Progress

We've had two days with big sleeping accomplishments - yesterday Charlie took a 2-hour morning nap, and today he took a 2-hour afternoon nap. The amazing part of this is that he was sleeping in the bassinet (the mattress was on an incline), not in the bouncy seat or car seat! He's still waking up quite a bit at night, but I keep hoping it will get better soon.

Other random news - Eli let me put Charlie on his prized Spiderman couch with him for a few minutes without too much protesting. This is progress from last time. It helped that Eli was distracted with the Laurie Berkner Band DVD :) He loves the music.

My family came over last night to visit. My parents and Gram are all doing the low glycemic diet and are losing weight. I'm really impressed with their dedication and think they look great! I wish I had more willpower right now to do something similar to lose the last of the baby weight, but I went to Trader Joe's last week and bought my favorite Almond in the Coconut chocolates... that's not exactly low glycemic.

Here's Eli on our new couch! We finally have a place to sit in our living room. It will still be a while before the room feels put together, but we're happy to make progress a little bit at a time.
Poor Eli had a night terror last night, or something like it. He woke up around 9 p.m. screaming and pretty out of it, and it took a long time for him to calm down and go back to sleep. Apparently it's more likely to happen when kids are overtired, and Eli was totally wiped out after not napping (since we have afternoon church this year). Today he slept until 8:45 a.m. and still took a 3 1/2 hour nap! I was able to take a 2-hour nap while Charlie was also napping, and then even took a shower, dried my hair, and wrote this blog post while Eli slept. Amazing!

The Joys of an Ear Infection

Eli has had a miserable couple of days - I know the pictures on Friday make him look happy, but he was still fighting a bad cold that he has had since last Sunday. Over the last few nights, he woke up multiple times in the night crying pretty hard. On Saturday, he spent much of the day crying or hitting the sides of his head out of frustration - it was so sad!! Then this morning at 5 a.m. when I was up with him once again, it clicked in my head.

Eli had an ear infection.

Hello!? He'd had a week straight of a congested cough, runny nose, fever, and his head was hurting him... Why it took two bad nights for us to figure it out, I don't know.

Ben had things he needed to do at church today, but Eli and I stayed home and I took him to the doctor, who confirmed that Eli's left ear was infected, the right ear had fluid in it, and his throat was red/sore. Poor little guy!! Thankfully, we filled the prescription right away and Eli had a full dose of the antibiotic by tonight. I also was more diligent about giving him tylenol and motrin throughout the day.

What a difference! I took these pictures tonight with my old point and shoot camera, so the quality stinks, but I can't believe how much happier Eli was! He woke up this morning screaming, so this was a major improvement. I'm hoping tonight is more restful for all of us. By this time last night, Eli had already woken up crying two times, so that's a good sign.

Eli is pretty possessive of his Spiderman couch - anytime Ben tried to put his head on the couch when Eli was off doing something else, Eli would run back over, move Ben off the couch, and laugh because he had it to himself again. Ben couldn't resist teasing him though, and put his head back up on the Spiderman couch anytime Eli ran away from it.

Darn. I just heard him crying! I spoke too soon. It probably doesn't help that it's super windy outside (making the windows rattle). Tomorrow our high is 14 degrees, wind chill below zero (the forecast shows the worst of it will bring us down to -10 degrees for the wind chill, because the wind could be gusting 20 to 30 mph). This is WAY too cold for December! I expect this more in January and February, but December isn't usually THIS bad.

Think warm thoughts for Ben tomorrow as he commutes by train and then has a long walk to his office. I made him promise he would wear a coat, hat, gloves AND scarf - he hardly ever brings the scarf, which I think is nuts. I'm a firm believer in covering everything but your eyes in weather like this.

Poor Eli. He's still crying, so I'm going up now to check on him. We may still have another long night ahead of us...