We took the baby and Carolina to visit the family in Mexico. It was his first airplane rides and first trip out of the country. He did pretty well. I had pretty high expectations as Carolina was a surprisingly good traveler and I had very low expectations with her. Again, my Carolina was a great traveler.
She slowly picked up some Spanish and got used to visiting a lot of people and missing her naps, and staying up late. In fact, she took only two naps in the car when we were going or coming home from visiting someone and the rest of the week she was up. And up late! She was a good girl most of the time and rarely gave us a truly hard time. I think playing with her cousins made it more fun. Once Angela went home midweek she was less interested in being there, but there was always Jose to play with and his little sister.
The baby was afraid of everyone the first day, of course. And the second day he slowly warmed up to family. He was having a week where he preferred men to women. Carolina was like that around this age: having a preference for men over women and then vice versa. Always, the babies prefer other babies. This was great as Elena is just a year old and also using a walker, so the babies had dueling "andaderas" (walkers).
Carolina was very excited to be there and be able to take off her socks and shoes and run around in the grass. I have to say, she got very dirty most days and was very happy about it. She was very loving with her Abuelos and was happy to see Tita and Bis. That was nice as it's the first time she was clearly happy to be there and the family was glad to have her, as always.
The baby, once he warmed up, was very charming indeed. We took them everywhere and only had 3 days where we stayed at my in-laws (aka "home"). In fact, we shared a room, all four of us. It wasn't too bad. It did get crazy half way through since the baby's second tooth came through. So, now he has two teeth!
And that night when it broke through was pretty much like the night his first tooth broke: he got up constantly and sometimes stayed up for up to an hour. Gratefully, Carolina was very tolerant and either didn't wake up or was able to go back to sleep. She would be more concerned with "what happen with the baby?" than "why's he waking me up?" She is more kind than I was!
Yesterday, our first full day back, was a bit of a trial. I forgot until the afternoon that the day after a big trip like that with a baby, you basically have to just throw away the next few days in terms of sleep patterns and just do whatever the baby needs. It's like when a baby gets sick: all bets are off and schedules are whatever the baby says. End of story.
He didn't sleep well Saturday night, and Sunday was skittish and didn't want to be put down. It was when we were plotting to get him into Carolina's room ASAP and thinking this was the beginning of a nightmare anti-sleep situation (we must let him cry it out for an hour!) that I realized the baby just needed more time to adjust. He didn't want me to put him down? He was afraid? He only wanted to sleep 30 minutes at a time and whine the rest of the time he was awake since he was exhausted? Ok! Let's just roll...
Last night was a bit better with him only waking up 4 times but always going back to sleep, and today's naps were back to a regular schedule.
I have to decide what to do next: Re-start the bottle with formula (to get him weened off me), Ween him off of the reflux meds, Start to move him into Carolina's room.
I think I'll do bottle in the morning tomorrow or Wednesday and start with weening him by the weekend. I just don't want to do too many changes in case something goes "wrong", then I won't know what the thing is that set off the "wrong". Since we don't have any more big trips planned, I can start to plan for him to go into Carolina's room in a month or so.
After we all shared a room, Carolina was very interested in having her brother be in her room at home.
Finally, I should mention that the baby has started to "cruise". He figured out how to pull himself up in the crib while at my in-laws and sit back down (sort of). I say, "sort of" since he mostly just loses his grip and falls down. Mostly startling himself but not hurting himself. So when we got home, he's very adept at pulling himself up and has started to do that everywhere. He even tries to "walk" by holding on to chairs or a table or the couch. He's less interested in crawling than figuring out how to walk. He's clearly trying to keep up with his big sister.
His quick crawling style is still more military commando-behind-enemy-lines-on-the-belly, but even that changed while we were away. He's doing more and more crawling with his belly off the floor.
I had previously thought that crawling was important but not essential. I read an article about a book that talks about the correlation between the importance of the crawling stage and learning ability/styles in later development (early childhood), in particular the lack of crawling and ADD/ADHD. So, now I know that it's REALLY important for the brain to go through that phase. I'm not worried that Ismael will miss the crawling phase, but now I understand it's importance as more than just being a milestone between sitting up and walking.
This is the book if anyone is interested: http://www.amazon.com/Stopping-ADHD-Nancy-E-ODell/dp/1583331972.
And this is the part that I'm talking about from http://stoppingadhd.com:
The Main Problem: There are many children and adults, at least 10% of the total population, who cannot seem to sit still comfortably for more than a few minutes. They are often classified as ADD or ADHD. The mechanical aspect of writing, just getting the words down on paper, becomes an incredibly difficult task. Many of these difficulties can be traced to an immature Symmetric Tonic Neck Reflex.
The Cause: Although the Symmetric Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR) occurs naturally in the normal development of children, if this reflex stays at an immature level, it can greatly interfere with specific and general coordination tasks. The STNR will stay at an immature level if the child does not crawl enough or properly in infancy. Individuals with an immature STNR will be extremely uncomfortable in what is generally considered the “proper” sitting position: sitting up straight and sitting still.
She slowly picked up some Spanish and got used to visiting a lot of people and missing her naps, and staying up late. In fact, she took only two naps in the car when we were going or coming home from visiting someone and the rest of the week she was up. And up late! She was a good girl most of the time and rarely gave us a truly hard time. I think playing with her cousins made it more fun. Once Angela went home midweek she was less interested in being there, but there was always Jose to play with and his little sister.
The baby was afraid of everyone the first day, of course. And the second day he slowly warmed up to family. He was having a week where he preferred men to women. Carolina was like that around this age: having a preference for men over women and then vice versa. Always, the babies prefer other babies. This was great as Elena is just a year old and also using a walker, so the babies had dueling "andaderas" (walkers).
Carolina was very excited to be there and be able to take off her socks and shoes and run around in the grass. I have to say, she got very dirty most days and was very happy about it. She was very loving with her Abuelos and was happy to see Tita and Bis. That was nice as it's the first time she was clearly happy to be there and the family was glad to have her, as always.
The baby, once he warmed up, was very charming indeed. We took them everywhere and only had 3 days where we stayed at my in-laws (aka "home"). In fact, we shared a room, all four of us. It wasn't too bad. It did get crazy half way through since the baby's second tooth came through. So, now he has two teeth!
And that night when it broke through was pretty much like the night his first tooth broke: he got up constantly and sometimes stayed up for up to an hour. Gratefully, Carolina was very tolerant and either didn't wake up or was able to go back to sleep. She would be more concerned with "what happen with the baby?" than "why's he waking me up?" She is more kind than I was!
Yesterday, our first full day back, was a bit of a trial. I forgot until the afternoon that the day after a big trip like that with a baby, you basically have to just throw away the next few days in terms of sleep patterns and just do whatever the baby needs. It's like when a baby gets sick: all bets are off and schedules are whatever the baby says. End of story.
He didn't sleep well Saturday night, and Sunday was skittish and didn't want to be put down. It was when we were plotting to get him into Carolina's room ASAP and thinking this was the beginning of a nightmare anti-sleep situation (we must let him cry it out for an hour!) that I realized the baby just needed more time to adjust. He didn't want me to put him down? He was afraid? He only wanted to sleep 30 minutes at a time and whine the rest of the time he was awake since he was exhausted? Ok! Let's just roll...
Last night was a bit better with him only waking up 4 times but always going back to sleep, and today's naps were back to a regular schedule.
I have to decide what to do next: Re-start the bottle with formula (to get him weened off me), Ween him off of the reflux meds, Start to move him into Carolina's room.
I think I'll do bottle in the morning tomorrow or Wednesday and start with weening him by the weekend. I just don't want to do too many changes in case something goes "wrong", then I won't know what the thing is that set off the "wrong". Since we don't have any more big trips planned, I can start to plan for him to go into Carolina's room in a month or so.
After we all shared a room, Carolina was very interested in having her brother be in her room at home.
Finally, I should mention that the baby has started to "cruise". He figured out how to pull himself up in the crib while at my in-laws and sit back down (sort of). I say, "sort of" since he mostly just loses his grip and falls down. Mostly startling himself but not hurting himself. So when we got home, he's very adept at pulling himself up and has started to do that everywhere. He even tries to "walk" by holding on to chairs or a table or the couch. He's less interested in crawling than figuring out how to walk. He's clearly trying to keep up with his big sister.
His quick crawling style is still more military commando-behind-enemy-lines-on-the-belly, but even that changed while we were away. He's doing more and more crawling with his belly off the floor.
I had previously thought that crawling was important but not essential. I read an article about a book that talks about the correlation between the importance of the crawling stage and learning ability/styles in later development (early childhood), in particular the lack of crawling and ADD/ADHD. So, now I know that it's REALLY important for the brain to go through that phase. I'm not worried that Ismael will miss the crawling phase, but now I understand it's importance as more than just being a milestone between sitting up and walking.
This is the book if anyone is interested: http://www.amazon.com/Stopping-ADHD-Nancy-E-ODell/dp/1583331972.
And this is the part that I'm talking about from http://stoppingadhd.com:
The Main Problem: There are many children and adults, at least 10% of the total population, who cannot seem to sit still comfortably for more than a few minutes. They are often classified as ADD or ADHD. The mechanical aspect of writing, just getting the words down on paper, becomes an incredibly difficult task. Many of these difficulties can be traced to an immature Symmetric Tonic Neck Reflex.
The Cause: Although the Symmetric Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR) occurs naturally in the normal development of children, if this reflex stays at an immature level, it can greatly interfere with specific and general coordination tasks. The STNR will stay at an immature level if the child does not crawl enough or properly in infancy. Individuals with an immature STNR will be extremely uncomfortable in what is generally considered the “proper” sitting position: sitting up straight and sitting still.
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