He sleeps!

Had to post our latest development - Cooper started sleeping through the night this week! Or, at least what I consider sleeping through the night: not waking Mommy up for a bottle at 2 or 3 a.m. For the past three nights he has gone to bed between 11 and 11:30 p.m. and has been waking up around 6 a.m. Yesterday he slept in until 8! Needless to say, I was pretty darn excited to get some well-deserved shut eye. Although, the first night he did it, I woke up at 3 a.m. in a complete panic that something was horribly wrong and ran into the nursery to inspect him and make sure he was still breathing. Panicky, crazy new Mom? You bet!

I think part of the new sleep pattern is the fact that he is now staying up longer during the day. He is napping less and less, so he's tuckered out by evening. Because of this, I am constantly entertaining the boy because like all infants, he bores easily. It's an ever-changing rotation between making funny faces at each other, tummy time, reading books, taking a tour of the house with Coop nestled in the Baby Bjorn, sitting in the swing and looking at himself in the mirror that hangs above it, etc. By the time CJ gets home from work, I'm one tuckered out Mommy.

I will also give huge thanks to my cousin Jenny who suggested using a Miracle Blanket at night, to try to get him to sleep in his crib as opposed to in his crib while inside the car seat. I had a SwaddleMe that our friends Matt, Jenny and Liam gave us and it did the trick because he is now sleeping and napping either in the crib or the play yard while bundled up tight. This is probably common sense to Moms, but something I wanted to share. We had been trying to swaddle him with a regular blanket and he must not have been cozy or wrapped up tightly enough as compared to now.

And thank goodness he's finished sleeping in the car seat because his head was really starting to look flat. Another big thanks to Jenny for her suggestion of using the Boppy Noggin head support. His head is looking rounder by the day!

We've also had some more full-fledged smiles and a possible giggle, though it sounded more like a cross between a burp and a squeak. He is beginning to coo more, too. For some reason, he always does these new things when my Mom is here visiting us. So she gets to see everything first hand, sometimes when I'm out of the room! I have tried to record his morning smiles on my cell phone for the past two days but he stops as soon as I reach for it. Men! I've also had no luck photographing the toothless grins. Will have to get better at the sneak attack!