A Weekend By Ourselves

I'm talking about last weekend actually. This week was so crazy/busy, I never got a chance to post this until now...

Last weekend J took off for San Francisco, leaving me home alone with Squeakles. Any other weekend and I would have looked forward to it completely, with visions of taking Squeakles to the playground and lazing around with him during naps. But this weekend I had a lot of work to do (which is why I didn't plan to go to SF with J) and I worried about how I would manage to do it and take care of Squeakles at the same time. So I arranged for a babysitter to come over on Saturday and figured I could also sacrifice some sleep at night. Well, Squeakles one-upped me. I don't know if he was sick or teething or both, but he pretty much abandoned his naps over the weekend, couldn't go to sleep at night, and woke up every hour when he did finally go to sleep.

Still, he was otherwise the charmer he usually is and although I didn't get as much work done as I wanted (needed to), I did enjoy my weekend with him. Here are some of the pictures I sent to J from my iPhone throughout the weekend.

First, here is Squeakles asleep in his own bed!! I have been meaning to write about this, but just haven't had time. Previously he was sleeping in bed with us, but then J worried that he might roll over on him so he moved to the couch. Squeakles and I slept much better with more space in the bed, but it wasn't exactly a solution to have J sleeping on the couch. Thing is that Squeakles often wakes several times throughout the night and if I'm right there, a quick touch or replacing his pacifier or (re)turning him onto his side can help him go right back to sleep. But if he's by himself in the crib he wakes up much more quickly and is so much harder to settle. I didn't want J sleeping on the couch, but at the same time, we weren't getting up several times a night and that was amazing. So we decided to try a possible sleep solution that would be something halfway between our bed and the crib - we put the crib mattress on the floor next to our bed. It has worked out wonderfully. We've only been doing it about a week but he goes to sleep there without much trouble and stays there all night. I only have to roll over on my side and I can shush him, put a hand on him, replace his pacifier, or even turn him over onto his side. And then I can roll back over and sleep comfortably on my back or snuggle with J! Perfect.

Now for the caveat, which is that Squeakles' sleeping was not so perfect over the weekend. On Friday night, our first night home alone without J, Squeakles slept wonderfully, only waking up once during the night. But the next two nights he slept horribly, both at night and for naps. On Sunday night it took me three hours to get him to sleep and ended with me on the phone crying to J out of frustration. Or rather, just minutes after I finally broke down, this is how it ended.

You win little boy. You win.

In spite of not sleeping well at night, Squeakles woke up in a fantastic mood. This is Saturday morning.

But when nap time rolled around, Squeakles knew what I was up to and made a break for it.

I caught him and hoped he would chill out in the exersaucer for a bit. Clearly not.

Because something was clearly up with him, I took him into bed with me on Saturday and Sunday nights. He woke up several times, but since he was next to me, he was easier to soothe and so we both got more sleep. On Monday morning I emailed our doctor because I was concerned that maybe Squeakles was sick - perhaps an ear infection? She said she didn't think so and that it was more likely to be teething, but that I could try Tylenol as a way of making him feel better and that I should bring him in the next day if things weren't better. Well, all it took was one dose of Tylenol on Monday afternoon (from the babysitter) to get him down for a restorative nap and ever since then he's been back to normal and sleeping on his own mattress at night.

Doesn't he look recovered? (And also, in that shirt, about a year older?!)

Now that he has recently discovered that he can crawl out of the living room, he has been exploring other parts of the apartment. This weekend he discovered the magnets on the refrigerator and now spends hours pulling them off and then sticking them back on. I think it's time to get some alphabet magnets for him.

And finally, one last picture of our little model. (Strike a pose babe.)

J came home on Wednesday morning after a red-eye flight from San Francisco, I slept in (like a whole extra hour) and then rushed into the office to give the presentation that was not at all in the state I wanted it to be in. By afternoon I was just beat, so I came home and crawled into bed with Squeakles and we took a three hour nap together. Since then I've been sick (gee, wonder how that happened) and yesterday (my birthday) I was really not feeling well at all. :(

But I've slept and slept and sucked on Ricola throat drops and self-medicated with hot and sour soup and now today I am feeling pretty close to recovered. Good thing because I have less than a week to finish this presentation and head out to Denver for a conference.

Unfortunately, now J says his throat is feeling sore...