Homemade Baby Gym

I don't know if you have heard of baby gyms, such as this or this. They can get quite expensive. Well, I'm a part of the Welcome Baby program and once a month a volunteer comes and shows me ways to help my baby development, what activities I can do with Alex, and what developmental steps I should expect in the next month. Well, last visit, she showed me how to make a homemade baby gym, that is really easy.

All you do is buy some PVC pipe, two elbow joints, two T-joints, and 4 caps. Then you cut the pipe into four 6-inch pieces, two 16-inch pieces, and one 18-inch piece. Put it together and then you can hang whatever toys you have. When done, it looks like this:

Getting Baby to Sleep

I think I posted awhile back about how the first night Alex didn't sleep at all (new parent + cold newborn = disaster). Well, it basically became my mission to figure out if there was anything I could do to help Alex sleep longer, and to know at what age I needed to do what so he would sleep as well as he could as soon as he could. I was somewhat disappointed to discover that there is not much you can do when babies are newly born. They need to eat often because they can't eat much, and they're too young to be trained to sleep longer (one book claimed that you could train a newborn, but from all the reviews on it, I don't believe it's true. I read the book as well, and completely disagree with the author). What the majority of books I read do agree on is that you can begin to train your baby between 12 and 16 weeks old.

Basic Update

So I thought I would update just with how everything is going in general. Alex is really good; he's 3 months old now and can grab onto things (as shown in the pic where he's grabbing his clothes) and can sit in my lap (though I have to keep steadying him because he can't sit up yet). Some days he doesn't take naps well, but he's doing well so far today. He slept from 7:30 to 9:15 and right now he's napping and has been for an hour. I love it when he sleeps well. Yesterday he didn't want to sleep at all (and the ice cream man woke him up while he was taking one of his naps. Arg!). I don't think he got more than 45 min in a row all day.

But even so, he sleeps really well at night. I have to say that bedtime routines really work! Every night an hour before bedtime, I give him a bath, then a massage, put him in his sleeper and a swaddle blanket, and then I feed him. Once I do all that, I just put him in his crib and he goes to sleep. He was waking me up at 5 a.m. to eat, but for the last week, he has been sleeping till 6:45 or later, and some mornings I get him up to eat because I can't wait. After feeding him, I will put him back down and he will sleep 2 to 3 hours more. So most nights he gets at least 10 hours of sleep if not more. I try to get to bed by 10 so I can take advantage of that and get 8 or more hours of sleep. I don't know how I made it through the first couple of months being woken up every 2 or 3 hours. It's a good thing it's short-lived. I think he's a sleeper just like me--we both love sleep! But the bedtime routine really seems to help get him ready for bed and help him to sleep (that and the swaddle blanket, the dark room, and the white noise machine).

For the most part he doesn't cry or fuss (except when he's hungry or tired/overtired). He'll sit in our laps while we're on the computer and just move around. He is entranced by things moving on the TV or computer, if only for a minutes. It's funny how absorbed he gets. He really likes to be held, though when he's full and happy, he'll just lie on the bed content or floor content. I made him a baby gym out of PVC pipes and he will entertain himself by the toys hanging there.

And he is such a flirt. He'll smile at you and then turn his head like he's shy. It's so cute!

On June 1 Alex was blessed at church. Aaron's dad and sister came from Washington to attend. Here are pictures if you would like to see, click here. Unfortunately, none of my other family was able to come. 

Babies who hate cribs

So I frequent the ads on KSL.com because I've gotten some great deals on used stuff. One section is for cribs. And basically, I'm sick of people who put on their ad that they are selling their crib because their child hates cribs or won't sleep in their crib. Okay, well, maybe I don't know their situation and their child really won't sleep in a crib, but an ad I saw today really got to me. It says, "i bought this brand new a couple months ago but i came to realise that my son hates cribs so im selling it, it has only been used once for 10 minutes tops." Now, besides the fact that this person has lived long enough to have a child, but to not realize that I is capitalized, and doesn't seem to have grasped grammar, I can't believe that putting her son in a crib for 10 minutes "tops" is long enough to realize that he "hates" cribs. I mean who is the parent here? Apparently not this woman.

I have to wonder how she discovered this. Did she put her baby in the crib and, like all babies (at times), he cried because he didn't want to be put down to sleep. I mean seriously. And where does the baby sleep now? Probably in bed with mom where he has slept since he was born and has not been taught to sleep anywhere else. If that's the case, you just need to give the baby time to get used to the crib. This is why I stopped having my son sleep with me once he was about 2 months because by 3 or 4 months they start to understand and realize, "Hey, I like it here with mom. I'm going to cry if she doesn't let me sleep with her." Since I stopped it before then, he didn't have a problem transitioning to a crib and has slept in one since we got it for him--no problem.

I just don't get some people.