Aedan at 11 Months & Pulling Himself Up!

Samantha: 46 Months, Week 2

Aedan: Week 48

Since this was Miami's spring break, Daddy's schedule was much more flexible.  He went to his Bible study on Tuesday morning, but then stopped and got doughnuts to bring home to us for breakfast.  He wanted to take Samantha to preschool that week since he didn't have classes to go to.  It was nice to have a more relaxed morning together.

We started something new with Samantha overnight from Monday into Tuesday.  We decided to let Samantha come out of her room to go potty by herself if she woke up in the middle of the night.  Ever since this whole potty issue started about a month ago, we have been waking up with Samantha throughout the night to take her to the potty.  We had a doorknob protector on the door in her room and a monitor so that she could just call for us if she needed to go potty.  Up until a month or so ago, this was never an issue.  Samantha would go to bed and sleep all night, never having to wake up to go potty.  Now, Samantha was waking up once, sometimes twice, a night to go potty.  Ben and I were getting pretty tired of being woken up so many times, especially on nights that Aedan woke up one or two times, too.  So, we made the ultimate decision that we would let Samantha try it on her own.  We plugged a night light in the bathroom, and we bought a bottle of hand sanitizer for Samantha to use rather than having to move her step stool and use water and soap.  We didn't want her to make a lot of noise and wake up Aedan, especially since his wall is right on the other side of the bathroom wall.  We weren't sure how it would go, if Samantha would take advantage of her new freedom and play or not go right back to sleep.  However, we knew that we would have to take her doorknob protector off at some point, and we knew that most kids are getting up on their own to go potty at her age, so we figured now was as good a time as any.

We are continuing to encourage Samantha to sleep until 7:00.  We still have the minutes on her clock covered up with a 7 written on an index card so that way if she wakes up before the numbers match, she is expected to go back to sleep or at least lay quietly.  When she wakes up, she says, "Mommy!  Daddy!  It's 7:00.  It's time to get up!"  So we're glad that she isn't waking up super early anymore, that is an accomplishment!

Monday night went pretty well with Samantha getting up by herself to go potty.  She was very quiet, and we hardly noticed her at all.  However, she said she got up three times during the night.  Now, we don't know if that was actually true or not.  We do know that she got once in the middle of the night and then again just before 7:00, but I'm not so sure if there was another time or not.  I was a little upset that she was getting up so many times during the night because I didn't want her to be getting up more often just because we are no longer getting up with her.  I didn't want to be encouraging a bad habit.  It's hard to know what to do in parenting sometimes.  Sometimes it seems like you make a change to solve one problem and then create another.  Oh well, we'll see how this all plays out, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of why Samantha has been going to the bathroom so frequently.

They both went to sleep really well for me on Tuesday afternoon, and I got some great sleepy pictures. :)

On Wednesday morning Samantha had a doctor's appointment at our pediatrician because I was getting concerned about Samantha going to the bathroom so frequently.  At times it was 4 times in less than 2 hours, and often she acted like she needed to go immediately, like she had no ability to hold it in any longer.  The employee health center called and said the urine culture came back negative, so there was no bacteria in her urine and she didn't even need the antibiotics they prescribed.  The problem had not gone away, so I wanted to get some answers, to figure out if there was something else going on or if we needed to retrain her bladder somehow.  Since it was spring break, Ben was able to stay home with Aedan and put him down for his morning nap.  At the pediatrician they tested her urine again and the test once again came back negative.  The doctor began to discuss something that I discovered while researching on google the night before called pollakiuria, which is also called extraordinary daytime urinary frequency, with no physical problem causing it.  The doctor said that it is fairly common among children and can last anywhere from 2 to 10 weeks.  He said we were actually lucky with how many times Samantha was going to the bathroom, commenting that some children will literally feel the need to go every 5 minutes.  We basically just have to wait for it to pass, but in the meantime, he prescribed something called oxybutynin to help control the spasms of her bladder to help her not feel like she needs to go quite so often.  I was glad that there was some sort of answer to what has been going on with Samantha.  It has been frustrating dealing with it, and hopefully it will just phase out soon and she will go back to her normal patterns.

Wednesday afternoon, once Samantha woke up from her nap, I let her in on a little secret: it was finally the day we were going to go see Cinderella in the movie theater!  I talked to her about possibly going to see it a few weeks ago, but I didn't tell her when we would do it.  I figured this was a perfect day since Daddy was already working from home.  We saw a 4:30 show, arrived in plenty of time to get our tickets, buy a bag of popcorn to share, and find seats that Samantha liked.

She was a little confused by the commercials and previews and kept asking me when the movie was going to start.  (I told her that this was the part Daddy hated as well.  Sometimes it seems like you have to wait so long just for the movie you want to see to start.)  However, Samantha was thrilled when the short movie Frozen Fever came on.  She loves Anna and Elsa, so this was the best way to start her first movie going experience. :)  (She even wore her Elsa shirt to the movie.)  I got her a little plastic booster seat to prop her up higher in the seat, and also so that way the seat wouldn't keep flopping back up on her.  She was pretty mesmerized by the big screen at first.  And she really did pretty well during the movie.  I was a little worried that she would get bored and wouldn't be able to sit and watch a movie in one sitting like that.  We very rarely sit down and watch a movie in its entirety at home.  This also was a different kind of movie than she's ever seen.  I don't think we've gone out of the cartoon genre with her yet.  Plus, there's no singing like in the cartoon version of Cinderella.  Samantha got a little antsy during the parts where there was more dialogue and less action.  We had to stop once during the movie for a potty break, which was pretty good considering how much Samantha has been going to the restroom lately.  The biggest problem we had was that whenever she talked or asked me a question about the movie, her voice was a little too loud for a movie theater, so I had to keep reminding her to use a quieter voice so that we wouldn't disturb the other people watching the movie.  For the last half of the movie, she sat on my lap and snuggled with me, which was pretty great.  As an almost four year old, she doesn't snuggle too much anymore, so I'll take what I can get. :)

We had a great time at the movie theater together, and I was happy to be a part of this first experience for her.  She couldn't wait to get home and tell Daddy all about it.

Thursday morning, since Ben didn't have class again due to spring break, he took Samantha to preschool.  Aedan slept in that morning, and I planned to go grocery shopping after he woke up, come home and put everything away before going back to pick her up; however, the shopping took longer than I expected, mostly because the check out lady I had was pretty slow.  So, we had to rush home and I barely had enough time to put the refrigerated food away before we had to rush out the door again.  Aedan was also not the happiest at the grocery store since his schedule was all thrown off due to sleeping in so long that morning.  Normally, he is pretty happy sitting in the cart, looking around, and eating a snack, but he was pretty fussy that day.  He is still working on getting his right upper lateral incisor, and I think that's causing him a good deal of discomfort.  It was a very hectic and busy morning, and both kids were slightly cranky, so it was not the most fun day with the kiddos.

It was a rainy day outside that morning, and Aedan found it interesting to watch the raindrops trickle down our patio door while I put groceries away.

Luckily, even though Aedan was grumpy about being put back into his car seat, Samantha, being the great big sister that she is, entertained Aedan the whole way back home by making him laugh.  This is the laugh that Aedan does when he is tired and getting slap happy.  It was too great not to point the camera of my iPhone toward them and record them interacting.  Aedan is so much happier when Samantha is riding in the car with him, and Samantha loves having her little brother to talk to.  One day when I was driving in the car with just her, she was pretending to talk to her imaginary baby brother in the car seat; it was just too weird not having him in the car with her.

Nap time continues to go well.  Samantha goes to sleep pretty easily, most of the time all by herself.  Every once in awhile, I will sit in there for 5 minutes, but she usually falls asleep after I leave the room anyways.  She doesn't usually sleep for too long, about an hour to an hour and a half at the most, but it is good for her body to rest.  It helps her to have a much better night, but she's not napping so long that it impacts her ability to go to sleep at a decent time at night, so that's good.

During nap time on Thursday, we got a package in the mail from Chicago Grandpa and Grandma for Samantha, so after she watched her show, I let her open it up.  I recorded it so that way I could show Grandpa and Grandma what her reaction was when she opened it.  It was a special Frozen chest with Anna and Elsa dresses, head bands, rings, bracelets, and necklaces.  The rest of that day, as well as the several days after that, we couldn't get her to wear anything else.  She loved her Anna and Elsa dresses.  It was a great gift idea from Grandpa and Grandma, especially since a lot of her hand-me-down dress-up clothes are getting too small for her now.

We let Aedan play in the box that the chest came in.  He thought that was pretty interesting, too, although he really just wanted to get into what Samantha has.  He has reached the age where whatever she has is what he wants, because if she has it, it must be cool and fun.

And here is Princess Anna....

And Queen Elsa...

And, of course, she wouldn't be Queen Elsa without the magic power of freezing things.  I think the Elsa dress was her favorite one. :)

On Thursday night during bath time, Aedan showed off his new skill of pulling up on things.  He grabbed on to the edge of the tub and pulled himself to standing.  Then, he leaned over the side and almost slipped out of the tub!  Daddy caught his wet, slippery body just as his head went over.  Good thing he has quick reflexes!  Our crazy little boy has no fear.  After this adventure in the bathtub, we decided it was time to move Aedan's crib down to the bottom level that very night.  We didn't want to chance him pulling himself up, leaning over the side, and falling out sometime.  Life is an adventure with a little boy on the move!

Friday was one of those days that I realized the challenge of taking care of a preschooler and a little boy on the move.  He is totally mobile now so he is getting into EVERYTHING!  I feel like no matter how much I baby proof, he finds something that I didn't think of: cords, library books, small toys, Roscoe's water bowl, trash cans, and many more.  He also in in the stage where, when you take something away from him that he wants or when you move him somewhere else or say no to him, he gets cranky and cries.  He doesn't want his own toys anymore, he just wants whatever it is that we told him he can't have.  I know that's fairly typical and that it's just a stage, but he definitely keeps me busy!  We think it's one of those things where he just so desperately wants to walk but doesn't know how yet, so he gets frustrated and grumpy when he can't move how he wants.  It's so strange because in the last few days he has cried more than he ever has in his life.

Aedan has been slightly challenging when trying to get him to nap this week.  He has not nursed very well, probably because of his incoming tooth, and sometimes he doesn't really want me to hold him or rock him either.  So then I usually just try laying him down to see if he will fall asleep on his own, and that works better than others at certain times.

Friday evening we had a few errands to run, so we decided to make a family excursion of it.  We stopped to pick up Aedan's framed hand prints from Hobby Lobby, went to JCPenney for Ben to buy some new dress pants, and then stopped for dinner at Olive Garden.  Our kids were in pretty good moods, and we hadn't been to Olive Garden in years.  Aedan was getting pretty hungry when we got there, so we got him eating his baby food jars pretty quickly while Samantha enjoyed coloring and putting stickers all over the special kids' coloring page.  It's nice that she can amuse herself like that, giving Ben and me a chance to take care of Aedan and also carry on a conversation.  It obviously would have been more relaxing had we gone out to eat on our own without kids, but it really wasn't too stressful eating at a slower paced sit-down restaurant with both of our kids.  After eating dinner, we stopped to get dog food and went to Once Upon a Child to get some baby shoes for Aedan (particularly for when we start playing outside in the warmer weather) and some non-footie pajamas for Samantha.  Aedan was getting pretty tired toward the end of our trip.  It seems like once it gets past 7:00 p.m. he is just done for the day, but he fell asleep in the car on the way home, so it all worked out well.  It was a successful night out, and we got several important errands done in one fell swoop.  Sometimes it seems like getting errands done is the hardest thing for me to do as a stay at home mom with two kids because it is difficult dragging both of them with me to various stores, especially when we have to drive into Cincinnati.

Here is a picture of Aedan's framed hand prints.  We did them right around 9 months old, which was back in January, but it took us a while to get it back from the pottery painting place and take it in to get framed.  I think it turned out really well, even though it was rather tricky to get his hand covered in paint, spread out, and placed down on the tile without him wiggling and squirming away.  I like that we started this tradition, especially at the 9 month mark where they are out of your tummy longer than they were in your tummy.

 And here's the finished result on our wall, a tile for each of our children. :)

Saturday morning, we planned on going to do something fun as a family.  It was still pretty cold outside, so we thought we'd make a family trip to Jump and Jack's, which is an indoor play place that I took Samantha and Aedan to awhile back with some other Oxford moms.  However, Samantha woke up too early that morning and wouldn't go back to sleep.  She was acting a little crabby, and we didn't feel like it was worth it to drag the kids out when they would be just as happy staying at home and playing.  So, I went out and got my hair cut that morning, and then we just had a relaxing day playing at home together.  It was a good choice.  Time with family is good wherever it is, whether going out or staying in.

Look at this sibling love!  So precious.  It just melts my heart. :)

That evening at dinner, I had to take a picture of Aedan in his high chair.  He often will sit with his ankles crossed like this, and I think it is adorable.

Here is a cute video of Samantha and Aedan playing in the bath tub together.  We usually put Aedan in the baby tub while we are washing him, and then we let him sit in the tub to play with Samantha after that.  They both really enjoy bath time together. :)

Sunday was Palm Sunday and the kids were scheduled to sing in the big church in front of all the adults.  They had palm branches to wave, and Samantha was SO excited.  We had been practicing their songs at home quite a bit because Samantha loves to sing, and she really knew almost all the words without our help.  We got to OBF early on Sunday morning so that Samantha could get in line and get ready to sing.  We took a video of the whole performance.  You can see Samantha on the right side of the stage in the front.  She was so darling, singing her heart out.  She participated, sang all the words, did all the hand motions, and sang loud enough that many other people in the church couldn't help but watch her as well.  The lady that led them in their songs commented to me afterward about how great Samantha was doing and how she was even distracted by how "into" the songs she was getting.  She couldn't help but watch Samantha sing.  Samantha's Sunday school teacher told me about how excited Samantha was before they went up to the sanctuary and how afterward Samantha said, "That wasn't as bad as I thought it was!  I did great!"  You have to watch the video, it still brings tears to my eyes.  I love Samantha's heart and enthusiasm.  I hope this quality about her never fades.

We went to the first service at church on Sunday since we didn't have small group afterwards, giving us extra time at home to play together before lunch.  We replaced batteries in this little activity stand, and both kids enjoyed playing with it for quite awhile.  I helped give Aedan's legs some support while he stood and played.  I think he really enjoys the new perspective of standing.  Here are some great pictures and video of Samantha and Aedan playing together.

The kids had a good nap time, and like usual, Samantha got to pick a show to watch.  She chose Frozen and sat with her Daddy and her dolls, acting out the story and singing along to every song.

This picture below showcases Aedan's long hair.  It's getting pretty curly in the back as well.  I think we may have to cut it soon, as it's getting long and hanging way down past his ears.  However, I don't think I am brave enough to do it on my own, so I may take him to a local mom who is a hair stylist on maternity leave.  I can't imagine cutting this wiggly boys' hair!

Aedan's new talent is starting to pull up on things.  As you can see in the picture below, he is pulling up on the coffee table (and anything else he can can grab onto).  So far he mostly pulls himself up to his knees, but it's crazy how quickly he's developing.  Two weeks ago in Chicago he wasn't even crawling yet, still rolling around everywhere.  And now, two short weeks later he's crawling everywhere and learning how to pull up!  That's too much development in a short amount of time for this mama!  Slow down time, where's my little boy?  My baby is soon going to be a toddler.

Later that evening, we attempted to get Aedan's 11 month pictures, but he wasn't quite in the mood.  It was getting too close to bed time and he didn't want to be made to sit in a certain way.  However, here are some of the pictures from that evening.  It's hard to believe that in one month we will have a one year old!

As you can see in these pictures, we have started moving the coffee table out of the way during the day so that we have more open floor space for Aedan to crawl around and play during the day.  It works well, and I think Aedan enjoys it a lot more, especially with not worrying about hitting his head on the coffee table.

Monday morning, after Ben left for campus, I attempted to take some more 11 month pictures of Aedan when he was happier and not as tired.  I think some of these turned out pretty well.  We have such a handsome, fun-loving little guy.

I love it when Aedan smiles and squints his eyes, like in the picture below.

I think this picture below is my favorite one of the bunch.  Just look at that face!  Isn't he just the cutest little boy you've ever seen?  I may be partial. :)

Another of Aedan's favortie activities is crawling after the sound machine in his room and playing with it.  If we don't get it away from him quickly enough, he will start chewing on the cord, which is obviously not allowed, so then we have to take it away from him.  However, I captured this video of him crawling after it in his little cloth diapered bottom.

As we were playing in the house Monday morning, Aedan was reaching for Samantha's ponies on the coffee table, and he fell and hit the corner of his eye.  I saw him about ready to pull away from the coffee table, and he's not the most graceful at lowering himself back to the floor, but I just couldn't get to him in time.  He cried pretty hard for awhile, but after a few snuggles was calmed down.  However, he really didn't have the greatest day anyways.  He was pretty fussy and cried a lot, which is saying a lot for him since he hardly cries unless he is really upset.  It was hard to get him settled down for his naps as well.  I felt bad for Samantha that morning because we were planning on having some one-on-one time together, but it was cut short because I had to deal with Aedan being extra cranky and clingy.

However, Samantha and I were still able to play ponies and play outside for awhile while Aedan napped.  We even did some preschool activities together.  I found a free curriculum online to help teach the letters and sounds of the alphabet through some fun hands-on activities.  I worked on printing off lots of stuff over the weekend, and we started the letter Aa on Monday.  I figure it's a good way to encourage her learning at home, and a way to help her learn her letters, sounds, and numbers more.  It's fun to do these activities together, and she was really excited to get started on them.

That afternoon I had a doctor's appointment to go to so Ben came home early to hang out with the kids while I went to the doctor.  While I was gone Ben sent me a message saying that Aedan pulled himself up on the couch.  He didn't get his video started in enough time to catch him pulling himself up, but did see him holding himself up in a standing position while trying to get at Samantha and her dolls.

(Blog about March 24-30, 2015)