A Rough Night

Colin woke up crying just before 11pm last night. He was screaming bloody murder. I laid in bed for about 15 minutes, watching the monitor and waiting for him to put himself back to sleep. This did not happen and the crying continued at a fever pitch, so I got up and went in to him. We were then awake together until about 2am. He was exhausted, but he simply would not go back down. I tried every single trick in the book and nothing worked, including letting him cry. He would fall asleep in my arms, but as soon as I would lean over the crib, he would start screaming again. I could feel the tension in his body even as his eyes were closed...I could tell that he was keyed up and was just waiting to scream when I attempted to move him. He had no fever, nothing was wrong, he just wanted to be held. And rocked. And that was that. The problem with this whole scenario is trying to figure out when to go to him and when not to. I knew immediately after I went to get him that I had made the wrong decision. I was worried that he was ill or something was wrong, so I went in. Had I stayed out, he would have finally put himself back to sleep. It would have taken about 45 minutes since he was so worked up, but he would have. Colin is the kind of baby that sees me and then he will NOT go back down. This has been our problem all along. Once I enter the picture, the night is a loss. It always takes hours to get him back down at that point. But I am a mother! I don't want to take the chance that something is really wrong! Now that he sleeps through the night 95% of the time, when he does wake up screaming, I assume he actually needs me. This is not always the case, but I can't know! Anyway, I just had to vent. After a night like that, I am a waste the next day. I just wish that I had magical powers. ;-)

A Whole New World

Well, this is turning into quite the week! Colin has decided to do a lot more walking in the past 24 hours. He was only taking off if he was walking toward Jer or myself. These little walks were taking place on my watch, when I wanted them to. Last night Colin decided to change the rules by taking off on his own. Running. On the tile kitchen floor. DEAR LORD. The baby is fearless. He is wobbly and drunken on his feet, yet he just takes off running and screeching. It is literally the scariest thing you have ever seen. If I thought I was watching him like a hawk before, I was WRONG. This is insanity. He has already fallen several times and that is with me running with him!! I just can't catch him fast enough. We have a couple of little baby gates, but I am now on the hunt for a great big one to completely block off the kitchen. He is seriously going to do major damage if he falls on that floor. I must say that if I could go back in history and change one thing, it would be to get some nice new carpet instead of the wood floors that we put in early in my pregnancy. Don't get me wrong...I simply ADORE my floors. I begged and begged for them until I was blue in the face. But now my entire house seems like a booby trap! We left carpet in 3 bedrooms, but Colin certainly won't stay in those rooms! I am wondering what the time frame is to get from this kind of walking to the kind where they don't fall down and break their heads open. Anyone??

I am so proud of Colin for all this major progress in the past few weeks. It is like someone opened the flood gates and now everything is changing faster than I can keep up. We had kind of a lull...between 6 and 10 months, things were kind of peaceful with Colin. He learned to sit up on his own and make fun noises. We spent those months playing nicely together with his toys and watching his little cartoons. Dinners out were fairly easy since his major meals were bottles and he could just sit and play with a toy. I could do dishes and clean house while Colin sat in my field of vision playing in one little spot on his own. If I wanted to blog or check email, I could just sit him down here in the office and he would play happily with whatever book or game I handed him. Then he hit 10 months and the last month or so has been a new world. He is all over the place, crawling, pulling up, cruising, and now just taking off walking. He can't even be in the office anymore because he climbs under the desk and starts taking apart the computer wires!! He is also a champ at trying to "fax" things and attempting to turn on the shredder! He is suddenly so much like a little boy and I love it...and miss my tiny baby, too. This whole year has been about a "new baby" and little baby hands and toes and breast feeding and bottles and onesies and infant carriers and rocking chairs and Boppy pillows and rattles and tiny little things in general. All of a sudden I am looking back on that instead of being in the middle of it. I feel like I stepped into a new room, full of new things, and I am learning all over again how to get my footing. I have a feeling that I have a lot of new rooms in my future. I loved the first room so much more than I ever could have imagined.