MattJenGreer: Settling into a routine

These last 2 weeks since I've been back to work have been exciting and tiring at the same time. Max has become super active in the past few weeks. We haven't been able to catch him rolling over on camera, but we know he does it becuase we find him in his crib most times either all the way on his tummy or almost there with one arm under him. He also turns circles in the crib while he naps/sleeps. We'll put him down laying in one direction, and he's usually 180 degrees and across the crib from where we laid him down. He's definitely a little mover and shaker! :)

The very exciting thing that happened in the last week is Max is finally sleeping through the night!! We thought he was ready to do it the past couple of weeks because more often than not he wouldn't eat well for his first 1-2 bottles each day. He had just gotten in a routine of waking up between 2-3am, and we just fed him because we didn't want him to get so awake that he wouldn't go back to sleep. Last weekend when Aunt Em was here to help, we decided to let him try to go back to sleep without eating that 2-3am bottle. Aunt Em was in charge of that feeding, and she heard him wake up through the monitor around 5am. He stirred quite a bit and she thought he was about to start crying, so she went to fix his bottle. By the time the bottle was ready, he was sound asleep again! So she went back to bed. When I woke up about 6:45, I asked her how well he had eaten, and she said "He hasn't!" We were hoping it wasn't a one-time thing brought on by a very busy day the day before...and it wasn't! We haven't had to feed him in the middle of the night in the last 7 nights! It's so exciting!! He usually goes to bed between 7:45 - 8:15, we wake him up for a quick bottle at 11pm, then he sleeps till 7am! Usually around 3:30 and again about 6:00am, he'll wake up and chatter for a few minutes, but he goes right back to sleep!

Max is also doing much better at Ms. Wanda's during the day. He always gets 3 naps that are at least an hour and 20 minutes to 2 hours. He's also eating much better there now that he isn't so stuffed from that middle of the night feeding! The only nap we struggle with is his 5pm nap. Some days he'll sleep from 5-7 and we'll have to wake him up to eat, and others he's wide awake at 6:00...which makes for a long rest of the evening! Luckily this is the nap that most babies drop around 4 months, so maybe we won't have to worry about it much longer! We feel so blessed to have him on this routine - it may not work for everybody, but it is very comforting to us to know what to expect each day, and to be able to plan things around his routine. We had our friend Rhonda come to babysit Friday night while we went to dinner and a movie, and she was so surprised that he slept, ate, played, and went back to sleep at almost exactly the time we told her he would. Very rarely now do we have to "make" him do anything - he knows when it's time for bed or a bottle, and he happily does it. Obviously there are still times/days that he gets a little off schedule, and we're OK with that. We know he'll pick it back up quickly and easily.

More pics are on the shutterfly site. I'm not taking as many as I'd like these days - hard to when I only see him awake for about an hour and a half each day! I'll try to do better on the weekends! Have a great week!!