Almost 5-month update

Yeah, yeah, I know. Big talk about moving to a password protected blog and getting it all set up by the end of the week....about 4 weeks ago. Sigh...I just cannot get my whole to-do list done these days ;). But I did, at least, want to shoot an update - for my own future reference as well as for my peeps.

Just a quick update on me: despite my lack of completing the to-do lists, things are going well! I got a horrible stomach bug last week that we have determined I picked up from Finn's daycare and then carried home to my poor in-laws who also both got it. Somehow, THANK GOD, Finn escaped it. He was fussy in the few days leading up to it, so I think he may have had a very mild case, but other than that was fine. DH also escaped it which was good because I was 100% out of commission from Thursday night thru Friday night. And found out on Monday that EVERYONE, teachers and kids, had the same bug last week. Oy. We had to do emergency daycare at the center on Friday (we don't normally do Fridays) and it was amusing - in my haze of vomit and "other" issues - to watch DH try to coordinate everything I do on a daily basis. Ah, boys.

Also, I'm being sent on a business trip in early February, so that'll be tough to be away from Finnbug. I went away overnight once for my friend's baby shower, but this will be 3 days. They originally wanted me to come for 5 days and I put the kibosh on that. So, we'll see how it goes -- Finn will go to daycare during the day all 3 days and my in-laws are coming to stay while I'm gone to help DH out in the evenings, so they should be fine. It'll be me that has the harder time, I think.

The Finnbug is closing in on 5 months this weekend and is such a cool little cat. He's silly and jolly and giggles easily. He can easily grab things these days, and all of those things go directly in his mouth ;). His very favorite thing in the world is to stand (with assistance, of course) and pity the person who lays him down again when he's in a standing mood! He's developing this high-pitched whine when he gets frustrated, which is fairly often these days as he's on the cusp of rolling over. It's hard to take a step back and just let him whine sometimes, but we try. It's not the prettiest sound in the world, though! ;) He is beginning to sit fairly well...for about 5 seconds and then he tips over, haha. His favorite toys right now are his jumperoo (of course), the Baby Genius Take Along Tunes and mommy's knees (in the form of a slide, I'll get a video of this soon). He is also beginning to take a keen interest in the cats.

On the food front, he's been eating solids for about 3 weeks now. The big hits? Rice cereal, apples and by far: sweet potatoes. The misses? Meh on the bananas and oatmeal and total despising of peas. It was actually hilarious to watch the shivers run through his body upon each moutful of peas until I took pity and have shelved the peas for now. We'll try another green vegetable, probably beans, tonight.

For sleep, it's going well but we have some questions for you gals. On a good night, he goes down to sleep @ 8:30. He usually falls asleep on my lap after I stroke his hair, post-bedtime story and bottle. Yea, yea, I know it's not what the books say, we should put him in his crib drowsy, etc. But we both enjoy that quiet time together so much and he transfers to the crib without a single, solitary issue so poo, we're sticking with that for now. Then, on a good night, he sleeps until about 3am for a bottle. Goes back to sleep at 3:30, pretty easily, and sleeps til 6:30 or so. On a bad night he'll wake earlier than 3am, which equals a two get-up night. But just this week, if he wakes before 2:30am, we don't go to him. Obviously if he sounded in distress, was sick or was really crying, we'd go. But it's usually low-level crying and fussing and we gave ourselves a cap of 15 minutes and so far he's put himself back to sleep each night in less than 10 minutes, so that's working well to at least enforce a one-getup night. DH and I are such wimps about it - we practically clutch each other during those 10 minutes, whimpering "Oh, this is so sad!", haha.  Anyway, also, if he wakes before 6am, we also don't go to him right away. If I hear that he sounds wide awake, I'll go in and turn on his mobile, which he LOVES, and he's happy to look at it and sometimes even falls asleep again. Even if he doesn't fall alseep, it easily buys us another half hour, so yay, mobile!

But my sleep question is: when or how do people phase out the middle-of-the-night feeding? If he was just grazing when he has his 3am wakeup, I'd think about phasing it out. But the boy is voracious - he'll easily suck down 6oz in record time. So if he's clearly hungry, I'm not comfortable starving him overnight. Is it just a matter of adding more and more solids to his diet until he can go longer stretches without eating?

Also, how long do you ladies let your babies fuss (again, not counting if they're sick or all-out crying) during the night before giving in?