Hellobee

Olive turned 13 months old this month! It’s been really tough the past two months because Olive was sick nonstop with colds, 2 ear infections, and a respiratory virus. But she’s finally better, we re-sleep trained this week, and we’re all happier. Here’s what’s been going on in her little baby life!

Olive loves crawling through the leaves at our local playground.

Sleep Training

Olive’s sleep was really bad while she was sick. She was so congested, feverish, coughing, etc. that she was waking up 5+ times a night. Even after she was better, she was in the habit of waking up, so I decided to night train her for the first time this week because I was one tired mama!

On Monday night I nursed Olive and put her in her crib awake. She started crying as soon as I put her in her crib. I left the room and came back after 5 minutes and sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to her, which is her sleep cue for naps. She stopped crying while I was in the room, but immediately started crying again after I left. She cried for another 10 minutes and then just passed out. She woke up at 11:45pm and 3:45am and I nursed her both times. She protested being put in the crib awake for a couple of seconds at the 3:45am wakeup, but quickly fell asleep. She slept the rest of the night and I woke her up for the day at 8:30am.

On Tuesday night, she cried 4 minutes and fell asleep. She woke up at 12:45am. When I nursed her and put her back in her crib awake, she cried for less than a minute. She woke up at 6:30am, I nursed her, and she fell back asleep until 8am when I woke her up for the day.

On Wednesday night, she cried for 1 minute and quickly fell asleep. She woke up at 12:45am and 3:45am and I nursed her both times. She cried for a couple of seconds when I put her in her crib at 12:45am, but quickly passed out. I woke her up for the day at 8:20am.

If I’d known that night training was going to be this easy, I would have done it ages ago! I put it off for many reasons, but mainly because I didn’t want to wake up Charlie or our upstairs neighbor. My goal was to get down to two night wakings because Olive has barely been eating solids the past month, so I was afraid she was hungry. She finally started to eat better the past couple of days, so I’ll eventually let her cry out her first waking. I think that one will be easy, but the 4am wake up will probably be a little harder since it’s the last one, and that’s the time of night when babies have a strong shift in their sleep cycle (which is why many babies wake up around 4am). At 13 months she really should be sleeping through the night, but I don’t think she will on her own unless I sleep train or night wean or both.

Olive the strawberry and Charlie the astronaut on Halloween. The cutest headband came with the strawberry costume, but she didn’t want to wear it. You can see it on Charlie in a picture below!

Nap Training 

Naps remained great while Olive was sick except over Thanksgiving week, when I had to rock/nurse her to sleep. Olive was the easiest baby ever to nap train and has taken excellent naps since we first nap trained at 8 months. My plan was to re-nap train her first then tackle nights since she’d been nap trained before, but I started night training and then did naps the following day. Olive cried for 5 minutes before her first nap, and was back on track pretty quickly. One thing I realized was that she has to take her second nap before 4 o’ clock, or she has trouble falling asleep for some reason.

Olive can have a very stubborn personality, so it’s been shocking how easy she has been to sleep train. Try letting your little one cry for a couple of minutes if you’re battling bedtimes and naps — they just may surprise you!

Schedule

Since Olive was waking up so much at night, I’d been letting her sleep in and wake up at 8:30. She’ll sleep in as late as 9:30 if we let her. This has been her schedule lately:

8:30am – Wake up
11:00am – 12:30am Nap 1 (1 1/2 hour)
3:30pm – 4:30pm Nap 2 (1 hour)
7:30pm – Bedtime
Total Sleep: 15 1/2 Hours

Olive has always been a late riser — thank goodness for that! She will also wake up later if we put her to bed later, while Charlie always woke up earlier when we put him to bed later so we were much more strict with his bedtimes. Olive is a lot more flexible and her bedtime varies between 6:30-9:00 depending on what we’re doing on weekends.

Breastfeeding

While Olive was sick, she became a nursing machine, not only for nutrition (she was barely eating any solids at all), but also for the comfort. She nursed so much that I experienced a boost in my supply! My pipe dream was to wean around 15 months, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I would be happy to continue breastfeeding beyond that if she were only nursing 1-2 times a day. But she still nurses 4 times a day, at her 1-2 night wakings, and would nurse even more often if I let her. I’m not sure how I’ll wean this nursing monster and I fear it’ll only get harder the older she gets!

Milestones

Olive is still behind on physical milestones — she belly crawled from 7-12 months, and only started real crawling at a year. She’s great at standing but only cruises a little bit, and shows no signs of being close to walking any time soon. On one hand she is much easier because she doesn’t walk — I don’t even really have to watch her when we’re home because she’s just happy to crawl around and doesn’t get into any mischief. On the other hand, I think we could take her to a lot more places if she were walking since she wouldn’t have to crawl around on the dirty ground. I think she’ll probably walk closer to 18 months because she’s very cautious — the opposite of Charlie — so she never takes risks and never falls.

Even though Olive has lagged behind Charlie in her physical milestones, she’s passed him in her talking milestones! At 13 1/2 months, Charlie could say three words: ball, mama and bubble. Olive has been saying 5 words consistently for the past 1-2 months: mama, dada, wow, uh oh, and bye bye. At first we weren’t sure if she was really using the words purposefully. But now that she uses her words more regularly and in the correct context, we know that she actually knows what she’s saying. Maybe she’ll be an early talker since she’s behind in her physical milestones! Olive babbles nonstop, and can have conversations with herself for 30 minutes straight. We always joke that she has her own secret language because she’s always talking, and it’s not monosyllabic baby babble either.

Olive’s favorite things to do this month are answer the phone, blow kisses, pop out from under a blanket and play peekaboo, and brush her hair. It’s funny that babies pick these things up because we never intentionally taught her any of this, and Charlie did these exact same things when he was a baby as well.

Our single most played with toy.

Personality

Olive has always had a stubborn streak and lets you know when she doesn’t like something like getting dressed, changing her diaper, etc. But for the most part, she is pretty mellow. At Thanksgiving dinner at our friends’ place, Olive played with toys, crawled around and entertained herself for 5 hours. We barely had to watch her. She just loves being around other kids, which makes me hopeful for the transition to daycare next year. We wanted to start her around 15 months, but she would be the only one there not walking. I wanted her to be walking so she’d be a little more independent. I’m just glad that Charlie will be there so the transition will be much easier for her. No matter what though, I think she will always be my baby, and I definitely coddle her more than I did Charlie.

Charlie 35 Months

Charlie wanted to try on Olive’s strawberry costume.

I can’t believe my little boy is turning 3 next month! He is usually such a smart, charming, affectionate, funny little boy, but lately he’s been much more defiant. I think we escaped the terrible two’s relatively unscathed, and I fear that the 3’s are going to be extra tough. I talked to Charlie’s daycare teachers who’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and they said the 3’s are much more difficult than the 2’s in their experience.

Charlie had one week recently where he was just so naughty all day, every single day. At first I thought that he was suffering from a sleep deficit. Even a couple of hours of missed sleep a week can result in behavioral problems. He had been fighting/skipping naps on weekends, and going to bed later in the evenings. So we got much more strict about his routine, but ultimately I think he was just having a super duper naughty week because he seems like he’s back to his normal happy self.

Sleep

Charlie’s sleep has been pretty bad the past month+. Though he naps wonderfully at daycare, he fights naps every single weekend. That’s resulted in him either taking stroller naps, or skipping naps altogether. I know he still needs a nap because he melts down if he doesn’t get one. Bedtime has also been a huge battle. He says he’s not tired every night and will turn on the light after we leave the room. I think his mind is so busy he just doesn’t want to sleep! There are a couple of things we’re going to try:

– put childproof light covers on the light switches so he can’t turn them on after we leave the room (he has a night light so he can still see)
– put a digital clock in his room and tell him that he can come out of his room when the clock reads a certain number. One of Charlie’s closest friends falls asleep watching the clock for the numbers to change.
– wake him up earlier to set his internal clock. Charlie has been waking up at 8:30am or later because he’s going to bed around 9:30, but we have to wake him up at 7:30am so that he’s tired enough to go to sleep by 8pm.

When you become a parent, you never know that sleep issues persist far beyond the newborn stage, and they’re actually harder to address when your child is older!

Food

Charlie has been having a rare week where he’s been eating so well at daycare. I pack huge lunches for him, and most of the time he finishes almost everything. He’s also been eating dinner well this week, but he has phases where he eats pretty well for one week, and then hardly eats for two weeks. Dinner still remains one of the most stressful times of day most of the time, and weekends are always tough when he eats all his meals at home. He hates trying new foods of any kind, so it’s been hard trying to introduce more Paleo foods into his diet. I don’t think Charlie will outgrow his pickiness for a very long time.

Potty Training

We’ve been following Dr. Tom’s plan (from The Ins and Outs of Poop) to treat Charlie’s constipation, and it’s been going really well. Charlie used to have painful stools almost every day and begged for a diaper every time he had to poop. Now Charlie is pooping in the potty almost 100% of the time and he’s no longer in pain! He still asks for a diaper, but we can usually pretty easily convince him to use the potty instead with the promise of a “poo poo video.” Poor Charlie really suffered for almost a year with painful constipation, which impeded his potty training. At least pee training was super easy for him. Now I wonder… when can kids do a great job of wiping themselves???

Talking

Charlie is such a chatterbox that’s always talking and asking “why” questions. Some things he’s said recently include:

“This little fire truck is a choking hazard.”

“What am I? An octopus? I only have two arms!” – after his daycare teacher asked him to  help clean up.

Charlie: Daddy you’re handsome.
Mr. Bee: Do you know what handsome means?
Charlie: It means when you shampoo your hair and it’s clean. Like handsome!

He also loves to make up stories about his friends, family, and characters in books. It’s amazing watching his imagination grow!

Milestones

Mrs. Cowgirl’s name song is INCREDIBLE. Charlie learned how to spell his name right away once we started singing his name song. Then he learned Olive’s name, my name, Mr. Bee’s name, and our nanny’s name. He doesn’t even need to sing the songs anymore to spell everyone’s name. We used to spell words in front of Charlie like T-O-Y if we didn’t want him to know what we were talking about, but now he asks us, “what are you spelling?” He also loves to point out letters everywhere we go. “There’s C for Charlie! O for Olive! B for Bee!” It’s truly incredible and makes us super excited about teaching him how to read. Thanks Mrs. Cowgirl for teaching us about the name song!

Charlie continues to be a voracious lover of books. He memorizes his favorite books from cover to cover starting with the title, author’s name, illustrator’s name, to all the text in the book. Other than reading, building with blocks, and playing with his kitchen, Charlie’s favorite thing lately is to put together puzzles. Puzzles are great for so many skills including fine motor, pattern recognition, etc. Charlie will sit quietly and put puzzles together by himself every morning. We definitely need to get more puzzles!

Charlie and Olive

Charlie and Olive get along so well. Sure Charlie gets mad at her from time to time when he doesn’t want to share certain toys, but he’s generally good about sharing. He regularly says things like, ” I love you Olive,” without us asking him to. He gives her hugs and kisses and loves to help me bathe her. He’s such a great big brother.

And of course Olive thinks that Charlie is the greatest thing since sliced bread!

 
Olive hasn’t had any new teeth since she got her first 8 around 7 months.

Favorites

Here are some of our favorite things this month!

Olive’s favorite toys: Melissa & Doug Cutting Food (she loves the velcro texture and pulling the pieces apart), trains and cars and anything on wheels (she pushes them around and makes vroom noises)
Charlie’s favorite toys: M & D blocks, Gruffalo 4 in 1 Puzzle, M & D Construction Puzzles (these are 4, 12 piece puzzles that are easy and build his confidence), M & D 48 piece Underwater Puzzle.
Charlie’s favorite books: Katy and the Big Snow, Should I Share My Ice Cream? and other Mo Willems’ books in the Elephant and Piggie series
My favorite purchases: snood from Zara (a scarf that will actually stay on toddlers), Innobaby Stainless Bus Platter (helps Charlie eat dinner better)

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Phew that was a monster of an update!

Now that Olive is sleeping better, we just have to get Charlie to go down without a fight at night. With two kids, one or both are always sick or not sleeping. It’s a zoo and it’s a circus, but we still feel so very lucky (most days).