Splish splash

Sam LOVES taking baths. He has loved the water from the first time we gave him a full bath after his umbilical cord fell out. This past week he discovered that if you hit the water with your hands... it makes big splashes! It's been a lot of fun for him.

When you combine this new discovery and love of the bathtub with Sam's increasing mobility... you get the following picture:


Although, he might want to talk to his Uncle Jayson about what happens if you jump into the bathtub when you're not ready for bathtime...

"You have Tortellini?!!"

Most of you don't know the background to the title of this post, so I'll need to back up a little bit and give you a Hansen Family history lesson...

Once upon a time, in a land far far away... or possibly just in Provo about 2 1/2 years ago.... Eric and I were engaged. Since we enjoyed spending time together, we would get together after classes every night and make dinner together. One night Eric was over at my apartment rummaging through my freezer for something we could make. Suddenly he pulls out a bag. With a look on his face that could mean that we'd just told him today was Christmas, he says "you have tortellini?!" This was how I discovered one of Eric's favorite meals. He was so excited about it that at that moment I REALLY wished that the tortellinis in his hand were mine. Unfortunately, they were in fact my roommate's. However, you can bet that with a reaction like that I made sure to buy tortellini on my next grocery trip, and pretty much every grocery trip since.

Fast forward to today. Last night I once again made tortellini for dinner. Which meant there were leftovers for my lunch today. I made the mistake of making that lunch while Sam was hanging out in the front room with me. The following is what ensued...

Sorry the pictures aren't the highest quality... Sam wouldn't go more than a foot away from me and the tortellini.


Yeah, Samuel is definitely his father's son :P

The Ferberish Method Followup

So for those of you who endured my novel length post on our sleep training methods with Sam you may be interested to know what became of that. I'm here to give you our current progress.

After Day 2 I noticed a trend for Sam. If I put him down within a couple minutes of when he fell asleep he would put up little or no fight and then sleep happily in his playpen for the duration of his nap. If I put him down before he fell asleep then he has something to say about it. If I waited too long after he fell asleep he would wake up and think that the 10 minutes he was asleep counted for his nap and be up for the next couple hours, albeit a little cranky. So I went with that and it's worked like a charm.

After going with this method I listened to this episode on No Cry Sleep Solutions from the podcast New Moms, New Babies (it's made by the same people who make my favorite pregnancy podcast - Pregtastic) and learned something interesting. Apparently the first 10-15 minutes of a baby's sleep cycle take off the edge of tiredness that the baby feels. So if the baby wakes up after that first little bit of sleep they feel like they've gotten rest, but their body hasn't really received all the benefits that they need. So, they won't feel like they need to go back to sleep but they'll still be cranky. (sorry, I know I've made that more confusing, I'd recommend listening to that podcast if that didn't make sense)

It was interesting to me because it totally explained what I was seeing with Samuel. After figuring this out I've been able to get Sam to take all of his naps in his playpen and at least start out every night in there as well (I'm still too lazy to make him sleep in there all night, it's way too easy to just let him sleep with me.

I'm much happier now knowing that our safety concerns with Sam are alleviated during naps. Our next step is working on sleeping through the night. Sam still sleeps nothing like unto through the night, but I don't know how much of that is a result of our wacky schedule and how much of it is poor training on our part. We make it work, but it'd be nice if we could clear that milestone too. I'm sure I'll let you know if/when that happens :)