle and nurse him (if he wanted to, sometimes he does and sometimes he just wants the bottle), then I rocked him in  my arms and he fell fast asleep.  But the second that I laid him in the sleeper, he was wide awake and crying.  But I left the room anyway and we let him cry it out, which only took about 20 minutes or so and then fell asleep.  He awoke shortly after 11pm, I had already been in bed asleep and Mark had just come to bed, so he went in and gave Enzo a few pats and made sure he had his binkie, then Mark came back to bed.  He cried for a little bit, not really all that serious though because I fell asleep.  When I woke up and realized the house was silent and Mark was sleeping next to me, I checked the time on my phone and it read 1:13am.  Apparently he had worked it out on his own and gone back to sleep!  He fussed a bit again about an hour later and we contemplated whether to go in there and repeat what Mark did earlier (reassure him with a few pats and make sure he has a binkie) or just let him try to work it out.  We waited a few minutes and his cries were starting to get serious so Mark went in (pat pat here’s your binkie) And then Enzo fussed a bit for another 10 minutes and fell back to sleep.  And he slept until 6:10am.  So he didn’t leave his sleeper all night long, and just needed to be reassured once the two times he woke up.  Progress!

Tonight he cried for a little longer at bedtime.  Even though he was asleep in my arms when I went to lay him down, the second his body touched the bed he was up and angry!  I finally ran myself a hot bath and hoped he’d be asleep before I got out.  And he was.  I am hoping that the rest of the night goes even better.  Maybe Mark won’t have to go in the room at all.  We are holding off on having me go in and do the consoling because he seems to get more agitated when it’s me.  Probably because he knows that he could be nursing.  Daddy doesn’t have anything he wants, haha.  You know, I mean, besides love. 

So that’s where we are at.  My goal is to get him to the point where I just lay him down awake and he knows what to do and can fall asleep with minimal to no crying.  In a perfect world.  This will be very beneficial to me because starting next week, I am going to be a Nanny!  My next adventure!  More on that later…

xoxo

P.S.  I’d like to give a special shout out to my awesome Father-in-Law Bill!  Today is his birthday and we wish him the happiest!  Love you Dad!

Happy Birthday Grandpa Bill!

The magicallly magical Magic Bullet, oh how I love thee!

My Mom dropped by our house yesterday and delivered this gem to us.   I promptly got in the car and made a trip to Costco for frozen fruit and whatever fresh vegetables and fruits I could find that Enzo might like.  This morning I made fruit smoothies for everyone for breakfast, super yummy!  And then I made some delicious baby food for Enzo, just by steaming things and blending the heck out of them!  So easy and so healthy!

I put them into ice cube trays and froze them, then popped them out into a ziplock bag, labeled it and put it in the freezer!

carrots and green beans

So far I’ve made carrots, green beans, mango and pears.  He had carrots and green beans for lunch and then more green beans for dinner.  They look and smell so much better than store-bought baby food, no matter how fancy or organic it was.

And I know it will also save us money, which is definitely a good thing!

Tomorrow I plan to blend up some apples and peas.

Oh, and we met our friend Lacye for some coffee today, and walked to a park so her puppy could run but it was too darn cold and wet to let Enzo experience a swingset. We’ll have to do that a different day!

And now I’m going to go back to watching the Betty White special, can you believe she is 90 years old??  She’s awesome!

xoxo

Last night Enzo did really good in the sleeping department!  Yay!

Claire had volleyball practice from 7-9pm so Mark put the baby to bed at his normal 7pm bedtime.  I guess he wasn’t very interested in drinking his bottle and he didn’t want to lay in his crib.  (I even bought one of those toy things that you hang on the crib and it plays music and lights up.  I got one that looks like a fish tank.  Enzo is too smart though, he knows we are just trying to create a diversion so instead he gets mad because he can’t grab the fish floating inside the plastic chamber.  In short, it just makes him frustrated, and I will probably be returning it.  It came with a remote, however, and Enzo loves playing with it! Go figure!)  So he put him to sleep in his swing instead.

But when Claire and I were getting ready to come home, I got a text saying that the baby was “wakey wakey”.  Which was fine, because my body was ready to nurse him anyway.  So when we got home I took him in his room and nursed/rocked him to sleep and put him in his crib.  He wasn’t totally asleep, so he laid there and thrashed around for awhile but didn’t make a peep and eventually conked out.  This was at 9:30pm.

And he slept until 1:30am!  I then nursed him again and rocked him to sleep, but it took a couple tries laying him down in his crib before he wouldn’t immediately start to cry.  So at about 2am I put him in and he eventually fell asleep again.

And he slept until 6am!  Yay Enzo!

That is progress, for sure.  Not sure if it had to do with the later bedtime, short nap beforehand or what.  I think tonight we’ll have to do the same schedule, cause Claire has practice again.  We’ll see if it was a fluke or if maybe we are onto something that works for him.

In the meantime, here is what naptime looks like when he isn’t ready to go to sleep…

this was this morning, blurry because I used my phone camera

He makes it freak out when he does this, it plays music and when the batteries are getting low the music will just stop playing when he sits up like that.  And it clicks really loud because it can’t do it’s swinging motion with him sitting up, I think the swing is about to go by the wayside.  He’s pretty hard on it, obviously.  I wish I could get him used to sleeping in his crib for naps but that’s another challenge I am not quite ready to face.

* Don’t worry, we buckle him in so he can’t fall out and that thing is really sturdy on the ground the way it’s built.  Even his chunky butt can’t topple it over! 

xoxo

Something we aren’t getting very much around here.  And this would explain my absence from blogging for the past week, because it is literally consuming me.

Enzo doesn’t like to sleep.  And I have no idea how to fix this.

At first, about five months ago, I thought it was due to teething and that it would eventually get better.  But now, with seven teeth halfway grown out of his gums, and no relief in sight – I am perplexed.  We’ve tried giving him tylenol at bedtime, and rub the teething gel on his gums to give him instant relief until the tylenol kicks in.  But this doesn’t seem to make a difference in regard to sleeping duration so I don’t think that’s the cause anymore.

Last night he awoke at 3:30am and was wide awake.  I nursed him, which he seemed half interested in and he kept letting go to babble about something.  He loves to babble.  And I love to hear his sweet little voice.  But NOT in the middle of the night.  He proceeded to be wide awake and babble/cry for the next two hours.  Mark and I were both trying to figure out what it was he needed, changing his diaper, rocking him, walking him, more teething gel when the cry seemed painful, replacing the dead batteries in his swing to have that as an option.  After two hours of trying to decipher the baby code, I finally ended up fixing him a bottle of formula since he was refusing to nurse at this point, and then putting him in his swing.  He then slept for two hours.  And thankfully so did we.  Turns out, he was constipated and likely his stomach was hurting him.

I have noticed the past week that he is nursing three or four times at night.  We put him to bed about 7pm and then it’s about every three hours he wakes and I feed him.  And this is after putting him to bed with a six ounce bottle of formula since for some reason he prefers that at bedtime.  So I thought perhaps he was getting his schedule backwards and was starting to think he needed to eat at night, not during the day.  I usually nurse him when he wakes up in the morning, around 7:30am, but then it’s a fight the rest of the day to get him to breastfeed, to the point where I’ve had to pull out the pump and use it a few times in order to not confuse my boobs into thinking we are weaning.  We feed him solid foods during the day, at mealtimes, and he likes to snack on cereal puffs and avocado.  But that’s about it as far as eating during the day goes.

We have also stopped swaddling him at night.  This is night #4 of that business.  He doesn’t seem to be waking any more often than he did when he was swaddled.  But the bedtime routine is all out of whack.  He fights it hard.  He used to get really sleepy as I fed him at bedtime, all swaddled and cozy.  Then I would stand up and rock him back and forth and he’d fall asleep with his head on my chest.  Then I would gently lay him down in his crib and sneak out of the room.  Now it looks more like we are wrestling.  He flails all restless like when I am giving him his bottle and bangs his pacifier on whatever he can come in contact with (my face, his bottle, the crib behind his head), or he scratches at my neck/chin/chest.  He’ll try and sit up and I’ll lean him back down.  Then when he decides he’s done eating, I stand up and try to rock him and he uses all four limbs to push against me, trying to escape my embrace.  So we do this little dance for awhile and he cries until I either give up and take him back to the living room for a break or he gives up and I am able to lull him to sleep.  Tonight he was having a tough time and I suddenly started bouncing up and down with him in my arms instead of swaying back and forth.  This worked.  He’s now sleeping.

Have you read this book?  (caution: strong language)

It’s all just a crap shoot.  And I am a Virgo.  I like routine and structure and staying on schedule.  So I just don’t know what to do with myself.  I spend my spare time googling:

“my 10 month old doesn’t sleep”

“how to get your baby to stop nursing only at night”

“how to make the best martini”  (I’m only kidding with this one, but sometimes I feel like he’s going to drive me to drink!)

When I should be using my spare time to sew my dolls and make clothes with all the fabric I have been hording for years.  So it’s really frustrating and I am desperate for answers.  So far I have read lots of forums where people advise to just deal with it because they are only babies for so little time, or find whatever works for getting your baby to sleep even if it means giving up your personal space (family bed).   And I HAVE considered this, many times.  Because selfishly I desperately WANT to GET some sleep, I LOVE SLEEPING.  But our queen sized bed doesn’t fit the three of us comfortably and I don’t want my husband to sleep in the recliner every night.

So either we need to find a king sized bed, or get some actual advice on how to help Enzo get some sleep.

Sleep.

I better go try and get some before he wakes for his first feeding, by this last week’s pattern I would say he’s due to wake up in just under two hours.

Have you, or do you know anyone, who has struggled with their children in regards to sleep?  How did they make it through?

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Okay, so I can’t leave this post on a Debbie Downer note, so instead I will introduce you to my cousin Bobbi’s darling baby boy, who is five months old and we met for the first time the weekend before last.

This is Trick!

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… and here are the boys in the morning, in Great Grandma’s kitchen.  I think we need to get Enzo a bean bag, he thought it was really fun!

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I think he looks like me in this picture, and here’s why:

can you see the resemblance?

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While I was trying to finish this post, he started fussing and stirring.  I waited for a bit to see if he could work it out himself, but he started to lightly cry.  So I picked him up and set him straight up against my chest, and with his knees tucked and arms up by his face, he immediately fell back to sleep and didn’t move.  He wasn’t even suckling his pacifier.  So I waited a minute and then put him in his swing and turned it on to rock back and forth.  Whatever keeps him sleeping.

That’s where I am at.  And now I am seriously GOING TO BED.

xoxo

(Foreword: the pictures in this post are super crappy due to using my phone instead of a real camera, my apologies)

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Our little squirt is 10 months old!  He is such a little ham these days, but he’s got two older sisters who ham it up pretty good so he’s learning from the best.  His teeth are really cute and if it weren’t so impossible to get a picture of his top ones I would definitely take one!  There is a new one coming in on the bottom which probably explains the sleepless nights lately (which isn’t really different than usual but he’s been fussy in the middle of the night, not easily nursed back to sleep like normal).

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Oh, so yeah, he is still not sleeping through the night.  I don’t even remember what it’s like to get a full night of uninterrupted sleep.  I know I will experience it again, and this time in his life is brief so I’m just going to suck it up and love the fact that he wants ME in the middle of the night.  My favorite part is when he lays his head down on my shoulder, that’s when I know I’ve got him and he’ll be slumbering shortly.  And even though he weighs 22 pounds, it’s a wonderful feeling to hold him close and snuggle with my nose in his soft blonde hair.  He’s my sweet boy.

And guess what?  He ROLLED OVER.  He figured out how to go from his tummy to his back which was really great and exciting… until I realized that meant he would refuse to stay on his tummy when I put him there with this new found skill!  But we are doing more and more tummy time every day, trying to encourage him to get moving on his own.  He likes to push backwards on his belly, not quite able to get up on his knees or maybe he just doesn’t realize he has the power to do so.  So he does make a little progress, slowly shimmying around on the floor.  Baby steps.  

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He enjoyed his first holiday season, spending Thanksgiving with all the family.  He LOVES mashed potatoes so he got plenty of those that week.  And he watched his Mommy catch a fish in Tygh Valley, I’m sure he thought that was exciting even though he can’t tell me yet.

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And he still loves to flash those dimples!

Here are some more photos from his tenth month…

fun with puffs!

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and this is where most of the puffs end up!

baby butt crack, too funny!

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xoxo

Hello Santa...

Tonight we drove across the river to meet Grandma & Grandpa Ritchie at a little coffee shop.  Grandma’s friend had invited her and the grandkids to a special Santa meet-n-greet.  I was really anxious to see how Enzo was going to react to the big guy in red.  I have several photos of me as a baby, until about age 3 I guess, sobbing my head off while on the lap of Santa Clause.  So I was prepared for him to react the same way.

...this isn't so bad, but he isn't smiling yet...

I was able to snap a few photos, but there was also a professional taking them as well.  And the best part, it was FREE!  We got a great shot of him, just like this one (only more glamorous, since I don’t know how to do anything besides point-n-shoot with camera).  He didn’t do too bad!

Oh wait…

...there they are...tears.

I knew it!  And then he proceeded to cry as he was passed from Grandma, then to Daddy, and finally to me.  Where he immediately quieted.  Well, duh, that’s cause he’s a mama’s boy!  <3

Are you taking your kids to see Santa this year?  I’m a little sad that our girls are too old for this now.  But I’m happy to start new traditions with Enzo, since right now as he sees it, this big scary bearded guy really does exist!  Hopefully the “scary” part won’t last long.

xoxo

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Our boy is 9 months old!  He is such a good baby.  He’s been very busy lately, ever since he started going forward in his walker.  We call it many different things – scooter, car, buggy.  And it usually makes me start singing a song that has the word “drive” in it.

“Baby you can drive my car”

“Beep beep, beep beep, yeah!”

He is all over the place in it, and he’s really good at turning himself around.  I like it because the bottom frame is just wide enough that it keeps things out of his reach, like the fireplace grate, cords attached to the computer (he’s like a puppy, chews cords), or the oven.  But it doesn’t prevent him from touching yucky things, like the recycling bin or the toilet (groooooss!).  Baby proofing needs to happen sooner than I think.

tickles from sister

Bedtime is still difficult.  Well, not necessarily bedtime, though he has had a rough past week with it.  But more specifically, the fact that he isn’t sleeping through the night.  I am still up a few times to nurse or give him his pacifier so he’ll fall back to sleep.  He is still swaddled at night time and he seems to be fighting against that lately too.  But if I try to let him have arms free than it seems like he doesn’t get back to sleep as easy during the night.  He flails.  I’m not sure what we’ll have to do to break him of the swaddle.  I’m sort of hoping he’ll just grow out of it, as soon as he realizes he can roll over (still not doing that yet either) then he won’t want to be immobilized like that, and we’ll just know it’s time.  Maybe that’s wishful thinking.  It made me feel better when our pediatrician shared that she also swaddled her son until he was like 10 months old.  I’ve had a couple people recommend that we try the cry it out method, assuring that it only took their own child a few nights before they figured it out.  I can handle a few nights of crying if it means that after that I’ll be able to enjoy uninterrupted sleep again.  I don’t even remember the last time I got 6 hours straight.

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At his 9 month checkup with Dr. Jenny, he weighed 21 lbs. 12 oz.  And he measured 29 1/4″ long.  He is in the upper percentiles in everything according to the charts.

looking for sister

He has the two bottom teeth that are coming in quite nicely.  And the top teeth are there as well, he has the two left ones in and the right canine, but the right front tooth is still just under the surface.  He is eating lots of solid baby food and some little vegetable puff things that Gerber makes.  And he LOVES potatoes.  Sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes – he doesn’t care.  We have introduced the sippy cup with water but he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.  He doesn’t know to tip it all the way up in order for water to come out.  And the cup I bought is so spill-proof that it’s virtually drink-proof too.  He has to suck pretty hard, like a bottle.  If you have a glass though, he loves to grab it and put it to his mouth like he knows what he’s doing.  So I think he’ll be really fond of the sippy cup, once he figures it out.

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I can hardly believe that in three months he’ll celebrate his 1st birthday.  I predict some really big milestones happening over the next couple months.  I am very lucky that I get to enjoy him all day, every day.

Happy 9 months sweet boy! We love you!

xoxo