Sleepless

Will is being a super handful for the last week. He's been more difficult now than he was as an infant, I think!

He's got a lot on his plate, so if I wasn't so absolutely exhausted, I wouldn't blame him for being extra fussy, extra needy of being held, and never ever sleeping. He has FOUR molars coming in at once. One of them just finished completely breaking through, but the rest of them are still just swelling up his little gums.

He was also running a fever out of the blue two days ago. Possibly from teething, possibly from a little cold, I'm not sure. Katie had a fever last week, which seemed so out of the blue as well, and then just slept it off and it disappeared the next day. His did the same.

For the last four nights, Will has refused to sleep. Not only is he only taking ONE nap a day, but he goes to bed late and then wakes up all night. He spends hours of the night sitting up jabbing me or crawling over me. Last night he was up from 4 AM - 5:30 AM, again from 7 - 8, and he woke up for good at 9. He only went to bed at 12:30, and I went to bed around 1 AM, so there was very little sleep.

It's been enough to make me want to stop cosleeping and put the fourth wall on the crib (it's sidecarred to our bed currently so he has his own space.) However, he still is heavily nursing through the night, so if I force him to sleep in his crib, I still have to wake up 2-4 times a night, take him out of the crib, stay awake while he nurses, try to convince him to go back in the crib, and repeat. That would have me awake even MORE than now!

I've also tried feeding him a big meal before bed so he doesn't need to nurse as much, but of course he won't have anything of it. He eats solids, but he's still not a big enough fan of them. He snacks on different solids all through the day. He eats bananas, meats, veggies, etc from my plate, but he likes breastmilk to still be his meals. When I try to get him to eat more, he just spits it out.

I'm super tired. I don't know what the solution is. I'm hoping it's just his teething keeping him up and it'll end any night now. Or if he'll start eating bigger meals and needing to nurse less so I can crib train him. Once he's walking and not nursing much of the night, I'd like to move him to the nursery in his own toddler bed next to Katie.

Will's Vocabulary

I can't believe how much Will is suddenly growing up. It's like when he turned a year old, there was a switch that went from baby to toddler automatically. In the last week, he has been pronouncing and learning so many words. He pronounces a new word each day this week. It started with tree - he loves touching our Christmas tree. Every time he touched it, I'd say tree and he'd repeat it. Not only can say it, but now if I say "tree?" he immediately looks at it and tries to touch it. He knows the word!

Then he had a ball in his hand. So I'd touch it and say Ball and he'd repeat. Now if I say ball, he looks all around him for the ball. He can actually pronounce the "b" sound really well!

Which led into saying Boo. He already has been stepping up his peek a boo game by using a blanket or his shirt to cover his face, and then quick take it down and giggle when someone said peek a boo. Now he does it and says "boo!" when he brings it off his face. He also thinks it's hysterical to "scare" mommy, so he sits in his high chair while I do dishes and says "boo! boo!" and giggles when I act scared.

I emptied out the whole nursery and bedroom yesterday to make sure there were no choking hazards of any kind, then brought down some toddler toys from the attic. While Katie took a nap, Will spent three hours crawling, climbing and playing all over the nursery and bedroom. I was really surprised how fast he could go, and how well he could balance. He still won't walk without at least one hand on something, but he balances so well as he tries to reach across for the next thing to hold onto. I'm pretty sure he'll be taking his first independent steps soon.

Will's First Christmas and Birthday!

Will had his first Christmas and his first birthday last week! (And he also went through his second New Years, but again he slept through it, so much less exciting.)

Will loved Christmas. Half of the gifts he crawled up on and ripped through the wrapping paper, the other half Katie gleefully helped him unwrap (she was an unwrapping machine this year!) Christmas prepared him well for his birthday, which he was able to unwrap the gifts mostly himself.

My little boy is barely a baby, not in size or in age anymore. He's now a little toddling toddler! He's also a little crazy chewing machine. He has 4 molars coming in, which are constantly a discomfort for him. There's never a moment when he's awake where he's not trying to gnaw on something, from toys, to the edge of his pack and play, to some part of me that he can get into his mouth. I can't wait for them to break though, his little gums look swollen from the big teeth coming up.

There's roughly a million pictures from Christmas and birthday combined, so I'll (try to) just put up a few...