Hello 2020

Happy New Year!

With the new year comes new year resolutions... some stick, others (or most) don't. This year Alex and I actually made an audio recording of our resolutions. Alex got me a bunch of audio equipment last year for Xmas since I had expressed interest in recording audio clips of us and Quentin. I am going to see if I can load the clips onto this website somehow... but that will take some learning on my end. As a quick summary of our resolutions I have listed them below.

Alex

Do one house project a month
Play guitar every day for at least 1 minute
Volunteer 50 hours in year 2020

Christina

Be able to do a handstand unassisted by next year
Play piano every day for at least 1 minute
Continue to do 1 blog post a week

The Q Corner

Anyways, on the Q front, he had his 4 month visit with Dr. Cook. He got 3 shots and was a champ about it. Generally it's me who gets pretty upset about the whole ordeal, but I did much better this time too.

Here we are right before shots.

And after shots, back at grandma's house recovering.

Q's measurements.

Sleep Training

So I know this is somewhat of a controversial subject, but I would like to document how things are going for us in this regard. At Q's 4 month appointment, we discussed with Dr. Cook about starting some form of sleep training. The fact that Quentin is healthy, gaining weight appropriately, and is essentially thriving in every measurable way is important to note. He is eating enough in the evenings to make it through the night, and generally when he does wake up, he uses nursing to get himself back to sleep rather than NEEDING those calories. So on Saturday night (1/4/2020) we started sleep training. Below are my notes from our first night.

Ate 4oz & nursed, fell asleep in mom's arms
Put down in his bed at 8:26pm still sleeping
Woke up at 9:04pm (which is typical for him) crying
This is when I would usually get him up and nurse him for about 5-10 min to get him to fall back to sleep. I did not do this, but instead let him cry. Easier said than done...
He cried from 9:04pm to 9:44
Was quiet for a bit
He cried from 9:56 to 10:06
He woke up to feed at 3:20am, fed for about 20 min, then went back to sleep without any crying
He woke up to feed at 5:30am, which is when Alex usually is getting up
The rule we used was to wait a full 4 hrs minimum to go in and feed him from the time we put him down

So far I'd say day one of sleep training was pretty successful. He seems like he isn't holding a grudge against us today (the day after letting him cry it out), and Alex and I got a pretty good night's sleep. We will see what tonight brings. It seems like day 2 is the hardest, and then day 3 going forward it gets way easier. Will keep you posted!

Cooking with Q

Quentin has become quite good at grabbing and holding onto things. Here we are in the kitchen and he is in charge of holding onto my spoon.

Figured I'd end with a fun pic of the 2 of us. Signing off!