Nathan's Last Few Days As a 23 Monther

To my dear children,
Hannah turned 1 month old last Friday. I can't believe how fast time has gone by.

 Things are still going pretty steady. Hannah is pretty much eating and sleeping with a few moments of alert time where she likes to look around or sit on the swing. It seems like Hannah is preparing for another growth spurt. Monday she was feeding like crazy. And then that night, she slept like a champ. In fact I got a few 2+ hour stretches of sleep. You can see from the chart below.

Since Hannah has been only sleeping for stretches of more than 2 hours once a night, I kind of think it is due to her not feeding as well during the middle of the night and then she gets hungry. It was a bit frustrating to be waken up, only to have her drink for 10 minutes and be out like a log. I would try to rub her back, her hands, her feet. I even tried a cold towel against her skin. So then I would put her back in the pack and play. An hour or so later, she would wake up. I tried something new last night to try to get her to get more of the fatty hindmilk: Start nursing her on one side until she starts to slow down. Then I switch to the other side. When a let-down occurs, I quickly switch her back to the first side so that she can get more hindmilk. Repeat a few times and then I put her back down to sleep. I'd say it worked pretty well. We'll see if it continues to work. 

Hannah and I visited a friend who also just had her baby. The baby is about 2 weeks younger than Hannah. We did a mini-photo shoot in their cool home studio. Two sleeping babies: A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E. 

Nathan has been interested with tools lately. He's been playing with Allen wrenches, screw drivers and hammers. He's actually really good with them too. He has the fine motor skills to actually unscrew screws with the tools. I'm surprised that we don't have a bunch of things falling apart.

There has been times where Nathan needs to have a time out. This happens when he disobeys what we tell him not to do or when he impulsively hits another person, or throws something at them. I'm pretty sure that he has no ill intentions, but he's simply trying to figure out what would happen if... Regardless, those behaviors are not OK and so we have him go to time out to help him understand what situations are not OK. Our time-outs consist of putting him behind a door, shutting it, and counting to ten before opening the door and explaining to Nathan what he should have been doing. When we started to do this a few months ago, he would cry and come out cuddly and sad. When asked if he wanted a time out, he would quickly shake his head. 

Now, things are different. When he does something bad and we tell Nathan to go to time out, he actually seems happy to go. He runs to the bathroom and shuts the door. We then count to ten slowly. Sometimes he counts with us. Then he opens the door and runs to us. We explain to him what he should be doing instead and most of the time he doesn't repeat the undesired behavior. I don't know how effective this will be in the long term, but for now it seems to work. 

Nathan is also into jumping. He can now jump, with both feet off of the floor at the same time. He's actually kind of obsessed with it. When we take walks or walk anywhere with curbs, he will jump. Sometimes he runs up a neighbor's uphill driveway and jumps, saying "tiao" ("jump" in chinese") as he hops back down to the sidewalk. 

Nathan is continuing to sleep from about 8 pm to 7:30 - 8 am and on most days, takes a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. He is still anti-veggies and will only eat them if they are pureed. 

Nathan can finally reach the pedals on his trike. He understands the process of pedaling, but he does a modified form of it; he will push forward about a half of a cycle and then pedal back and forth to go forward slowly. (It's not a fixed gear) Nathan is not very good at steering, but I'm sure that will come in due time. 

Nathan really enjoys playing with his Thomas the train set. His favorite engine is Henry. I don't know why, but he is always yelling "Hen-E" and looking for him. It's probably the toy that he is most attached to. 

 Nathan likes to help build the track, but sometimes Mommy and Daddy have more fun and start to help out as well. Daddy has printed out a few specialty pieces with his 3D printer so we can make lots of cool designs.

 Every day before nap time, we feed the fish. Lately we've spotted 2 snails and every day Nathan tries to look for them.

Sometimes I feel like I'm taking care of 2.5 children. For example, if I'm nursing Hannah, sometimes Nathan will want to "nurse" his Hannah doll. Of course, it doesn't last long for him and then he hands his baby to me, insisting that I nurse her as well. Some days he wants his big baby, some days he just has to have his little baby, so it's almost like I'm taking care of half of another kid.

The weather is finally cooling down so I foresee lots of afternoons spent outside in the next few weeks. For now, I'm probably going to update the blog on Tuesdays because Nathan goes to school on that day, which allows me to get a few moments of extra sleep, eliminating the need for an afternoon nap. Once Hannah starts sleeping through the night, I may switch back to Wednesdays. 

That's it for now. 

Love, 

Mommy