Sleepless in Roswell

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Whether it is because he is super tired or because he is teething or just because we don't know what we are doing, Caleb won't sleep without his Mom at night. It feels like a major step back. Prior to our trip to Tennessee, Caleb had fallen into a nice pattern where he slept through most of the night in his crib on his own. For the last two and a half weeks, Caleb has spent very little time on our own.

Both in Tennessee and here in Roswell, we have had pack 'n plays set up in a bedroom separate from our room. Fortunately, those rooms also have beds in them because Mom has ended up in them at some point in the night. Last night, Mom never even made it into our bed. She tried nursing Caleb in our bed with the thought that I would move him to the pack 'n play when I came to bed. He woke up almost instantneously and Mom moved to the second bedroom with him where they spent the night. This morning, I moved in there with them and we cuddled as a family for a while. When Mom got up to get in the shower, Caleb and I stayed in the bed and dozed a while longer. I pulled the covers up around us and Mom snapped this picture.

We got up and all went to breakfast together. A while back, some of the women at the church here in Roswell threw a grandmother's shower for TuTu and she got some nice things to keep here for Caleb. One of the gifts was a toy bar to strap onto the handle of the infant carrier. The bar has several toys that spin and are designed to work on Caleb's hand eye coordination.

Earlier this week, we put the bar on the carrier, but Caleb did not seem to pay any attention to it. We tried it again this morning and we lowered the bar a little to try and get it into Caleb's field of vision. At first, Caleb did not seem to pay any attention to it, but we kept spinning the toys for him which kept getting his attention. After a while, he started to reach up on his own. He knocked the spinners by accident a couple of times which only encouraged him to keep trying harder. By the end of our meal, he was pretty excited and had essentially mastered spinning the toy with his left hand.

The parents of another set Poppy and TuTu's surrogate granchildren brought over a gift for Caleb last night. Part of the gift was three handmade wooden rattles. One of the rattles is in the shape of a fish with the wooden circles in the body of the fish. There is an opening in the body of the fish that Caleb can get his hand into so he can hold on to the fish. We've been playing with the fish today and this afternoon, Caleb was able to get a good grip on the fish and was picking it up in his hand and waving it around in the air. Caleb has some neat toyes here at Poppy and TuTu's and we've all had a good time playing with them.