Little Manipulator?

Oh our little lad is sure testing our patience the last few weeks.  Remy has always always been a good sleeper at night.  When he was little the hardest part was getting him to bed (which wasn’t THAT hard) but once he was sleeping he would only wake up to eat and then go straight back to bed.  Once he was probably 6 months or so we started putting him to bed awake and he would just chit chat with himself and fall asleep happy, almost never fussed.  This all changed when we went to the cabin.  I understand he was not in his crib and he was somewhere different and that was reason enough to not sleep well.  I gave him a break there.  After we got home he ended up getting a bad fever and for about a week wasn’t feeling very good.  Understandable that he won’t sleep good.  But now… there is no reason for him to be such a stinker!  He usually goes to bed at 7-7:30 every night but now he is pushing it to 8-9:00.  We can’t put him to bed awake or he screams bloody murder.  I do let him cry it out but I can only handle about 15-20 mins.  Then I go check on him, rub his back until he stops crying, try not to pick him up (sometimes I can’t help it, I’m a softy) and go back downstairs.  Then we let him cry again.  This goes on for a while until we give up and rock him to sleep.  Then we finally get him to sleep and he sleeps for 2-3 hours and wakes up screaming.  Once he sees us and we pick him up he’s happy.  Put him back down, screams bloody murder.  He will scream forever.  Last night he was up from about 12-2:45.  If he’s in his crib, he’s screaming, if you put him on the floor with his toys, he’s happy and wants to play.  Momma can’t handle this!!!!  So we are wondering if he might be in a growth spurt or just testing/manipulating us (95% sure it’s the latter).  I said we’d give him until the end of the week and if he’s still doing this then he is crying it out.  If there is nothing wrong then he needs to cry himself to sleep.  I’m just not used to the crying baby at night!  I honestly think he’s manipulating us AND he has all these new found abilities that he wants to practice and he wants to stay up late and play.  That’s what he was doing at 2:00 a.m.!  Scooting around as fast as he could, pulling himself up to stand next to the coffee table and attempt to walk along it.  When he does these things he looks at us with a huge smile and you can see on his face that he’s so proud of himself.  It’s super cute, but just not at 2 a.m.!  I’m just not sure what to do at this point…. Any suggestions?  If I just let him cry it out, I’m not sure how long to let him cry until I should check on him.  I’m so tired……..  We need to fix this asap.

Caged Animal

We should have done this a few weeks ago but since Remy is belly scootin around the joint (and is pretty quick about it) we decided to finally put up a baby gate and gate him in the living room.  This has made things MUCH MUCH easier for me.  The living room is a baby safe zone and he can play play play without me worrying about him.  Plus I can lock the dogs out if I want.  ;)  He thinks it's funny right now but soon I'm sure he won't like being a caged animal.  

First Haircut!!

Phil and I took Remy in for his first haircut yesterday.  It made me weepy.  How can my baby boy be old enough for a haircut already?!  But it was time... his hair was doing the funny thing over his ears and his bangs were almost in his eyes.  So we brought him in to Kids Hair.  I wanted his first cut to be special.  I'll attempt the next one at home.  Remy wasn't too excited about the cut as you can see.  He mostly doesn't like to be held down.  But he did really well, no crying.  :)  We decided to give him a fohawk.  I think the haircut makes him look older.

Before:

 

During:

After:

9 Month Stats and Such

Remy's appointment on Friday went well.  He's growing strong and is as healthy as a horse!  He now weighs 20.11 lbs (70%) and is 30 in tall (99%).  I still don't know where the height thing comes from but maybe that will simmer down as he gets older.  The doc was concerned that his clogged eye duct hasn't gone away on its own yet.  We've tried all we can think of to make it go away on its own - rubbing the spot between his eye and nose, putting ointment in his eye and trying breastmilk.  Nothing has worked thus far so she referred him to an eye place to have it "unclogged".  Apparenlty it's actually called dacryostenosis.  Anyways, that's getting taken care of next week.  Hopefully he's in and out and it doesn't cause too much pain.  I can't handle watching him in pain.  It breaks my heart.  Speaking of pain, after his shot on Friday he got a fever.  It started Saturday night and is still really bad tonight - 24 hours later.  He's never had a reaction like this to any shots before but I'm assuming that's the cause.  Poor little guy has had a temp of 101 all day and this evening it went up to 103.6.  That scared me so I called and spoke to a nurse.  After we gave him some more Tylenol his fever went back down to 102 and he seems ok.  The nurse said to bring him in tomorrow unless his temp goes to 105 or he seems much worse.  Gosh I hate seeing him sick.  :(

My little sick dude cuddling with dad.

 

9 Months Old!

Remy turned 9 months old on July 2nd.  Holy smokes, only 3 more months until he turns 1!  Ahhh!!!!  I'm so not ready for that.  Rem has been doing fantastic.  He's growing like a weed and learning so many new things.  He has his 9 month appointment at the end of this week so I'll have to blog again with his stats.  

We stayed up north for a week at a cabin and I thought Rem would start crawling then but he didn't.  He sure knows how to get around though.  He army crawls faster and faster every day.  Building that upper body!  We desperately need to baby proof our house....  whoops, procrastinators.  

While we were at the cabin he learned how to give kisses.  They aren't what you would call a "normal" kiss.  They are more like an open mouth slobber but they are kisses all the same.  It's soooooo sweet.  He also started giving everyone the finger while we were at the cabin.  No, not the middle finger, his pointer finger.  He sticks out his pointer finger and waits for you to tap it with yours and then "blow it up" as we like to call it.  Haha.  He's just so darn cute.

While at the cabin Remy went for his first swim.  I put his feet in the sand a few times and he hated it.  But then we went to Phil's uncle's cabin and tried it again and the lake must have been warmer or something because he ended up loving it.  It took him a few minutes to get used to the water and then he didn't want to get out!  

Rem also had his first experience in his kiddy pool this week.  I'm not sure what he liked more - being naked or being in his pool (we were too lazy to go upstairs and get a swim diaper).  :)

Remy has also started saying "mama" a lot.  I still don't think he knows it's me but Phil seems to think he knows.  So I'm not sure if I can call that his first word yet but either way, it's adorable and it melts my heart.  Pretty soon he will definitely know it's me and will say it when he's upstairs in his crib crying.  My heart won't be able to take it!  I'm a sucker for my little love.

Until next month...