Neil's sleep pattern

Neil keeps waking up in the middle of the night, and requires that we hold him before he falls asleep. Sometime that lasts only 10 minutes, sometime he doesn't go back to sleep for 2 hours. Poor Lisa, she is almost afraid to go to sleep worrying about how to avoid lack of sleep!

So we looked up some books and did internet search. Everyone seems to say that we should let the child cry to sleep. This sounds horrible, and we were afraid that he will learn helplessness. Our doctor said that he will in fact learn self reliance. There is some truth to that, yet it is very difficult to just let him cry.

We may bite the bullet one of these days. But for now we have decided to take only the first half of the "Ferber Method" and create a routine and good associations with sleeping area. We are using his love for water - we try to keep him awake from 6:00 PM, and from 9:30 to 11:00 pm, we finish the following things : Let him play in the water, bathe, warm clothing, his last feeding, little play inside his crib, and finally force him to sleep inside.

We have done this past 3 days, and 2 of the nights he slept for about 6 hours (almost) straight. He does wake up once in while, but goes back after about 10 minutes, without picking him up. We hope to keep him awake longer in the evening. Let's see how it goes.

Neil swimming in bathtub

Neil has always loved water, even though he is just 8 months old. When he was 6 months, I showed him water squirting out from the garden hose. He laughed so hard every time I started the water flow, it was amazing. We have a small fountain nearby, and he watches it for a long time as if he is watching a TV show. Then I started putting his feet and hands in the sinkful of water. He would splash the water for half an hour, and had to be taken away against his will. Every time we passed by the sink, he would start kicking his feet.

Couple days ago we let him loose in the bathtub. (doubleclick the picture above to see the amazing detail - Lisa took a really nice shot!) He was so excited, he played for half an hour even thought he was really sleepy. He wanted to hold the faucet, so he would walk towards it When I held him horizontal, he actually swam (with my support) towards the faucet. I am not kidding! See the clip.

Baba's trip back and Everyone's sick

Baba went back home today. Just got the call that he was in the car traveling from Mumbai airport to Pune. Apart from being extremely tired, everything went smoothly. So that's nice. Just before he left we went to dinner out for send off. When we came back I recorded his "Bagalyanchi Maal Phule..." for Neil, as he gets mesmerized when he hears it. Wish I had thought of recording at Vija's program. Oh well.

For the past few days, everyone was sick. First Baba, then Vija and Ruchita, and then finally Neil and Lisa. They keep saying I am the next in the line. I hope I skipped this line for good. Touch wood!

Neil has recovered, and both Lisa and Aai seem to be on the last leg of their illness. I was a good boy and good husband yesterday. I let both of them rest, played with Neil, made some popcorn, cheese crackers, and maggi. (My cooking skills have deteriorated, as you can tell!) We watched the Indiana Jones movie. Aai enjoyed it too, despite having some gross scenes typical of Indy movies (snakes and mice crawling around...)

Starting the blog

The idea is to start writing up small events that happen day to day. Kind of like a scrapbook that can shared and accessed easily. Blog does not have the warm and fuzzy feel of a scrapbook, but given that our parents are thousands of miles away, sharing is so much more important. Besides, I am really bad with papers, and clippings and sticking things in a book.

Starting with Neil's picture we took recently. His grandparents requested that we dress him up in girl's clothes and see what he would have looked like as a girl! So here it goes... doubleclick on it to see a more detailed version.