In the Pursuit of Sleep

This week's post is going to be dedicated to the ever relentless pursuit of quality sleep in the Z-household - which means of course dedication to getting our children to sleep through the night so that we're not so exhausted!! Aside from our own exhaustion, our focus on good sleep quality came from reading a book which has been our "sleep guide" - 'Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child' - which has been an amazing resource and one that we would highly recommend - although if you read it, beware that the book is split in two halves - the first half being more of the "research-y" type writing and the second half being comprised of chapters that are age-specific.

Since Kaleb's arrival to the Z-home, Zachary's sleeping habits have taken a turn for the worse. Recently, Zachary has started to wake up during the middle of the night crying his little eyes out - we haven't figured it out but we're beginning to suspect that they might be nightmares because once Amy stumbles over to his room in her sleep-walking state, he is easily consoled and then immediately goes back to sleep without any further ado. It is very strange and we're hoping that these don't increase in number. We have video monitors (dueling monitors - one for each boy) so although we sleep with a fan in our room, we can know when the boys are awake.

Not only have nightmares seemed to make an appearance, but he has been consistently waking up anywhere from 4:45A to 6:00A - WAY TOO EARLY. Karis finally stumbled upon a solution this last weekend (thanks to our Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child book) that if he puts Zachary to bed for a nap really early - about 12:45-1:00P - and then if we wake him up at 4P (yes, we're having to still wake the child up after a 3 hour nap!), that he'll sleep in! It has been luxurious to not have Zachary wake up until 7A for several days in a row - although we will admit that it's not foolproof as two days this week he did wake up early! Because he is still in a crib, he was in the habit of just screaming his head off when he wakes up - regardless of what time of day (or frankly night!) it was. So, with the 7A wake up time, this thankfully is after the adults are already up and about for the day. The next trick that we'll try if he starts to wake up early again is to get a night-light that turns on at a certain time in the morning and tell him that when the light comes on that he's allowed to get up because it's morning - otherwise it's still night-time. The internet is an amazing place of ideas - it seems that you can find suggestions on how to fix almost any problem!

Misc. picture of Zachary resting on poor Daddy after a wrestling match - Zachary seems to be the winner! :)

One thing that we did not count on with two kids is the conspiracy to never let the adults in the house have a good night's rest! It seems like the kids have a secret conference before going to bed and decide which one will take the first shift of waking up and crying and which one will take the last shift (aka crack of dawn!!!) to wake up and need attention. Amy is convinced that she may never have a good night's rest again! Both of them individually are very good sleepers for the most part, but together it's a mess!

Kaleb has become a very good sleeper, and typically is done by 8P and doesn't eat again until 6A - although last night his "wake-up call" came at 4:40A - just to be sure that we don't get too comfortable with assuming that he'll sleep in all of the time! However, we do have to swaddle Kaleb for each nap and during the night in order for him to sleep - we've tried to unswaddle him, but he doesn't sleep well. At this point, we're beginning to wonder if he'll go to Kindergarten still swaddled! :) Just teasing. He is quite the little Houdini though and manages to get out of the swaddler blankets - which has resulted in multiple purchases of different type of swaddle blankets (we are quite the experts on the different brands out there, so if you're ever in the market, give us a call!). We've finally seemed to settle on one that works (the Snug 'n' Tug) except that during the night he'll wake up and manage to get his arms out and then he's awake for sure.......so, Amy put all of her energy into coming up with a solution - and came up with a modified strait jacket! :) She put in two socks into the inside of the swaddle blanket, and at night (not for naps) we put Kaleb's arms into the socks into the swaddle blanket and then he sleeps the entire night through! All of this for the pursuit of a good night's sleep...... Anyway, it works like a charm and we've actually passed this tip on to other moms and it works for them too! :)

Getting ready to drift off to sleep at night....

Just about to be "released" from his strait jacket in the morning!

In other news, Kaleb began to roll over yesterday - from his stomach to his back (not yet the other way) so we're excited about his new achievement. Our kids take a while to do the physical achievements, so we're always ready to cheer them on .

Kaleb is becoming very steady sitting up

Phrase of the week (related to sleeping of course!) - "Mommy, no 'creamin' an' no cryin'!" - Zachary reminds me each night and each morning of the rule that he is not supposed to scream his head off when he wakes up.

Summer's End Celebration

Happy Labor Day! or Labour Day for our beloved Canadians! :) Luckily here in Florida (or not so lucky depending on how you look at it) summer NEVER ends - in fact, we only have two seasons here - hot and hotter!!!

Yesterday Zachary and his beloved Daddy went on an adventure to SeaWorld with fellow friends while Amy and Kaleb stayed behind - Kaleb didn't think that he'd enjoy it very much! :) Actually, Amy took Kaleb on a "show and tell" trip to her work (it was a holiday off of work for the office, but there were still a fair number of people there working) as most had never seen Kaleb before. He was an angel baby the entire time, and even fell asleep in his 'Aunt' Kelli's arms - she has the charm! He is getting so big that it is getting harder to hold him for long in your arms!

Zachary had a great time at SeaWorld - mostly because there is the new "Elmo" show. He has not been there since that show joined the SeaWorld productions and had no idea what he was waiting for. But, apparently when the characters came out, he was overcome with excitement and immediately began to scream their names, "Elmo!!!, Cookieeeeee, Abby!!!!!" . He then would look back at Karis and yell their names at Karis again to be sure that Daddy was in fact paying attention!

Hanging out in the climbing gym at Happy Land at SeaWorld

Kaleb has discovered his hands in a big way and loves to chew on them. He is becoming more verbal all of the time and now has earned the nickname "Bubble Boy" as he loves to blow bubbles with his mouth! Ah, the simple enjoyments of life!

Tummy Time

Our friends Jennifer and Bruce have welcomed their second son into the world - Evan Brady - what a cutie! It is the craziest thing that all of the friends that we hang out are having boys - in fact out of about 24 kids there are only 6 girls! I sure hope that elsewhere there are only girls being born because our boys are going to need wives someday!

Now that Florida has returned to being "sunny Florida" rather than "rainy Florida" the re-screening project on our pool has been completed. It is quite nice to no longer have any holes in the screen - now we should be able to enjoy that area without any bugs/gnats etc bothering us! It had never been fixed after the hawk flew through it (see old post from 2007), so it was a long time coming! That is one thing that is awesome about Florida is these screen rooms - it really does allow you to flow in and out of your home without worrying about pests bothering you!

Today in Sabbath School Zachary was sitting on Amy's lap as the program progressed when all of a sudden he got up and ran across the room to the other side and grabbed some poor little girl's seat away from her (she was standing beside it). As you can imagine, this almost started a "altercation" in Sabbath School as she quickly announced that chair was "MINE!" Zachary doesn't know this little girl so we have no idea what got into his little mind - I guess gentlemen training needs to begin already! :)
Zachary's language skills are expanding so fast and are so precious that we've decided to try and add a cute phrase/word each week that he's said - this will help us pay more attention throughout the week, and it will help ensure that we don't forget!

Phrase of the Week - Zachary chanting "That's funny.....too funny!" accompanied by belly laughs as Karis was carrying him across a climbing net at SeaWorld because Karis was having a hard time staying upright....apparently Zachary's funny bone was tickled to have Dad struggling to keep on his feet!

Misc. picture of Zachary screaming with delight to be sitting in a pile of clean laundry - now if only we could get him to fold it and put it away....

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

The first, and hopefully last, storm of 2008 arrived in Central Florida - Tropical Storm Fay. We originally thought that it would be fairly benign and would pass through without much mishap, but we were oh-so-wrong! Tropical Fay passed through Orlando on Tuesday with truthfully a minimal amount of rain and wind - although Amy was freaking out that our wimpy power would go out and ruin all of the frozen breastmilk that she has! When Tropical Storm Fay passed us, it decided to boomerang back over Central Florida and just basically stalled out. We have had major flooding (not in our immediate area thankfully) but we have received about 6 months worth of rain in about 4 days. Our power thankfully never went off, so the milk was safe! As a side note, for any mother who has ever breastfed, you know that breastmilk is like liquid gold! Because of Kaleb's nursing problems in the beginning (thankfully a thing of the past now!), Amy has been pumping, and has amassed a TON of milk that is stored out in our garage freezer - we have 3 shelves worth currently (we have to keep eating the frozen food so that we can make more room for milk!). There is probably about 150-200 bags of milk currently. At this rate, she'll be able to wean him at 10-11 months and still get all the way to 12 months just on breastmilk!

Here is a picture of the milk as proof! :)

We are going to be sad to see the Olympics end tomorrow - we really are Olympic-junkies. We always forget how fun they are, and how tense, to watch! We have had a great time watching swimming, diving, gymnastics, track and field and beach volleyball along with some of the more unusual sports like handball, badminton etc.

A few years ago, we planted the top of two pineapples in our backyard - and then we've forgot about them basically. Well, this week we actually got a pineapple off of one of them - it was very tasty!

Zachary and the pineapple before it was entirely consumed!

Kaleb is starting to be able to sit up in the "bumbo" chair that we had with Zachary (just a note here, these chairs do have warnings not to ever put a child in them other than on the floor, which we follow faithfully!). He is enjoying seeing the world around him from another vantage point. We believe that Kaleb might be our little "worrier" - he often times has a very concerned look on his face and has furrowed brows. We've rubbed his brows before to relax them - telling him "Don't worry Kaleb, we'll take care of you - nothing to be concerned about!" :)

Photo 1 - looking very worried about something!

Photo 2 - now we're all smiles again!

A cute story between Kaleb and Zachary happened this week - Kaleb is becoming much more aware of Zachary now and will follow him (with his eyes of course) around the room. Zachary has about the same level of interest in Kaleb, but as we've mentioned before, Zachary loves to play with Kaleb's toys! This week, the treasured toy is the floor toy that has flashing lights and music - Kaleb was under it having a grand time when Zachary decided that he wanted to get in on the action. Zachary tried to lay down under the toy with Kaleb, but Kaleb was right in the middle so Zachary couldn't fit. Zachary demanded "MOVE OVER Kaleb!!!" - Ha ha ha, Kaleb can't even roll over yet so clearly a parent had to get involved at that point to position the toy. Both were able to be under the toy and they co-existed quite nicely.

This picture is as Zachary is attempting to fit under the toy while Kaleb wonders what is going on!

Amy's mom came over for a visit last week, and Kaleb cooperated by being awake to take a nice picture with his Grandma! We also caught a very sweet picture of him hanging out with Karis.

A "Yes" Answer to Prayer

This week brought an answer to prayer for our friends the Deiningers. Rob is a pilot for Frontier, and with the economic downturn, the airline announced plans to lay-off employees. Rob was at Frontier for about 2 years, so was relatively "new" which meant the danger of being amongst the furloughed pilots was great. Fortunately, Rob had gotten his MBA during college as a "just in case" along with his pilot's license, so he set to looking for a job utilizing his MBA. This week, he was offered a job at Florida Hospital in their Performance Improvement department as a project manager. We are so thankful that he is still gainfully employed with the extra bonus blessing of actually being at home now every day to watch his family grow!

Our family is doing well. Kaleb's 4-month doctor visit was this week where his weight was 14 lbs 2 ounces and he was 23 inches long. When we looked up the percentiles for his weight, head and height, it would appear that we have a short, big-headed pudgster! :) Just teasing, he is perfect just the way he is!

Kaleb is enjoying this musical toy that flashes lights above him.

Zachary is beginning to show small signs of the occasional jealousy when Daddy pays too much attention to Kaleb. This week we were all standing in the kitchen with Karis holding Kaleb, and Zachary looked at Amy and said "You hold YOUR baby!!!" It gave us a silent chuckle. We are very fortunate this has been the extent of it. He also has a renewed interest in the baby items that are for Kaleb's age, such as the swing - he looks HUGE when he tries to fit himself into these things.

Zachary has learned how to crawl up into Kaleb's crib - so when we are changing Kaleb's diaper, he gets into the action by joining him in the crib. We are just praying that he doesn't figure out how to crawl OUT of his own crib - we are enjoying the fact that when we put him to bed, he stays there! He is also expanding his vocabulary by leaps and bounds - he is starting to put 3-4 word sentences together so it is amazing what he comes up with. We got a new book of shapes this week, and he surprised us by starting to tell us what the shapes were as we went through the book without us telling him what they were! We had no idea that he could identify them on his own! He also can go through the ABC's to the letter H. He is spending so much time out in the pool that he has turned into a little Indian! It is amazing how dark his skin is - Amy is jealous of what a gorgeous tan he has! :)

Zachary enjoys "washing bottles" with Mommy and Daddy (really he enjoys splashing in the bubbles!)

Pool Antics

This week's post is dedicated to all of the pool fun that has been happening in our home - Zachary has really turned into quite the fish and begs to get into the pool as soon as he gets up in the morning - which is before the sun even rises! We tried to post the video this week, but unfortunately we are still having technical difficulties, so we'll give it the ol' college try again this week!

Picture 1 - One of the last skills that Zachary had to prove to graduate from swimming lessons was that he could float even while fully clothed.

Picture 2 - Enjoying playtime with Daddy - Daddy holds him up in the air and then lets him fall into the water

Recent pictures of Zachary jumping with abandon into the pool (sures looks like a belly-flop to us, but it doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest!) and then swimming to Daddy.

We're clear that this picture will be one categorized as "my parents are humiliating me" when Zachary is 18, but this gave us a chuckle! The Target swim trunks weren't doing the trick while Zachary was playing with his 'Uncle' Kent, and as Kent would lift Zachary up and down in the water, the water pulled his pants off. Zachary began to immediately yell "pants! pants!" as if to say "People, can't you see that my rear is exposed here!!!???"

At last - we figured out to publish a video! We are so un-savvy technically! :) The video is about 1 minute and 30 seconds in length.

In other news, Zachary had his last appointment this week with the pediatric neurosurgeon who specializes in hydrocephalus. Our pediatrician had concern that his head was getting so big when he was about 1 year so off we went to a specialist. The specialist always felt that Zachary was fine but wanted to observe him over time to be certain, so we've been going periodically over the past year. (Amy never felt that this was a burden because the specialist was quite good-looking! :) ha ha!) The doctor checked out Kaleb's head as well, and all looks to be fine. Zachary inherited his large head from his mother unfortunately! Hopefully this just means that he has lots of brains! :) We won't be surprised if in the end we have to take Kaleb there as well to be monitored as it seems reasonable that he may end up with a large head around a year old as well, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Our friends from college - William and Heather Cochran - have welcomed their first child into the world - Kieran. He was 7 lbs 3 ounces and 20 inches long. The best part - she was only in noticeable labor from 7:30A until 10:45A when the baby was born! How is that fair???? Kieran was born on 8/8/08, so very cool birthdate! Congratulations!

Kaleb is 4 months old on the 10th, so we've including his official picture this week. He is 13 pounds 13 ounces. We are quite happy to report that he consistently sleeps through the night until about 6:30'ish (apparently the Z children just are pre-programmed to wake up about 6:30A). He has discovered his hands and loves to chew on them. He is getting a lot stronger and can hold up his head quite steadily now.

The Four S's - Stars & Stripes, 'Simming' and Squeals!

Karis became an American citizen on Monday, July 28th. Fortunately, Canada will still recognize him as a Canadian citizen, so he felt like he didn't have anything to lose by getting his American citizenship. Now he won't ever have to worry about renewing his green card or getting kicked out of the country for being a suspected terrorist! :) Just teasing. So, everyone in this family is already a dual citizen, or on their way to becoming one, except Amy. Who wants to be left out??? So, we are kicking around the thought of Amy becoming a dual citizen as well - thanks to the fact that her dad Gene is a Canadian, she can apply for Canadian citizenship as well even at this late date.

Karis holding his naturalization certificate

The "swearing in" ceremony was very short and sweet - so much so that Amy almost missed it. It was supposed to be at 2:30, and so she waited at the house for as long as possible to let Kaleb take his normal nap before running down to the convention center (30 minute drive). Anyway, she got to the amphitheater around 2:20 and it was already have half done - she made it just in time to see the reading off of the countries represented, the actual swearing in oath, and then the pledge of allegiance! There were 375 people becoming Americans from 69 different countries.

Zachary has graduated from "simming" lessons - it is the craziest thing - he swims so well now! He wants to go into the pool 2-3 times every day. He loves to jump in from the side of the pool and swim to the adult in the pool. He gets enough momentum from jumping that he isn't having to work very hard at kicking, but even when he starts out in the pool, he can swim about 5-6 feet. He knows how to turn over and float to take a breath, but he's getting "lazy" and starting to just lift his head out of the water (sort of like dog-paddling) to breathe and then back under he goes until he reaches his destination. We'll do periodic "refresher" swimming lessons to reinforce his skills.

Zachary is becoming increasing "OCD" - obsessive compulsive aka BOSSY!! He is a man of routine to be sure - and if something gets out of wack, he will quickly tell you that you're not doing it right. Karis had on his shirt this morning in the pool to ward off the chill (water was only 81 degrees - that is kind of chilly for us Floridians!), and Zachary was quite disturbed - he kept insisting that Karis take off that shirt before Zachary would get into the water. Once that battle of the wills was won (by the adults, thank you - sadly this isn't always the case!), he happily went about swimming until he began to boss Karis around again, telling him that he needed to sit on the side of the pool and KICK! KICK! KICK! (Zachary loves to see the water splashing) and JUMP!!! By the time all of the kicking and jumping into the pool is completed, half of the pool water was out on the deck! Both Amy and Karis are sure that his "type-A" personality comes from the other parent! :) We have some videotape of Zachary swimming, which we'll try and post either later today or tomorrow once we figure out how to do it.

Kaleb is getting used to having Daddy at home now - we are constantly amazed by how easygoing he is - lucky for him and us with such a demanding older brother! He will play in his crib for long periods of time without making a noise - very contented. We've been struggling with diapers rashes on poor Kaleb for the last month. We've finally determined that Pampers swaddlers are not a good match for his skin - so we've switched diapers. That has make it dramatically better, but unfortunately his skin is still sensitive, so we have to be really careful otherwise another diaper rash breaks out. He is becoming very verbal and loves to have "conversations" with you - his coos and squeals are precious. He is 13 pounds 2 ounces today, so we'll see how much he is next week at his official 4 month visit!

Zachary keeping Kaleb company on the lion mat