Thursday, August 9, 2012

Congratulations Aiden!

I know I'm going to jinx it as I type this, but congratulations are in order for my boy! Last night, Aiden slept completely through the night. Followers may recall the discussion I had when Alli first slept through the night and what the true definition of "sleeping through the night" really was. Is it 6 hours? 8 hours? 10? I'm sure that definition varies for each parent - which is why I typically give new parents the side-eye when they brag about how their newborn already sleeps through the night. Listen newbie, I got news for ya - if you have to get up (even once) to feed your child and are able to go back to sleep before you have to get yourself up for the day (and get your @$$ to work)... that's NOT considered sleeping through the night. At least not in my book, anyway.

We put Aiden down at 7pm last night and didn't hear a peep from him until 5:30am this morning. That's 10 1/2 hours of uninterrupted sleep! Well, for him, at least.

Mommy B and I hit the sheets at around 9 - but only made it until 3am. We didn't know this when we purchased the house, but apparently there is an unwritten rule that the batteries in the smoke detectors only die between 2 and 3am. Even though they are all hard-wired together, when the battery dies it makes a loud, short chirp noise every minute. As of this morning, I have now successfully changed the batteries in all 7 smoke detectors in our house - and they all took place in the wee hours of the morning. The funny part was this last one was located in Alli's room - and she didn't even wake up when it started chirping. We didn't hear it either, and it wasn't until our faithful Golden jumped on our bed (which she never does when we're in it) shaking in fear of the high-pitched noise. The sound annoys the crap out of me, so I'm sure it was torture for her. So there I was at 3am - kitchen chair hauled upstairs so I could disconnect the smoke detector and take it down to replace the battery. Then Mommy B and I had the lovely task of trying to calm the dog down enough so we could go back to sleep. It's always something...

Anyway, 5:30am rolled around and Aiden finally started waking up. Mommy B fed him and I walked him around for a while to get his burps out. Believe it or not, he fell back asleep on me at 6 and stayed out until just after 7:15! This gave us time to get Alli up and ready for the day before they headed off to school and myself off to work (Mommy B had the day off). We actually had to wake him up so we could get him changed and in the car seat.

I don't know if last night was a fluke, or if we're onto something good here - but either way it was nice having the (briefly interrupted) sleep that we had. I'm so proud of my little man, he's grown up so much in the last two weeks! His head control is amazing, and he actually prefers to hold his head up rather than lie it on my shoulder now. He's also really close to rolling over. I just know it's going to happen really soon, I can tell he's been working on it while at school. And the kid smiles... all the time. Any time we look at him and smile while we talk to him, he smiles and coo's back at us. I don't remember Alli smiling this much when she was that age, but all I know is that this kid really seems to react to facial stimuli very easily.

Oh, and he's putting his big sister to shame in the eating department. When Alli started going to school, we took in 4-5 bottles, each with 3oz in them. After a few weeks we moved up to 4 bottles each with 4 oz in them. Aiden is already taking 4 bottles with 6oz each! And we've moved him up to the medium flow nipples at his teacher's suggestion. She said he'd been pulling on them so hard that not only would the nipple collapse, but the sides of the bottle were folding in. It's ironic because all his teachers would talk about was how much his big sister Alli loved to eat. Each one recalled their favorite stories about how Alli would just eat and eat and eat - well watch out y'all, here comes little brother (who may not be "little" for much longer if he keeps this up.) Good thing Aiden's 4-month doctor's appointment is coming up soon, because I think this guy is going to want (and need) some rice cereal added to his bottle STAT.

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