Six Month Goals Update and Setting Nine Month Goals

So I had some goals by the time james was six months old, let's see how we're doing . . .

1. Lose (most of) my pregnancy weight.

Done!

2. Get james down to three one-hour naps per day at specific times.

Ummmm. Well he definitely naps now around 10, 1, 4 for an hour each. But then he also sometimes takes mininaps in the evening or morning, but I guess now that I think about it, we are pretty close to this goal!

3. Clean out the room across from ours so we can paint and make a room for james.

Definitely not achieved, however, we've put some work in, probably cleared out at least half of the stuff and organized another quarter or so to be ready for a tag sale. So I think with another good weekend of work we could be ready to paint. So that's still on the to-do list!



Now to set some goals for the next three months!

1. Finish cleaning out the room, plan the mural and paint it. Get furniture put together and moved in and everything ready in there, basically (though we'll probably keep james' bed in our room for 3 more months to let the paint outgas before he starts sleeping in there).

2. Clean out the garage and arrange a section to stage our tag sale from.

3. Get everything set for our tag sale, have it at the end of the summer.

Okay Mom I Don't Think We Are Getting a Crib . . . (cringe)

Sooooo

We never registered for or got a crib. I knew I wanted to cosleep, and many of my friends who did ended up never using their cribs. I really didn't want to spend 500-600 dollars on something we wouldn't use . . . so I figured I would wait and get one when I wanted one.

So maybe about a month ago, watching james start to fill up his cradle that I somehow seriously thought he would physically fit in until he was 2 (it's 31 inches long), I started feeling some pressure to make a decision about his sleeping situation and thinking maybe we should get a crib for him to use for naps, especially because at this point I was having some success to rocking james to sleep and putting him in his cradle . . .

. . . however, in the month since then, as I alluded to before, something has sparked to life in james which cannot be controlled or even guided much of the time. He loves life. He doesn't want to sleep (or even get a good meal in, sometimes!). He wants to look and play and wiggle and chew on things. He has discovered that the world contains all this interesting information and objects which are a joy to behold and interact with.

This is quite adorable but it means that our sleep situation has changed. It is nearly impossible now to rock him to sleep without a LOT of time and effort invested. Right now there are two easy ways to get him to sleep. One: Nurse him and then rock him, and then stick him in his swing and leave him there to "fuss it out" until he falls asleep, anywhere from 2-15 mins. OR, lay in the bed with him and nurse him for 5-10 mins until he is completely asleep. Nursing is much easier and even pleasant and relaxing (for both of us). AND it's sustainable on the long term. Which putting him in his swing isn't.

So my basic conclusion, here, is that the easiest thing for us on the long-term is for me to nurse james to sleep. A crib, therefore, is not going to work for us. Attempting to transfer him to a crib will mean that he notices he is alive and begins to smile and look around again. Cute, but not restful.

So I believe our immediate action on his sleeping situation is going to be to get toddler rails for one or both sides of our bed. And then before he starts crawling (in the next month or two), we'll get a twin mattress and throw it on the floor in our bedroom and I will nurse him to sleep and then he can nap there and potentially spend part of the night. If he wakes up he can crawl out safely--we can put the mattress on blankets or a rug or something so it's soft for him.

At this point we'll also get a baby gate that we can set up in our bedroom door.

And then when his room is done (and has out-gassed for several months), we can transition him to sleeping in his own room on the twin mattress on the floor (and at that point, put the baby gate across the hallway so that he can access both of our rooms but that is all). And then he'll have plenty of time to get used to his own room before we night-wean him (out of our bed and from nursing at night). I would hope to do that around 18 months or so.

So that's the plan. Mom, if I feel like I want a crib in the future I will still get one! But we're going to try this first and see how it goes.

james' own room?

I just realized that another goal I had by the time james was 6 months was to have the room across from ours cleaned out so that we could start decorating it as a Toddler room for james. I'm thinking I'll transition him into napping in there first, between 9-12 months (whenever it's finished being decorated and it's ready). And then sometime between 12-18 months I can start transiting him to sleeping in it during (most) of the night. So that's my goals on james' room situation!

My progress at this point--welllll, there has been some. The room is particularly problematic because when I was pregnant and trying to get the rest of the house prepared and cleaned and ready for a baby, I basically stuck all of the most-difficult-to-deal-with-junk (for instance, boxes of old bills, paperwork, tax info, old journal print outs, all my stuff from teaching, boxes of clothes that don't fit, etc) into this one room so that I could keep a good flow on the rest of the cleaning . . . so then it was crammed full of stuff and very overwhelming.

We started making progress on it a few months ago when we cleaned out a lot of stuff. And since then we've gone a couple times and just spent 10-15 mins trying to clean, organize, and throw away trash and useless junk. So it's improving. Also part of why it's improving is that some of what was in it was gear, toys, diapers, and clothes for james that were too big and waiting to be used. Well now that he's five months old, I'm shocked how completely we've depleted the waiting stash. He's in 9 month stuff now (and six month stuff with a crotch extender), and in a few more months we'll start needing to actually shop for clothes for him because we've finally used most that we got at our shower!

Anyway, back to the room--we've made some progress. But we need to decide what to do with some of the things in there:
-The desk that is in there (and the one we have downstairs here). I'm thinking of setting up a computer/bills area somewhere and potentially we could put both of our desks there . . .
-And we need a place to put the filing cabinets (two small metal ones), and we have about 5 boxes of bills and paperwork to go through. That will be the hard part, going through all of that stuff. Ideally, we'd condense everything into the two filing cabinets and put them near our desk area!
(And ideally we would clean out the garage and sell a bunch of stuff (from that room and from the garage) at a garage sale this summer and/or fall, but that's more a 9 month goal I guess, haha.)

So maybe I'll be able to work more on that this week. I'm REALLY excited to paint and have a great idea for the room but I'll need to work on it. It needs a lot of planning still. A rough idea is that it will be a woodland scene with trees, birds and animals. The ceiling will look like the blue sky. But when you turn out the lights there will be glow-in-the dark stars and constellations! So fun!

I'm going to design it as a room for all my children to use between 1ish and 5ish (or when-ever they get pushed out by younger siblings). Since it's right across from us, it will be easy to put up a baby gate at night so they can reach us without the danger of stairs or getting into the rest of the house.