The Beach

We got back on Friday from a surprisingly relaxing week at the beach spent with 15 of our closest family members.  I say surprisingly relaxing because vacation with 2 boys, and only having Blake there half the time had "possible disaster" written all over it.  Thankfully though, with help from everyone watching and chasing my children down (and a lot of help from my mom - God bless her), I was able to relax and enjoy my time with family.

When I was little, my grandparents on my Mother's side would rent a beach house every other year and would have their 3 daughters and their families come and stay.  Memories of those times are some of my most favorite summers of my childhood, and I think helped to instill the high sense of importance of family, and of extended family in me.

A beach house trip from about 15 years ago I am going to guess - this depicts how our family gets along - everyone is happy as can be. Couldn't ask for a better family!  (I think this was the trip where my youngest cousin fell asleep under the TV, and the rest of us decided to watch JAWS)

My grandparents both passed away in 2010, and my Mom and her sisters decided that the family has seen entirely too little of each other since their passing, and so they rented a beach house which could sleep 16 (or 19 which we actually had there....).  The only ones missing from the way things used to be other than my grandparents, were my cousin and his wife who moved to Colorado last spring and could not get the time off to come and play with us.

The House we had this time at the beach - beachfront, perfect

 

Highlights of things encountered at this beach trip - these aren't in order, just numbered to keep track: 
1. Travis sleeping through the night during the WHOLE TRIP (this is huge because he only just barely started doing this a couple days before we left).
2. Jake having "dry undies" for 5 consecutive days.
3. Blake and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary, and went to M&M in Galveston (We were going to go somewhere else but it was entirely booked, so we improvised).

Happy 5 years!

4. Watching Travis's reaction to "jumping waves" - he loved it
5. Watching Jake chase birds, and smack waves with a pool noodle - which looked a little like the game of whack-a-mole the way he played it.
6. Late night rounds of Hand-and-Foot card games with the Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins
7. Going out to the beach during burning hours every day, and not getting me, or my boys sunburned!
8. Taking morning and afternoon naps with Travis.
9. A lot of good food, and seafood was eaten.
10. When we got back into town, it was only in the 80s, as opposed to the 100s when we left.

Jake, Travis and their second cousins David and Katy.

Sleeping through the night, one of the wonderful things that babies are supposed to eventually do...

We actually thought that we had gotten even luckier this time around when Travis would go 4-6 hour stretches at night off the bat, and was on solid 6-8 hour stretches of sleep at night by 3 weeks old.  Jake slept through the night, and kept it up at 2 months old, and our new baby was doing it even earlier!  But, Travis stopped sleeping through the night between 2 and 3 months old...

During the day he is on an eats every 2 hours schedule, which is fairly demanding, but nothing which is unreasonable considering he was sleeping at night.  At about 2 - 2 1/2 months though, we started waking up again every 4-6 hours to eat, and then it was down to every 3-4 hours.  Still I was thinking that this isn't too bad, he eats, and then goes right back to sleep and I can get a few more hours before having to feed him again.

Well, he is 5 months old, and it was still every 3-4 hours at night and every 2 all day long for eating, and during the day he would only eat a little, and then be good for a while.  (I am now chalking this up to too much night eating).  Because I value my sleep, and was getting grumpy, I started reading my baby books again about sleeping through the night, and the books say that after a baby reaches 11 lbs. that they do not technically need the middle of the night nutrition, and after 3-4 months, it is more likely to be comfort nursing which they are doing as they have gotten into the habit.  It also said that after 6 months, this is a harder habit to break.  Well, he was 11 lb. before he was 2 months old, and I don't enjoy being awoken all night every night, so I was sold - going to break my sweet little one of this habit before it becomes totally ingrained in him!

So, I have been keeping a sleep log to try and figure out the patterns of when he sleeps better at night.  I am either really bad at interpreting patterns of what makes him sleep better, or this kid has no pattern at all.  Not sure which it is, but I am going to go with the latter - anyone else wants to analyze the data for me, feel free!

The only discernible pattern was that he would wake up somewhere between 11pm and 1am, and then typically again between 3am and 5am.  Sometimes more often (4 times a night), sometimes less - but neither seemed to have anything to do with when he would go to bed, or how much nap he got during the day.

I think most of the drama of sleep training is behind us now. (Cross your fingers for me because I probably just jinxed it!)  About 2 weeks ago, I simply quit feeding him when he would wake up at the 11pm-1am time frame.  The first night was awful, it took about 45 minutes to get him to go back to sleep - and I almost gave up immediately because it only takes 25-30 minutes to feed him and have him back down totally happy and fed.  But after that 45 minute "fun", he slept until about 4am - so he had gone about 7 hours since last being fed.  Ahh, success, he can go longer than 3-4 hours.  The next night was easier, only 20 minutes until he was back down.  Again, back up at 4am to feed him, but still - doing pretty good.

Then, a few nights ago, after putting him to bed at 9, and comforting him when he woke up at 12am, he slept through until 6:15.  Whoa, that put us at over 9 hours since he was fed.  Somehow we have increased the sleep time!  Last night, he did his standard waking up at 11:30, and then this morning - I had to wake him up at 8 to feed him before taking Jake to school!  That is a whopping 12 hours between feedings.  So now that I know he can do it, I plan to try to keep him doing it, going from his 8-9pm feeding, until somewhere between 6 and 8am.

 Wish me luck!

Napping on the couch.