Our Tales of Two Cities: Little & Big Loves

Most of our life revolves around our little love, Waverly and our big love, Cole so I figured I'd write a post on them.

Here's an update our BIG love...King Cole!

I have to admit...Cole has gotten the shaft in the past 5+ months. He hasn't gotten the walks and exercise he deserves since Waverly has arrived. I had hoped that I would LOVE to walk Cole with Waverly in the stroller, but the reality is that it's not easy. He's 120 lbs right now (hoping to reduce that) and I haven't taken the time to train him well to walk with the stroller...even though I did try a little before Waverly was born. He's getting better, but will pull when another dog walks by and zig zags behind me so I'm constantly trying to keep him on one side. He gets a couple walks a week from me....it really should be everyday.

I also always find him in the way these days...he's SO. BIG. He'll lay across the kitchen while I'm in it or in a walkway...I know he just wants to be where we are...but it's in the way. He's also been begging like crazy...he used to stay away from our food, but not recently. We may not be feeding him enough either, but as I stated he's 120lbs!

On the positive side...Nick and I loooove our big lab and know that all he needs is exercise, attention, and some more training. We're thinking about obedience school which would actually be fun for him because we'd have our attention 100% on him! He loves Waverly though and kisses her lots! She has started to reach out and touch him...can't wait for her to crawl after him!

Winter Walk

Checking each other out

Cole may seem interested but really he's sleeping.

Waverly watches Cole while Cole watches for food.

As for my little love, Waverly, she is now 5 months! I can't believe it...she is so much fun. I kiss her soft chubby cheeks at least 1000 times a day. She is growing great and hitting those developmental milestones like a champ! She is rolling all around our house! I feel like I need carpet or foam padding everywhere because I can't keep her from rolling off her play areas. She started rolling from front to back around 2.5 -3 months, but on Christmas at 4 months started rolling back to front and now does both sometimes multiple times in a row....often toward something she wants of course!

She's also soooo LOUD and vocal (we often wake up to her squealing and "ahh-goo" noises). She blows raspberries, puts everything in her mouth, and has the best grin. She's also starting to sit up a little more now and bounces like crazy on her legs.

Luckily for us she has always been a great sleeper...slept 8 hours at 2 months and 10 hours at 3 months. But 4 months threw us some major curve balls, so we have been tired in January!

All the 4-5 months changes were so rough on us. It also takes me a little while to adapt and figure out what kind of change she needs, so in the meantime we struggle with lack of sleep and a decent amount of crying at nap and bed times. Changes included:

-rolling around like a crazy woman
-no swaddle
-not keeping pacifier in
-wanting mommy or daddy more
-starting to eat more...including rice cereal
-possible start of teething

So I have been doing process of elimination to find out what might be causing her sleep disruptions. This resulted in doing a couple things I didn't really want to do...

-no blanket/sleep sack so that she can roll over
-let her sleep on her tummy
-let her cry some to sleep to prevent us from replacing the pacifier constantly
-reducing naps from 4-3 a day so that she can get longer naps

This week starts the new schedule! I'm a schedule mom while also keeping the schedule flexible if necessary...I think it helps life be more predictable and Waverly knows what to expect and falls into the schedule naturally. I learned a lot of this by reading Becoming Babywise...and really attribute our early sleep success to applying some of the theories of this book. I am now reading Becoming Babywise II and wish I had started it last month!