Lynsey's 2 and a half, Adam's 4 months . . . where is time going!

I can't believe it's May already - the last 4 months seems like just a blur in a lot of ways! We decided last Wednesday to give Adam some rice cereal. We had planned all along to give him cereal at 4 months, so this was just a few days earlier than planned. I had really high hopes that cereal would solve all our night problems, and it really has helped. Things aren't perfect yet, but on Friday night, he slept through the night for the first time! YAY! He went to bed at 9 and didn't wake up again until 6:40 - what a relief to know that he could sleep through the night under the right conditions! He hasn't repeated that performance, but the last few nights he has slept at least 7.5 hours in a row, and before cereal, 7 hours in a row was his best night and that only happened once. Last night was a bit discouraging because he was hungry again at 4:30 (his last night feeding is between 8 and 8:30 so it was still almost 8 hours, but still . . . ) so I'm debating giving him cereal in the morning as well. I really would rather not do that yet because that's just one more thing in his schedule to work around, but we'll see how this week goes. In any case, the improved sleep has been excellent for everyone!

Adam started grabbing one of the hanging toys in his gym yesterday! He's still not very interested in toys or jumping in the jolly jumper, but I can see a steady improvement. He shows no sign of rolling over, but he is very strong, has been from the beginning. It will be interesting to see how quickly things will progress once he becomes more interested in moving around. We took him swimming this morning! He really liked it! He didn't flail around like Lynsey did the first time I took her, but I could tell he liked it. He is also a bit younger than Lynsey was, to be fair.

Lynsey is now 2 and a half, and we have officially been potty training her for 2 months now. Every time I think we're out of the woods, she regresses a bit, causing a bit of discouragement. I never in a million years would have thought it would take her this long to catch on - how can she not JUST GET IT ALREADY! We are 99% sure she is peeing in her pullup after she wakes up in the morning, which is a bit discouraging, but not my biggest issue right now. She still just doesn't seem to recognize the need to pee until it is almost too late, so if we don't take her regularly, she is still quite likely to have accidents. Some days she pees voluntarily whenever she feels like it, but some days we have to force her to go after 4 hours. Oh, the joys of parenting a toddler! I am surprisingly becoming less stressed about it as time goes on, which I think is a step in the right direction - the last thing she needs is to see how much it bothers me that she still doesn't have this thing nailed. I have just released it to God at this point - I was doing a terrible job of handling it, so He can take it from here:).