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May 18 2009
5 Comments
Cooper, Family

Moving

This is my last full week in Maryland before we make our trip west to Texas. I have a thousand and one things to cram into the last few days I have left here. Between packing, visiting with friends and family, Jayme’s graduation, settlement, and just trying to run a few more last minute errands, I have my hands pretty full. So if you don’t hear from me on our blog for a while, you will know why. I promise to faithful keep updating the blog once we get to Texas and get our Internet set up. I am sure I will have a lot to say about your move. Just in case you did not know, we are driving to Houston, Texas with Cooper. Yes, I know that sound crazy, but we are doing it. We needed to get our cars to Houston and well that means we needed to drive. Jayme is coming with me to help out with Cooper. We plan on breaking the trip down into 3-4 days. So hopefully that will make it more manageable with Cooper. Cooper has been a real trooper lately! We have taken him all over God’s creation and keeping him up late at night (normal bedtime is 7pm and he’s been going to sleep some nights close to 9pm) he is missing naps left and right, but despite all the craziness, he is doing okay! I cannot believe that he is handling all of this so well. I am thankful to God that he is allowing Cooper to be more flexible so that I can do all my good-byes!

This week is bound to have me filled up with emotions. I was born and raised in Maryland and leaving it feels like I am leaving a piece of me behind. I pray that my transition to Texas will be smooth! I’ll just miss all my family and friends that I am leaving behind.
Okay…more cleaning/ boxes await…signing off for a little while…

May 14 2009
2 Comments
Cooper, Videos & Photos

I ♥ Saber

Hi Everyone, It’s me Cooper. This is my first blog post and mommy is helping me write it. I wanted to put a video up of my buddy Saber. Saber is a mini gray hound dog and he is my best friend. He makes me laugh and giggle really hard. When I am in a bad mood, Saber can always make me smile. I sometimes grab his skin too hard and mommy tells me to be “gentle”. I’m working on that! I am going to miss my buddy Saber when we move to Texas. I asked daddy and mommy if we could get a dog, they told me not yet. Boo!

Saber, I love you! Don’t ever forget me because I’ll never forget you!

May 08 2009
1 Comment
Cooper

A Week’s Worth of Posts

Our website is hosted by Chris’s brother Trent. Trent and his wife Sarah were away for almost 2 weeks in Italy. (Yeah, I know…doesn’t it make you jealous!) The server was down while they were gone.  Now that they are back, I have our website back up and running! Needless to say, I had a lot of things I wanted to write about during out hiatus…so without further ado…

Gig ‘em Aggies!

We have a little Aggie in the making. What is an Aggie? Well for those of you who are not from Texas, let me explain.  Texas A&M Aggies (variously A&M or Texas Aggies) refers to the sports teams of Texas A&M University. The nickname “Aggies” is common at land-grant or “Ag” (agriculture) schools in many states. You can also refer to a person who attends the college Texas A&M as an Aggie. Chris went to A&M and he has already started talking about how little Cooper will one day become an Aggie too. Jill, a friend of Chris’s, bought Cooper an Aggie sweatsuit to get him started young!

Sew Your Own Sleep Sac

I decided to test out my crafty side and make my very own sleep sac. I got the idea from my friend Jo. I was over at her house about about two weeks ago and I noticed that she was trying to make a larger sleep sac for her 14 month old son. I thought, what a great idea. Sleep sacs cost a ton of money ($20 each). I traced a sleep sac that my friend Jo already had on a brown paper bag. I used that as my pattern since the front and back side are relatively the same size. The only thing I made sure to do is to make the neck opening lower in the front. I bought a yard of soft cotton fabric and a zipper from JoAnn Fabrics for $6. I love the fabric because it has monkeys on it and says, “little monkey.”  I traced the pattern onto the fabric twice to make my front and back and I had my sleep sac started! Adding the zipper was a little tricky at first, since I have never done one. But I got the hang of it. It took me about 2 hours to complete, but I think I could have been faster if I knew what I was doing with the zipper. I took some pics of Cooper in the sleep sac.

Packing Up

We started to pack for our big move to Texas at the end of the month. I cannot believe that we are actually going to move. I don’t think it seems real to me. Even with all the packing and boxes that we have started to accumulate in our condo, I still don’t feel like it is quite real. Moving probable will not feel real until I am all settled into my new home. I bet I’ll feel like Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” Anyways, I took some pictures of Cooper helping us pack! He was so helpful!

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Apr 28 2009
3 Comments
Cooper

We’re Making Progress But…

I should have known that writing my post yesterday would have jinxed Cooper’s Sleep. Yesterday I mentioned that he was sleep from 8pm-7am during the night after I tweaked his schedule some. He had been waking a lot in the night and taking poor naps until I changed his schedule some. I will say, that his naps were great yesterday and he slept great all night long, but he still woke up an hour early at 6am. I was looking over my notes and it seems that he has been waking between 5:45-6:30 for almost 3 weeks now but occasionally sleeping in until 7am (which seems to happen mostly on weekends).

Here’s my theory for why he is waking an hour early:

First, it is getting lighter sooner. I think this is setting off a natural alarm clock in Cooper that says, “rise and shine”. Unfortunate for Chris and I because our alarm clock says, “no thanks we need another hour”. I have tired to darken the room even more than it was, but there is still a faint bit of daylight creeping through, enough to make it appear to not be night but morning. The hormone that signals sleep, melatonin starts to decrease in the early morning hours, causing us to have lighter sleep. Sunlight also decreases the amount of melatonin that we produce.

Second, our neighbors above us (we live in a condo) have been waking up early in the morning it seems. I hear them somewhere between 5am and 6am. I can hear their footsteps and water running. Occasionally, I might even hear their dog tramping across the floor or let out a bark. They are not being overly loud, but the noises are enough to stir me awake. (I am a light sleeper to begin with.)

Conclusion: I think I am just going to have to accept the fact that Cooper is waking at 6am. I cannot not tell God to make the day light come up an hour later and I cannot tell my neighbors above us to wake up later. This just means that Chris and I need to go to bed an hour earlier at night and wake up at 6am instead of 7am. Oh well!

Future Action: Since we are moving to Texas in a month, the time zone will change and we will be an hour behind Maryland time. This might be the chance for me to get Cooper back to waking at 7am. I will be in a quite house with no condo neighbors and the time change will make it easier for me to just shift his schedule.

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Apr 27 2009
Cooper

Follow-Up From Last Week

Last week I was kind of frazzled. I wrote about it in my last post titled “Here We Go Again“. Cooper was not sleeping and I was tired and stressed out. I was trying to trouble shoot with a few friends of mine to figure out what could be going on with Cooper. I am still not really sure what happened, but for about 2.5 weeks, Cooper was not sleeping well at all. I thought I was following all the usual tricks to get him to sleep well. Then it dawned on me- maybe Cooper is getting TOO much sleep. This happened when Cooper was about 8 weeks old. I realized that even though all the books said to put him to bed early, that was not working for him. When I put him to bed early at 8 weeks old (7pm), he would wake up a lot through the night and he took terrible naps. I started to keep him up later and he slept better both during the day and at night. So, I bumped up Cooper’s bedtime from 7pm to 8pm. That really seemed to help. I also extended the amount of time that Cooper is awake between naps. Presto…he started to sleep well again! YEA!!!

I should also add that during this time, Cooper was 29-30 weeks old. According to the book The Wonder Weeks, Cooper was not experiencing a wonder week but perhaps separation anxiety. The book says that separation anxiety typically happens during those two weeks. That could explain why he was waking in the middle of the night screaming. I would go in his room to feed him thinking he was hungry, but he did not nurse hardly at all. He would just cuddle up and rock with me in the rocking chair and be completely content. However, the moment I put him back into his crib, he would start to cry. I think he was just feeling anxious about me leaving and me not being there when he would wake in the middle of the night.

Could have been a bout of separation anxiety and the need to tweak his schedule. Even if it was neither, it really does not matter much any more. At least that is all behind us and we are all getting sleep again! I posted Cooper’s new schedule just in case you wanted to know what we are doing with him now that he is 7 months old.

Cooper’s 7 Months Schedule

7 Months Schedule

7:00 milk & solids
9:00 nap

11:30 milk & solids
2:00/2:30 milk** & nap

3:30/4:00 snack (Gerber puffs 10-20 pieces)
5:00 solids
6:30 bath & milk
7:00 bed

I wait 15-30 minutes in between milk and solid food. This helps Cooper eat better.
Nap= 1.5-2 hours each
Morning wake time is 2 hours, afternoon wake time is 3 hours
** I started to breastfeed Cooper before his nap because he was waking early out of his naps from hunger. This solved the early waking from his nap.

Apr 22 2009
2 Comments
Cooper

Here We Go Again

Cooper’s sleep has been rather poor for about the last 2 weeks. He keeps waking up at the 45 minute mark for his naps and fussing/ crying. Sometimes he falls back to sleep and other days the nap is just over because he refuses to go back to sleep. He was sleeping for 12 hour at night, but recently he has been waking up after sleeping 9-10 hours of sleep. He will cry maybe fall back to sleep, but most of the time he is pretty much up.
I know that the wonder week book mentioned that between week 29-30 (which Cooper is in) that babies may experience some separation anxiety and may be fussy and have sleep disturbances. Is that what is causing all of this?

Then it makes me question if he is getting enough to eat and drink. I am breast feeding him still. I must say that breast feeding has become my greatest challenge lately. I have really wanted to throw in the towel and give up lately. I know that breast milk is what is best for Cooper, but it has become extremely difficult. He is highly distracted during nursing  and often it is very difficult to keep him focused enough to finish a feeding. I am nursing him 4 times a day and I pump the 5 feeding to keep my milk supply up and running. Am I making enough milk? Sigh… Any other mom’s out there feeling frustrated about breast feeding too? I could really use some encouragement!

I was talking to my friend Aubrey (whom I meet through our blogs). She has a son who is a little older than Cooper. She suggested trying to get Cooper to bed at night a little earlier. I did that two nights ago and he slept 12 hours strait and his naps were good yesterday, 1 hour and 45 minutes a piece. So I put him to bed a little earlier last night too…but that did not seem to work. He woke up at 4:45am cried, fell back to sleep, woke up at 6:00am cried and never went back to sleep. Sigh!! Why does sleep have to be so complicated? My son is like a wave, he sleeps well for a while and then he doesn’t.

So is this a wonder week phenomenome? Is he waking because he’s not getting enough to eat? Do I have milk supply issues? Is he in a growth spurt? Is he over tired and that is why he cannot sleep? Is he getting too much sleep? Is he not getting enough sleep? Do I need to adjust his schedule? I feel like a crazy woman…I have all these questions floating around in my mind and I wish that I knew the answers.

Jo, I think I need that worry broach, haha!

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Apr 21 2009
Cooper, friends, Random Thoughts, Videos & Photos

The Wonderful Thing About…

So Cooper is really getting the hang of his jumperoo. He reminds me of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh jumping all about. Thought you might enjoy watching him get his jump on! Click on the link to the song too!

The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers


The wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is Tiggers are wonderful things.
Their tops are made out of rubber,
Their bottoms are made out of springs!
And they’re bouncy, trouncy,
flouncy, pouncy,
fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!
But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is I’m the only one!
I’m… the only one!

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Apr 20 2009
Cooper, Family

Sunday Afternoon Movie

Chris and I rented the movie Seven Pounds with Will Smith. Oh man, that movie is so sad. I really could not hold it together by the end of the movie…but anyway…We started to watch the movie when Cooper was napping, but he woke up fairly early in the movie. I breast feed him and watched the movie.  When I was finished feeding him, we just kept him in bed with us. I brought a few toys over for him to play with. He kept himself entertained with his toys, giggling to himself. Occasionally he would look up at Chris or I for approval or acknowledgment. We would engage with him and tickle him or just give him a kiss and Cooper would go strait back to playing. At one point in the movie he just laid across my legs with his head resting in my arms. He was just so content to be near Chris and I.  I loved that he let me snuggle with him. Cooper is not a snugly baby so I took full advantage of his cuddling. He sat there for almost 2 hours (long movie) and was such a good boy. I enjoyed having all three of us up on our king size bed “Snuggling” together on a quite Sunday Afternoon. That’s a memory I want to remember, which is why I am writing about it. Makes me thank God for the family he’s given me and for beautiful moments like that.

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Apr 18 2009
1 Comment
Cooper, Videos & Photos

Two Tooth Wonder

Here is our two tooth wonder! He broke his first two teeth when he turned six months old. You can see his teeth finally so we thought would show off his new pearly whites!

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Apr 17 2009
1 Comment
Cooper, Videos & Photos

Mr. Independent

Cooper is becoming more and more independent every day. He is able to do a lot more. He can truly hold a bottle all on his own now and feed himself. It takes him a while to finish feeding himself, but he can do it. He still requests me give him his bottle most of the time, but there are times when he flat out will not let me give him his bottle. He has to do it– Well, okay, Mr. Independent, have it your way!

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