Spring Break! and a rant on parenting

I wish that spring break meant some wonderful great escape from this overly crazy time in life... it does not but at least I do not have to go to class. I am getting so so so tired and I cannot wait for the semester to be over. I just can't believe how much work I have to get done before it does end. But I guess there is only one way to do that, doing it.

Apart from that something wonderful has been happening. Julian is having a magical response to my all time favorite band Smashing Pumpkins. What a blessing! First of all when I turn it on when he is getting a little sleepy, he starts to calm down, looks around and then starts to yawn. It is so cute and then he drifts away to sleep. If he is really tired and is fussy and crying he immediately stops, looks around and then closes his eyes and goes to sleep. The second wonderful thing about it is that I love Smashing Pumpkins, like from the time I was 11 and now I get to listen to them all the time:)

Upon making this discovery I realized that I could probably help him sleep at the times I wanted him to in the day instead of whenever and decided to look up the sleeping schedule from "Babywise." A friend of mine swore by it because her baby was sleeping through the night by like a month and obviously I was impressed because Julian is still not sleeping through the night and he has just turned 4 months. Hearing about the scheduling and everything I thought that I was screwing up as a parent because Julian does not have one, however, when I looked up "Babywise" I discovered that may not be the case. Not sleeping through the night may be just what he needs for now anyway. Looking at the blogosphere I learned that "Babywise" is not just a sleeping schedule but a feeding schedule and philosophy of making sure life does not center around your child. From some articles I learned that the author responsible for writing the book has more or less been disowned by his church, is not a pediatrician or any kind of child specialist, and that he is estranged from his children and grandchildren. The book has also been cautioned against by the AAP and a ton of pediatricians. Not a big deal because I am not doing that system. However, the thing that really upsets me is what a loser it made me feel like because I did not have my little tiny infant on a sleeping schedule. THIS IS A SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE PEOPLE THAT ARE MAKING MONEY OFF OF PARENTS INSECURITIES!!! YOU ARE SO LAME AND I AM SURE THAT YOU WILL HAVE A PRICE TO PAY FOR BEING SUCH A JERK SOME DAY!!! Okay, so I am sure that most baby books are really there to help parents but honestly, if there is ever a title or book that says "NO FAIL, SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT GUARANTEED" or whatever guaranteed that person probably has no children or DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU OR YOUR BABY! As if parents did not have enough to worry about when they are worrying about everything, add "you are not doing enough" to be a good parent to the list. It makes me so mad! So anyway Julian may be more on a schedule now because he is a bit older and I know how to help him fall asleep when he is already tired. But his schedule is one that he helped make up himself and he gets up in the night but he is happy and fat and healthy. Just the way that I want him to be. If that means less sleep then so be it. It is the only time he will ever be a baby. The bottom line is that parents have been doing parenting since Adam and Eve. Somehow we managed to make it this far and ten thousand years or so later we are still around. So i'll forget about all this stuff I could learn about control, and special unknown cures and enjoy the crazy unpredictability that is parenthood. Trusting your instincts as a parent helps you stress a lot less.

Julian turned four months old last Saturday and when he went in for a doctor visit a week ago he weighed 17 pounds. He is such a little chunk! He has been so much more social at feeding time lately so I wonder if his weight gain will start to slow down a bit. He has been averaging about 2 1/2 pounds a month and if he were to continue like this he would be 30 pounds at 9 months. So I am sure he will start to slow down at some point soon. Apart from being a happy boy almost all the time we have been struggling with some eczema problems and food allergies. The food allergies have been going on for about a month but I think we are getting a handle on that. I had to stop eating eggs, dairy, wheat, chocolate, and nuts. We stopped the obvious things but it wasn't till lately that we started looking more closely at labels and realized that eggs, wheat, and milk are in like every processed food. So since cutting out all that stuff his diapers have been looking a lot better. Diet restrictions may explain some of my crankiness with the sleep schedule book... He also has had some skin probs. His skin has always been really sensitive but it was getting pretty bad on his head and where his birth mark is between his eyes. So we started lathering him in lotion and his whole head cleared up except for one tiny spot. His head is beautiful but the lotion on the spot between his eyes made it too wet and Julian loved to rub that spot he got an infection (reason we went to the doctors before his 4 month check up). So now we are trying to treat it with a special anti-biotic ointment but he rubs it soooo much it is so hard to let it heal. Right now he has his Indian prince bandana on and we are hoping that it helps. His cheeks have also started to flare up a bit but there are much less severe and we are just putting .05 hydrocortisone on them. I asked the doc about him ingesting the hc because it was on his face and he told me that he would have to ingest a teaspoon and a half in one dose for it to bother him so that alleviated one of my many mom fears. Throughout all this Julian is such a little sport. He is still happy and loves to play and have fun. Here is the little Indian prince is in his Johnny jump up:

Last but not least I have been determined to get a family picture done. A friend of ours has silhouettes in their front room and I thought they were so artsy and cute I tried to do some for us. They turned out pretty weird but I think the general look will be nice and I don't figure anyone will look at them too closely. I did them on gimp which is like a free photoshop you can down load. I can't believe how many times I messed up the pictures before I got it right. If anyone wants to know how to do it let me know. I am going to print these off at Walgreens and then hang them in one big frame. Here's how they turned out:

Till next week...