"Challenging"

I guess the nice word for the last few days would be "challenging". I'll be polite here and not list any of the other words that could be used to describe it. I guess it only makes sense that if we're lucky with a well behaved, easygoing baby most of the time, there can only be times where he's not that way. Otherwise how would we know how good he is the rest of the time?

I've heard of the terrible twos, but Sam's only 8 months old and already having sort of mini-tantrums. Since he can pull himself up now, there is a lot more "no". There's a lot more pulling him away from the entertainment center, or pulling his baby monitor away and putting it up so he can't get it. And when we do that, he sqeals. Yes, it's a "hey, give that back you mean jerk" kind of squeal.

Right now he's in his crib crying and screaming at bedtime. He's been really, really fussy all day today. I don't know if it's because he seems to have a cold (runny nose/coughing) or if it's because another tooth is coming in, but he's been a major pain for the past couple of days. He's been very fussy before his naps, but also strugling when we try to rock him to sleep. Last night he woke up at 2 in the morning and would not go back to sleep. I tried for over an hour to get him back to sleep, but it just resulted in an hour of him crying in his crib and another hour of him in our bed eating a bottle and falling back to sleep.

It's just so hard to know what to do. I don't want him to learn that if he wakes up and cries in the middle of the night, that equals him getting a bottle and getting to cuddle back to sleep with Mommy and Daddy. But it's hard to see that logic when it's 3 AM and the baby has been crying for an hour. There is lots of stuff about letting a kid cry when you put them to bed, but what do I do when he wakes up in the night?

He just stopped crying. I guess he's asleep... oh, nope. There he goes again. It's more of a whimper now though so I think he's falling asleep. Before we went on vacation he was taking 5 minutes or 10 minutes at the most of crying to fall asleep. And it wasn't even too bad, usually it was just a tired cry, not really being upset. I don't know why things have been more complicated since we got back, but we're trying to stick to his bedtime routine. It's just hard to listen to him cry. It makes it a little easier when I know on days like today that if I do pick him up, he'll just fight me and struggle against me. But a lot of days it's hard not to just pick him up and comfort him. I guess that at the same time being a parent is a series of joys and love, it's also a series of hearbreaks as your child grows, and even at 9 months, has to discover different types of independence. I think he's really asleep now....

Oh, one last thing - one a good note - I finally got the rest of the pictures up from our New Jersey trip. There is a set for Sam's First Christmas with all the pictures from Christmas Day, and a set of random pictures from during the trip. Check them out by clicking on the photos link to the right under 'Good Stuff'.