Solids & Sleep

At the beginning of December we started Josh on solids. He was pretty unimpressed. First we tried breastmilk mixed with baby rice... not a hit. Then it was apples.... not a hit. Then it was Watties fruit salad which he liked and would eat... but not alot and generally with quite a bit of cajoling. Next was pears which he liked too. For awhile he just ate pears and fruit salad while I tried to just get him used to the fact that he needed to eat. I started to introduce other foods too and it has taken ages but he now is pretty good at eating and really good at drinking water out of his sippy cup. What really helped was Reesey came over the other day and was sitting up eating like a pro and I was telling Laura how Josh was so not into solids and said "Here, I'll even give you demo just so you can see for yourself cos it's quite funny too" so off I went to get the rest of the potato pumpkin and beef that Josh had (not...) had for lunch to do the demo, sat him up by Reese so he could see Reese eating and thought surely he won't eat any, especially since we'd just had a go at lunch time not long ago but what do you know? He gobbled the whole lot up! Yep, Laura probably thought I was lying, or at the very least exaggerating! Ha! Anyway... it's all good and since then he has been much better. Here is a little video of Josh and his Daddy at dinner time tonight. My favourite thing is the gummy/sniffy little laughing he does too and I'm glad we got in on video in this little clip.

A couple of weeks after we introduced solids we also decided that getting Josh to sleep at night needed to be addressed as we'd (I'd...) gotten into a bad habit of cuddling Josh in the evenings until he fell asleep, which was ok at first (yeah.. yeah.. I'm a sooky mummy and should never have done it in the first place but I loved it and who knows whether I'll get to have another bubba or not so I'm enjoying every minute I can!) as it was pretty quick and then he was off out for the night (or until his next feed at least) but just before Christmas it started to get ridiculous and a couple of times he was up until like 10pm because he'd just gotten too alert and then overtired etc. And we knew this couldn't continue. He'd never been a really early evening to bed baby but 10pm was getting too late. Anyway after 3 HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE evenings of screaming and me going in intermittently to cuddle/settle him he finally got it and started to cry less and less until finally he went to sleep happily around 7 - 7.30pm without even a cry at all... for a few days... now we are back to big crying again most nights. And I hate it! So does Mike. And what's even worse is that since he started this "self settling" in the evenings, with the exception of the 1st night of the 3 HORRIBLE nights, when he slept soundly from 9pm-ish (after huge crying must have worn him out) until 5am, he has begun to sleep very lightly all evening and wakes at nearly any slightly loud or sudden sound (ie. dishes being done, shower turning on, a bit of cutlery dropping, a creaky floorboard etc) we make until we go to bed or even sometimes wakes even if there is no noise and often goes through the whole crying thing again! Argh! And even worse than that - he is waking so often through the night all night every night that I'm half considering going back to the old way of cuddling him off to sleep to see if he stops all this wakefulness! I even took him to the doctor the other day to make sure he is ok and not allergic to any food or something, but he's fine. And to be honest I don't really think that is the problem at all, I'm guessing it must be teething because he has no teeth yet and is 7.5 months old so they must be pushing their way up surely! We're going to get an amber teething necklace for him and see if that helps. Anyway I'm tired and any of you who feel inclined to pray for me please do! I'm just holding on the the hope that this sleeping part is "just a phase" and will soon be over! But also we wouldn't trade him for the world even with this annoying sleeping bit at the moment because he is such a wonderful, funny and happy little boy and we totally just love him to bits!