Obviously my "reply one at a time" attempt went very poorly. I replied to one person. So, back to the old way.
SK--Oh, I'm so glad you posted another pic of F! He is so adorable and really suits his name! As someone said, those are the most kissable, squeezable cheeks I've seen!
I'm sorry you have so much to do for Christmas. This is why we let our in-laws host it every year.
What do you bet that your husband will claim that his great(er than your) contribution to Christmas was teaching F to walk? And F probably will skip crawling, if he's already showing interest in walking. Whenever we tried to get J to walk, he just bounced around when we took his hands. He had no interest.
Clairey--good for you for figuring out the ear infection! That makes so much sense now, why everyone (adults included) are more miserable at night than during the day. I hope she is feeling better.
Storm--Oh, I'm sorry that it didn't go so well with L the second night, but it did still sound like it worked in the end?... I think I didn't quite get that part. (I'm back on page 243, answering the posts there, so I apologize if I'm responding to things from too far back...) J's way of putting himself to sleep is to pound around in his crib doing god knows what. I think he's either kicking the bars, or he's banging his legs up and down. But when I hear it, I'm relieved. It's actually his method of self-soothing... Since I'm replying so late, I'm sure you've updated us on the rest the training, but if she doesn't currently have a uti, would this really hurt her? I still think you're doing a fabulous job. What you're doing is slower than pure "extinction" (CIO), where you simply close the door and walk away. J could handle pure CIO--he was old enough and he knew and we knew that his "waking" was pure malarky. But the gentle approach isn't going to be so "clear cut" for little L. I'll keep on reading your next posts to find out what's been happening.
Borboleta--Okay, I'm going to be über-bossy, and interfering and all that. LEAVE T ALONE AT NIGHT!!! Man, you're just like my husband. One morning, I woke and listened to J cry for quite a while during what was supposed to be his morning nap. And when I finally opened my door, my husband was sitting in front of J's door with his head in his hands, shoulders slumped. I asked him what the hell was going on. He said that when J asked for his first morning nap (ie., sat down and started crying), he took him up with his bottle and did the whole routine. However, J didn't take the bottle AT ALL, so Eric just put him in the crib. But J didn't stop crying when OH went down (I don't know how long OH let it go on for--I suspect it was the typical nap CIO time). Then OH freaked out and thought that maybe the problem was that he was really hungry and he should give him that bottle again. Nope, J didn't want it, and now all the progress for nap time CIO had been blown. But OH put him back in the crib, and in order to help soothe him, he gave him one of his stuffed animals to sleep with. But J kept on crying and crying.
Now, the bottle part, I thought OH was being a bit silly, but I can understand the instinct. But a new toy in the crib when everything is about establishing
routine? I just wondered, again, what goes on him my husband's head... So I got J up, took him downstairs, looked for the first yawn or eye-rub--which happened almost immediately--and I put him to bed. He didn't cry. When I came back down, I gave OH a piece of my mind, then passively-aggressively kept staring at him for the next hour.
Please still love me Borboleta, even though I'm being insufferable with the "advice."
Charlie--how beautiful Sophia is! Wow! I can't wait to see more pics! Re: bedtime--J chose his own, 6 pm. But I think we're an anomaly.
We used The Baby Whisperer book to establish a routine at around 2 months, because he was cranky Alll. The. Time. At first we followed her EASY routine pretty religiously, which put him in a better mood almost immediately. Then, when we learned his own patterns, we just used it as a foundation for effective "J" routines. But once we started, we both began to feel like we were far more in control of things.
Okay, need to take nap. More personals to come soon!