Thursday

One of the side effects of school starting is that Mom is not with Caleb a big chunk of the day. That means that less pictures are taken giving me a smaller selection of pictures to put here on the blog. I now realize that really busy days for Mom are going to be a blogging challenge.

Today was a really busy day for Mom. After school, she and Caleb went home, but Mom was not feeling well so she and Caleb just hung around the house for a few hours. It wasn't long before Mom had to go back to school for open house and a meeting with the Board of Directors. I went straight to school to pick up Caleb and take him home. I stopped to get something to eat and by the time we got home, the skies had opened up a heavy rain. The rain was blowing sideways and when I opened the door, it hit Caleb in the face and I could see him wince a couple of times. That's not a sensation he is used to yet. So I hurriedly got him inside the door and got frazzled in the process.

I ate my dinner and then played with Caleb. Mom came home from here events just in time for Caleb's bedtime routine. She hadn't taken any pictures and asked if had. Sure enough, we had no pictures today. To compensate, I took a picture of Caleb lying in his crib since his learning to sleep has been a big achievement in our lives that has been chronicled by words, but not really in pictures.

That was a mistake. Following the advice we had read on putting Caleb to bed, Caleb goes through the same routine every night. The last step in the routine is a bedtime snack for Caleb. When he is tired, Caleb falls asleep while nursing. However, the experts all say to put the baby in the crib somewhat awake so that they will learn to fall asleep in the crib on their own. This is also beneficial for us because Mom is trying to teach Caleb baby sign language and he needs to be awake so he can see the sign for sleep.

Laying Caleb in the crib awake has not been a problem so far. However, taking a picture of him was too much. Caleb was crying as we left the room and Mom was glaring at me. We are up to 10 minutes of Caleb crying before we go into soothe him. A couple of times, it sounded as if he was drifting back to sleep, but then he would find a second wind. After 10 minutes, we went into him and it was the first time in a long time that we have had to go back into the nursery after putting him down. When I got back in there, in addition to crying, he had done a complete 180 and was now facing the opposite end of the crib. We're not supposed to pick him up out of the crib, so I just patted him and he was in a full on cry. Mom brought in a pacifier and I think he might have been asleep before we closed the nursery door.

Needless to say, we will do a better job of taking pictures during the day so we don't have to take any more last minute shots and risk messing up the routine.