19.5 Week Adventures: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

It was a typical Saturday evening. We had just finished eating dinner and Daddy was playing trains with Nathan while Mommy was playing with Hannah on the exersaucer. The time: 7:00. Fast forward an hour and both children are fast asleep in their own rooms while Mommy takes a nice long shower and Daddy catches up on his Reddit posts.

Dear Children,
We had just returned from a 15 day vacation. While we were at Grandma's and Ampa's (Grandpa's), Nathan expressed an interest in sleeping in a "big boy bed." So we went along and he did just fine. When we got home, we asked Nathan whether or not he wanted to sleep in the "big boy bed!" or the "Baby crib." He proudly announced, "big boy bed," so Daddy quickly moved the bed into Nathan's room and the crib into Hannah's. So far so good.

[Sleep training info: skip if this does not interest you]
Up until this point, Hannah's bedtime routine consisted of a warm bath each night, a nursing session and then sometimes a story. Then, I would swaddle her while singing a lullaby, and then rock her to sleep in my arms. When she had been asleep for about 5 minutes, I would then put her down. Recently, I've been experimenting with putting her down as soon as she starts breathing deeply and patting her until she falls asleep. Tonight starts night 1 of sleep training. After bath, I nursed her until she was full and then we read a story. After the story, I swaddled her while singing a song and afterwards just rocked in place while standing up. She rubbed her eyes against my shoulders and would fuss. After her fussing stopped and she was a bit calmer (but still awake), I put her down in her crib (with the white noise machine on) and patted her until she was deeply asleep. I'm going to do this for about a week, putting her down a bit earlier and then patting less and less. I know I'm going to have to have her "cry-it-out" for a few nights, but hopefully what I'm doing now will help ease the crying and soon she will be able to fall asleep on her own.

Hannah has made a significant leap recently. She is now able to sit up in the Boppy pillow

and grab for objects and deliberately put them in her mouth.

 She's really enjoys exploring the toys on the exersaucer.

Hannah is just really alert now. She will jerk up at the slightest sound while she is nursing and turn her head when she hears an odd sound. I'm also pretty sure that she knows her name, although she probably thinks it is "Hannah Bear." 

Hannah also made her first giggle at week 18. Hannah and Nathan were both in the bathtub. We were asking Nathan who had the biggest belly and Nathan replied Hannah. This immediately made Hannah giggle. We tried it again, and sure enough, Hannah giggled. It was too cute. I'm so happy that Nathan made Hannah giggle for the first time. A few days later, I was giving Hannah a massage after bath and while holding her up in the air and turning in circles, she started to giggle as I sang "The wheels on the Bus." The giggle wasn't as big as the one Nathan evoked, but it was still audible. 

Hannah is napping about 2-3 times a day. For the past few days, the typical 10:00 am nap lasts for about 2 hours. Then the 2:00 pm nap, lasts for 2-3 hours. At dinner, she'll take a quick 20 minute catnap while nursing and she's usually in bed around 8:30 pm. Then, around 11:30 she'll wake for another feed. Afterwards, it varies: some nights, she's up every hour, some nights she sleeps for 3-4 hours and then wakes. I haven't really seen a pattern there. We are back home and our schedule is a bit more predictable, so let's see if her night sleep patterns will improve. 

Hannah is now wearing 6 month clothes. I had packed a 3-6 month dress for her to wear. I tried it on her before we left and a week later, it no longer fit her. Wow, talk about a growth spurt. According to the Wii, Hannah is now 14.5 pounds. Nathan didn't reach this weight until he was 6 months old. 

Ok, enough of the boring stats and milestone updates, let's talk about the highlights of the past 1.5 weeks. (I'm publishing 2 posts in one day, so if you missed the Christmas Eve post, it' there too.)

Christmas Eve, Great grandpa and great grandma came to grandma's house for dinner. Before dinner, we all went to the Christmas Eve service at church. We had talked about Christmas being baby Jesus' birthday and so throughout the service, Nathan was pointing out all the baby Jesus' that he saw (which was quite a few). We were a bit embarrassed at first, but considering that Nathan was simply repeating "baby Jesus" at church, and could be muttering worse things, we worried less about it.

For dinner, Mommy made everyone authentic Chinese food and Nathan kept great grandpa busy.

 Hannah had Great-grandma covered.

 After we said our good-byes, everyone went to sleep. In the morning, grandma made some awesome pumpkin waffles and then we gathered to open presents and see what Santa had brought.

 For lunch, we went over to a different Great-grandparents' house to celebrate the annual Christmas party. There, you guys met your newest second-cousin.

 Then, we played a not-as-crazy game of white elephant gift exchange. Believe me, in the past, things got a bit crazy. When you get older you can ask us about the giant underpants and funky animal hats. Hannah just sat with grandma and after awhile, just fell asleep in her arms.

 Nathan became enamored with a particular dancing snowman whose hips swayed in an almost raunchy way. As much as Nathan would've liked to take the snowman home with us, I'm glad he didn't really understand the rules of the game and the snowman went home with a grand-uncle.

 Hannah got some pretty funky shoes from the great grandparents.

 After the game was over, the Christmas band reunited for their annual concert. This year, the band featured their newest player (Hint: he's playing the drums.) Nathan stole the show away as he banged on the drum oh so rhythmically and swayed his body to the melodious sounds of Christmas.

 It was a long day and for Nathan, a no nap day. Besides being a bit more clingy, he did well.

The next day, Hannah met a new friend. Nathan had met him before, but he probably didn't remember. For the most part, they played pretty well together.

 But a few times somebody wasn't too keen on sharing or taking turns.

 On Saturday, we decided to take the commuter train to downtown Chicago. Nathan was super excited to ride on the train. Even though the ride was about an hour long, he didn't want to get off.

 We walked around the Sears Tower, Union Station, and had lunch.

 Afterwards, we rode back home.

The next day, we took advantage of the weekend train pass that we had purchased and rode the train in the opposite direction to a little town, had lunch, and then rode the train back.

On Tuesday, your cousins joined us in Illinois and in the afternoon, we went to the Chicago botanical gardens to view their train exhibit. It was pretty cool and you were pretty excited to see Thomas there . You didn't realize it then, and probably won't for awhile, but the buildings there were all artist renditions of famous Chicago buildings. It was quite beautiful.

The next day, New Year's Eve, we got together with another second-cousin and had some fun at Chuck E. Cheese. Nathan liked playing skee ball (but wasn't great at it, unless you call throwing the ball into the next lane, good) and a driving game. But the best part was probably seeing Daddy get into the ticket chamber where hundreds of tickets fly around for 30 seconds and you have to grab as many as you can. Daddy did pretty good and got about 450 tickets. 

On New Years Day, we all got up really early to go to the airport. The ride back was pretty smooth and once again, Nathan was a great kid. Hannah pretty much slept the whole way and when we arrived, Auntie Momo picked us up and we all went to get some Chinese noodles for lunch. 

The next day, we headed out in the morning for Austin. The drive was wet, but steady and we hit some traffic along the way. We stopped in Waco and visited the Mayborn Children's Museum. Nathan really enjoyed pretend driving the fire engine and school bus. There was also a train exhibit set-up, but we didn't stay too long because Nathan wanted to play with the trains, and they were off limits to us. We made the second half of the trip after lunch and both Nathan and Hannah slept most of the way home. 

Today, the house is still a mess as I'm trying to unpack everything and put things away. It will get done soon, but I'm also realizing that we probably should get rid of some stuff as well. Well, that's it for now. Hannah has a 4 month check up in a few days so I'll make another update on Wednesday. One more day and it'll be just you two and me during the day. Yikes. 

I love you two so much! 

Mommy