After recovering from the past illness, Connor has returned to sleeping better again, sometimes only waking up once each night.  But the last 4 nights, for some reasons, he was waking up often.  He just wanted to be held, sometimes it would take a few tries before I could put him back to the crib.  So I decided that it was time for sleep training as it would be good for him to learn to sleep on his own.  We had set the date to be today on Friday.  However, I have been dreading for tonight to come.  I was not looking forward to making my happy Connor cried.

     Tonight after the bedtime routine, Connor fell asleep as usual while being fed by me.  When he was done, I decided to brush his teeth to sort of wake him up.  He was quite drowsy but not totally asleep when I placed him in the crib.  As soon as he realized where he was, he started to cry.  I said my good night quickly and left the room.  He continued to cry loudly.  He rolled back and forth a bit in the crib, but not rolling over.  I was watching him on the monitor and listening to him.  His cry was so sad that I could not handle it anymore, so I was doing dishes to distract myself.  At 10 minute mark, I went into the room to quickly tell him that it was ok and he should go to sleep.  Connor stopped crying when he heard me come in; his face was so sad and was begging for help.  But as soon as I walked away from his crib, his sad cry began again.  At 14 minutes, he took a couple of 30 seconds pauses.  Then finally fell asleep at 16th minute.  I was relieved since I might not able to take too much longer of that sad cry. 

     We trained Logan when he was almost 8 months old and it took 27 minutes on the first night of training.  I remembered it was hard listening to Logan’s cry too, but it seemed harder this time.  Maybe because Connor is such a good boy, always smiling through and dealing with everything, that I feel worse putting him through this. 

     Logan has moved to his twin bed for almost a year now, and all these times, he would stay in bed when he woke up from nap or night.  He would either call for daddy or mommy, wait for us to come in before climbing out of the bed.  But the past couple of days, he suddenly decided to come out of the room on his own.  Yesterday at 6:15am, I heard his door opened and a little boy walked into our bedroom.  Logan came to the bedside and told me to “wake up”.  I was in bed with the sick Connor while Stuart slept in the living room.  So Logan asked “where’s daddy?”.  Then he rushed out to see daddy after I told him where he was.  This morning, Logan woke up at 6am and went directly to the living room.  Now I just hope that Logan won’t be waking up too early as we will not able to keep him laydown any longer like we used to.

    Today was another sick day off for Stuart.  And instead of for Connor, it was for Logan.  Last week, he had some allergy symptoms, red and watery eyes, that were cleared after using Clartin.  However, it turned into redness just at a corner of his left eye over the weekend.  It looked worrisome, so we decided to take him to see the doctor today.  Stuart told me that right before his appointment, Logan’s right eye actually had some gunk in it.  So the doctor diagnosed it secondary infection after having allergy.  Antibiotic eye drop was prescribed for the right eye.  But Stuart and I decided to use the drops on both eyes to ensure clearing the infection.  Logan ended up having a fun daddy day the remaining of the day.  Besides the redness in his left eye, his eyes looked fine.  Hopefully he will be able to return to school tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Scottie!

     Connor flipped for the first time today.  He really dislikes being on his tummy.  Today, he tried to reach out to me to help him, and finally reached far enough and flipped back to his back on his own.  Logan first flipped when he was almost 6 months old.  Connor is definitely behind schedule, but certainly he has more weight to work with.  Speaking of weight, at his appointment yesterday, Connor was 24lbs 10oz with his clothes, diaper and shoes on.  Connor is a much better eater than Logan was.  He has been eating whatever I give him, and so I am more motivated to make him more homemade foods,  Recently, he had zucchini, spinach, potatoes, blueberries, peaches, grapes, tofu, salmon, cantaloupe and apples.  But he does not eat a huge portion, usually after eating around the size of a jar food, he would not be opening his mouth as willingly anymore.

     To update, last night was a difficult night for Connor.  He woke up at 10pm and was coughing a lot.  The cough must have been hurting him since he would cry after each spells of cough.  He could not get comfortable to return to sleep.  I was holding the upset Connor for almost an hour, so Stuart came in to help out.  At that point, with all the coughing, Connor suddenly had a very loud squeaky breathing noise.  We decided to use the albuterol inhaler and take him to the bathroom for some steaming.  Finally after midnight, he was a bit more comfortable.  We all were so tired that I took him to our bed to sleep.  He finally slept through the night with just a couple of light awakening.  This morning he was still very fussy, but after the morning nap, we decided to all go to Kasey’s birthday party as initially planned to get some fresh air.  This afternoon, Connor seemed slightly better; his smiles had returned and he would clap often.  Hope he will have a better night tonight.

     We got a call from daycare yesterday around noon about Connor.  He had a low grade fever and had thrown up twice, therefore he needed to be picked up.  I was having a very busy day at work, so Stuart took time off to pick Connor up.  Connor was ok with Stuart in the afternoon, just a bit more needy than usual.  He was also fine in the evening, eating, drinking and playing ok.  Yesterday I saw that Connor’s top two teeth had finally cut through the gum.  So we thought he was just having some teething issue.  But at 1am, he woke up with very bad cough.  They were very forceful that I was so worried he would throw up afterward.  He also had a fever of 100.2 axillary again, so I gave him a dose of Tylenol.  Every time I put Connor back to the crib, he would wake up from more coughing.  So I ended up holding him upright almost the rest of the night.  Because of the horrible cough, we made an appt to see the doctor today.  I was able to stay home with Connor; thanks to Thuy for working my panel for me today.
     Connor came with me to the office for 10 minutes first so I could finish some work that I forgot to do yesterday.  He was good talking with Melissa and playing by himself.  Then he also was quite patient during the doctor visit.  He allowed the doctor listened to his lungs and cleaned his ears so she could take a better look inside.  He did not have a fever anymore and fortunately no wheezing either.  He does have a mild ear infection on his right side.  The doctor prescribed the antibiotic for us to pick up if Connor’s fever persists or fussiness continues in the next 24 to 48 hours.  Connor must have been happy with what he heard since he started clapping after the doctor told us the result.
     Logan has also been having a runny nose for a few days now.  He is congested with some coughing too.  Yesterday we started to notice that his eyes were a bit red and they were very watery.  We also had seen him rubbing his eyes.  The doctor thought that Logan may be having allergy symptoms.  I ended up buying a bottle of Clartin to let him try it.

     Can’t wait for this cold season to be over soon, so we can have everyone well in the household again.

     Since Logan was weaned from pacifier few months ago, Stuart had become his new pacifier, falling asleep with him every night.  However, for the past couple of weeks, we were able to not sleep with Logan.  Stuart tried to read more books with him at bedtime to get him tired, then it would still take a lot of convincing to get him down.  The past few nights, Logan had a new request.  He already had a cup of milk before bath, and now, he has been asking for another cup after reading books.  Stuart had asked Logan why he wanted more milk, Logan just simply said “I like milk!”.  Before we agreed to go get the milk again, Logan always promised to have his teeth brushed again and would go down to sleep on his own.  And so far, Logan has been keeping his promise.  We are happy with this new trend even though he is drinking a lot more milk than the doctor recommends.  The cute thing each night before he lays down is that he always will say “Goodnight Connor, goodnight Scottie, goodnight Daddy, goodnight mommy, goodnight Logan” in various orders and with repeating names sometimes.

     Just a side note, Logan has his funny way of counting.  He has been counting with “one, two, three, four, eight, nine, ten” for a long time, many months.  Now he can definitely count up to four with no problems.  But he still has trouble with “five”.  If we made him do the counting slowly, he might be able to make out the “five”, then suddenly would be able to mumble all the way up to “thirteen”.