Freedom

Oh man, this blog post is really overdue. No posts for over two weeks! Chris was busy getting ready to go to Maine for a conference. Summer has been busy getting ready for residency applications, battling another round of mastitis, and preparing for her alone time. Elliott has been busy learning how to sleep at night, which makes all of the above (minus blog posting) a little easier.

We celebrated the 4th of July weekend first by heading to a friend's BBQ on the 3rd of July. This was actually a party in honor of the 148th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1-3rd. The invitation referred to the "war of northern aggression", which made Elliott concerned that his parent's friends are either confederate supporters, or just huge nerds. So, he decided to show his support for the UNITED States by wearing this awesome bib. I mean cape!
Laughing or crying? It's hard to tell these days.Mom, please stop taking pictures of me in this dumb outfit:
On the 4th of July, we decided to celebrate an early event of the American Revolutionary War by breaking free from Seattle and going for a hike to Twin Falls, about 35 miles north of Seattle. Summer and Chris had a lovely 3 mile hike enjoying the scenery. Elliott pretty much just had a lovely nap.
We then stopped at Target to buy one of these. It seems like this thing has been a sleep aid miracle, or it could just be that Elliott was developmentally ready to start sleeping more at night. I think it is funny that people will ask me, "is he sleeping through the night yet?" I excitedly reply, "no, but he just started sleeping during the night." Since I've had the pleasure of knowing the little guy, he has been quite the night owl. He rarely slept more than 6 hours total between 10 PM and 10 AM. A couple of weeks ago he was only sleeping from 2-5 AM straight, and was making up for it during the day. For the past week he has been sleeping 8-10 hours with only two nighttime feedings, but he still does not go down before midnight, and often not until 2AM or later. But I'm so excited that he is sleeping during the night, I can wait patiently for our schedules to align.
The real reason this rock and play sleeper is a miracle is that Elliott is finally doing most of his sleeping not being held. This may be confusing to some people who have/know babies who sleep in their cribs or cosleepers from birth. This was not Elliott. Even in the hospital, he wouldn't sleep for more than 15 minutes unless he was being held. We're all finally getting some good nighttime sleep around here and everyone smiles a little more in the daytime because of it. Yay for freedom!

The sleeper is also pretty good for not sleeping.
Big smiles after a night full of sleep:
Relaxing in the shade at a family BBQ:We rounded out our 4th of July weekend with some stove top popcorn, smoothies, and episodes of Dr. Who. Yup, we're all nerds.