make a new plan, stan. set yourself free.

So, we just got back from a weekend away at the cabin in lovely lovely evergreen, co. The weather was just beautiful, and though its not as restful as it use to be, we had a good time being away as a family.

Since tobo's routine was blown anyway, we took the weekend to experiment with his sleeping habits. We found out that he is totally not hungry when he's waking up, though he's up at 7pm, 10pm, 1am, 4am, 5am, 6am, 7am, 8am. He just wakes up too far out of his sleep cycle and can't settle again. With this info, we came up with a new plan...a plan that will eventually lead us to another plan, but for now will hopefully cut down on the number of times up at night.

plan B: Tobo eats as much as he'll take (a big feeding for him is 5 oz) at 7pm, 10pm, 3am, and 7am. If he wakes up any other time, we sooth him back to sleep any way we can. (*exception: if he turns manic(!) than feed him something note the time and we'll figure out why he didn't have enough to eat before that). The nice thing about this plan is that I sooth him between 10p and 3a feeding, then its Paul's turn and I can (in theory) sleep for 4 solid hours together!!! Ok, not really likely, but I can always hope. I've just hit a bit of a wall when it comes to sleep. I just can't keep doing 2 hour intervals after 4am and still get up and work the next morning at 8am.

I can hear you over the internet. Many of you are saying, "how is this better than what you're doing now?" Really I just wanted to take time this weekend to work out the guidelines about tobo's night with Paul so we understood them, agreed about them so we can be consistent when applying them, which we haven't been doing so far. Or rather, we've been letting him set the schedule. I've also gotten in the bad habit of letting him settle in our bed for what starts out as 15 minutes, but turns into an hour and half because I fall asleep. (see sleep comment above) So now we're trying to sooth him anyway we can and use coming to our bed as a last resort (because it actually works). The manic! exception is also a last resort, after checking his diaper, getting a dumb, etc. What is ironic is the whole settling in our bed started because he would fall asleep in my arms and then freak out as soon as I put him down so I was holding him for _hours_ at night. I think we're beyond that now, he's got a good history of sleeping in his crib now, but...yeah this new plan may change quickly.

Ideally this will get us positioned to take away a feeding in a little while, start getting him to settle in his crib more readily, and eventually start sleeping through the night in his crib.

He's now eating about 2 meals a day with gusto (about 2 tablespoons a meal) so I tried a breakfast meal this morning. Not really enthusiastic about it. We'll try again in a little bit. He eats about 14 to 16oz of milk a day, and nurses in addition about 15 to 20 minutes at night. (break that into 5 minute intervals) He is still fundamentally refusing the breast. The nursing is happening when he's asleep and not paying attention. :/ I think he's getting enough to eat. As a secondary thing, we're trying to consolidate his feeding into meals and snacks, so he will stop nipping 1oz meals every hour all day. This is kind of working, except when he's teething/growth spurt,etc. (see manic!) I just don't like to let him howl for food.

Other news - our disposables have started leaking like nobody's business, causing me to dig out the pocket diapers again. This time I joined a forum and got a few answers. Pockets can be massively stuffed with liners, making them very absorbent. I think the answer is that in hard water, plan on stripping your pockets every 2 to 4 weeks. And that there will be some beading at all times, but it should last longer than 30 seconds before the liquid soaks through. Tobo will do his first night in one tonight, so we'll see how it goes.

Paul weight him tonight and he's around 15.5 lbs. He feel so different than when he was 5 lbs. :)

Well, off to finish folding laundry and such before we go to bed.