Goodbye Miles

When Jr. is older we will tell him all about Miles, his daddy's first baby. Yesterday we had to put Miles to sleep, he was old, tired, in pain and not getting any better. It was the toughest decision ever. We are going to miss him so much.

In dog related news, Jr.'s first word, we are calling it, is "Woof". "Woof" is what he called Miles and calls dogs in his books or the dogs outside that bark. Selma is either "Woof" or "Saaabaaa".

The kid loves dogs.

Tired

Crazy pants monkey boy Coleman has been getting up in the middle of the night again to party. Last week was good, this week bad. I am too tired to say much more than yesterday he was 11 months old, we have less than one month to plan the big one year birthday blowout.

Hardest best year of my life. I am just now feeling like I can move around again. For the longest time, I felt like my feet were glued to the floor in my house with a busy baby boy in my arms. Last year I was super pregnant and so excited for him to come, now he is here and everything has changed. I laugh when I think about what my ideas and expectations of being a mother would be like.

He is blowing bubbles under water in the bathtub. We can't go to swim lessons until his cough clears up. Thursday is the last lesson, don't think we'll make it. Oh well. We can take them again this summer.

Cry It Out

Let me just say that I cannot write anything about this last week without being kind of judgemental about the Cry It Out method of teaching your kid to sleep. I HATE IT. But we did try it. Friday night we were at our wits end with crazy kooklamlooka Ed Jr. and partying at 10:30 at night after being asleep for 2 hours.

It could have been daylight savings time, it could have been Cissie's absence, it could have been the new tooth (#3 on the bottom), but sleeping for little man this week sucked. It seemed like all of the good work we had done, and the progress that we had made was gone out the window.

Normal scenario. Let me just say that there is no such thing as normal anymore, but this is what was pretty predictable. 1.5 hour morning nap, 1.5 hour afternoon nap, bed at 8ish and asleep until 11 - 12 at which time he was moved to our bed for the remainder of the night and gets up between 7 - 8 AM. Not too bad. Plus it seemed like he was sleeping longer and longer in his crib at night and eventually, he would just sleep in there all night. Not SO!

It all started last Friday night while his Nanna was babysitting. He woke up around 9:30 and decided to stay up and watch TV with his nanna until 11 when his parents got home and tried for an hour to put him back to bed. He thought that it was such a fun schedule, he would keep it up for the rest of the week, and naps, FORGET ABOUT IT. 20 minutes - 40 minutes, that is good enough. UG it was so frustrating. I started online research and picked up a book that I should have tossed in the garbage 10 months ago. Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. The Dr. who wrote it is a pretentious crapbag. So Saturday night, we let him cry for 30 minutes. It was just so wrong. Wrong for him, wrong for us. Plus it didn't help his sleep. Ed still had to go up there and put him to sleep.

The best advice I have ever gotten about being a parent is find people with similar values and listen to their advice, drown out the rest. That is what I am doing. I am returning to The No Cry Sleep Solution. I am going to know that as Ed Jr.'s mom, that I am the expert on him. I also am going to chill out, ride this wave, and keep working on helping him sleep longer and better, not chicken out and cry it out for promises of quick solutions.

Its fun to swim at the Y M C A

Photos from our swim lessons.

We are practicing blowing bubbles under the water.

Scooping toys out of the water.

Floating on our backs while kicking.

Snowshoeing Baby

We have been talking about cross country skiing all winter. It seems like when we have snow, it is FREEZING or we have company, or we are out of town. It was a lot of excuses to avoid what we were really worried about, me falling down on skis while wearing Jr. on my back. Although I am really confident in my ability to ski with him on my back, I always have some reservations. Our solution was to buy me a pair of snowshoes - thank you tax refund. Ed already had a pair from his timber days. With that, we were off.

We went to Mac Pass and snowshoed on the X-C trails. Yeah, I know. Major no-no, but we stayed to the side of the groomers and as soon as we could get off the trails we did. We saw a couple of the Swix Hat wearing skate skier a-holes, but they ignored us. We think we found some other places to try out my new gear.

The sunshine was awesome and it was great exercise. Jr. had a blast too. Unfortunately, he took his afternoon nap on my back and woke up when I tried to unload him into the car. The unfortunate part was that the nap was only 1/2 hour.

Oh and P.S. I did fall down once on snowshoes, but it was no big deal. Jr. barely even noticed.

Waiting

Cissie leaves in May. I am getting a TON of pressure to come back to work more hours starting in April. That spells daycare. Ug. I hate the thought of it.

I have started calling around to the daycare facilities remotely close to our home and work and now we are on several waiting lists 9, 10, 12 people deep. I guess the only daycare centers that have openings are out in Montana City or the valley. Personally I would rather leave him in the care of Miles and Selma all day.

I feel a ton of anxiety about this, the same anxiety I felt one year ago when he was on his way into the world, and I had NO childcare lined up for him after my maternity leave was over. I was just kind of hoping that something magical would happen and I would get to stay home with him. Well, the next best thing worked out and we got Cissie. She was an excellent present from my friend Tina. Tina interviewed her and couldn't use her, so she passed her along to us. She has been amazing and Ed Jr. LOVES her.

We can't afford a full time Cissie, so if it isn't daycare, it is leaving him with a SAHM. Stay At Home Mom. There are always a couple of them out there looking to take in an extra kid to make some cash. I think to myself, why don't I do that? Stay at home all day with Ed Jr. and another bebe? I mean, I really don't like my job, but taking care of someone elses kid, is that what I want to do?

Today we are going to check out a daycare center who can take him in afternoons. Great, so looking forward to ear infections, chicken pox, respiratory viruses. . . All of my friends who have babies in daycare have sick babies all of the time and KNOCK ON WOOD, Ed Jr. is one healthy little horse.

I guess whining about it on the Internet isn't going to solve my problems. I will pass along one wish. I WISH my dad and Sheree would hurry up and retire so they could take care of Ed Jr. all day. WISH!

I will say that I have been VERY lucky to have had this last year to stay at home with him part time. I can't imagine putting him in a daycare at 6 or 12 weeks. We have had one incredibly blissful year of sleeping in, playing in our jammies all morning and having a nice lunch with daddy every day.

Boob Tube

Right now I am letting Jr. watch Clifford the Big Red Dog on PBS so I can post this. I know you aren't supposed to let your kids watch TV until they are two, but it is only 30 minutes.

Anyway, in order to better serve our Baby Coleman reading public, I have returned to Youtube. The Flickr videos are slow or just won't play on some computers. Plus Youtube has cleaned up their act a little bit, and made uploading videos easier.

So TAAADAAA! FOUR NEW VIDEOS!

GI Junior

On Tuesday Jr. turned 10 months old. 10 months is great. He is a funny little person and man is he starting to get in to everything. Plus he is on the move. Although it isn't a textbook crawl, Jr. has begun to army crawl like a regular old Army Ranger. He takes off out of his room and makes it to the kitchen in no time flat.

He is working on pulling himself up. I read an article about 10 month olds and the article said that one day you will turn around and you will see your kid has pulled himself up onto some furniture and then they won't know how to get down. That is exactly what happened. I set him on the bathroom floor, went into his room to get his towel and wash cloth and when I came back around the corner, he had pulled himself up on the side of the bathtub. Now it is constant, he pulls himself up on his toybox, the side of his crib, me, chairs, dogs, the toilet. Next step walking.

He has also begun to turn off the lights for us, unplug appliances for us, unpack laundry baskets for us and help us file paperwork. He is so helpful! The finger for pointing is also SUPER effective at popping out those pesky outlet covers to protect babies from sticking things in electrical outlets. One small flick with THE FINGER and those suckers go flying.

As for a tooth update, it appears after just about three months of working on the top ones, the two front teeth have officially poked through. I feel bad for him, they look REALLY painful, but I also kind of feel bad for us.

We really need to spend this weekend childproofing. Although, I imagine that no childproofing we do will slow this kid down.

Swimmie McSwimmer

Over the valentines day Auntie Liesel came to town with her beagles. We had so much fun and Ed Sr. even took care of Jr. on Saturday night so that Liesel and I could have a special night out on the town. How did we spend our v-day date? At a fundraiser for the Lewis and Clark Humane Society. The spay-ghetti dinner and auction was a hilarious treat! Liesel lost out on an amazing ring to some H-town vest wearing short haircut sporting man lady. Boy was Liesel hot. I thought she was going to rough someone up or at least kick a tree or car. The ring was beautiful and the bullish woman hadn't bid on it ALL night only to come out in the last seconds to edge Liesel out. THE INJUSTICE! Other than the devastating loss, we had a great time and daddy and baby managed without us.

Then, on Sunday it was off to Fairmont to hang with the Moogs. It was the first time swimming for Jr. and Adrienne. Adrienne took to the water like, well, a fish to water. Jr. was not so charmed at first. He cried and cried and wouldn't make eye contact with Ed and I. He was MAD MAD MAD. So we let him chill out on the side of the pool until he was ready to come on in. Then he had a blast.

Wonder of all wonders, the two little lumpkins behaved like little angles at dinner that night. Note to self, poop them out, then take them to eat. Seriously, Jr. was quiet, played with spoons and ate potatoes, bread and grapes like such a big boy. Adrienne sacked out in her momma's arms. Then the next morning at breakfast, the same thing. The two of them both receive the BABY MVP awards for how great they were!

The second day in the pool, Jr. was a champ. He loved swimming with his daddy and let his mom get away to sit in the hot hot hot adult pool for a few minutes. Ahhhh.

It was funny because I said to Kim, gee, I bet these two get ear infections after this weekend. Well, neither of them got ear infections, but Jr. did get a little cold. Not too bad, but he does sound like a pug when he breathes out of his nose. Adrienne is fine, other than keeping her momma up all night to eat. . .

We were so excited by Jr.'s excitement of the pool, I rushed back to make reservations to get him into Aquatots at the YWCA. Keep that swimming momentum going.

Mr. Sweetness

Junior is a very busy boy. He is also a very focused and determined little man. All day long it is go go go play play play. Getting him to fall asleep is usually a wrestling match. He kicks, punches, scratches, pulls, pushes, jerks and howls to try to stay awake and when he sleeps, oh lordy he is so dreamy. Maybe that is why I love co-sleeping so much, he is so sweet and snuggly.