Change is in the air!

Well, it's happened - our little girl is officially in school! She did great, I did great (a little sentimental, but no tears:)) and we are officially on a school schedule! Labour Day weekend was fun for all of us - Brian and Lynsey had a great time camping (even slept in the tent every night despite some cold temperatures!) and I had a great weekend with my boys:). It was indeed a quiet weekend like I predicted, and I realized how much work my little girl must be! I always thought she was my easiest child, and in some ways she is, but she definitely requires a lot of me still because I felt like I had it fairly easy this weekend with my two youngest:).

Nathan has been doing so well - he's just a happy baby! We are in a bit of a transition sleep-wise right now as it seems we need to start cutting out his third nap, but he sleeps great at night (had his first 12 hour uninterrupted stretch a few nights ago!) and does pretty well at nap time most days. He seems very interested in what we're eating and I think we will be transitioning him to table food sooner rather than later (had some potatoes the other day and I gave him a bit of meat sauce today - definitely seems ready for some new flavours and textures!). On Saturday, I was at a day retreat for youth leaders, and Brian witnessed him getting up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth a few times. We think that crawling might not be terribly far away at this point! He has also started saying "da-da" in his babbles (and no, he is not referring to Brian!) so his development is coming right along:).

I have not written about this on the blog yet, but I feel like it's time to talk a bit about our journey with Adam. We have been on the list for an assessment with the Early Childhood Development Team since last September. It's been well documented that we have many struggles with communicating with him and handling his tantrums etc., and the more time passes, we feel like we could use some help in these areas. We're not sure if he's on the Autism spectrum, but definitely feel there may be some delays that we could use some help addressing. Anyway, we had our first in-home assessment this morning with a speech therapist and an occupational therapist. It went pretty well - I felt like he behaved very much like he always does, giving them a good idea of what we're dealing with as far as his strengths and weaknesses go. This is just the beginning of the process, so on Wednesday, we are bringing him to the Children's Hospital where he will play in this play area with other kids so they can observe him in a social setting. I feel like help has finally arrived, and that is a big relief! I'm a bit unclear as to how everything will work out if he does end up with a diagnosis, but I'm just concentrating on the next step right now, and when that's done, the step after that. It's definitely a bit of a bureaucracy which I can imagine could get quite frustrating to deal with! Fill this out for THIS type of funding, oh and if you want THIS kind of help, fill THIS out, blah blah - we just want the RIGHT help for Adam! What do we fill out for that?? Anyway, I'm confident that we're on the right track with him now and we WILL get some help, and that is what really matters!

Six months have come and gone!

My baby is six months old! To celebrate, he decided to cut two teeth last weekend:). His first one (the bottom right) came through Friday morning, and the bottom left finally cut on Sunday night. He wasn't actually that cranky, just a lot of diarrhea (sorry - too much information I know), which unfortunately woke him up early from almost all of this naps. We practiced sitting a bit with him this weekend, and he's actually a lot better than I thought. He was able to stay upright for quite a while - getting stronger! Since the weekend, he has been sleeping really well - several nights in the last week he hasn't woken up during the night (some 6:30 mornings due to aforementioned teething symptom, but no night wakes!) so I'm crossing my fingers! Could this be the start of something consistently beautiful??

Lynsey starts Kindergarten on Tuesday! I'm so excited for her:). We've been doing some back to school shopping together, which has been fun. We even managed to get some stuff that wasn't pink! My girl's tastes are evolving somewhat! She's going camping with Brian this weekend, so hopefully that goes well. They had a lot of fun last year. It will just be me and my boys this weekend! Not sure what we'll do, but it will be a quiet weekend, that's for sure:).

Adventures in teething, and a wonderful night out!

And I've blinked and summer is basically over - crazy! This summer has not been like summers past for us. I have not gotten out nearly as much as I usually do. I have definitely found the third kid to be the back breaker where getting out is concerned. Getting that third child ready to go out is apparently just too much for me. The kids have been great about it. They seem to like playing in the house or just outside the house just fine. All this being hermits is about to change - come September, we will be out every single day, twice a day bringing Lynsey to Kindergarten and picking her up. I'm excited for her, but scared for me - what a hassle! I'm hoping I'll be able to adjust Nathan's schedule so he sleeps right between pick up and drop off, but we'll see how successful that will be (start time is 12:09 and end time is 3:10).

Another exciting thing I did over the last few weeks is register Lynsey in Gymnastics! I hope she likes it! We decided not to do dance this year and let her do something different to see if she likes something else just as much or more than dance. I am not willing to do more than one thing, and she seemed fine with no dance this year.

Nathan stopped nursing last week. He was down to two nursings and two bottles a day, when he all of a sudden just refused to nurse. I guess he was finding the bottle much more convenient! I'm okay with it, as I was kind of aiming to be done by 6 months, but it was a bit sooner and a bit more sudden than I had hoped. It's okay - I'm just pumping a bit here and there and it's all working out fine! It's nice to have him solidly on a four bottle a day schedule - feeding at night is no longer an issue for the most part. He has not had a repeat of his 11 hour straight night unfortunately, but he's generally only waking up once, maybe twice at night now. He's had a few 6:30 wake-ups, but I think that's just him still adjusting to no more night feedings. We just keep him in his crib until at least 7, and I try my best not to feed him until 7:30. Today he didn't wake up until 7:30 so I think he's getting it. I remember this with Adam - he was waking up early for quite a while still once he was on the 4 bottle schedule. It just eventually got later and later until he was on a 12 hour night, so I know Nathan will get there, too!

One more piece of news on little Nathan - those bottom two teeth are as good as through! I give it a few more days before they are completely out (teething is such a process!). He's been a bit finicky, not extremely fussy, but you can tell it's bothering him. Baby Orajel seems to help.

Brian's parents came over on Friday night to watch the kids so we could have a date night. It was wonderful! We were quite the multi-taskers with our night out - first went for haircuts (so nice without the kids there!), then picked up my race package (I'll explain later), then went for dinner at The Keg, then watched The Dark Knight Rises! It was a really nice night. I needed a break really badly. They stayed until Saturday and took the kids to the park in the morning as well which was really nice - they got some more Grandma/Grandpa time, and Brian and I got some time to do a few things around the house (I made babyfood - almost time to get Nathan on more than just cereal!).

I ran a 10k night race on Saturday! I had hoped my time would be a bit better, but I ended up doing it in 59:06 (my watch had the distance at 9.89k, so a full 10k would have been about 59:30 give or take). It's about the same as my time last year in this race, which is a bit disappointing - I had hoped to improve. I realize that yes, I did have a baby in-between, but I've been working so hard, running 3 times a week faithfully in a very hilly area! It's okay, though - gives me something to work towards:).

Last but not least, I have to mention that I have joined the land of the living and gotten a smart phone (Galaxy Nexus in case anyone cares:))! I love it so far! I just really don't want to be one of those people that is always on my phone, so I need to watch that. I think the novelty will wear off quickly, but I can see how it could become a bit of an obsession. Mark my words, that will not be me!

First night sleeping through!!

I have waited almost 5 and a half months to make this announcement:

Nathan slept from 7:45pm until 6:45pm with no waking in-between - our first 11 hour night!

I knew this day would be here soon, and we've had several nights that have been close, but we keep having to go to him at least once at night just to give him his soother and/or roll him over. Finally, he has managed to sleep all the way through! Of course 12 hours is the goal, and I think he'll get there, but this is definitely encouraging. It was a timely sleep-through, because he didn't nap well yesterday, and I ended up letting him cry a bit in the afternoon which didn't go well - it looks like he will be a bit like Adam was. Adam used to work himself into a complete frenzy when we attempted to let him cry it out. Clearly we'll have to use a modified form of cry-it-out with Nathan like we did with Adam, but I'm just happy to see that he is capable to sorting himself out at night now. He's getting so strong when he's on his stomach, doing full push-ups now. He is becoming quite the jumper in his jolly jumper and is finally showing some interest in toys! He actually grabs them and sucks on them now sometimes. He also seems to like pushing buttons in his exersaucer that make music. Whether he loves music as much as Adam did/does remains to be seen!

Another first for Nathan - we took him swimming on his 5 month birthday! He loved the water and was very chilled out the whole time:). The other kids had a lot of fun, too, although Adam didn't last as long as the others unfortunately. Oh, well - it was still worth doing!

Adam has had a rough few weeks. He's been having a lot of trouble going to sleep at night and is screaming a lot during the day again:(. Very frustrating. I can't express how much harder he makes my day when he is like this. The last few nights he's been a bit more agreeable at bedtime, so we are hopeful that he will get through this phase. Again I will say that I hate to wish away a phase of my kids' growing up, but this two year old madness . . . really getting tired of it!