Norwegian Star Hat

As a general rule, I don't like to make any knitting project twice. That would be boring, and besides, there are so many patterns out there that I want to make, I don't have time to waste going back and doing something I've already done. But I'm going to make an exception in this case. I made Owen this Norwegian Star pattern hat for the winter:




While I was making it, Andy said "when are you going to make me a hat?" and I told him that I would make one that matches this one. Because as you may know I have a weakness for anything that involves dressing Andy and Owen alike. And then I realized that in a scant 10 weeks I am going to have THREE boys to torture and embarrass by insisting they dress alike. So there's pretty much no option: if Andy's getting a Norwegian Star Hat, then so is the new baby. So stay tuned. Because those pictures are going to be awesome.

Big Boy Bed, Part 2: Night 1

well. I'm as surprised as anyone - more surprised, actually, I assure you - that the reprot on the debut of the big boy bed is not that bad. Overall, weighted to the positive, even. I expected a disaster, and we actually ended up with a moderate degree of success. Not that I got any sleep - I was awake all night, anxiously anticipating the *THUMP* and subsequent screams that never materialized. I was so worked up about it I ended up getting up and making a cup of tea at 2:40, hoping that would work. But until a little after 4, I heard....nothing.

Now, we did stack the deck - we basically skipped his nap yesterday and then kept him up an hour and 15 minutes later than normal to the point where he was trying to put himself to bed on the living room rug, handing me back toys and saying "night night. night night". I figured this would make the boundaries of the cage-free sleeping arrangements less tempting to test, and to a degree it seems to have worked. He did wake up crying at around 11, but I went in and rubbed his back for awhile and was able to get him back sleeping and successfully sneak out.

at about 10 past 4, he woke up crying. I found him sitting up in bed, crying to be picked up. He clearly didn't associate that he could just get out, and I wasn't about to illustrate it for him. I got into bed with him, and he tried and failed to go back to sleep. He closed his eyes, but he embarked on the famous routine where he flails around, keeps checking to make sure I'm there, insists on wrapping his hands in my hair, and kicks like a donkey. He kept this up until 5:15, when he fell back asleep again. When I finally managed to nod back off, he was up for the day. Luckily, Andy was kind enough to let me return to my bed and sleep in until 9:45.

Overall, the score: Owen stayed in the new bed all night. He woke up MUCH later than he normally does (with the exception of 11:30, but I'm willing to discount that since I was still up, and he went back to sleep). He still ended up sleeping with a parent - not ideal, but at least not in our bed. He still has this weird, restless, half awake half asleep state that results in screaming if you leave him alone but prevents you from sleeping and also results in severe battery if you stay, which is bad. But on the bright side, I only had to endure it for about an hour rather than 2 or three which is what happens most night.

We still have a long way to go - I have no idea what naptime will bring. He's notoriously more resistant to naps then to bedtime, and might take that opportunity to just climb out. Also, as we have learned many, many times in this great parenting experiement, nothing is generalizable from one experience. We'll see how it's going in a week.

And ultimately, it can still be classified as an overall fail because I still ended up in the bed with him - not sleeping. But I really think it's a much milder fail than oh, say, the past year and a half. I call this making progress.

Owen gets a big boy bed

Owen helping Daddy put the bed together:



We thought long and hard about what to do about the crib situation. We have one crib, two bedrooms, and 1 and 1/2 children under the age of two. Not bad numbers, but as you can see they don't exactly add up. We had lots of options. 1) do nothing. keep owen in his crib, put baby #2 in the cosleeper until 6 months, and deal with it then. 2) buy/borrow/steal a second crib; put it in Owen's room. 3) make the leap to a bed, toddler or twin.

I got lots of opinions on what we should do, mostly from people who've dealt with the 2 under 2 situation recently. And ultimately, we decided to go straight to the twin bed. There were compelling arguments for the others, but the deciding factors were these:

-unlike most 20 month olds, Owen still does not and has never slept through the night consistently. He does still end up in our bed every morning. We've tried so many things to break this pattern with no luck, so, baby steps here. First thing: No more coming into mom's bed. Mom might very well have to come into Owen's bed, but the pattern where he gets himself into our bed stops tonight. Bonus: small possibility that after mom comes in and lies down in new big boy bed, she can sneak back out once Owen is back to sleep. We'll see if this works. So, a toddler bed wasn't going to work for this.

-I feel like major transitions are best tackled separately. So, either we do something now or not till way after baby 2 gets here. I'd rather do it now to avoid taking Owen out of the crib one morning and putting the baby in it that night. Better to have him done with the crib before the little interloper even shows up.

- 2 cribs seems excessive. Plenty of kids transition to a bed between 18-22 months, we don't need another crib, especially since we probably won't have any more babies. It feels like a waste.

So, we'll see. We shall see. Tonight is the maiden voyage. Wish us luck.



Le bed du big boi:

Good news: I'm not crazy.

For about the last two weeks, I've been feeling a little anxious about driving places. Recently, each time I've been in the car, I've been hearing...something. Something that sounds like a voice, but I can't tell what it's saying. It's a muffled, low sound that for all the world sounds like a man's voice. This sound is not loud, and a lot of times it's drowned out by the sound of general traffic, the radio or Owen chattering away, but at other times, particularly at night when it's quieter out, it's undeniably there. The first time I heard it, I was listening to NPR and using my GPS, so I thought it was a malfunction on the radio. I thought that there was some muffled recording error on the talk show I was listening to, and forgot all about it...until I heard it again on my way home. That's odd, I thought. They usually are pretty good about picking up and correcting technicial errors on air. Then, I promptly forgot about it again.

Then next time I heard it, I was listening to a CD, but using the GPS. This time, I figured it must be the GPS doing something weird, like repeating directions sotto voix or some other malfucntion. But what was it saying? To find out, I held the GPS up to my ear while driving to try and figure out what it was doing. Here's a tip: Don't do this. I was listening so intently that when the woman who normally barks directions at me spoke up to tell me to turn left, it was directly in my ear and scared me half to death. I almost caused a 10 car pileup.

After repeated experiments with and without the GPS, I realized it was happening even in it's absense. I looked all over the dash to see if something was wrong with the radio. I started driving around with the radio turned unescessarily loud. And I started wondering if maybe I was even hearing the voice at all. My job isn't excessively clinical, but heck, I am a licsensed and practicing mental health professional. If there's one thing I absorbed from two years of dozing through grad school it's that hearing voices is Not Good. With a capital N and a capital G.

So it got to the point where I was approaching the car pretty warily. I even skimmed parts of my grad school DSM-IV just to see if it said anything about a location-specific auditory hallucination (it did not).

Until today. I left work a little early, and on my way home I took route 9 instead of the Jamaicaway like I normally do because I wanted to swing by Barnes and Noble for a few minutes. As those of you who are local can attest, route 9 at 4 on a Friday is a nightmare, and it ended up that I had to stop short behind a truck that decided to make a break across the lanes from the Chestnut Hill Mall driveway. The car lurched forward a bit and all of a sudden, in an extremely clear, deep male voice, I heard:

RECTANGLE.

Rectangle?

For a second I was confused. My auditory hallucination was....a man saying "rectangle"? bizzare.

I pulled into the Barnes and noble parking lot, and the mystery was revealed. Tuesday before last, I had to bring Owen into my office for a little bit for a short meeting I couldn't miss. I brought along some toys for him to play with, which I took back out of the car when we got home except for a shape naming puzzle which apparently got stuck under the backseat. When I stopped short, it dislodged and was out in the open, so I could listen to it malfunction all the way home.

rectangle!
rectangle!
rectangle!

 

Anyone know a toddler with a really small head?

I made the toddler aran sweater from Tina Barrett's Natural Knits for Babies and Toddlers. I'm posting it because despite the fact that the pattern was written poorly, and despite the fact that it took me forever to troubleshoot the mistakes and make the body and sleeves come out correctly, I stuck with it because I really liked the pattern. Now I'm finally finished, and the neck is so small there is no way this sweater is going over the head of any child over the age of 6 months. So annoying! So, if you got here because you googled the designer name and the pattern, my advice is to skip it. There are plenty of adorable toddler cable knits out there, and this one is more trouble than it's worth. I'm supremely annoyed that I spent almost 3 weeks making this, and there's no way Owen can wear it. If you have any use for this, let me know. it's yours.

now I need to find another pattern - and buy more yarn - for Owen to wear at the holidays. knitters, any suggestions?





Edit to add: the color is really off in these photos. The sweater is actually not that putrid yellow. It's more of a cream. Dunno what happened with the camera.

Dr. Y solves all your problems.

I've posted about it before, and I'll say it again: I love, love love Owen's pediatrician, Dr. Y. I also consider the good doctor to be the final word bar none on any baby health and wellness related issue. Sometimes, I'll admit it, I make appointments with Dr. Y just to talk about my baby. Oh, I give him a snuffle and a cough just to get it by the sniff test of the triage nurses on the phone, but Dr. Y usually knows as well as I do why I'm there. And he never minds indulging me, so after he's cleared Owen of his imaginary ear infection he says, "so what's going on with Owen?"

What is going on with Owen is that he doesn't sleep. He will not sleep through the night in his crib. I've posted about this extensively and I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing about it, but it is significantly negatively impacting our quality of life. I don't mind working, keeping up with a toddler and generally trying to keep my arms around life, but I do mind doing it when I can count the number of times on one hand in the last 19 1/2 months that I've slept through the night. Some nights are ok (one major wakeup), some nights are horrible (three or more). On balance, I'd say we're weighted toward the horrible.

So this is how I ended up in Dr. Y's office blubbering about Owen's sleep problems today. (Definitely not the first time I've blubbered in there. There was the infamous "my baby nurses every 40 minutes and I think I'm going to die" episode at 3 months. yikes.) And Dr. Y looked very seriously at Owen and said, "Owen, my beautiful boy, why you are not sleeping?" and then he asked me, "when he wakes up, what does he want? To eat? To drink?" I said, "no, he wants to be cuddled. He wants to come into bed with me." And this is true. Most of the time, I fight with Owen (unsuccessfully) to stay in his own crib for a couple hours before I eventually give up and let him come into bed with me, after which he is usually quiet until the morning. Not necessarily not bothering me, but quiet. (and yes, we've tried the hard line approach of just not. letting. him. in. bed. It doesn't work. He cries till morning on and off, and we get zero sleep for weeks until we give in and let him back in bed again). I told Dr. Y all this and more. It's been a long battle with the sleep.

Dr. Y said, "Jenny, I love this country, but there is one thing I do not understand. Why do Americans think their babies should sleep away from mama and daddy? Of course he wants to come sleep with you. You have a smart baby. He knows it is nicer to sleep with Mama. In my country we sleep with babies and we are not a country of psychopaths."

"well, ok, Dr. Y". I said. "It's not so much that I have an aversion to cosleeping. We've been doing it more or less since Owen was born, after all. And if everyone was happily sleeping, we'd keep doing it. the problem, though, is that after we bring him into bed, HE'S happy. But we are still up because he flops around like a flounder on the dock, kicks, squirms, wakes up every couple hours to find a better way to position himself and generally takes up approximately 3/4 of our queen size bed by 5am. So Andy and I are hugging the edges of the bed for dear life while he's snoring spread eagle in the middle. We really, really, REALLY need a way for everyone to get sleep, not just Owen."

Dr Y seemed, finally, to understand what I was saying. "Ah!" he said. "I got it. I know what you need to do."

Finally! I thought to myself. This is what I've been waiting for! I should have come and cried to Dr. Y sooner. He ALWAYS knows what to do.

"Jenny," Dr Y said, "what you need is a bigger bed."