A Visitor and the Big Boy Bed

A little over a week ago, Mauri's brother decided to rent out his house. He has been living with his new girlfriend for a while now, and decided that the extra income could really help out. I must admit that normally none of that really concerns nor interests me, but because the house was filled with lots of Noa's toys and other things that wouldn't necessarily fit into the new house, we ended up inheriting a lot of Noa's things.

Eric and Sheena outside his new house with his new car

In the past, Mauri's brother didn't want to give any of the old toys up. He figured that Noa would still want to use her play house (that Eric loves) and slide (that we haven't gone to pick up quite yet). With the renters moving in, though, things changed, and we headed over to the house to pick up, well, a house for Eric. I also rescued the little car that was in a pile of things to give to the new escoleta. It was just like one with which he always plays at school, so I knew he would love it. I was soooo right.

Eric hanging out with Trufa

They also told us that we should pick up her old crib/bed.

I have to admit that I wasn't all that happy about that part. We already had a hand-me-down crib that I don't love. Plus, I remembered having gone to paint Noa's room years ago when Cindy was pregnant. The wall was painted with the same little cartoon people that were on the colorful furniture.

I have never been a fan of colorful furniture, and much prefer something a little more neutral that can be combined with any sort of color scheme or theme in the room. Plus, Mauri and I had been eyeing several "big boy beds," and we'd actually fallen in love with a couple of them. You see, with Eric's room as tiny as it is, we were looking at loft/bunk bed type styles where the bed is on top, and Eric could have a play area below. Of course, at Eric's age, sleeping up on top is a little bit dangerous, so I gave in and decided to check out Noa's old crib-converted-into-bed.

Eric naps in the new bed

While the drawer and footboard were both orange and the footboard was decorated with one of the little cartoon people I described, the orange wasn't bad, and the main part of the bed was a more neutral wood color. In the end, I decided that the little bed could serve a temporary purpose for us, and could get us through until Eric is ready for a bigger boys' bed that, hopefully, we will get to choose for him.

Eric loves sharing smoothies with mommy

You see, lately Eric has been able to climb out of his crib. For those who don't know it, Eric's crib is wedged between the wall of our room, and our bed, and if I take the rail off, Eric can roll into our bed. This has been very handy for when he wakes up at night, and was perfect when he was a baby that needed to breastfeed several times nightly. I have to admit that a lot of times I would just open up my nursing tank, and let him nurse while I fell right back to sleep.

Hello, Trufa

Even in the era of feeding him several times nightly, I have never felt run-down or lacking in sleep. Our arrangement has been perfect. The only thing that made me a little more sleep deprived was when I would get up in the middle of the night to try to pump, when milk supply was supposedly at its highest, so that Mauri would have a bottle to feed Eric at night. Once my pump stopped working, though, around the time that Eric reached an age where he could drink whole milk anyway, I gladly gave up the pump at night routine, and Mauri started to give him a bottle of whole milk at night.

Let's face it, pumping milk sucks. So, for those who think that toddlers should only drink pumped breast milk from their mothers, rather than directly breastfeed, I don't agree with them either. First, I don't understand the point. Breastfeeding is not sexual and won't traumatize a child for life. Second, not everybody can pump very well. I always had a hard time getting enough milk out that way. It doesn't feel natural, takes longer, and supposedly doesn't give the same protection in antibodies because the child isn't passing on microbes to the mother.

The only problem with our arrangement, is that by having mommy milk so close, Eric has continued to wake up several times a night to feed. He has had no interest in sleeping through the night, and has rarely done so. So, lately, I have been denying milk at night; at least until after 4AM when daddy goes to work. For awhile he had been waking every night at 3AM to feed, and it was waking daddy when he really needed to sleep. Now, though, he seems to usually hold out for at least until his daddy goes to work. He sometimes wakes up and asks for water, but usually falls right back to sleep after taking a few sips.

The first couple of nights were hard, but now that he knows he won't get milk at night, he usually goes right back to sleep whenever he does wake up.

As for when he wakes up before we've reached the bed ourselves? Well, like I said, he got to the point that he could climb out of his crib and onto our bed. I got a little bit worried about him getting hurt, but didn't want to lower the crib because even at the lower level, the crib wouldn't be that much lower, but it would be lower than the level of our bed, making it more inconvenient for night comforting. One night, we turned on our camera monitor to see Eric having jumped out of his crib. We decided to watch to see what would happen, and were very surprised when a minute or two later of crying, he decided to climb back into his crib and go to sleep!

Eric loves to open the fridge and get out juice boxes

Here are a couple of juice boxes, mom!!

Yummmmm!

If it was that easy to climb in and out, what was the point of putting up the barrier in the first place? So, I stopped doing it. Now, when I put him to bed, he sometimes runs after me. Once I close the door, though, he climbs back up onto our bed, and heads back to his crib to sleep. By the time I get to bed, he is happily sleeping in his crib, and, luckily, never is sleeping in our bed.

The jump to a big boy bed, then, shouldn't be that difficult. For now, I like having him close. I like the idea of slowly getting him used to his room, though. So, I have him take naps in his newly inherited bed. For now, it seems to be working well.

What else is new?

Well, this week we've had the visit of Sheena's biological mother, Trufa, while Maite and Hans were vacationing in Germany. Things actually feel more normal with her here, and she is a lot like Sheena and likes to follow us around. Eric likes to laugh at them and try to play with them, as you can see from the pictures.

Other than that, there isn't much more to tell. We've been finally able to harvest some vegetables from the garden, and are also able to eat a lot of fruit from our fruit trees. Eric, so far, has liked the green beans and plums from our garden. We only got a couple of apricots and peaches this year, and sadly missed their prime time for eating, and tried them when they were a bit too ripe. We've been enjoying lots of plums, though, lately. If all goes well, we will hopefully be trying some persimmons and pomegranates from our trees for the first time this year too. As the trees get older we should be getting better yields.