sleep – Page 3 – Baby Wong (Caleb Wong & Caris Wong & Chloe Wong)

June 14, 2008June 14, 2008

Date #2

We went out on our second date since Caleb has been born… Well, our 2nd date without the baby. It was part of Chris’ Father’s Day celebration. We went to Ruth Chris… compliments of a gift card given to us by a friend.

It was nice going out, but I felt completely out of place. Me dressed up when I’m normally in sweats and a tank top nowadays. I feel strange without a baby clinging to my legs or attached to my left hip.

Caleb’s been sleeping so poorly for a while now, but even worse for this past couple of weeks. (We’ll blog more on this later). Grandma was babysitting Caleb so that we could go on our date. I warned her before we left that Caleb has been waking up multiple times in the night even at the very beginning…. and he cries hard. Whatever you do, don’t turn on the lights or talk to him. It’s an invitation to play. And he gets much harder to put to sleep. Haha. As I was walking up the stairs after we got home from our date at 9:30PM, I saw Caleb’s bedroom lights on and I could hear chatting (grandpa had come over to eat dinner with grandma). What?!!! Lights, talking?! What’s going on? I walk into the room to find Caleb bouncing up and down on his air filter, with a couple toys strewn around the room. Grandma and grandpa are chilling in his room like it’s their new living room. Hee-hee. Caleb cried hard, grandma couldn’t handle it. On came the lights. And naturally, the talking and playing came next.

Chris took a short video clip of Caleb playing. He was soooo hyper. The video clip really doesn’t do justice to how hyper he was.

Chris commented, “I’ve never seen this boy so hyper before.” And believe me, we’ve seen him very active. As I was trying to calm him back down into a slumber, he was jumping from my arms, crawling/walking from one piece of furniture to another. Finally, I got him to nurse (cuz he hit his head hard on the crib edge). In my arms, he reminded me of this crack drug baby I once held in the hospital. He was so jumpy & shaky. Yes, this is our son when he doesn’t get enough sleep. My goodness. We were surprised that it only took us 30 or so minutes to get him back to sleep. Good thing he was so tired. God, You’re merciful. Thank you for not making us stay up for hours with this boy.

April 18, 2008April 18, 2008

9 month birthday

ok, ok… so our son is nearing his 10 month birthday and we have yet to blog on his 9 month one. we’re a little behind with our blogging. we’re a little behind with everything!

At his 9 month checkup, we discovered that our son is no longer this huge baby anymore. Always in the 90-100th percentile, he is now in the 50-75th percentile in everything. Hmm, am I starving my baby? Strange thing is that Chris and I get different measurements than Caleb’s doc. Our scale told us that he was 22.5 pounds, and we measured him at 29.5 inches. Oh well. We know our munchkin is a healthy, active baby.

Length = 28.25 (50 percentile)

Weight = 20 lb, 14.5oz (60 percentile)

Head Circumference = 45.5 cm (50-75%)

Grandma & grandpa bought Caleb his first ride-on toy. Caleb loves it!

Caleb’s crib now looks like a white prison. Since he started crawling, we’ve had to remove the bumper from his crib leaving it completely bare. Good thing, though… cuz Caleb loves to stand and climb. He climbs onto our bedside tables already. He pulls out his dresser drawers and tries to climb them. He pushes boxes and get on top of them to reach things on higher shelves. Where did he learn to do all this from?

Caleb is looking more and more like his daddy. Both of them are so adorable!

Caleb still loves his music class, but now he’s more active and can stand and hit the drums hard.

Awh, Caleb had his first (and hopefully) last allergic reaction. We tried out a new rice cereal, not thinking that there would be any problem. Within 5 minutes of having it, he started getting unusually cranky and his face turned red. Then his eyes and face got puffy and itchy (see picture below). It was pretty scary. But our newlywed fellowship was there and prayed for him. He got drastically better within a couple hours without any need for a visit to the ER or for medications. Praise God!!!

Pupu (mommy’s mom) visited Caleb at the end of March. I had so much fun with her.

Caleb now occasionally can fall asleep at church for a short morning nap. This is far better than the hour or more of wailing he used to do when we took him to church.

Caleb is usually much better when we go out to eat now. He loves menus… maybe more than mommy and daddy.

Caleb’s 1st time on a playground swing.

March 12, 2008

Big Island Travels

We just spent the last 3 days on the Big Island with Bel, Stan, & baby Noah. Here are some highlights and funny moments.

We explored a lava tube and lots of lava rocks. The volcano here is currently active, so we were trying to go visit the site where you can see lava going into the ocean. Well, let’s just say the boys were navigating and we found ourselves at a totally different spot. But I must say, where we went was nice too… and probably heaps safer for the babies. We saw the area of the last most recent lava activity (about 5 years ago). Caleb was so fussy after not getting any naps and being in a car all day. He wouldn’t be soothed in our arms. Finally I had to nurse him while we walked to the lava site. It was like carrying a sack of potatoes on a hike. And, baby Caleb decided to have another poop explosion… this time all over mommy’s shirt and pants and the Ergo baby carrier. It was quite impressive.

On our trip, Caleb found himself a new toy… baby Noah who lays there like non-moving target. Poor Noah. Just wait ’til Noah can roll and crawl well. He’ll be chasing after you, Caleb.

Caleb fell asleep on the beach. I put him down in his tent… and he stayed asleep!!! well, it was for only 25 minutes, but it’s a first for him to go to sleep with lights and sounds without much of a fight.

We wanted to visit a macadamia nut farm. Stan found one on the internet. We went there and found this house on a farm. Very interesting. Nobody else was there. We got a nice personal tour of the mac nut trees, kona coffee beans, & avocado & banana trees. We learned that bananas were originally eaten on the Island by only males. Females would be killed if they ate this food associated with male fertility. We found big spiders there. Chris liked them a lot! He wanted to take one home with us.

Chris looks mighty cute taking care of 2 munchkins.

February 15, 2008February 15, 2008

I got all my incisors, better to eat my food with

Caleb officially has 8 teeth now. His bottom side incisors came in next. His top central incisor truly came in dead last out of all 8, but it’s here now.

It’s been a rough, fussy week for Caleb. He’s had it tough with these 6 teeth coming in… and having a cold/flu, constipation, etc… Please pray he starts sleeping well again. This mommy wants to enjoy sleep again.

Here’s a picture of my not-so-happy Caleb. Unfortunately, this has been his face of the week.

Caleb’s first carousel ride.

Caleb’s already pulling up. He started doing that before he was even crawling. Here’s a pic of him standing.

More pics to come.

February 10, 2008February 10, 2008

7, 8, 15, 21, 6, 7, 2

Yvonne had posted earlier that Caleb was popping out teeth 3-6 on his top. After that Yvonne told me that teeth number 7 and 8, the next 2 on the bottom don’t usually come out until 15-21 months. That’s when the molars and canines come out around the same time too. So we’re thinking another 5 months or so of good non-teething for our son.

So you know those lower teeth that aren’t suppose to show up until 15 months? Well they’re here. And yes. That’s 6 teeth coming out at one time. From 2 teeth to 8 teeth in 2 weeks. No wonder he’s drooling so much.

So besides the teething, Caleb is also sick (as is the rest of the family). He’s been sick since Wednesday. He’s got a cold and can’t breathe through his nose well. He’s been eating much less than he normally does since he’s been sick.

Not only is he teething and sick, but he’s also constipated. Last night before we put our son to bed, we took his temperature. As the thermometer was up his butt, Yvonne could feel the poop right on the edge. So we helped him along. Helped him along to about 7 inches of poop coming out. Now for some of you, 7 inches of poop may not seem like much. But you have to realize that my son is only 28 inches long. That’s 1/4 his length. Imagine Shaq dropping a 2 foot deuce.

Anything else besides teething, illness and constipation? Yup! He’s just started to crawl as well. Well he’s not really crawling in your normal baby sense. But he definitely scoots across the ground.

So what does this all add up to? Well, Caleb since the beginning of the year has been sleeping extremely well for night time and for nap times as well. It’s quite an amazing turn around that he’s had since his non-sleeping days, which lasted for his first 6 months.

Since Wednesday, his sleeping has been pretty bad. It might be just the sickness messing with his sleep, but it could be and can be everything else that’s going on. He’s slept some nights waking up only twice, and then some nights waking up every hour. His naps have gone back to 30 minutes, rather than the 2 hours he had been getting consistently the previous month.

We know Caleb is going through a lot of stuff, but he needs sleep. He gets sleep, then mommy and daddy get sleep. If he doesn’t sleep, mommy doesn’t sleep and that doesn’t help anyone.

Please pray that Caleb will get healthy soon and return to his good sleeping patterns. Please pray that these short naps don’t become a habit, and he’ll return to his long napping again.

December 5, 2007December 5, 2007

Sleep little baby

So if you didn’t know, we’re trying hard to get our baby to sleep. Most of you don’t know the pains and effort we try not just to get our baby to sleep, but also to keep him asleep. At night, he’ll wake up every hour or so. He’ll start moaning and groaning, and eventually will be full on awake. So we had been picking him up and sooth him and get him back to sleep. But the problem is trying to get him back into the crib. He’s got this seventh sense (sixth sense is knowing when you’re sitting down and holding him) about when we’re going to put him back in the crib. Once he touches down, he often start moaning and groaning and eventually crying again. It takes a great amount of work and patience to endure this multiple times a night and it is HARD.

So last night, both Yvonne and I got tired of constantly trying to put him in the crib to sleep. So we just left him there awake. So what would happen.

Now in the past, this did not work. We’ve tried. He’ll cry and cry. "Sleep on my own. What a silly idea." I’m sure that’s what he was thinking before. And when Caleb cries, he cries. It’s gets hard to console this crying baby which is why we always tried to prevent it before he does.

Caleb was playing around when he woke up this last time. So we left him there awake, but tired, in the crib. We both headed back to our room to see how he does, both expecting him to cry eventually when he got bored of playing and being awake. So we wait, listening intently to the monitor. We hear him talk and talk. And slowly it starts fading. We hear him talk again but less and it fades… Again talking less, then fades… Until there’s no more.

I believe Yvonne went to go check up on him and what do you know… He’s asleep. What the? He fell asleep by himself! No way! That happened at 2am. He wakes up again at 5am to feed. And Yvonne again leaves him awake in the crib to sleep when he wouldn’t go down asleep. And again… he falls asleep inside the crib.

Now I’m just reading over this entry again, and I don’t know if I properly explained how frustrating and how difficult a task it was to get Caleb to sleep. You can’t truly understand this unless you’ve gone through it yourself. But I don’t care if you don’t understand. As long as this sleep thing improves, that’s all that matters to me. Hopefully this isn’t a one time thing fluke where he falls asleep on his own. Please, Lord, let this be the norm.

Keep on praying for us. We surely appreciate it.

Now onto some pictures:

November 14, 2007November 20, 2007

Sleeping, New Tooth and New Home

If you haven’t heard, Caleb hasn’t been sleeping well. It’s not that he doesn’t sleep. It’s just that he doesn’t like to sleep. Yvonne’s got his sleep cycle down, but knowing his sleep cycle doesn’t mean he actually stays asleep. For daytime naps, Caleb’s schedule goes like this:

0 min – Falls asleep
25 min – Stirs awake.

It’s at this point where intervention is almost always needed. First off you need to be holding him. Secondly, adult intervention is required usually in the form of bouncing up and down, sticking a finger in his mouth, or a combination of the two. If all doesn’t go well, he’s awake after his 25 minute nap. If all does go well, Caleb passes this moment back into slumber land. This process continues:

45 min – Stirs awake.
1 hour 45 min – Stirs awake.

According to babycenter.com, babies at four months of age need 12-15 hours of sleep a day. Now if Caleb only goes down for 25 minute naps at a time, he doesn’t get enough sleep. And when he doesn’t get enough sleep, he gets grumpy until he finally crashes before his normal bedtime.

It’s not easy getting him asleep and keeping him asleep. But Caleb is getting enough sleep now (most days), but it’s hard work. We’ve even had to trick him into thinking we’re still holding. That’s what it’s come down to.

Nighttime sleeping is a different matter though. This whole sleep cycle is different for some reason. He can actually stay asleep pass that 25 minute barrier. Problem is he’s developing too fast. He talks, he rolls, he’s teething. All this complicates his sleep, which complicates our sleep.

Caleb popped his first tooth a few weeks ago, and this morning we can see his second tooth about to pop out. No wonder he keeps waking so often during the night. I wish I could get a good picture of it.

You probably didn’t notice, but baby.chriswong.org has a new home. It’s on a new server that is. Hopefully it’s much more reliable and much faster. Cause all know the real reason why you’re here. It’s not to read stories. It’s to see pictures of Caleb.