Today's Normal 2/10/11

Yesterday was not normal. This little baby that I gave birth to a year ago, became a toddler. It was an emotional day for me, as I remembered everything we went through last year to get him here (http://unit34.blogspot.com/2010/02/jonah-clark-ohlms.html). This past year has gone by so fast. I understand the value of a year much more than I did before. Just over a year ago, Jonah did not have a life outside my womb. And now, here he is, a one-year-old, with a will of his own.

Besides the big deal that is Jonah's 1st birthday, here is a summary of our current "normal." He seems to have developed a fear of elevators. Since at least October, he has been a little unsure about them, but now he is definitely scared. He gets visibly upset when the doors start to close and can be crying by the time we get to the next floor. I'm not sure where this came from, as he has never had any bad experiences with elevators. He's not usually in a lot of closed spaces, so I don't know whether it's limited to elevators.

Jonah has started being able to entertain himself for a while. When left in his crib/play yard with toys, he will play for 10-20 minutes before being bothered by the fact that he is alone. He will also sit and looks at books for a similar length of time. This has been a very useful development, as it allows me to brush my teeth, etc. in the mornings without him being underfoot. He has started to enjoy rolling wheeled toys across the floor. Jonah seems to be more ticklish than before. I don't want to overdo it on the tickling, because some people don't enjoy being tickled, but they laugh anyway. So I don't want to risk torturing him, simply because I think it's cute when I tickle him. But, for now, he does seem to be enjoying it.

For a few weeks now, Jonah has started to let us know when he is unhappy or doesn't want to do something by throwing his head backwards. Depending on how we are holding him, this can result in him bonking us in the head (which hurts), or almost dropping him on the floor. He doesn't usually give a lot of notice. Hopefully soon he'll find another method to exert control over his situation.

My least favorite part of our current normal is the transition to one nap a day. He started this about a week ago, and it has made for a long week. For most of the past week, he has only taken one nap each day, sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. I think that once he is done transitioning, I will be happy with the new schedule. Assuming he takes a long-ish afternoon nap, it will allow us to run errands, etc. in the morning, and then be home for him to nap in the afternoon, while I get stuff done here. However, this transition period has probably been one of the most exhausting parts of my parenting journey since those early days. Jonah acts sleepy in the mornings when he used to take a morning nap, so I try to put him down for a nap. Sometimes he will take a nap, but then he refuses to do so in the afternoon. Other days he will fight the morning nap, and we end up battling for an hour before I give up. If he doesn't nap in the morning, he will take an afternoon nap, but they have not been particularly long and he still sometimes fights them. One day, we went shopping and he slept in the car on the way to the stores and then in the car on the way home a couple of hours later. No nap at home. For a long time, he would go to sleep easily, and I appreciated it because we used to work hard to get him to sleep. Now we're back to putting forth much effort in order to get him to sleep and it's wearing on me a little bit, so I'm hoping that does not become his new normal.

I realize that he's transitioning to one nap a day, not just being difficult, so it's comforting to know that this will not last forever, but it's hard to know what to do in the meantime. One nap does not seem to be quite enough for him, since he's still acting really tired. But he's refusing to take two naps. I struggle with how to approach it: do I not let him nap in the morning, so that he'll take an afternoon nap, or do I still put him down in the morning and hope that maybe he'll also take an afternoon nap? I think I should probably keep him up in the morning, but it's difficult when he acts so sleepy.

For now, I will be grateful that the end result of our week in the hospital last year was a healthy boy. I have been blessed to be able to stay home with Jonah since he was born, and I wouldn't trade that time for anything. I have a lot of cherished memories from these past twelve months.