Juicy

I took the kids to the library yesterday. Alison was picking out books and Eliot was in his carseat about like this: A woman walked in the room, looked at Eliot and said, "Mmm, mmm, mmm. He sure looks juicy. Are you breastfeeding?" I told her I was and she said, "You can certainly tell". I never knew breastfeeding made babies look juicy, nor do I really know what that means. But her comment made me laugh all day.

I really took this picture to document how much of a stinker my little Eli is. Apparently it's growth spurt season in the Shear household and along with that, Eliot has decided that sleeping is for wimps and wants no part of it. I admit that it's caused a few of my own meltdowns. It's extremely frustrating to do everything you can to soothe your baby that has been crying for forever and the only response you get is them trying to jump out of your arms. I mean I'm doing everything the books say to do-he should be going down for naps easy and sleeping through the night. Oh, that's right...he hasn't read the books and could care less about my efforts to perfect him. He's fought me for days on sleeping, taking only brief naps and up a lot of nights. This morning I put him in his carseat while Alison was watching Mickey Mouse and went to round up all of our stuff for swim lessons. Moments later I came back to find him completely zonked out. Seriously?! There was no screaming, no wailing, nothing. He just closed his eyes and fell asleep. I wish he would have told me it was that easy. Just put him in the carseat, put Mickey on and walk away...sure would have saved us all some tears.

On the bright side, he's been talking up a storm lately and LOVES music. If you sing to him, he'll coo through the whole song, almost like he's trying to sing with you. I played some music at bedtime last night and found that it greatly decreased the amount of crying.