Random stuff...

I'm trying to capture some of Henry's sweetness before the new baby comes. He likes to give me kisses, so here are a few photos of that. Neither of them are flattering in any way, but that doesn't matter to me. All that matters is that I can look back at these and savor them when Henry is in Jr. High and way too cool to give his mother kisses :)



Thoughts on Baby #2:

• While we are curious about the baby's gender, we truly don't care if we have a boy or a girl. I love the idea of having another boy because it would mean the potential for a special brotherly bond between he and Henry. But...having a girl would be great too, of course. I would love to teach her to sew and it would be great to have even gender distribution in the house.
• This baby will be the first person in our family to NOT be a firstborn. I think this will bring an interesting dynamic to our house.
• I'm curious to see how Henry reacts to the baby once he/she arrives. He is very aware of the fact that our baby is coming to live at our house soon and he is very gentle and sweet to everything baby related. He constantly gives my belly kisses and he likes to talk to me about how mom & dad will go to the doctor to get the baby. He also knows that mom will have ouchies after the baby is born and that the baby will drink mom's milk. He likes to hold his arms across his chest in a rocking motion to show us how he will hold the baby.
  
• I always pray with Henry before he goes to bed at night. Before we pray, I always ask him what he wants to talk to God about. Every single time he says, "Baby." So every night we pray for the baby, which is incredibly sweet. I wonder what he will want to pray for after the baby actually arrives?

Thoughts on Henry big boy bed transition:

• This transition was (is?) MUCH more difficult than we thought it was going to be. I purposely had Henry nap in his bed for over a week before we even approached the idea of moving him to it for night time. I thought this would make things seamless...not so much.
• We kept Henry's bedtime routine EXACTLY the same, only instead of using the crib, we put him in his bed. This didn't seem to help Henry.
• For the first week or so, putting Henry in his big boy bed was like giving him a huge candy bar. It totally wound him up and made it almost impossible to get him to sleep. Horrible. I guess it was the change of location and the fact that he could actually get out of his bed on his own that made everything so exciting. Either way, we would start our bedtime routine around 7:30ish with a bath, and it would be at least 10:00 before we could get him to sleep. Talk about exhausting.
• We were reminded again that Henry just isn't a very great sleeper and that change in routine is somewhat difficult for him.
  
• There is good news though! Henry is now falling asleep on his own in his big boy bed! Woohoo! John gives him his bath, brushes his teeth, and reads with him, and then I lay in his bed with him for 12 minutes while we sing & pray together. This helps calm him down and then he knows that when the timer goes off I will leave (always leaving the door open with the bathroom light on, of course) and he will fall asleep on his own. This routine is working for us, which is absolutely fantastic!
  
• So anyways, the big boy bed transition has seen its share of difficult moments, but at least we are making big improvements. Now we are working on getting Henry to sleep through the night and stay in his bed the whole time. Usually between 3:00 & 4:00 he ends up either wandering into our room, or calling to us from his bedroom. All things considered though, we are still pretty proud of how far we've come.

That's it for the randomness...I just wanted to remember these things before baby #2 comes along.