We sold our house!

This has been a long time in coming, but this past Wednesday night we sold our house! It was on the market for almost 15 months, so we are totally thrilled. :) We have not been out looking at houses because we didn't want to find something we loved, then not be able to buy it because we couldn't sell our house. So, now that we are in the position to be looking, we can't wait to get out there with our realtor. :) We'll be looking in Lake Zurich and Palatine, and we'll see what we can find that best meets our needs.

After having such wonderful success with Dylan's sleep training at the end of last week, this week was horrible. It was as if I never even worked on it with him! As I write, he's been in his bed crying for 50 minutes. He's exhausted. He's just so stubborn and WILL NOT give in! So I'm back to feeling frustrated and exhausted from all of his crying. He gets very little sleep during the day since he refuses it, so that makes him extra crabby.

Steve and I have essentially moved out of our bedroom for Dylan's benefit (and ours) at night. He wakes up with the littlest noise of us crawling into bed, so his sleep gets interrupted. I'm afraid to even roll over in bed because that wakes him up too, so I get a horrible night's sleep, and then I'm not able to stay patient and calm for the next day's battles. The past two nights that we've slept on the blow up mattress in our family room have been the best two nights of sleep I've had in a long time! Now I know that we'll only be in this house for about 6 more weeks, so the end is in sight. Dylan will have his own room and we'll get ours back too! Can't wait!

Update on Dylan

Dylan had his weight check on Wednesday this week, and he was up to 16 lbs, 2 oz! So he gained 12 oz in two weeks. :) The pediatrician was very pleased and said it's rare to see growth like that outside of the first month or two! I think he had a little growth spurt right after I was in for his three month appointment, because he was nursing very frequently for the next two or three days. I'm guessing that's what happened, and that made him gain so much weight.

Steve and I got to a point this past Sunday where we couldn't handle Dylan not sleeping in his bed anymore, so we decided to start his sleep training right then and there! On Tuesday I finally got one or two successes. Wednesday was the same, then yesterday he took three naps in his bed! Woo hoo! He will even go down fairly easily for at least one of those naps each day. Such a dramatic improvement in less than one week! I have felt the weight lifting from my shoulders (almost literally, as I don't have to hold Dylan while he sleeps anymore!), and it has really brightened my mood. :) We still have a little more work to do, but I'm very thankful for the progress he's making!

Last night I think I heard one little chuckle out of Dylan! He really needed a fourth nap yesterday, but wouldn't give in, so he had gotten a bit hysterical with his crying by bedtime. I was getting him ready for bed and making fun of the noises he had been making a few minutes before, and he thought it was funny! We grabbed the camera to get a video, and he didn't laugh, but we got plenty of cute baby happy noises. Enjoy!

Micah's such a big boy!

As we close in on Micah's second birthday, I'm amazed at what a big boy he's becoming! When my sister, her husband, and daughter came to visit a week ago we put Kate in Micah's high chair and set up his booster seat at the table for Micah. Since then he's continued to want to eat at the table (as we expected!). He's finally wanting to eat with a fork all the time now - for so long he just wanted to play with it, not use it to eat with. And he's eating off of a plate too! That's a very new development - even a month ago he just played with it and threw it around. It's made me all emotional this week when we sit down to dinner as a family, and there's Micah sitting across from me, eating with his fork and plate, looking all grown up! Here's a picture of my view at dinner time. :)
He's still talking a ton, and repeats many words that we say in conversation. Lately he's started saying "love you" when prompted, which is SO sweet! He loves blowing kisses to anyone and everyone too. :) We've started to sing the alphabet song to him, and we follow along with the letters in one of his picture books that shows each letter. Sometimes out of the blue he'll sing little bits of the song - he particularly likes "e, f, g!" Of course this makes me emotional too, since I just can't believe my little boy is starting to learn the alphabet already! We're starting to work on letter recognition too, and so far he knows A and B. :)

What a precious blessing he is to us!!

Dylan's 3 month checkup

I took Dylan to his 3 month checkup today. Here are his stats: he weighed 15 lbs, 6 oz (90%), was 25 3/4 in (95%) tall, and his head circumference was 16 1/2 in (50-75%). Everything looked great, but he only gained 6 oz since his last visit. I was surprised by this since he gained over 2 lbs between months 1 and 2! His Dr. didn't think it was a big deal, but wants to see him back in two weeks for a weight check just to make sure. She said that he'd had big growth spurts the first two months, and it's possible that he's just settling into his "real" growth curve now. She also noticed how active he was (kicking his legs and moving his arms vigorously), and when I told her that he is that active most of the day, she said he could just be burning off all his calories! So I'm going to focus on his feedings to make sure he's nursing long enough, and hopefully he'll still be on track in two weeks.

I was wondering if he might still be hungry tonight after his last feeding, so I thought I'd offer him some more milk in a bottle to see if he would take it. He hasn't had a bottle at all yet, so I didn't know if he would even drink from it. I defrosted 3 ounces of frozen milk, and WOW, he took right to that bottle! So either he was really hungry still, or he was excited about how easy it was to get milk from a bottle. :) I'm so glad to know that he'll take a bottle! But now I'm slightly worried that my supply isn't sufficient...I guess we'll see.