Thursday, October 27, 2011

Loud talking

I am a loud talker. Once you get me started talking about something, I get excited and loud.  It can be about anything, good or bad. I just get really passionate about what I'm talking about.  I've been told to quiet down quite a bit.  When I argue, I get even louder.  In my house growing up, all 3 of us girls talked and argued loud and if you wanted to be heard, sometimes you had to be the loudest, so you yelled over each other. It drove my dad crazy. This is probably not the best way to be, but that's just how it was sometimes.  Tony doesn't really yell unless you get him really mad but occassionally we will get into heated discussions and we will both get a little loud.  Sometimes this happens in front of Jax and lately we have noticed that Jax will wave his arms and grunt at us as we are "discussing" things.  I guess that is his way of telling us we are making him uncomfortable and to stop it.  So Tony and I have talked about it and we are working on communicating better in front of Jax or not to discuss certain things in front of him.  I don't want to be the family that yells all the time.   I don't want my kid to think the only way to be heard is to be loud.  We have caught ourselves getting loud a few times since we discussed it and we change our voices to high pitch happy voices so Jax doesn't get freaked out.  I know this too will have to change since soon, Jax will understand what we are saying.  It's not even always bad stuff we are talking about, sometimes it's just the way we are talking.  Jax just doesn't like the loud voices.  So, we are a work in progress at the moment.  Learning as we go.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Making a will

Tony and I have put this off for way too long.  But since we are going on a vacation with our little man soon, I figure it is time to just face it and do it. 

Making a will is more complicted now that we have a kid.  Now we have to decide who will raise him, express our wishes to those people on how we would like him raised (religion, schooling, money,etc. and hope they take our wishes into account) and what things we would like for him to have and when.
 
It's pretty complicated when you have two people from two different families trying to decide who would be the best choice to raise your child.  Obviously, people are going to think this person or that person is a better choice but there are positives and negatives to everybody that is considered.  We have to pick whoever will be best for our son's well-being. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings but these decisions have been well thought out and talked about by Tony and I.  And we have agreed on them.  They have to be made with the information we have now, not the information we hope we'll have in 5 or 10 years.  Everybody may not agree with our decisions but they are our decisions to make.  We are not playing the you give me your kid and I'll give you my kid game.  We are trying to make the right decision for Jax should anything happen to us.

We aren't doing this to please everybody or make people happy, we have to do what is best for our kid, long term, short term, all terms.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Just a couple of new pictures

He loves playing with Sadie's dog bowl.

 Such a cutie pie.


Halloween costume meltdown

I really don't want to be a cow.
 I'm not kidding!  Get me out of this thing!
 Maybe if I run away, it will fall off somehow.
 Fine!  I'll be Superman!  How cute do I look?


Peeking in

The other night, Tony and I peeked in on Jax as he slept. I do this every night but occassionally we go look together.  Tony said he could look at Jax sleep for hours and hours, he's just so cute when he sleeps.  He said he remembered his dad looking in on him when he was a teenager ( he was still awake, but was faking I guess).  I said I know my parents did the same thing to me and Kristi.  I guess all parents do it.  How can you not.  Babies and kids are so cute when they sleep.

Crying It Out

We will not be playing that game.  No thanks.  We have talked about it, tried it for a few minutes at a time and even threatened it for real this time.  But 2 nights ago, we actually did it for real and the results are not what we hoped for.  It was 10pm and Jax was up hang out still not asleep, so I finally decided to put him to bed and see what happened.  Well, crying and whaling happened and lots of it.  We were watching a show on the DVR and every time there was a commercial I would go in there and calm him down.  The minute I left the room, he would scream and cry through our whole TV show.  Every 15 minutes we went in there and he would just cry cry cry.  After an hour of this, I finally went in to just pick him up and cradle him and he was unconsolable.  He could not get himself to calm down.  Nothing we did or offered him made him stop crying. It was a very sad whale of a cry and I felt so sorry for him because he just could not physically stop himself.  Finally, after about a half hour we took him outside and he stopped for a bit, then once we were back inside, he started again.  At about 11:30 he was calmed down and I just went to bed and Tony stayed up with him on the couch.  When Tony finally put him to bed, he had to stay there and watch him fall asleep because Jax kept turning over and waking up crying again.  So at 11:47pm, the boy finally fell asleep.

If the cry it out method means that my baby will be unconsolable for 2 hours every night for a week or however long in the wee hours of the night, then I am not getting on that train.  Sorry.  He knows how to self soothe and sleep through the night.  He just has issues when he is teething.  It sucks that those issues last for weeks at a time, but I can't be up for 2 hours with an unconsolable baby every night.  Hopefully these teeth will come in quickly and quietly from now on but I'm not counting on it.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Teething and Sleep

I don't know if I would consider Jax a bad sleeper or not.  Is it just teething or does he really need to wake up in the middle of the night, every night to have a snack and see Tony and I?  I mean, when he sleeps, he sleeps great, he can do 12 hours straight.  But for the past 2 and a half months now, he has woken up almost every night, sometimes 2-3x a night (see the bags and wrinkles under my eyes).  We have maybe gotten 10 days of full nights sleep in 2.5 months.  I looked in his mouth last week and there were no new teeth, then I look again this week and he has a huge back tooth that has come in.  Now maybe that has been his problem for the past few weeks, but it couldn't have been bugging him for 2.5 months could it?  I mean, if he is like this for every tooth, we are never gonna sleep until he is 3 or 4.  I don't even know when babies get all their teeth.  Anyway,  he slept for 5 days straigtht this weekend and now we are back to waking up the past 2 nights.  And there is no waiting it out to see if he will go back to sleep on his own.  He stands up and screams until you get in there and then literally jumps for joy when he sees us.  And we have to feed him.  He hasn't been eating real food lately so he is waking up hungry.  He is lucky he's cute.  I'm tired.  I knew this part of parenthood would suck.  I miss my sleep.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Infertility

It was around this time 2 years ago that the doctor told us to take a chill pill and relax for a few months because my body wasn't in any shape to make a baby.  After trying for 2 years with nothing to show for it and no reasons why, that was a hard pill to swallow.  Infertility sucks!  I knew we would get our baby one way or the other, but I had to live my life in the meantime.  I couldn't let it consume me.  Even in the darkness of it all, there were wonderful things happening all around me that I didn't want to miss because I was wallowing in my own self pity. Some things only happen once and then they are gone.  As hard as it was for me to go, I tried not to miss any baby showers or birthday parties I was invited to because, even though I was sad about our situation, I was still happy that my cousins and friends were living the dream I had for myself.  And while I was there, I actually had a good time holding the babies and hanging out with my family. I tried to make the best of our situation all while still going about the daily grind.

I held a lot of my anger and frustration and sadness in during those 2 years and it probably just added to our delay in getting pregnant.  My body could only stand so much and holding in all my feelings and worries didn't make me healthy or happy.  It just made me more miserable because I wasn't talking about it and letting it out.  I was very embarrassed and prideful when it came to our infertility in the beginning. I didn't talk to anyone about it for over a year.  Not even my mom.  I thought I was the only one it was happening to.  It seemed like everyone around me was getting pregnant.  But, once I started talking about it with other family members and friends, I found out I wasn't alone.  Yes, some of them were getting pregnant and having babies but I found out that it wasn't all smooth sailing for some of them either.  A lot of them either had problems getting pregnant or they had at least one miscarriage before they finally had their baby.  And once I told them about our issues, I had a new cheering and praying section backing us up.  Once I let people in, a weight was lifted.

I know my story has a happy ending, but what we went through to get that little baby will always be a part of our story.  I don't know if we will have another baby or not, but if we decide to try again, that struggle that we went through will always be a worry to me. Will we have those issues again? Was it all a one time miracle? I hope that whatever our issues were, they have fixed themselves but you never know until you try.  With my age, comes other issues.  If this is the only baby I have, then that's okay too.  If I had to pick one perfect baby for Tony and I, it would be Jax.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

13 months

This past month has been a big one.  You took your first steps and began walking on your own.  Once you started, it took you about 1 1/2 weeks to really get the hang of it.  You still prefer to crawl if you want to get somewhere quick.  You are a speedy little sea turtle when you crawl.  It's funny to listen to you coming down the hall.  It's like a stampede.

You are breaking my heart everytime you cry now.  Why is thatyou ask?  Well, now when you cry in the middle of the night or wake up from your nap or you are just plain sad, you yell for your mama by name.  You start crying and then you yell mama mama mamaaaaaaaaaaaa.  It's so sad but cute. 

You've started giving kisses on command to whomever wants them.  You usually open tongue kiss but I guess we will work on that once you get a little older.

For some reason, all of a sudden, you are refusing to eat most solid food.  The only thing that you seem to like is fruit or cookies.  Shocker!  Both are sweet and sugary.  Don't know what's up with that.

Your sleeping habits kinda suck right now.  You wake us up at least once, sometimes 2-3x a night.  Maybe you are teething, maybe you hate us. Just kidding.  You used to sleep for 12 hours straight for a while, now we are lucky if you sleep 5 straight.  Please figure this out and get back to us.  You are giving me more wrinkles than I would like to have at 35.

You are turning into such a mama's boy.  I love it but it makes me nervous too.  I just want to make sure I'm not the only one that can soothe you.  You are so cuddly lately too.  So cute.

You can almost say Sadie's name.  You can make the SSSSS sound and then something like ad  ie comes out afterward. 

You have started wearing shoes but you don't like them.  You can't really walkin them yet but we are getting there.