Dexter is still making so much noise it's just plain nuts. Sure it can be cute when he's laughing and happy, but the pterodactyl sound is now becoming a dead ringer for a baby wookie. It's hilarious (sometimes). He's also doing a couple other things that are rather cute and/or funny.
The first one is that he's re-discovered his feet (again). He only pays attention to them when I'm changing his diaper though. Apparently, I've been holding his butt up high enough for him to see and then grab his feet. Now, once he grabs his feet, I can let go of them and he keeps his own butt in the air for me. He seems to enjoy holding his feet, butt in the air, spread eagle, while I change him and put on diaper cream. It's pretty helpful actually. I'm teaching him good manners by thanking him for holding his butt up for me.
Number two, no not that number two, also occurs on the changing table. Dexter loves to be naked. He cries when I put clothes on him. I sometimes call him cave-baby because he'd love to play in nothing other than a diaper and he beats himself on the chest or stomach when he gets really excited. He kicks his feet really fast and makes a wookie noise or a pterodactyl screech. It makes me laugh every time. I'm so tempted to get out some leopard skin faux fur, wrap it around his diaper and take a picture or better yet - shoot some video. Hmmm... maybe I should. It might come in handy when he's a rebellious teenager.
I did jinx myself again on the sleeping front. He'd gone 4 days of sleeping 6-7 hours and now he's back to 4 hour stints. The only good thing is that he sleeps for 12 hours. I get 3 "naps" a night and I have to sleep at least 10 of the 12 hours to feel like I've slept enough. I've successfully moved his bedtime to 9:00-9:30pm though, so at least I can get an hour of alone time with Mr. Cobra.
We are starting some sleep training. Nothing drastic, as he's pretty good already because I started the basic bedtime routine around month 2. We start around 8:00-8:30 pm with a clean diaper and pajamas. We play with him for a while trying to get him tired. Then I change into my pajamas and I turn the lights down. I read a story, or two, or three until he gets tired. I nurse him, and if he falls asleep then he's put in the crib, the lights are turned off and I leave the room until I go to bed. We are sometimes just laying him down to go to sleep when he's drowsy instead of asleep too. That's only if the last feeding doesn't put him to sleep. He'll fuss for maybe 10 minutes before he falls to sleep on his own. He never gets super upset, just makes some noise for a while. He fusses like that when he's really tired, so it's really no different.
I don't know if that's what they call the "cry it out" method. It doesn't seem like he's really crying. I'd like to think that it isn't or maybe I'm just doing it the right way. I've read some people telling about how their babies cried so hard that they would vomit. I couldn't do that. I started early to avoid that, but I know that some babies just don't get it until drastic measures are taken.
The next step is to let him fuss in the middle of the night instead of feeding him back to sleep. I'm going to try and wean him off the first 4 hour feeding. Many times that's more of a "put me back to sleep" feeding than an "I'm hungry" feeding. I'll just try to reduce the time little by little until he doesn't need it or sleeps through it. Babies are unpredictable, so who knows if it will work. Seems like it would makes sense, but then again, I can't figure out why he's not sleeping 6-7 hours straight every night instead of only 3 times a week. I'm already trying to stretch out my response time to his night wakings to make sure he isn't going to drift off to sleep if I don't get up right away. Sometimes it works and I get another hour to sleep. Sometimes it doesn't and I have to haul my sleepy butt outta bed for 20 minutes. My little guy is a constant experiment.
