Tag: calvin

“Up”

“What?”

“Why?”

“No. Yet me do it!”

“Up!”

“I climb up der!”

“Pweas, can I have a cookie, pweas?”

“No!  <stomp>”

“I did it!”

“Up!!!”

Our most common response to Calvin, age 2?

“No, Calvin…”

I’ve been writing this post in my head for weeks now, but things never seemed to settle down perfectly, so I kept putting it off.

Basically, Brooke and I split time sleeping on Calvin’s floor for, like, 8 months this year.  He simply did not want to sleep alone, and while you could get him to sleep, the minute he’d wake up, he wouldn’t go back down (willingly) unless someone was with him.  This also made it nearly impossible to leave his room (or we’d fall asleep waiting for him to finally pass out).  We tried a few things, including removing his crib because he was getting too large to lay in there without waking him up.  He fell asleep on the floor one night, so we went with it and made a little “nest,” of sorts, in the corner for him to sleep on.

Ultimately, we relented and began just sleeping on the floor with him.  I moved a backpacking-style air mattress in there, Brooke laid down multiple comforters, and one of us would just take turns going in sometime between 1:00 am and 4:00 am and staying with him until it was time to get up.

Finally, finally, we got sick of it.  On Calvin’s birthday, we gave him a small toddler bed.  We figured this would be the opportunity to start fresh in a “new situation,” where we rearrange his room a bit, put him in the bed, and make him sleep in it.

Shockingly, the process of getting him to sleep in it didn’t go as terribly as we’d expected.  That first night was somewhat challenging, but even within the first few days, he was sleeping in the bed by himself for 6 hours at a time.  It took us a bit to get into a routine of one of us sitting with him with books or YouTube videos before he’d let us leave his room without crying.  There were some times when he’d try to follow us out and we’d have to sit there, holding his door shut, so he couldn’t escape.  Early on, this didn’t happen all that often though, and he’d actually stay in his bed for awhile.

“Awhile” is a critical point, though, as 4:00 am would roll around and he’d decide “I’m awake!” and he’d leave his room.  We had a door knob protector on, but those old door knobs are useless and the protector would stick in such a way that Calvin could get right past it.

Occasionally, he’d go into Meg’s room and wake her up, wanting to play.

More recently, we picked up a special alarm clock that changes colors depending on whether it’s time to get up or not.  He mostly ignores whether it’s “yellow” (stay in bed) or “green” (time to get up), even though he’ll tell you what those colors mean.  We think the clock has helped, to some degree, as we know what time it is so, if he’s crying at 5:00 am and wants to leave his room, we can use the walkie-talkie function on the baby monitor and tell him to stay in bed “until the light turns ‘green’.”

Overall, we’re doing much better.  Both of us are getting far more sleep than we were at this time last year, and we’re getting to stay in our beds for longer on successive nights than we have since Calvin was born.  Occasionally, we still need to go in there and help him find his lost stuffed animal in the middle of the night, but for the most part, he’s sleeping quite a bit better than he has in awhile!

As a brief aside, over Thanksgiving this year, Meg and Calvin slept in the same rooms for 4 nights and actually did remarkably well!  We tried it once at our house a few weeks ago and it was a literal nightmare, but on the road, Meg was actually pretty good at keeping him in his room and knowing whether it was okay to get up and play or not.  Since she can actually tell time, she knew whether it was okay to get up and play with toys in their room but not actually leave the room, and other policies like that.  Perhaps we’ll be able to move to bunk beds sometime in 2016!

Though Calvin started off pretty slowly, so far as the whole “talking” thing goes, he’s been picking up pretty rapidly in the past month. Meg had 35 at this point in her development, but Calvin’s been able to rely on his big sister to help him out up until now.  Still, it looks like he’s running a bit ahead on language than she was (though, again, it feels like an explosion in the last month, whereas Meg got them a bit more gradually).

Anyway, here’s a non-exhaustive list.  I’m probably missing a few…

Words/People:

• Mama (“Mama”)
• Daddy (“Dada”)
• Meg (“Meh”)
• Sam (“Hem”)
• Nana (“Nana”)
• Mimi (“Meh-meh”)
• Harper (“Hah-pah”)
• Emma
• Banana (also “Nana”)
• Milk (“Mah”)
• More (“Moh”)
• No (“Nooooo”)
• “Cow” (“Boo”)
• Pig (“Pih”)
• Snow (“No”)
• Snowman (“No-MEN”)
• Please (“Peas”)
• Baby (“Beh-beh”)
• Books (“Boo”)
• Bed (“Beh”)
• Bath (“Bah”)
• Shoes (“Soos”)
• Socks (“Hoks”)
• Moon (“Moo”)
• “Shh” (“Ssss”)
• Water (“Wah-wah”)
• “Rock rock” (also “Wah-wah”)
• Elmo (“Meh-mo”)
• Bye bye (“Bah-bah”)
• Night night (“Nah-nah”)
• Tractor (“Tac-tah”)
• Bird (“Bih”)
• Truck (“Tuh”)
• Dog (“Dah”)

Body Parts (Identification, mostly):

• Mouth
• Nose (“Noh”)
• Belly (“Beh-beh”)
• Toes
• Feet
• Head
• Hair
• Cheeks
• Hands
• Arms
• Knees
• Eyes
• Teeth
• Ears
• Fingers

A year ago today, we welcomed Calvin into the world.  And what a year it’s been.

Granted, the last half of this past year blew by incredibly quickly because of Life Changes for the whole family.  I barely remember what we did 4 months ago, as most of our time was spent packing and cleaning and looking into buying houses.

Through all that time, though, Calvin kept getting bigger!  It’s amazing how much progress he’s made, especially in comparison with his big sister.  Due to ear infections, it took her a bit longer to be mobile.  Perhaps Calvin is more motivated to follow Meg around though, because he’s been crawling for a few months now and late last week started to try taking a few steps for the first time.  He’s routinely standing up from a squat all by himself, standing for nearly a minute at a time before sitting back down again.  He’s ready to walk, but hasn’t quite taken the plunge yet.

Within the last month or so, he’s also finally, finally, slept consistently through the night.  He’ll cry out occasionally but can usually get himself back to sleep.  I’m thinking the creepy peacock wallpaper in his room has something to do with it, but it seems like shortly after the move to the new house in Marshall, his sleeping situation (and ours…) improved dramatically.

Now that he’s a year old, we’re also in the process of weaning him off of Brooke faster than we were before.  Meg was on a bottle long before this point in her life, but Brooke’s been able to keep feeding Calvin.  Generally, she’s only doing it first thing in the morning and right before bedtime.  We don’t even have to do it at naptime anymore to calm him down.  She’ll slowly scale it back, but at this point, it seems like he can make it pretty well without needing that particular form of comfort.  Big boy finally growing up a bit!

Other than his progress, life has been busy for the rest of us.  They say your first semester is the hardest and they aren’t kidding.  I’m frequently working 12 hr days during the week in order to stay ahead, but I don’t mind it so far.  Brooke’s still getting settled with her job in Sedalia, but things are starting to look up on that front, too.  I’ll post more about the house later, but we’ve got half of the electrical system done, some important plumbing done, some new appliances, and we re-did the bathroom upstairs by ourselves in a little over a week (there will definitely be a post on that one).  Long-story short, we’re making progress with the house and are nearly “settled.”

Because of that, we were able to have a birthday party for Calvin this past weekend at the house.  We had around 16 people over and, as the weather was gorgeous, we set things up outside.  Grilled burgers, had many sides, and of course, birthday cake.  Calvin napped through half the party and wasn’t exactly “smiley” after he woke up, but I think he still had a fun time, and definitely got some fun toys.

Regardless, Calvin’s done well this past year and, though his sleeping schedule was terrible for, oh, 10 months of his life, I think we’re finally past it.  At least we’re to the point when he and Meg can play together in their room(s) by themselves, giving us a few extra moments of peace.

It’s worth something, for sure.