Two Body Problem (orig)

Time for your workout, fatty!*

One thing I didn't really think about going into this whole parent thing was how coupled everything with babies is. Ezra wouldn't take to a bottle so once we put him in day care he basicly wouldn't eat all day. This had two effects, one he hated day care, and two, I really couldn't help much in the feeding department. Because of the former, he wanted to eat all night and due to the latter it was all Shanna.

Shanna is fortunate that after some brief initial troubles, she could more or less nurse while sleeping. Having a career and a baby are hard enough when you actually get some sleep, not to mention when you haven't slept for a year. So whatever we could do to get Shanna more

sleep, we did. This means that Ezra sleeps with us.

All-in-all cosleeping worked pretty well until recently. Although we are both prone to worrying and complaining, Shanna and I have been pretty happy with how it has worked. From my perspective, Ezra would start of the night in his crib then at some point, he would materialize in our bed. He didn't toss and turn much (unlike me) and unless he was undergoing a growth or development spurt and feeding every hour, Shanna got some sleep too. Since Ezra started crawling in his sleep (not to mention his new fun habit of kicking daddy) we can't let him stay in our bed. So now our routine is for Shanna to feed him when he wakes up at night and me to put him back in the crib when I notice he's there. For whatever reason I have much better luck transporting Ezra while he's asleep. We did this last night and everybody seemed to be happy with the results.

Another exciting development is that Ezra has largely weaned himself between 9 am and 9 pm. Instead of Shanna nursing him he has taken to the sippy cup. This is a welcome development since I can completely take over putting him to bed and Shanna can get more work done in the evenings. Unfortnately he still seems to be pretty unhappy at daycare has been only slowly eating more there. (I'm comparing his behaivor on weekends to the account the day care ladies give me.) I'm hoping that as he eats more he'll be happier at day care.

Instead of Shanna nursing him to sleep like she used to, I take Ezra for a brisk walk. Usually he falls asleep between 1/2 and 1 mile. Although we recognize that this isn't the ideal way of doing things, it does kill two birds with one stone. Ezra goes to sleep and I get some exercise. I'm not sure what we do if it happens to rain. I don't think the stroller will fit on the treadmill.

*I know I just wrote about Ezra's sleep schedule, but I thought this picture was too cute to pass up.