This Moment x2

'This Moment' from last week. Grandma Gardner stayed with us for two weeks and Max loved hanging out with her. We're sad to see her go today :(

This week's 'This Moment' is from Sunday when we picked out pumpkins. I think Halloween's quickly becoming a favorite holiday! So much fun stuff to do!

My Monkey Boy

And by the way, baby boy is crawling!

Pumpkin Carving

We carved pumpkins last night; it was the first time I've carved pumpkins since I was a kid. It was fun, but a lot of work!

Here's Mom's:

Steph's:

My first one, which Jeff drew:

My last one:

All together now:

I'm entering my first one in the contest at work tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Making Baby Food

I've been making all of Max's solid food and it's oddly satisfying. We started with carrots, and after some trial and error, I learned how to get the right consistency.

It's quite the ordeal, involving washing, peeling, cutting, boiling and then processing the carrots.

I don't go through that much effort to make Jeff and I dinner. But hopefully I'll get so used to making Max these healthy meals, that I'll continue to do it throughout his childhood and not rely of frozen food.

I've also made sweet potatoes (which he loves) and peas. After 30 minutes of shelling snow peas, I only had 1/2 a cup of peas to show for it. I'll be using frozen peas next time. That's just not worth my time. This week we'll be trying green beans. I understand it's a bit of a challenge to mash the green beans because of the "skins," but we're gonna give it a shot. I've been getting my baby food recipes here. I think next week we'll try a fruit!

This Moment

Max and Sean

Max's Trip to the Zoo

Max didn't see many animals at the zoo.

But he did make lots of friends.

Ferber Method

After almost two weeks of allowing Max to "cry it out," I would say it's working pretty well! He goes down fairly easy at night, maybe crying 5 minutes or so. And 4 of the last 5 nights he's slept through the night, 8-6 (and the fifth night he slept from 8-4:30). It's been nice catching up on my sleep, although I do wake up a little panicked every morning, wondering if Max is okay.

Naps are a little harder. We've only put him down for nap using the Ferber Method a hand-full of times, and three of the six times have been successful. It's still a work in progress. We're trying to condense Max's naps down to two or three a day (he likes to take 5-6 short naps), which should also help him sleep better at night.

I thought this method would be a lot harder on me than it is. In truth, it's actually easier than rocking him every fifteen minutes throughout the night. Knowing that this is best for him, makes it easier too. He needs to be able to fall asleep on his own, without his mommy endlessly rocking him. I'm glad we took this step, it was a hard choice to make, but it's working well for us. If you're interested in reading more about the Ferber Method, this is the book I read. It's a quick read and it's pretty interesting. It gave me some good tips for when Max is older as well!

This Moment

This Moment