All Sorts of Good Stuff Happening

My mom came out for a visit last week. She teaches interior design at a college in the SF Bay Area and she spent her entire Spring Break out here with us. There are few things I get more excited about than a visit from my mom. She is so much fun and so helpful with our boys, and all things design. Plus, lots of chocolate always arrives with her, and stays (for a very short time) after she heads home.

Ian ran off with her suitcase and packed some essentials for his own trip.

Grandma loves to snuggle and rock her grandsons. Ian playing with an early birthday present.

I love building tracks. I've been known to continue playing even once Ian has moved on to something else.

During my mom's visit we ate lots of fried southern food, BBQ, some amazing lobster sandwiches at my new favorite place, Blue Bell ice cream and several pounds of chocolate. Each.

We also painted some subtle stripes on a kitchen wall.

A better picture is needed; there are now cool items in the boxes.

And we made purses using some of the suitcase full of fabric she brought. By 'we' I mean she gave me lots of design and fabric options and then she made it happen using her skill at the sewing machine. I LOVE how they turned out!
The designer at work. Notice how photogenic she is, even after midnight!

The purses!

We also shopped for home decor (she has radar for incredible deals) spray-painted stuff, laughed about funny memories, made some new memories with the grandbabies, and ate some of her famous smoothies.

One night Scott went on a scout campout and we stayed in for a girls night. Here is some of the snacks we indulged on while watching a movie. Twelve cheesecake squares are absent from this picture because I had already eaten them all!

We sure wish my dad could have come out too. Ian loves that Home Depot truck "dat Gwampa 'made' for us". That orange matchbox truck is the first thing he asks for each morning and it travels in Ian's little fist wherever we go.

In other news, several weeks ago I stopped swaddling Joseph during his morning nap. It took him about 30 minutes to fall asleep that first time, but ever since he's gotten comfortable holding a bunny and a blanket as he drifts off to sleep. And he sleeps much better now that he can retrieve his own binkie.

And the night my mom left, Scott and I began 'Sleep Training' Joseph. Until then Joseph was waking to eat at least 4 times a night. And it was getting worse every week. He's almost six months old. I know. It was ridiculous.

We figured it would take several weeks for Sleep Training to work its magic, since his habits were pretty bad. We didn't bother waiting for a weekend, because we figured we'd be working on it for several weeks. However, using the Ferber method Joseph ate only twice that first night, and only cried for about 30 minutes total. The second night he ate only once, and cried for less than 5 minutes. And by the third night, he didn't eat at all, and awoke only once or twice with hardly any fussing at all. Scott and I are ecstatic about his quick improvements. And not unlike our experience with Ian, Joseph has become even more good-natured, charming and giggly since getting better night-time sleep.


The only sad part about all this is that Ian gave up his binkie the first night Joseph slept through the night. Which means that although Joseph slept, Scott, Ian and I did not. We had been planning to continue Ian's binkie use, but were unfortunately forced to stop it abruptly. And I don't think the timing could be much worse. But parts of this experience have actually been pretty funny, so I will post more about it soon.

And lastly, Joseph has begun to sleep on his tummy. While I still put him on his back to sleep, he settles himself onto his tummy at some point in the night. To me this marks his departure from 'new baby' status into the stages of later infancy. He must really be growing up!