Raspberries, Peas, and Squash

Well, James seems to have mastered two things this week: eating, and the art of blowing raspberries! We're keeping our fingers crossed that he doesn't put the two together! He's successfully plowed through about a week's worth of peas (doesn't THAT make your mouth water?!), and has progressed to butternut squash (which I have to say is pretty darned good!). He seems to enjoy it and gets pretty perturbed if you take too long to get another spoonful into his mouth. Apparently he's in a VERY BIG hurry to spit that mouthful back out and doesn't like delays.
Over the past 24 hrs he has happily exchanges raspberries with mommy and daddy and will lay in his crib by himself continuing to make the noise to amuse himself! It's very funny now, but I wonder when teaching your child to make rude noises will lose its charm?
Back to the topic of solids, I've actually had to start pulling my t-shirt up over my face when I change his diapers...whoooWEE! One of my coworkers has recommended a cologne-soaked t-shirt, and that's sounding pretty good about now!
We've added some new pics to the August album, be sure to check them out. He just keeps growing! Every day he adds new tricks to his bag and becomes more and more social. He's a peanut and we're just crazy about him...enjoy the pic!

Happy Fun Ball and Adventures in Eating

The TinyLove Activity Ball has arrived! I don't know who was more excited, James or me... ok, I do know, it was me. This is the coolest toy I've ever seen. It jiggles, it makes noises, there are things that rattle ...(not sure if this is the toy or my post-pregnancy body HAHAHA). Anyhoo, you can see pictures of this thing in the August photo album. The antenaes on the head are James' favorite. He enjoys trying to eat them, along with anything else that comes within a mile of his mouth. You can see in one shot he's actually trying to fit the entire thing in his mouth, and has no regard for the fact that the toy is larger than his entire torso. Babies!

And speaking of things going in his mouth, these days it's rice cereal, oatmeal, and peas (blech!). Apparently you're supposed to start with the least appetizing foods first (we couldn't find beets) so that you don't spoil them with the fruits. If it tastes *too* good, then they won't want to eat anything but the sweet stuff. What *they* ("they" say alot, don't they?) don't tell you is that this also means that eating is not fun. If all I were being offered was James' current menu, I'd be happy going without, too! He does enjoy playing in it, though. His favorite trick is to wait until he's got a big mouthful of food, then he shoves his whole hand in there, takes it out and rubs it on his face. Niiiice, eh? We're cringing at the thought that one of these days he's going to figure out that he can blow raspberries *while* eating and will end up sharing his meal with mommy's hair.

Aaaand what goes in must come out... we're encountering some pretty rough stuff these days... "down there". I think we're going to have to apply for a permit to store toxic waste in the diaper genie... and to think that it's only going to get worse!?! We may need to have our noses surgically sewn shut!

Sleep Update: He's officially sleeping through the night. Doesn't wake up at all, down at 7:30, up at about 7:30 am. What bliss! We're all a happier family for it. Who knew that sleeping face down with your butt in the air and both arms by your sides was such an ideal position for a sound night's slumber? I guess the little man did... sweet dreams!

How the Woodruffs got their groove back

Well, we seem to be heading in the right direction. James slept completely through the night Sat and Sun, and mostly on Monday (needed a quick paci fix, but 5 mins). So, we seem to be back to actually getting a normal adult's requirements for sleep! Yay!
James seems to be benefitting from it. He wakes up happy, eats like an absolute pig, and is in a great mood the majority of the day. Everyone's a winner!
New for this week:
James' new pasttime is shrieking. He seems to enjoy just lying around hollering. He's not happy or upset, just experimenting, it seems. If you go to the ParentsPlace link, to the boards, on the Marcy 2004 Playgroup board, another mom started a chat about her kid doing the same. I guess this is another milestone, albeit kind of a weird one!
He is also very close to sitting on his own. He keeps tending to tip forward since he's also VERY interested in toes these days. I told Sterling that he was looking at his toes the way Sterling looks at a plate of bbq! MmmmmmCHOMP!

No more tears!! (or sleepless nights!)

WE DID IT!! Night #1 (Thursday, August 5) consisted of about 1 full hour of crying (for details, please refer to the posting "The Crying Game"). Night #2, as predicted, was worse... 2 hours! We were up from 3:30am until 5:30am when the little bugger finally fell asleep. I had to keep telling myself, "he's crying because he's tired and doesn't know how to fall asleep on his own... he's not lonely, he's not feeling abandoned, he just wants to go to sleep!".
Night #3... HE SLEPT THROUGH THE ENTIRE NIGHT! From 7:30pm until about 7 the next morning. Unfortunately, the dogs had gotten into the trashcan two nights before and Moose's tummy hadn't yet recovered. Sterling was up with *Moose* at 2am, 4am... etc. So much for catching up on sleep!
At any rate, we seem to be golden! James is officially sleeping through the night at exactly 5 months old (that's today!). Forecast calls for happy, better-rested parents with a slight chance of recurrence in the future after visits to the grandparents (just kidding!).
Oh yeah, he was in a GREAT mood when he woke up and super happy all day!

The Crying Game

No...not the one where the girl's a guy, but rather, the act of crying it out to get to sleep. Yup, I finally relented (after another visit to the doctor for reassurance) and last night was night #1 of using the Cry It Out method, made famous by Dr. Richard Ferber (also referred to as "Ferberizing"). The theory here is that kids sometimes need help to learn to put themselves to sleep. When they cry in the middle of the night, it's not necessarily that they need comforting or that they're hungry, but that they're tired and they want to go to sleep but don't know how on their own. They get used to being rocked or nursed to sleep and when they wake up in the middle of the night and these things aren't present, they're not sure how to just fall back asleep on their own. So, what the parents do is give them 5 mins to try to put themselves to sleep. If they don't, you go in for a few mins to pat them, comfort them and talk to them, then say "night night" and walk out (no picking up!). Wait 10 more mins, if still crying, go back and do the same. Again in 10 more mins, then in 15 min increments from there on out.
Last night he went to sleep at 7:30pm, woke up at 3-ish (which in itself isn't too bad, but babies his age need about 10 hrs of sleep at night), and after the CIO (crying it out), finally fell back asleep on his own at about 4:30 or so. Not too bad for Night #1. Unfortuately, alot of the books say that Night #2 is a little worse, and then it gets better from 3 on. So, tune in tomorrow for more tales of sleepless nights in the Woodruff household. Sweet dreams!
More info on getting babies to sleep...

Have you seen this lion?

The hunt is on for yet another baby product! This time it's James' lion lovey. Be on the lookout for this character, and notify the parents of James Woodruff immediately if you encounter it. Do not attempt to purchase it yourself, simply notify the designated authorities so that they may obtain it and restore the order throughout the night.
The owner of this product, J. Woodruff, has been reported as crabby and just plain rotten when he doesn't sleep with it. Unfortunately, the lion in question required a bath yesterday after being thrown up on, and the authorities have not been able to secure a backup lion for such an event.
The lion in question is pictured here, and has a label that reads, "BabyBoom", although attempts to locate this company on-line have been unsucessful.
If you have any information leading to the location of a similar creature, please don't hesistate to call. Thanks for your vigilance!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (of my crib...)

... who's the silliest baby of them all? It's James! Yesterday we went to Babies R Us (in a fruitless search for TinyLove's Activity Ball, but that's another story), and we bought a crib mirror for James. He LOOOOOVES this thing! It's got a little fish hanging out over the top of it, and he bats at it and just laughs and laughs when the music plays. It's supposed to play whenever the baby hits the mirror, which he just managed to do this morning with his foot.. yay! This is supposed to help teach stuff like cause and effect (cause: Mommy reads about developmental milestones, and effect: she spends money on stuff that neither she nor daddy needed when they were growing up!).
Anyway, the search for the Activity Ball continues, as we're working on sitting up now. Check out the June and July albums ... he can do pretty well as long as he's leaning against something. He does have a tendency to list off to one side, though! All things in due time!

James get Cold #2

Well, poor little guy came down with his second cold this week.  On the plus side, he really tolerates the boogey-sucker quite well (we think he's amused by the noise it makes!)!  Now most babies actually get cranky when they don't feel good, James is in just as good a mood as ever!  He's not sleeping much better, but he's not sleeping worse either, so we're counting our blessings!  Basically, he's none the worse for the wear.  Can't same the same for his parents.... sleep would be niiiiice.

Test Natal News (Baby's Here)

Anatomy of the Big Day
What an exciting few weeks it's been! We welcomed James Sterling Woodruff into the world on March 8, 2004 at 3:03pm at Rex Hospital here in Raleigh. I'd had a feeling that weekend that the end of our journey was s imminent, so I'd logged on to work the Sunday before for about 5 hours to wrap up some last-minute stuff, and called my coworkers to let them know that I might not be in the office the next day. Sure enough, I was awoken at about 2am with contractions about 10 minutes apart. Since they didn't get any closer together, I figured I'd just stay in bed until they did... no point in waking up Sterling since we couldn't do anything until they were closer together anyway, and I figured at least one of us should get some sleep!He woke up for work at about 6am, at which point I told him I was having contractions. He asked, "what do you want to do?", to which I replied, "take a shower.". He obviously took this as a sign that I wasn't too worried about things and he started his day as he normally does. He shouted in to me while I was in the shower, "I hope you're not using up all of the hot water!". My response was, "I hope you don't think you're going to work today!". This must have caught him a bit off-guard, and he started timing my contractions. We then realized that since I'd started moving around, they'd decreased to about 5 minutes apart. We called the doctor, who told us she'd meet us at the hospital!Labor continued until about 2pm (with no drugs up until that point...hoo-ah!), at which point we realized that the contractions were not getting any closer together. James was also struggling a bit, so we decided to proceed with a C-Section. By about 2:30 we were in the OR, and James was pulled out at 3:03pm... I could hear the doctor on the other side of the curtain say, "well hey there, darling!". The entire staff at the hospital was wonderful, and although James had a bit of a rough start, and spent time in the Special Care Nursery, everyone took wonderful care of him and his parents, and we're all home, happy and healthy (and sleepy)!


Back at home...
So now we've had our little guy at home for a little over 2 weeks. Throughout most of the day he sleeps...well, like a baby! He also lets us sleep for almost 2 and 3 hours at a stretch! You can see from the pic that he's a real cutie pie, and we're all settling into the routine of being a new family!