Tired

Honestly, I've been spoiled with having a good sleeper for the first 7 months of his life, so my current situation in retrospect probably could be a lot worse.   But I am beginning to wonder when its going to end.  It seems that the little one has decided not to sleep a good 6-8 hour stretch anymore with a 4ish  hour stretch to follow and instead is screaming every 1-3 hours at night instead.  The only way I have found to get him back to sleep is by nursing.  While usually I can sleep thru the nursing, I can't seem to do that anymore it hurts much more because of the teeth.
So my first intuition is to blame it on the darn teeth, but there are a lot of other factors that have been added or changed.  First, I am much more stressed these days, I have 2 weeks till my PhD defense and I wonder if he is feeling the extra stress that I am carrying.  Next, he started crawling, but he really wants to walk, and I think partly is frustrated with this. He can furniture walk, but not on his own yet.  And its turned cold.  So we can't spend all day outside, which is something that he loves to do.  So, with cutting teeth, (2 are here finally!) and all these other changes we have a rough sleeper.  So I am just wondering if you have any advice.  Since this is my first, I am in the dark with experience here.
I am not into letting a child cry it out, it just doesn't seem right to me, but any other advice would be great. Thanks.

Quick Takes first of the week addition

1. We have a crawler, and it is so much fun.  Probably 'cause he's not super fast right now, but go Ben.

2. Defense day and time set for December 13th at 11am.  Prayers for perseverance, clarity of thought, wisdom, knowledge and to be well spoken are much, much, much appreciated. Oddly still have to remember what my darn title is.

3. We have half of a tooth out, waiting for 2.5 more to pop out as they are so close.

4. Prayers also for good interactions with my advisor would be of the utmost importance, because if you know me then you know its been a bumpy ride.

5. I am super excited that Arwen is having twins.  Send some prayers her way if you can as well.

6.  One more thing, we are getting a new fridge come Friday.  Considering it half died on us back in August and parts of it have never been working since we moved in last November this has been a long time coming. w00t all the way.

7.  I am awaiting news on little Jack Campbell being born, I hope he comes before the doctor's decide his mama has to be induced.

busy

Just a quick update here.  We are working on having a tooth pop out here, and finishing up paper editing.  On top of that we just returned from a long weekend trip to Memphis, TN.  It was a great trip, and I shall have to recap it sometime soon.  For now the paper editing must continue and thus the blogging will be cut short.  Here is a pic from the trip of Ben meeting his first llama.  If you know how he was called baby llama all the time he was in the womb, then the significance of this will make some sense to you.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Baby Mario and Yoshi.

little frustrations

You know those moments when you become frustrated with your little one because it seems he or she is in a lull of wanting to do anything, and when you encourage him to take the next step they don't want to take it. The past week has been full of that, or maybe the last month I dunno. So I have kept encouraging the little one to keep at it, but it seemed futile. The funny thing is that nothing happens the way I want it to happen. The little one has surprised me none-the-less and is starting to take steps in his own way to accomplish things. And as my husband keeps reminding me he will figure it out eventually, and all will be okay.

life as we know it

Small Successes.


You know, I never actually did one of these, because I never felt qualified enough as a mom to do them.  But today I will.

1. I handed in my thesis on Monday to my advisor and am awaiting his final edits. Some of which finally just came this morning.  One step closer!

2. I got Ben out of his anti-crib mode by putting a super fluffy blanket over his crib sheet to sleep on. It's not loose so it won't add to SIDS at least not IMO.  Anyway, I am glad to have my own space in my bed again.

3. I finally got the baby backpack about 90% of the way to perfectly fitting on my back.  I was such a Bjorn girl for the last 7 months that this new device was flustering me greatly.  Thus even though something has the most excellent reviews doesn't mean it will be super easy to maneuver.

4. I ran twice this week, which was something I had been avoiding for a while, not sure why except for the foot issues.  Anyway, something about running in the cold gives that extra dose of runner's high/energy.

So those are them.  I hope you all are well, and I guess I should add the little logo for this, and if I wasn't lazy today then I would.  Take care. I would love to hear a small success for you as well!

a day for a date

Since having Ben, actual dates with my husband have been limited.  But that is okay and I understand that this season in life is like this.  Little ones take a lot of your time, and that is okay cause its done in love.  We are trying to get them to heaven in the long run and if we aren't present there with them a lot of times teaching them, how will they learn?

Anyway, the point is that yesterday my husband and I did actually get to go on a date, and it was really nice.   In some ways, it felt like we were newly dating back as young 21 and 22 year olds.  It was almost surreal in that aspect yesterday.  It was like here we are as a couple, without others, just us.  And this wasn't our first post-Ben date, but for some reason it felt different than the other ones.  Maybe I finally was less worried about the little one, because we have a well established routine, or maybe it was just that it was really well need to have us time.  Whatever it was, there was a good vibe going on all around.

So on this date, first my husband got me flowers from one of our local florists.  A handpicked bouquet nonetheless, I was impressed.  I should take a pic of it and post it here.  In fact, I think I will.

So being given flowers and him actually putting them in a vase, we headed out to lunch at a restaurant more downtown from where we live in the city called Bricco.  The food was excellent, and the atomosphere just right.  We discussed personas on social media for a while and just had fun.

Afterward, we ventured on a walk to Cafe-Ah-Roma, and got coffee, one of our favorite things to do, at one of our favorite places.  Then we strolled around Cleveland State University, because that was where we were at.  Oddly, they have done a lot to the place and it was a pretty nice looking campus with a lot of nice new architecture and hidden walkways that make you feel like you aren't so consumed in city.

The one silly mishap on our date was that Keith backed into another car in the parking lot and left a nice dent in the driver side door.  A big whoops.  We left a note and are still looking to hear from the guy that  was hit. Hopefully nothing bad comes from it.

And that was it, simple and nice minus the mishap.  So I ask you the reader, have you had any nice dates with your husband or signficant other lately?