Happy Halloween!

William's First Halloween! I was so excited for this even if it wasn't his first costume. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. What's better than a day dedicated to wearing costumes and junk food after all? Anyways, the day wasn't even over before I started getting calls for pictures of William making his debut as a pterodactyl. And without further ado, here you are!

Pterodactyl man tearing up the food storage/baby castle boxes!

Oh, what's this?

Mommy's iPad? Tasty!

Showing off his wings!

I may have been more excited for him to fly than he was...

Whee!

Chillin' with Dad, getting a break from mom being nutso

He kept looking down, trying to get the front point of his hat squarely in his vision. Of course then he would grab it, pull it down, and slobber it. Hmm.

Watching the movie with Mom and Dad!

Out for a walk! (sorry Peanut, no candy for you yet)

Aaaaand he's out like a light. 

Halloween tradition in our house is to hang out and watch Dracula Dead and Loving It while we wait for Trick or Treaters. We didn't get as many this year as we did the last- probably because our porch light has burned out and needs a new bulb. But we had most of our closest neighbors stop by with their kids!

Night 5: Finale

Probably the last of the nightly sleep updates unless something dramatic happens. Seth is home, William is happy and went to bed at 8 on the dot with minimal fuss, and all is right in the world. Hopefully he'll stay asleep for a good while tonight, but it's 11pm and I'm going to get to bed myself!

Night 4: Surrender

Last night wasn't too bad. He took half an hour to fall asleep at 8, but didn't get up again until 3. At which point I surrendered and gave him an eatly breakfast. Seth is coming home today so I didn't want to fight him too much or else I'd be too tired to drive up to the airport in the morning. He didn't get up again until 7 and then I went in, changed him, fed him for a few moments until he was sleepy again, and put him back down! He protested, but I was still exhausted. I think he caught me mid-sleep cycle. Almost 9am now, and I'm ready to go! And more than happy to have Seth coming home.

Night 3: Missing Dad

Today was good! William was fairly well behaved and I even got some time playing Guild Wars Halloween events while he took a nap in the afternoon. Just one today, but it was a pretty good one. Dinner time around 6:45 was  our roughest. He missed Daddy and let me know in no uncertain terms that he would prefer to be fed by him instead of me. He settled down a bit when we tried (with no luck) to call him and that at leasts distracted him long enough to finish the cup of greek yogurt without making too muuch of a mess. He got put to bed pretty darn quick after that (around 7:30) and fell asleep within 15 minutes. The BEST part is that he didn't get up several times in the night though! He woke up for a change and breakfast from 5-6 and went back to bed until 8! Woohoo!

Night 2: Too Good to be True

Well today went better! Since William went to bed earlier, I got to bed earlier and therefore got sleep even with him getting up twice! Tonight I put him down ten minutes ago around 7:45 and he cried but was so exhausted he fell right asleep. I just finished stuffing him full of oatmeal and a good half a can of mixed fruit so hopefully he'll be full and sated all night? Ha. I can dream. Pear is apparently ambrosia while pineapple was not appreciated at all, by the way.

Still, it's hard putting him to bed so early. Tomorrow night I've got the Activity Day girls (we're making tshirt bags and I got white shirts for the project that they can go to town on with the dye sticks I bought for my Caithe costume. I only need the light yellow and white, so they'll have plenty of other colors to work with. Not like white would show up on white shirts anyways. Coming back to the point though, AD ends at 8 which means getting home around 8:30, finishing feeding William by 9-9:30 depending on how involved he decides to get, and therefore in the crib before 10 if I'm lucky. Which I'm sure will not be helpful for trying to get him down to a schedule, but that's life. I enjoy my calling, but sometimes it's frustrating. I'm still trying to straighten out whether we actually have money in the budget or if I'm having to pay for all the materials myself. Seth tracked down the exec secretary this past Sunday and got told the AD fund was at -$300! Unless someone at the beginning of the year seeeeeriously overspent that's a major error or the guy was looking at the wrong fund since neither of the two AD leaders before me actually ever USED the fund. And sure, the tshirts for the bags this week are only $15 for all of them so it's not like it'd kill our family budget if we did cover them, but I can't and shouldn't have to fund the entire program myself.

Update: 9:30pm
The Beast has awoken. Not even wet.
10:00
Aaand back to sleep. Huzzah
12:55am
He's doing an excellent impersonation of a yoyo. A really loud yoyo.
1:20
Down to the occassional exhausted whimper. Hopefully he'll sleep for real now. I'm tired.
6:30
Still tired. Can't complain about the hour too much though. Poor guy is starving.

Night 1: 45 minutes of sobs.

So I got a book, Sleeping Through the Night by Jodi Mindell. A lot of it isn't applicable to William's age yet, and a lot of it's what we're already doing or stuff I've read before, but we're going to try some changes. Regardless of what time Seth gets home now, I'm going to get him to bed by 7:30- 8. Hopefully the earlier bedtime will help him get the sleep he needs and not mean that he'll wake up ready for the day at midnight. Seth's out of town this week, but once he's back we're also going to try to have Seth get him when he wakes up in the night instead of me. It's the 3am feeding call that's killing me lately and the book says he shouldn't need food in the middle of the night anymore. With Seth getting him, giving him a cuddle, and putting him back to bed hopefully it'll break the habit of wanting to latch on for an hour and then sobbing horribly when I put him back in the crib after he gets his snack. I'm also going to enforce naptime now, whether he cries his head off every time I put him down during the day or not. Maybe if I make him nap he'll do more than take 15 minute cat naps when he gets exhausted.

It's 8:45 now. He went down at 8 and just stopped crying. Let's hope Night 2 of this experiment goes more smoothly. 

Blargh

So the cake was absolutely delicious. Two thumbs up, would make again. Apart from that, Halloween is trying to sneak up on me. William is going to be a pterodactyl and I've got the hat part of the costume made, but really need to find time to sit down and work on the body.

It's really hard to find time to do it with William's lack-of-sleep schedule lately. It's not really his fault. He's teething and that's hard on him, and last night a thunderstorm rolling through at 1am woke him up... and he spent two hours screaming unless I was in the room and holding him. Actually, if I'm out of sight at all he'll usually throw a fit too. He still doesn't nap very well. Just these little cat naps when he's worked himself into a fit and just can't stay awake any longer. These usually involve much screaming and flailing around before passing out.

I'm going a bit crazy, I think. And Seth has to travel for work all next week. Won't that be fun.

On the flip side, my little boy has the sweetest smile and his expressions of pure relief and joy when I come back into the room (after being gone for 2 seconds) are heart melting. I can't get mad at him for loving me. I just wish he'd let me sleep more. We share breakfast up in his room in the morning now. He adored the bread and raspberry jam the other day, and thought the peaches were pretty awesome too. I've got some sourdough from Panera this morning and he finds that pretty interesting too. I'm sure he'll have more fun with the strawberry parfait for lunch.