Toddler Bed

Monday night Davy did something that I was not expecting. It was bed time and we were getting him ready for bed. I went to get a book to read to him and he was running free in his bedroom. Before I could scoop him up and sit in the rocking chair with him he had run over and climbed up on his toddler bed. He had never taken an interest in sleeping in his toddler bed before. He had climbed up on it and played on it and sat on it and stood on it but never had he acted like he wanted to sleep in it. Kevin and I have been working on getting the room toddler-proofed in preparation for him to start sleeping in it, and so far the room is basically there. There are a few things I would like to have set up, but they are not absolute necessities. So Monday night we decided that we would let him try out sleeping in his toddler bed. We read him his book on the bed and then tucked him in, turned off the light and closed the door. Before going to bed we checked on him, he was asleep on the floor beside his bed, so we picked him up and put him back in bed. In the morning I heard him fall out of the bed and went to get him. But overall he did pretty good. I gave him the "big boy blanket" that I had made out of his crib bumpers, we made up the bed with the blanket and tucked it in under the mattress to make it more secure.

Last night I decided to let him sleep in his toddler bed again. We went through his bedtime routine and I tucked him in and put him to bed. He cried this time and I was worried that he would crawl out of bed and I would have to put him back in it. But when I checked on him later in the night he had fallen asleep in his bed under his new blanket. I tucked him in a little better since he had moved a bit while he slept. In the morning when he woke up and Kevin went to get him he was still in his bed playing.

This is a rather exciting development for us! I knew that we needed to get Davy into a toddler bed soon. The baby will be able to sleep just so long in her bassinet before she grows out of it and will need to move to the crib. I wanted to get Davy moved into his toddler bed before that happened and get him settled and used to sleeping in it. The fact that he took the initiative to start sleeping in it makes everything much easier. The fact that he is staying in his bed even when he doesn't want to go to bed make me feel better about the whole thing. Now I just need to get Kevin to finish the last few changes to the room and I will be happy with everything. It is strange to realize that my little boy is growing up and has moved out of his crib and into a big boy bed finally.

Colors and Shapes

In case I haven't mentioned it before, Davy's favorite color is yellow. Growing up most of the members of my family liked the color blue, in fact it was my Dad's favorite color, my Mom's favorite color, and I think my brother's favorite color as well as my own favorite color. My sister's favorite color was neon orange. When I married Kevin I discovered that his favorite color was red, which worked out just fine for me because he could have red things and I could have blue things. When Davy was born I clothed him in a lot of blue, which was fitting because he was a boy, and as he grew older I found that I began to wonder what his favorite color was. He has this dog toy, Scout, who talks to him, I think I have written about it before. Anyway when setting it up I had to choose a favorite color for Davy, I figured that he probably liked blue so I set that as his favorite color. Lately we have been working with Davy on shapes and colors, and what I have learned from it is this. Davy likes Yellow. He likes to say the word, he likes to find yellow things, he just plain likes yellow. He also likes circles, hearts, and triangles. He can say most of his colors (the basic ones not fancy colors like magenta and such), he can also say most of his basic shapes. He loves working with flashcards and will bring us the bag they are in just so he can go through them. And if we are busy he will go through the bag on his own and name the flashcards off to himself. He has down a good amount of the words that go with each flashcard. He is also learning what letters each word starts with. As this year goes on I wonder just how much he is going to learn, I am excited to see what he learns to do and say.

Valentines and growing babies

Today is Valentines day, and for the first time Davy is old enough for it to be fun. So yesterday I made a few heart shaped cards and supervised Davy while he colored them. He decorated them with scribbles, quite a few letters and numbers as well as some smilie faces. After he went to bed I finished the decorations by making a snowflake heart to stick on the front and also wrote a little message to the person/people the card was for. We made two cards, one for Daddy and one for Nana and Grandpapa (my mom and dad). Today we delivered the cards to them. Davy gave Daddy his card, and then later in the day we visited Nana and Grandpapa and Davy was able to give them their card. He even signed each card, granted the letters weren't all in a line or even necessarily close to each other but the letters DAVY were all on the card in some place. For a Valentines present from Nana and Grandpapa, Davy got some magnetic numbers, which he loved. All in all it has been a fun day. Kevin got me flowers and some chocolates which I shared with Davy and Kevin, they were Lindt petite desserts which are chocolates designed to taste like popular desserts. The other part of his present to me will come later this year, I asked him to take me to the Japanese gardens up in Rockford at some point later this year.

For his present I am going to take him out to eat up in Rockford on Monday, it will be our first date since we had the baby. And our first date so far this year. Needless to say we are looking forward to it. I have saved up some frozen milk for my parents in preparation for babysitting.

In other news Evangeline has been spitting up a lot lately. So I took her to the doctor, he suggested that I eat less dairy for a week and see how things went. So I stopped eating dairy and she began to throw up more. So I said "to heck with it all" and went back to eating dairy and she is not throwing up as much anymore. Crazy. While at the doctor I found out her weight, she is now 7 lbs 5 oz, which is less than what Davy was when he was born. She will be two months old next Tuesday. It seems pretty crazy that she is still so tiny. She is just beginning to grow out of her Newborn clothes.  

Busy busy

It has been a busy week. Last week Kevin's parents came out to visit for Evangeline's blessing and Davy's birthday. We had a really good time with them! Kevin's dad took Kevin and me to see Lincoln. Kevin's mom took me shopping for clothes for Evangeline. Now she is set with clothes up to 24 months old.

Sunday we blessed Evangeline. Kevin gave her a beautiful blessing and she looked lovely in her little dress. I was called as the Relief Society First Counselor. My sister Sariah and her family came out to see the blessing, Kevin's cousin Carolyn also came out. After church we went to my parents house for a super tasty dinner.

Davy's birthday was also on Sunday. It is crazy to think that he is now 2 years old. We held a birthday party for him on Monday. I made a donut shaped ice cream birthday cake. I then put letters and numbers all over it. It turned out pretty tasty. Davy's favorite part of the cake was eating the letters off his cake. He did great with blowing out his candles. Grandma and Grandpa Sampson got him a rug with roads and houses on it and also got him some cars to play with on it. It is super fun! They also got him some learning apps on our phones and on my tablet. He loves playing with them, especially since they are letter based apps. Nana and Grandpa Springer got him magnetic letters, a box for them to go into as well as a magnetic board for him to use them on. They also got him a leapfrog tracing and drawing toy that teaches him how to draw his letters. He loves practicing with it and can now write A, H, P, O and I am sure a few letters I don't know about yet. We got him a bunch of matchbox/hotwheel cars as well as a truck, and a child's laptop toy that he can learn things on. He loves all his toys and plays with them regularly.

We really enjoyed Mom and Dad Sampson visiting, it was a lot of fun and we got to spend some good quality time with them. We also started reading scriptures with them while they were out and have now gotten ourselves started on scripture reading together. All in all it has been a busy but great week!

Still Sick

So much has happened over the last week or so. First Davy got sick and had to stay with my parents to keep Evangeline from getting sick too. Then Evangeline and I got sick as well. Thankfully Evangeline did not get sick enough to land her in the hospital. According to her doctor we would need to take her to the hospital if she had a fever of 100.4 or more or if she started wheezing when she breathed. Thankfully neither happened and other than some scary coughing fits she has been ok. I think today she is finally beginning to get better. Davy stayed with my parents until yesterday. He ended up getting an ear infection and is on antibiotics. He seems to be feeling a lot better now. It has been so good to have our little boy back home with us again!

After a lot of crying and worry and stress over everything I finally went in to my doctor and asked for some anti-depressants, I must say that I feel a good deal better now that I have started them. I am no longer constantly on the verge of tears, and I seem to feel a lot more on top of everything. I have been sick with the same cold that Davy and Eva have and have been miserable because of it. I have been trying to get sleep when I can and have been gradually getting better as well. This whole week has been filled with temperature takings, coughing, sneezing, lots of doctor visits and some helpful medicine. I will be so happy when we are all feeling better again.

Sick

There is something terrifying about the idea of your child being sick. Maybe it is just post pregnancy hormones, who knows but yesterday was not an easy day for me. It started out in the morning, Davy was playing with some toys and so I went into the kitchen to get some food together for his breakfast. Kevin was sleeping on the couch so I figured that everything would be ok. I came back and thought that Davy looked like he might have something in his mouth so I did a finger swipe through his mouth to check. I thought I felt something but he swallowed it before I could get it, if I did feel anything at all. Shortly thereafter he started acting really tired (which was uncommon for the time of day) and we put him down for his nap. After he woke up from his nap I noticed that he was feeling kind of hot so I took his temperature and discovered that he had a fever. I ended up calling up the doctor and they had me come in right away for an x-ray for the possibility of a swallowed object. After a horrific time at the doctors where he got an x-ray, and had a flu test done to see if he had the flu we found that there was nothing to be seen on the x-ray and he did not have the flu. However the doctor did advise us to keep him away from Evangeline until he was 24 hours without a fever. So my mom took him home with her.

Needless to say yesterday was a very stressful, tear filled day for me. I was worried about my little boy, that he might have swallowed something that could hurt him, that he might have the flu, and worried about my little girl that she might have caught whatever it was that Davy had and would end up with a fever and in the hospital on IVs. Today I have had a few scares with Evangeline because our temporal thermometer (which you use on her forehead) has given me a few high measurements. However when I have double checked with an anal thermometer I have gotten regular readings. I just hate checking her temp anally, but it is the most accurate way and I don't want to take her into the ER without being sure that her temperature is high risk. All in all it has been stressful on me.

Eating and Sleeping

Since bringing our little girl home we have learned something about her, she is a cluster feeder. What is cluster feeding? It is when a baby will want to eat every 1 to 2 hours. So what does this mean? It means that Evangeline starts cluster feeding at about 11 pm and continues to cluster feed till about 9 am. Which means no sleep for Mommy, because every hour Evangeline wakes up and wants more food. Needless to say, my last few days have been a sleepless agony. Most nights I have been averaging about 2 to 4 hours of very awful sleep. Well the other night Kevin hit upon a fantastic way of fixing this. He noticed that Evangeline sleeps better when there is a lot of noise going on around her. And when things are dead quiet she tends to wake up and want food and stuff. So on Christmas Eve I downloaded a white noise app on my phone and played it whenever I put Eva to bed. I ended up getting about 6 hours of sleep this way and felt much more rested the next morning. Which was perfect since it was Christmas. Last night I went to bed early, and then used the white noise app to help me get even more sleep during the night and ended up getting 8 hours of sleep total! Finally I have a morning where I don't feel like a zombie!! Thank goodness for a wonderful husband with awesome ideas!!