Zeke's 4th Month - April 2012

so i am going to *try* to stay on top of this whole "record important things from Zeke's months" thing, but we'll see.  i'm not making any promises.  this month we started things on the same schedule that i shared from 12 weeks (7:30/11/2/5/8/10).

12 weeks -4/1/13
interesting thing happened in this 13th week of life (between 12 and 13 weeks)- Zeke started having trouble napping! noooooooooo :( my very good sleeper/napper all of a sudden started having trouble going down for naps and staying asleep. the return of the 45 minute intruder has struck! :( in Babywise, the 45 minute intruder is referred to as a baby waking 45 minutes into a nap or waking 45 minutes early from a nap. we have had both situations on our hands - specifically during his afternoon naps (the naps following the 11am and 2pm feeds). the advice i have read says that this is most likely due to coming in and out of sleep cycles and they just wake themself up but are unable to get back to sleep easily. one recommendation is to give them some time to settle before going in. this is what i have been doing. i'll give him between 5-10 minutes to settle, sometimes thats all it takes and he is back to sleep. if he doesn't settle on his own i will go in, pat his back, give him his paci, etc and try to settle him. then i will leave and see if he settles within a few minutes. sometimes going in helps, sometimes it makes him scream harder. if he is still not settled after about another 10 minutes i will go in and get him up, hold him and calm him. then i will put him back down to see if he will settle. if he is still unsettled after all this i get him up. Babywise says to treat these disruptions as a hunger issue first. so i have been feeding early if its not too far from a normal feeding. if it is way early i will just hold him and rock, most times this does the trick to get him to settle. it's frustrating and a little confusing not to understand what is going on in his little body but i know it won't last forever. and it doesn't seem to be messing with his morning nap, bedtime or night sleep. so i am SO thankful for that! he has still gone down for bedtime fine, right around 7:30/8pm and has eaten fine at his dreamfeed and then slept through the night from his dreamfeed till 7/7:30am. this too is what makes me think its a 45 minute intruder issue where he just needs to learn how to go back to sleep, and its not a hunger issue. but i will treat it as hunger first until i'm more sure of what's going on.

13 weeks old - 4/8/13
So right after this episode of having trouble with naps we hit a growth spurt! It's never ending fun this stage.... I tell you ;) it took me about 2 days to figure out that it was most likely a growth spurt and not napping issues that i initially suspected. here is how I settled on the fact that it was most likely a growth spurt.
He started waking early from pretty much every nap, even his morning nap which has never been an issue before now.
He woke in the night one night and wanted fed twice! This has not happened since those very early weeks.
He didn't poop for the entire week.
Plus, he is right about the age where growth spurts are pretty common - between 3 and 4 months.
This growth spurt definitely was not as bad as it could have been. He still slept for most of his naps, usually waking about 45 minutes to an hour early. And he only woke in the night one night. But I definitely did a dream feed every night, which I think helped to make sure he slept through the night. I considered starting to drop the dreamfeed early in the week but I will not be doing that until I'm sure he's past this growth spurt. It seems like he is coming out of it now (right at 14 weeks) and the timing seems to be right, it's been going on for a solid week. So we will see!
His napping seemed to be better this week. He didn't have as many episodes of crying when I put him down. So hopefully he's getting the hang of this sleeping thing :)
I'm hoping in the next week or two to start dropping the dreamfeed and then transitioning him to the crib in Malachi's room after that. So hopefully by 4 months we will have both of these milestones past us :)

14 weeks old - 4/15/13

Everything was pretty much normal this week.  The growth spurt seemed to pass pretty easily and we were back to napping and eating as normal -still on the schedule with a dreamfeed. But actually he has gone to more of a combination 3/3.5/4 hour schedule. This week he consistently slept longer for the first two naps of the day. So now his schedule is pretty much 7/11/3/5/730/1030. He is still only pooping once every several days, but doesn't seem to be bothered by it!

15 weeks old - 4/22/13

This week was the week Jeff's dad came to visit us. It was so nice and Zeke handled the different days and disruptions like a champ! 

Once Jeff's dad left we moved Zeke into the "boys room" for real. We had already been doing some naps in there but hadn't out him in at night yet. So I figured it was time once we had our last visitor for a while. 

The transition went really well and actually initiated our next big change that happened this week - we dropped the dreamfeed! I actually was planning to gradually phase it out but we did it more cold-turkey once all was said and done. First I pushed back his last feeding before the dreamfeed to like 930pm and we did this for several days. Then one day his schedule was such that his last feed was supposed to be at like 830pm and so I fed him and out him to bed but I was nervous that he wouldn't sleep till morning because it was too early, so I woke him up for a dreamfeed at 930 or 10. Well he ended up waking in the night that night! So I wondered if it was because the dreamfeed was becoming more of a sleep disruption than an aid. So the next night I didn't wake him and let him sleep from 830 on. He didn't wake! So it has become clear to me that once he is down for the night he likes to be left alone. :) ha!

So now our schedule is pretty much the same as the week prior just without the dreamfeed (7/11/3/530/830)

Malachi had such an awesome time with Papa. He is getting big enough to recognize people even if he hasn't seen them for a while. So as soon as Jeff's dad got here he knew exactly who he was! It was adorable.  All we heard for 3 days was Papa! Papa! He missed him terribly when he left! 

16 weeks old - 4/29/13

This week has been pretty mellow, Zeke continues to stretch out at night. I have out him to bed several nights at 730 or 8 and he has slept till 7 the next morning. I am loving the extra sleep! Eating and napping have been good this week. He has pooped a little more than the last few weeks. So that's great, maybe that trend will keep up!

He is growing like a weed! He is pretty much in all 6 month clothing now and as we look toward summer I think he's going to be in 6-9 and 12 month stuff over the summer. Which would be kinda great really, because Malachi was in 12 months last summer. So I could reuse some of his clothes! :) We'll see though how it all plays out. 

Malachi got his feet measured at stride rite and she said he was measuring right at an 8! I can't believe the size of this boys feet! He's in 2t and can even fit into some 3t as well! Getting so big!

I can't believe this sweet boy is going to be 4 old in just a few short days! Where have the weeks gone?! These first few months with Zeke have just flown by, in a way I don't remember with Malachi. I'm not sad though. I do like the infant stage but its not my favorite. I love when they start to get big and discover their world. I can't wait to see him play and interact with Malachi. I can't wait to see them together! I pray they are best friends! They are both such blessings and I am so thankful The Lord has entrusted them to me :)

Zekes baby dedication 

cloth diapers... 18 months later

so apparently i have been marked as some kind of cloth diaper expert or something (trust me - more of a surprise to me than anyone else! ha!).  a few friends have started to cloth diaper since i have and have all come to me for questions and advice.  this is partially what prompted my little series on cloth diapers i wrote up last year (actually, funny enough, right around this time last year as i realized when i went back to look at them) and that has been so helpful! when people come to me with questions i point them to those posts and then answer any questions they still have.  i really love it and i really love feeling like i have something to offer by way of advice and suggestions for newbies.  i know how helpful that was to me when i first started.  but recently i have been back in the trenches of figuring things out all over again for a new bum to diaper and thought it might also be helpful to hear how things might change after doing it a while.  so here are my thoughts on cloth diapering 18 months later.

i think the first thing to mention is the fact that things change! diapering is just like every other aspect of parenting, when you think you have everything figured out is when something changes and you have to go back to the drawing board again.  there were times when i felt like i had finally gotten a system down with my diapers and things were going smooth for a few months and then low and behold something new pops up and throws a wrench into my system.  just go with it! experiment, research, try something different, ask someone for help.  this is usually the times that people give up on cloth because they think its too hard.  but it doesn't have to be like that. it just means that you have to be flexible and try something new.  the same thing happens with disposables - sometimes you have to move up a size, or try a different brand, etc etc - you have to do something different to try and fix a problem. its not that big of a deal.  there are things i thought i would love that i ended up not loving and there are things i didnt think i would really care that much about that i now love!

and then, when you add another baby into the mix you're starting at square one again! i'm learning that really well right now.  Zeke is different from Chi - things that worked for Chi are not working for him. he is chunkier than Malachi was and so diapers fit him differently, and he seems to be a heavier wetter too.  i have had to experiment with different things the last several weeks to figure out what will work and not work for Zeke.

one thing that hasnt changed though is that i still love my pockets! i said it before and i'll say it again - they are my favorite! i have some prefolds and covers and they are great but when you have a wiggly one year old that will barely stay still for a diaper change the speed pockets allow is invaluable! i always have them stuffed and ready to go and so its really no harder at change time than a disposable diaper. 

one thing that i didn't expect, however, is my love for prefolds and covers for bedtime.  Malachi is a heavy wetter and so when we were having issues several months back with him leaking at bedtime (even with a hemp insert in his pocket diaper) i pulled out my trusty cotton prefolds and we havent had many leaks since. i even have to wrap the prefold around a hemp insert and put all that inside the cover - he wets that heavily! Zeke has been leaking at bedtime the last week as well - even through disposables! so i pulled out some smaller prefolds and covers and we are doing the same thing for him for bedtime too.  so far so good! :)

another surprise to me is how much i LOVE my diaper sprayer.  i wrote in my original posts that i thought it would be nice but not necessary.  well i have since changed my tune! i guess i could cloth diaper without it now if i absolutely needed to but i would not want to go back voluntarily.  i absolutely love my sprayer.  it has probably saved my diapers from staining like crazy and has helped me to beat the ammonia and rash issues i was having with Malachi last summer.  i highly recommend getting one if your baby is past the "exclusively breast fed" stage.  Solids can do crazy things to a baby's tummy and then do crazy things to your diapers ;)

i still love my Kawaii diapers, they still make up the majority of my stash, but i am also really loving BumGenius lately.  Especially since Zeke came along, they are trimmer and fit a smaller baby better in my opinion than my Kawaii's.  It's probably because almost all of my Kawaii's are snap and my BG's are velcro, i can get a much better fit with the velcro. This works well for Zeke right now because he is so young and I am trying to figure out what will work best for him. But i still highly recommend snaps for the longevity of your dipes and use with older babies. Malachi has now figured out if he pulls on the velcro it makes a really cool noise and the diaper comes off! yay for mommy! :-/ so needless to say, he is in snaps all the time! (and thankfully he hasn't figured out or isn't strong enough to pull the snaps off himself - so that's buying me a little more time)

i guess the thing i have learned the most over the last 18 months of cloth diapers is to be flexible, don't be afraid to try something new and think things through when you're having a problem.  you'd be surprised how much you can troubleshoot with what you already have in your stash and don't need to go out and buy every little thing out there. i've even heard of people using kitchen towels as extra absorbency boosters! i mean, talk about thinking outside the box!

18 months later and i still love it! i'm hopeful i can still say the same 2, 3, 4 years down the road :)

(but let me say my same disclaimer i said last year, i feel even more strongly about it now than i did then - there are times when i will use disposables without any guilt. and there are times when i think it is wise to not add to your plate with cloth diapers.  i know the benefit disposables serve at certain times and we always keep a pack on hand for things like church, all day outings, babysitters and sickness. they are a blessing at those times and i use them without shame.)