I am the mom of the biter

I feel like I am apologizing to everyone these days due to Jaxon's need to bite when he is teething. His canines are starting to shift about to get ready to come in. Since teething is an agonizingly slow process for the Lamela-Rhea children I imagine I get to be labeled as the "mom of the biter" for several more weeks to come. He only seems to bite when he is teething. He has never biten during any other time. However, during this time the triggers are many ... everything from playful biting to biting out of frustration and no one is off limits, unfortunately. Any discipline regarding the biting just brings attention to the fact that he bit which seems to trigger him to bite more to get a rise out of everybody. It is very annoying.

Sleep you little TURD!

Jax was not the best sleeping little baby in the world. He really did not like to and therefore would not sleep alone. This meant he slept curled up under my arm and nursed on and off all night. He rarely woke all the way up at night ... instead he woke, nursed and went back to sleep. While this was a situation that worked well for him at the time I was rather happy when he outgrew the need. By the time Jax was a year old he was sleeping through the night (although he does like to wake quite early) in his own crib and in his own room. Since then he really does not wake at night ... not even when he is teething or has a cold. He will occasionally rustle and need a bit of patting to calm back down but that is about it.

I have often thanked my lucky stars that Jax was not like Jaida as a baby. Jaida was generally a great sleeper when she slept. She slept long and hard but if she did wake for any reason (26 TEETH!) it was a process to get her back to sleep. The process entailed much shhhh'ing, singing, humming, bouncing, rocking and walking the cold hard floors in the wee hours of the morning. Jax in the last three weeks (for some undisclosed reason) has decided to start waking in the middle of the night. When I say waking I mean really waking up as in greeting us by yelling "hi mama" or "hi dad" as we walk through the door. He also hands us his pacifier and points at the dresser where they are kept when he is not in the crib. It is never a good thing when he hands us the pacifier in the middle of the night because it means he has no intention of going back to sleep. It has gotten to the point where I refuse to take it from him in hopes that he will give up, pop it back in his mouth and go back to sleep. Miracles do happen, don't they? That is usually the point at which he throws the pacifier towards the dresser and starts screaming as loud as he can. That is also the point at which Joe takes over because it requires a bit of walking with Jax to get him back to sleep and well Jax is just way too big for me to carry like that for very long.

Last night Joe made many trips into Jax's room. Then the screaming started. Then I heard Joe finally give up and plop Jax back in the crib ... still screaming. He was just awake and was not going to be left in the crib. I finally took pity on poor Joe and drug myself out of bed to try to help. I sat next to the crib and held Jax's hand until he finally started to drift off to sleep. At that point he was still very restless and needed considerable shhh'ing. So I layed down in the toddler bed in Jax's room and for the next 2 hours shhhh'ed him every 10 minutes or so. Toddler beds are really small. I am very stiff and tired today. The boy BETTER sleep tonight!

18 months old

I am a little late with this entry. Things have been busy but mostly it was because Jax didn't have his 18 month well baby(kid?) exam until last Friday.

The stats:

Length: 32.25 inches (50%)
Weight: 24 pounds 14 ounces (~40%)
Head: 50 cm (>95%)

He is a very healthy little guy. It is funny that with Jaida whenever we had to fill out one of those developmental checklists she always fell slightly behind on the physical aspects ... climbing, balancing, jumping, etc. She is perfectly caught up now but then she was always a tiny bit behind. Jax on the other hand has had all the physical stuff listed on the 24th month checklist mastered for some time. Anyhow, Jax is healthy and developing just perfectly. The only concern I had was about his lack of actual talking. The doctor assured me that he falls in the totally normal range for both boys and second children as far as his speech. He says about 30 words and combines many of them into three word phrases. He understands everything we say and can follow semi-complicated directions from me so I know that he hears perfectly fine. I suppose that Jaida was so far advanced at this point that it is a bit hard to keep from comparing the two.

Jax seems to have caught Jaida's cold/cough which of course settled right into his chest. I gave him a few doses of albuterol in the nebulizer and that seems to be knocking it right out. This is all after about a week and a half of rather sleepless nights for Joe and myself. Jax slept through all the coughing just fine but we of course suffered.

Bath-time Silliness

Sister, you look silly!
















Do I look silly too?

A VERY Merry Christmas

IMG_5900
Originally uploaded by gias_kids.

While Jax had very little interest in doing the work of un-wrapping his gifts he certainly enjoyed playing with all the toys afterward. He especially loves all of the car toys and his new rocket ship. He also loves the little tool sets and we hear him exclaim "I fix it!" quite often these days.

We had lots of time off work so we had fun making/decorating/eating cookies. Jax mostly just played with his toys or got into Jaida's stuff. :)

Cuteness

Jax
Originally uploaded by gias_kids.