First jump

Finn has been trying to jump for a long time now, but he has never quite gotten his feet off the ground. Yesterday, while we were at the park we were jumping and his feet finally left the earth at the same time. He landed and then promptly fell over. He hasn't been too keen about jumping since. 

He has also started making "vroom, vroom" noises while he plays with his trucks. He must have picked  that up from daddy!

What's in a name

Ben has started asking Finn, "what's its name?" in regards to people, objects and characters in books. Finns answer is always the same, "Dadda."

Night-weaning

The time has finally come. After Christmas and all the illness and upheaval, I had let Finn get into the habit of nursing all night long.  My hope had been that as life got back to normal, the night wakings and nursing would return to normal as well. I was sadly mistaken. If anything, in January and February he started waking more and wanting to nurse more and more during the night until we were nursing nearly every hour. This is nothing new for us, of course, but in the past when I have looked into night-weaning all the books and articles I have found said the same thing: night-weaning and co-sleeping were incompatible. It seemed that if I wanted to eliminate one, I would have to eliminate both. I desperately wanted to be done nursing all night long, but I was not ready to give up co-sleeping, so I trudged on.

But then as I was hopelessly researching the subject of night-weaning once again, I stumbled across this article by Dr. Jay Gordon: http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html  It was the first article I had read that gave me the immediate sense that this was a plan that I could follow and that might actually work for us. I had Ben read it too and his comment was "Wow. He knows Finnleif well." Exactly! This spoke to our situation perfectly.

I didn't follow his plan exactly. We actually started on step 2. I know Finn well enough to know that taking him off the breast before he falls asleep would make him just as angry and frustrated as just saying "no" in the first place, so why torture him (and me) unnecessarily? We started out by talking to him during our bedtime routine about the change that was about to take place. I told him that the nursies were tired and so he could nurse right before bed but then the nursies were going to go to sleep and they wouldn't wake up until morning, just like he was going to go to sleep and not wake up until morning. I felt like I might as well throw that last pitch in there and see if I couldn't get him to sleep through the night as well just by suggesting it.

The first week was rough. He did some screaming and clawing at my shirt, but I stuck to the plan and told him the nursies were sleeping. Once he realized I wasn't going to give in, he climbed on top of me and laid his head down on my chest and fell asleep. That wasn't quite what I had in mind, but at least he wasn't nursing! Oh, how my back ached that week with 23 pounds of toddler lying on top of me for hours on end, but as things progressed, he even started falling asleep just lying next to me.

After that first week he started consolidating his sleep more and would sleep un-aided for 3-4 hours at a time. One night, even though I was technically sleeping in his bed with him, he didn't wake me up or need to cuddle at all the entire night, but put himself back to sleep whenever he woke briefly.

Now we are about a month into our night-weaning routine and I would say it has been thoroughly successful. Now I only nurse before bed and in the morning (even if he wakes before 11 pm). Finn seems to understand and he no longer demands to nurse by screaming and yanking on my shirt and I no longer have to tell him that the nursies are sleeping.

The biggest breakthrough came last night when he slept the entire night by himself in his bed without needing any assistance from me!  I woke up at 2:30, shocked that he had not awoken yet and then spent the rest of the night in my own bed waking up every 20 minutes to check the baby monitor. If Finn keeps this up, I will be the one needing sleep training next!

This has been a long 20 month journey and I know that it is nowhere near over. I fully expect that most night will not look like last night, but I am hopeful for the first time in a long time that his night wakings will become fewer and fewer until one day they are no longer a problem for either of us.

Hugless Douglas

Finn has always liked books from a very early age. But the first book that he really started to interact with (point at the pictures, laugh at parts of the story, etc) was a book called Hugless Douglas which was given to him by my friend and former employer in Bozeman, Bill Bradley and his family.
I thought this deeper interest in books would extend to all books, and it has in many ways, but not to the same level as with Hugless Douglas. It has become his absolute favorite. He requests (maybe "demands" is a better word) that we read it every night at the exclusion of all other stories. When Ben and I have tried to sneak a different book in, Finn will get up out of bed, find Hugless Douglas and plop it down on top of whatever story we are trying to read.
His devotion to this book has recently reached new heights. Lately, when he wakes up from a nap, he will come out into the living room clutching this book. When he wakes up at 5:30 in the morning he somehow finds it in the total darkness of his room, brings it into bed and sets it, not very gently, on my face.  This morning when he woke up, he couldn't find Hugless Douglas (because he had left it in Mommy and Daddy's room last night) and so he rummaged through his book pile until he found the book jacket for Hugless Douglas and brought that to me to read. Fortunately(?), since I now read this book to him 3-4 times a day I have the gist of it memorized so that I can recite some version of it to him, even at 5:30 in the morning, when I am nowhere near being awake and the book is being pressed into my face.

UPDATE: Ben has started asking Finn at the end of the book "Who does Douglas hug?" (the answer is his Mommy). At first Finn wouldn't say anything, but the past couple of times Finn has turned to Ben and whispered "Dadda." Yet another example of how this kid is Daddy's boy all the way! 

Bubbles in the bath

Finn has been discovering his bodily functions lately. Ben has been taking him to the bathroom with him in the morning so he starts to understand what that is all about. Now, when I take his diaper off before bath time, he loves to stand by the toilet and pee...on the rug. Maybe this means I need to get him his own potty?

Last night in the bath tub Finn passed a little gas and made his own bubbles. He thought this was hilarious and was cracking up with laughter several seconds before Ben and I realized what was so funny. I think he started straining a little bit to see if he could make some more bubbles, but I whisked him out of the bath so we wouldn't have to deal with poo in the tub. It hasn't happened to us yet, but I'm sure it will someday.

In other news, Finn has started giving us "high-fives" which is pretty cute. He has also said his first 2 word sentence. I was trying to dress him and he wasn't cooperating so I told him he had to "lie down" to which he started saying "lie down" over and over again.

First haircut

We gave Finn his first haircut today. It was starting to hang into his eyes and was falling straight over his ears. The only curls were in the back, and they kept getting dreadlock-like snarls in them. So we decided it was time. Finn was really good. He didn't cry at all. He did fuss and wiggle a little but that is to be expected from an 18 month old! All in all I think I did pretty well for my first time cutting hair in general, much less cutting a boys haircut. It's not perfect, but then I didn't expect it would be. It pained me to cut off the curls in the back though. I had thought maybe once I cleaned up the front and sides of his hair, I might be able to leave the curls long for a while, but no, once the front and sides were short, the curls in the back had to go too. He looks way too grown up now. It's really starting to hit me how quickly he is leaving his baby days behind him.

To that end, he is continuing with new words. He is getting pretty good at repeating words we say. He has recently started saying "uh-oh" and "ow" and using them in the appropriate context. "Yuck" and "yummy" he has starting using during mealtimes but they both seem to mean "I don't like this!" We're trying to get him to say his name but so far he just smiles at us. Once it sounded like he said "Leif" but it hasn't happened since.

There was one funny story that came about this week. I was cleaning in the kitchen when Finn crawled up onto the couch and started to reach for the lamp. I came over and reminded him that he is not to touch the lamp and he quickly whirled around, said "Shit!" in his high baby voice and wiggled off the couch. Now, since I'm pretty sure I haven't said "shit" since before Finn was born and I know Ben has probably never said it, I can only assume he was just making a noise. Or maybe his grandpa's let a few questionable words slip over Christmas and he remembered....

18 Month Doctor Appointment

I am happy to report that this doctor visit went much better than the last one. Granted, my expectations were not very high, but there was no Finn running around the hall naked and shrieking at least. He still cried, but wasn't frantic and he actually allowed the doctor to examine him.

There were two really good things that happened. First, Finn did not have to have any shots! He was supposed to, but somehow we did a couple early so now we get to be shot-free until he's four. Yay! Second, she praised me on getting his weight up to the 45th percentile. This shocked me so I asked what his weight was and she said 25 pounds. I had to tell her that I didn't think that was correct since on the bathroom scale at home he was only 23 pounds. So she had him weighed after the visit and his weight came to 22.6 pounds, which I thought was a little low, but at that point, the visit was over, so there was no opportunity for her to get after me about his weight. So I got a free pass too! We'll just keep working on getting him to eat and increasing his milk intake to 2 cups per day (he currently drinks 1/2 a cup).

I didn't leave this appointment feeling so morally dejected as I did the last one. My next goal will be to get him sleeping through the night before his 2 year appointment so I won't have to spend the 2 weeks before his appointment practicing my excuses for why he doesn't sleep.