Walker Texas Ranger

Yesterday in my board meeting I got this text message "Jr. took 4 steps!"

He is that close. Here is a video we shot a few days ago. As you can see, he COULD walk if he wanted to, but clearly chooses the more effective mode of transportation, crawling.

C.I.O.

Cry. It. Out. and feel like the worst mother ever.

Jr. is going through a phase where he screws around for an hour when he is supposed to be going down for his nap. He will yawn, rub his eyes, so I go through the nap routine. . . new diaper, turn on the (miami) sound machine, close the blinds, wrap him in his blanket, sit down in the rocking chair, nurse and rock. This used to put him to sleep within a few minutes, 30 at the most, but last week he would not go down. The rocking/nursing would last for at least an hour. So I gave C.I.O. a try. I have tried every trick in the No Cry Sleep Soluting Book, and Jr. is one tough nut to crack.

40 minutes he cried. I hid in the basement holding the monitor listening to him. I can now easily tell the difference between the hurt, sad and angry cries. This was an angry cry, but I listened closely for a hurt or sad cry. I cleaned the bathroom and talked to all of my mom friends on the phone and my mom. To each of them I would announce, "I AM THE WORST MOM EVER!" Each of them would assure me that I wasn't. I even sent his dad a text message telling him what I was doing so he could come home and save his baby, or at least call the cops on me. He didn't. His text reply was "I luv u."

So 40 minutes, or an eternity in my perception, passed and he stopped crying. I let that go for 5 minutes before I busted through his door to make sure he hadn't died from neglect. He hadn't. He was sleeping face down sobbing in his sleep. I made some slight adjustments in his sleeping body and rubbed his back until the sleep sobbing stopped and then snuck back out. 20 minutes later he was awake crying. I rushed back upstairs and rocked/nursed him back to sleep.

As he gazed up at me with tears in his eyes, I heard his little baby voice say, "Who is sleep training who?"

Baby Coleman 1. Mama Coleman 0.

I got him back down and he slept for over an hour, but that is not the point. Why am I so bothered by C.I.O? I think it is this, I doubt it will work and that I just hate the thought of letting him be miserable for 40 minutes. I mean that is a serious long time. Baby light years.

I also have a deadline. He starts daycare in July. I seriously doubt Aunt Aimee (daycare lady) is going to put up with rocking him for an hour when she has 4 - 5 other kids to deal with. He is going to have to learn to put himself to sleep. Plus she called this morning saying that she could take Jr. starting on June 21. Yikes, I thought I had all of June to sleep train him. I was going to make his Aunt Nancy (his real aunt) let him C.I.O. for his afternoon nap the last two weeks of June in hopes that he would transition to daycare napping better. I guess we start today. Well, tomorrow at least. I had to cut his nails while he slept, so I had no choice other than to hold him and rock him until he was well asleep.

And, let's face it. He is not the best snuggler on the planet while he is awake, holding him while he dozes off to sleep, or after he is conked out is my sweet baby snuggle time. So yes, I do hold him too long after he is asleep, and yes, I am probably ruining his life by not teaching him to sleep on his own. So, maybe I am the worst mother ever.

Garden Boy

We are busy ripping out landscape mistakes of the past. Jr. is totally there to help us out every inch, every weed, every rock of the way.

Puddin

For dessert Jr. gets pudding. This was his first time with chocolate pudding. He loved it and the results were HILARIOUS!

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Billy Steve, AKA Baby Will, Ed Jr.'s first boy cousin. He will LIKELY be born on Friday morning. We are heading over to meet him. So exciting! I will be sure to post photos.

We are also anxiously awaiting the arrival of Hank, AKA Henry Roberts. His birth day is up in the air but is eminent. Now if I can just get off my tuckus and send off his gifts. . .

Also, the house update. We pulled the plug on new home shopping. Sigh. It has sucked to be broke for the last year with my part time paycheck. Don't get me wrong, we weren't destitute, but the extra spending cash was noticeably absent. A higher mortgage payment in our new dream house would guarantee that we would be broke for a long time to come. We have decided to stay put, but to redo our minuscule kitchen to add more storage. Mikey created a drawing, I think you can check it out here. I hope I don't get into trouble for posting. Anyway, I know that it isn't going to add diddly squat to the value of our house, but if we have to live here for a few more years, SOMETHING has got to give with that effing kitchen. We are refinancing to pay for it and with the lower interest rates and no more mortgage insurance, our monthly payments are the same, so it seems like it is free money, even though I know there is no such thing.

Now, who wants to come over and help me paint our bedroom? Ed calls it a disaster.

As you can see above we ripped out the "flower garden" out front and planted sod. While having a beautiful flower garden was my dream, sod is more my reality.

How To Take A Baby Rafting

1. Check your hesitation and/or common sense at the boat ramp.

2. Buy a small fortune in baby rafting gear, life vest, sun hat, sun screen, neoprene swim shoes, UPF clothing that doubles as swim clothes and a warm base layer.

3. Recruit tons of your friends to help out.

4. Launch.

5. Try to enjoy yourself.

In all seriousness, we are committed to hauling that Jr. man along with us wherever we go and that includes rafting. No, we won't be taking him whitewater rafting any time soon, but we did have plans to take him down the Smith River for a week this summer, that was why we decided to beta test him on the Blackfoot this last weekend.

Ed went down without baby and me the day before to ensure that the river was free of hazards and the float was not too long. One hour of screaming if all went to shit was enough, can you imagine three hours? The float was perfect 1 hour at max and pretty mellow and sweet water.

I spent days online searching for baby rafting gear before the weekend, or maybe even a smidgen of advice. As it turns out, there isn't much out there. The former owner of Outdoor Kidfitters helped me out with some brand names of some essential items. Outside Baby, Mountain Sprouts, Sunday Afternoon and Salus Marine. Here is the challenge, find this stuff on-line. This still leaves what to do with those little feet. We ended up slapping some Robeez on him and letting him get his feet wet, it was warm and after a while, we let him go barefoot and dry those little puppies in the sun. I did find some neoprene swim shoes from Imse Vimse. With any luck we will be able to pick up some more baby smartwool socks to keep his feet warm.

As for the advice, my cousin's family sent us an article about rafting the Green River with and 11 week old. Doug Fine in the article says "As we glided past 200-million-year-old sandstone cliffs, newspaper headlines popped into our heads: "Irresponsible Hippie Parents Haul Helpless Infant Into Wilderness in Triple-Digit Heat, Bring No Antibiotics."" I said the same thing as we launched on the 1 hour Blackfoot, but my headline was "Irresponsible Hippie Parents Launch on the Blackfoot During Spring Runoff. . ."

We should have rafted with him when he was 11 weeks, when he couldn't move around too much. Rafting with a 13 month old (or for you non parents, 1 year and change) includes constant entertainment to distract him from trying to climb out of the boat. We have a very busy boy. He is not to be contained, especially NOT in a small confined space of the bow of a raft. He was happy for some of the time, I would say about 1/3 of the float. The rest of the float he was irritated or just down right pissed off. Like everything new, there was a lot of crying. Next time, I am positive he will like it more. We have a plan to attach toys to the boat so he has something to play with and when he tosses it over the edge, they don't float away.

Other lessons, more sunscreen. We coated him, but it wasn't enough. Look at these cheeks!

Even though rafting wasn't 100% awesome our first time out, I am happy to report that Jr. is made for camping. He loves every second of it. We pulled the frame off the boat and pulled the boat off of the trailer, it was the best play pen ever.

*** Oh and we pulled the plug on our Smith trip it is four solid days of rafting, plus camping at night. I know that we COULD do it. I want to be that parent that takes their kids on amazing adventures, but I don't think we would have fun and that is just not worth it. Maybe next year. Maybe in two years. Who knows. Maybe Ed and I can go without him next year too.

I wish I would have thought of this

Jr. and Carter

These two are going to be best buds forever. They are going to have to share all of the pretty girls, Adrienne, Frannie, Allie, Zola. . .

Please ignore the hair it was super windy.

Happy To Be A Mom!

I LOVE being a mom. I love that baby boy so much it hurts. Just being his mom is greatly rewarding, but the sweet gifts don't hurt. I scored a great necklace and earrings. Sleep in two days in a row. Walked in the Don't Fence Me in 5K Dog Walk on Saturday, and today the Moogs had us over for lunch - yummo.

I wish every mother a wonderful and happy mothers day.

Carbella

The EVIL night waking is back and I am too tired to write eloquently about our amazing camping/rafting/Chicoing weekend. We were there to celebrate my cousin Phil's 30th birthday and the end of winter. There was still snow on the ground in Helena, but it was nice and dry down by Yellowstone (yes you read that right). It was warm, sunny and windy as all get out.

Jr. proved to be quite the little camper despite his massive incoming tooth. All of that fresh air did all of us some good.

We hit Chico on the way home and we were so preoccupied with greasing up the baby with sunscreen, we completely forgot to do ourselves. Both Ed and I have little sunburned noses and shoulders. While I know this is a bad bad thing, I am not going to lie to you, after the long winter, it feels kind of good. . . There is nothing like soaking in that hot pool, the sun beating down on you and sipping a vodka tonic to make you say "See Ya Winter!" It is going to be one hell of a summer - bring it on!

Birthday Party

Long story short, the party was a blast. The link to all of the photos are here. Thank god Auntie Liesel brought her camera, she took some fabulous photos. Here are some of my favs.

Thank you everyone for coming to the party. Thank you for all of the sweet loot. Thank you for supporting us over the last year.

XOXO