Happy Birthday Abby!

Abby turned 5 last week! We had a few friends over for a little celebration and then Grandma and Grandpa Pingel came to visit for her actual birthday. She had several days of celebration!

One of her favorite gifts--a pink guitar!

Jacob partied with us too! 8 months old and a crawling machine.

Beautiful Abby!

Best Buddies!

Happy 5th Birthday Abby!

No, Jacob is not sleeping through the night.

This is my answer to the question that I get a lot. Is Jacob sleeping through the night? NO! Can you sense my frustration?

I realize that many babies sleep through the night by the time they are 8 months old, but mine does not. My girls slept through the night at 5 and 6 months, and I assumed that Jacob would be sleeping through the night by now. But he's not:) Before Jacob, I had a pretty strong opinion about babies and sleeping, and now I have had to humbly change the way I think.

We did the sleep training thing with the girls. We let them cry for several nights and each night the crying got less and less. By the fourth night, they were sleeping all night. We thought we were awesome parents! We read the books, followed their advice, and poof! our kids did what the book said they would do. We have done the same things with Jacob but there is no poof. Just crying and screaming and sleeplessness.

We have let Jacob cry for hours, and he doesn't give up. I have talked to my pediatrician many times and she says that many people think that all babies should just sleep for 12 hours and that's that. But she says that 5-6 hours is really sleeping through the night. And that if he wakes up and is hungry that I should feed him. So I do. I followed that advice. He was waking up once per night and sleeping for a total of 10-12 hours.

But now, he's changed the game. He's waking up two times a night. Uggggh. I think it's due to teething, but he very well may be manipulating me. I'm not sure which one it is yet.

So I have resigned myself to the fact that I still have to parent at night (thanks for the advice Dr. Sears) and that I am just going to feed him when he's hungry and encourage him to fall back asleep. Part of me feels like I've failed in the sleeping department with this kid, but I also know that all kids are different and I was so naive to think that he would follow in his sisters' footsteps.

So, NO, Jacob is not sleeping through the night and if you ask me I might cry. I look forward to those incredible days when I can sleep for a full 8 hours again, but until then, I'll be hanging out with the cutest 8 month old redhead at night.

7 1/2 months

I love this age. Really I do. Jacob is no longer a tiny infant who eats, sleeps and poops. His little personality is starting to show itself and I must say, I love it. He is the happiest little guy and so determined in his endeavors . . . which include putting everything in his mouth, hanging out with me in the middle of the night, crawling, and playing with his daddy and sisters.

We've had some big milestones lately. Jacob's first tooth arrived last week and he's started to sleep through the night, but not consistently yet. He still thinks that he should be able to hang out with me at 3am. Lately, he's just had to cry. It breaks my heart, but it's time for a full night's sleep for all of us. He's trying to very hard to crawl. He gets up on his hands and knees and rocks and rocks and rocks. In the past few days, he's gotten a hand or a leg to move, but he hasn't figured out quite how to move them all together.

Jacob loves his sisters. When they come home from school or walk in the room, he gets so excited. He does this cute thing where he puts his nose in the air, scrunches up his face and does an Ernie (from Sesame Street) type of laugh. It's priceless. He also has one word do far. Da da:) I'm not sure he connects that word with Nate yet, but we're working on that. Enjoy a few recent pics of Jacob!

Abby and Jacob playing on the floor.

Abby teaching Jacob how to watch TV.

Can you see the tooth? Bottom right. It's our first one!

Trying so hard to crawl:)