Adventures in Teething and Sleep Deprivation

I haven't blogged for a while, mostly because T is teething and I'm too tired to hang out on the computer after work. We worked so hard on our bedtime routine and it really seemed to be working. T was consistently sleeping 5-6 hours for his first stretch and even gave us 7 a couple of times and 8 once! I was chipper and well rested and thought things were headed totally in the right direction. My bliss ended when T's gums started to swell.

I thought it was just going to be a couple of teeth, but I found a couple of teeth had broken the gums last Monday and there is still no end in sight. He has two full bottom teeth from a couple of months ago, and one little nubby tooth on the bottom and one on the top. There are at least 3 more hugely swollen bumps in his top gums. He doesn't like it when I poke around to investigate so I can't say for sure how many are working their way through, but if they are coming in somewhat symmetrically I'm expecting six more before he's done with this round. I complain about my discomfort, but obviously he's got the real raw end of the deal. On top of teeth boring through his gums, he's also got a very runny nose. The congestion and/or pain had him up every hour from 7:30-10:30 and then he screamed intermittently from 10:30 - 11:30 while we tried to calm him and sooth him back to sleep. It's very unusual for him not to go right back to sleep with a little help. Exhausted from the ordeal, he slept for four hours. It's only like this when he's truly miserable. We're going on three weeks of misery and sleep deprivation and I'm starting to wonder if it will ever end. We're still carrying out our standard bed time routine, but we've abandoned the middle of the night "no cry" sleep training and just do what it takes to make him feel better. Poor kiddo.

Despite his growing pains, he really is a trouper. In general he's only slightly irritable with occasional break downs like last night. He still smiles and laughs plenty and has started clapping his hands. Last week he started making a really excited sound - a long intake of breath that sounds like he's just seen or experienced the coolest thing ever. Sometimes he follows this sound with clapping. It's so fun to see him communicate with something more than tears and laughter. Here are some of the things he's doing

• Clapping and making sounds to show excitement
  
• Rubbing his fist across his sore gums
  
• Pushing things away when he doesn't want them
  
• feeding himself really well with a spoon when we load it for him
  
• handing the spoon back for more (sometimes)
  
• reaching to be picked up or to go to the other parent
  
• responding to his name
  
• responding briefly to the the command "no touch"
  
• crawling like a pro and pulling up on everything
  

Yesterday I carried him with me to open the sliding door so we could get some air circulating in the house. As I started to walk back to the kitchen T started to whimper and I realized he thought I was going to take him outside, so I did. We played on the grass until The Scoot got home. When T saw The Scoot way at the other end of the yard he immediately started whimpering and crawling for him. The Scoot met him half way - it was so cute!

Sometimes T doesn't know which parent he wants. I'll pick him up and he'll reach for The Scoot ... then he'll reach back for me. Sometimes we hug him at the same time and sometimes we pass him back and forth really fast which makes him laugh. When he's in pain he reaches back and forth because he thinks one of us can fix it and when we can't he wants to try the other one... again. We hate not being able to fix it.