It's that time of the year...

I don't cry much. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a tough guy in any sense of the word. And most people would probably even call me sensitive, but I don't cry much. On average, I probably cry once a year...twice tops if it's a big year. That's not to say I don't well up when I watch a sappy movie or when I got married, but it's still different then crying. Well yesterday, I guess it was just that time of the year because I cried.

We got to the airport around 8am, well before Mommy and Kaylani's 9:40am flight. The original plan was to check-in, and then grab breakfast before they headed through security. The problem with our plan was that at the Philly airport, or at least in our terminal, there was no place for breakfast outside of security. And since Kaylani was up at 6:30am (against her will) and needed to have breakfast, that meant it was time to say goodbye, about an hour before our original plan.

As I watched Mommy get things ready to go through security, including taking out plastic bags of liquids/food, DVD players, shoes for both her and Kaylani, I started to well up a little bit. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it was just a lot of emotion going through me. Only 5 minutes before that I gave Kaylani a big hug and a kiss, had her blow a kiss back at me and touch my nose, and then gave Mommy a hug and a kiss too. And as I was standing there watching them slowly go through the gate, I started to cry.

I couldn't believe I was crying because it wasn't an emotion that I've ever had to deal with before. It wasn't a situation I've ever had to deal with before. It was something completely different and I just wasn't prepared for it. As soon as they disappeared from site, I started to walk back towards my car and fought to hide my tears. Luckily I didn't walk by anyone because I probably looked a little ridiculous walking alone, holding Kaylani's jacket, and crying.

When I got to the car, I lost it. I sat there for 3 minutes in a complete breakdown. I finally regained my composure, wiped away my tears, and started the car. The rest of the day I spent trying to distract myself. I read the rest of my book that I picked up on the way to Boston earlier in the week. I went to a bar and watched the Red Sox lose, the Giants win, and eventually, the Yankees win too. I did everything I could to distract myself, but nothing helped me from feeling empty inside.

Looking back, I can understand why the emotion came out so strongly. Sure I've gone a few days without seeing Kaylani, but I've never had to say bye before doing so. Usually it's leaving for work before she wakes up, and getting home after she goes to sleep, but I know that it's only for a day or two. When I went to Boston, it was the same, where I left in the morning like normal, and came back 2 nights later as if she just slept through my night and morning. This time, I was saying bye. I was watching her (and Mommy) walk away from me, which is a much harder thing to do, and not something that I'd like to happen often.

Last night, I laid alone in my bed in the dark. There was no glow coming from Kaylani's video monitor. There was no sound coming from Kaylani's audio monitor. There was no one in the room except me. Needless to say, it was lonely. Tonight, it's more of the same. I stayed a little later at work. I had dinner by myself. And now I'm staring mindlessly at the TV at a game that I have little interest in. Mommy and Kaylani are having a great time in Puerto Rico and I did get to speak to her a little bit too, or at least hear her say "Papa" a few times which is enough to hold me over.

It's just the start of the week, but soon enough I'll get to see them again. You never know what you miss until it's gone. Luckily for me, what I miss is coming back in 5 days. 5 days that couldn't come soon enough if you ask me. In the meantime, anyone need a Dad? I'm available.

It Takes Two

Weekends are a great opportunity for Daddy to share in Kaylani's daily activities. They provide a time to finally see what Mommy goes through 5 days a week while he's at work. It also gives Mommy a little bit of a break so she can relax and not worry about Kaylani clinging to her or crying because she's not clung to her every second of the day. Sounds great, right? So why is it that weekends are frustrating for Mommy?

Okay, they're not really frustrating. They're just kinda frustrating. Sure she loves having me around. She also loves that I'm happy because I get to spend time with Kaylani. And she especially loves the part about her getting a little bit of a break from the baby clingy thingy. But what's frustrating to her is how different Kaylani is on the weekend. According to her, it's not a fair depiction of what Mommy goes through 5 days a week. Instead, it's like she's a completely different baby. Not in a bad way, but still different. For example:

Weekdays: Kaylani will cry/whine in her bouncy while Mommy takes a shower
This Weekend: Kaylani played with her toys in her bouncy while Daddy took a shower

Weekdays: Kaylani will take 1 nap on most days for 45 minutes to an hour, and usually only when she goes in the car to go somewhere.
This Weekend: Kaylani slept for 2 hours in her swing this morning, plus another hour in the car on our way to the farm/park.

Weekdays: Kaylani will wake up as soon as Mommy stops the car or tries to transfer her to her stroller.
This Weekend: Kaylani stayed asleep as Daddy transferred her to her stroller...for an hour and a half after!

Weekdays: Kaylani will crawl to Mommy (crying/whining along the way) and climb up her if she's left alone.
This Weekend: Kaylani sat and played by herself in the family room and the playroom while Daddy walked around picking stuff up.

Weekdays: Kaylani will be fussy during her lunch and eat 4oz only.
This Weekend: Kaylani ate her 4oz of lunch (sweet potato chicken again!) plus another 2oz of apples and apricot.

There are probably a few more examples, but you get the point. I guess it just takes two of us to make Kaylani an easy baby. I am still completely amazed and impressed by Mommy due to everything she has to handle during the week by herself with Kaylani. I'm not even sure I could do it if I was put in the same situation. But if weekends are any indication, then maybe it just takes that special Daddy magic. Just kidding Mommy! :)

The Toy Store

Tonight, Mommy, Kaylani, and I went to the toy store to pick up something for Sloan whose birthday party is this weekend. The last time I went to the toy store with Kaylani she was strapped in her stroller and wasn't really reaching out for anything. This time, things were a little bit different. There was no stroller, and she was definitely reaching out for things.

We looked around for different things, and any time we stopped to check something out, Kaylani would do the same. She'd bounce up and down in our arms, turn herself around to get a better look, and grab anything she could. And if she could get it in her mouth before we caught her, she would do that too. Luckily she's not quite old enough to sneak one by on us, and even luckier, she doesn't cry when we take things away from her and move on. I'm guessing she won't always be like this, but for now, it's not too bad.

There were a few things she was in love with, like the Tagsies Rocking Horse, or some giant nursery rhyme block thing, but unfortunately for her, she didn't leave the store with anything this time. While we were checking out, a little boy ran into the store and grabbed a plastic shovel. His mom finally arrived behind him and asked him to put the toy down because they had 10 of them at home already and get moving. After a few minutes of screaming, she bought him shovel #11 and they left the store. It was like a glimpse into the future for us. Part of me is dreading that exact situation. But the other part of me hopes that Kaylani gets attached to the $2 shovel when she's older. Sure beats buying the $130 rocking horse right?

Why are you crying?

So Daddy had his final regular season game of the Little League season tonight, but since we got blown out 16-1, we're not going to focus on that at all. Plus, all 6 teams make the playoffs so in actuality, tonight's game meant nothing. But nothing bothers me more than when my team doesn't show up to play. And to top it all off, it was a bad Kaylani night too.

Mommy put Kaylani down around 7:30pm for the first time, and that's when the night went downhill. As usual, she whimpered for a few minutes which is her way of falling asleep, but tonight it was different. She didn't stop whimpering and she definitely didn't fall asleep. What she did do is cry for the next hour, even when Mommy went in. She tried to nurse her again, hold her, rock her, nurse her, anything her, and none of it worked. When Daddy got home a little after 8:30pm, she was still crying (Kaylani, not Mommy...although it's hard to say).

We couldn't find a reason why she was crying. She was crying while she was on the changing table. She was crying when we held her. She cried when we walked her. She cried when we tried to give her Tylenol. She even cried when we gave her a turtle rattle. I mean, who cries at a turtle rattle? It was the oddest thing, but she finally calmed down after about 10 minutes of walking her. Even though she didn't have a fever, we slipped her some Tylenol anyways in case she was teething. Finally, after 10 minutes of nursing (which brought Mommy up to a total of 70 minutes of nursing within 2 hours), she was calm. Not asleep, but calm.

We made the decision to put her in her crib. She was dry, fed, drugged up on Tylenol, and really tired, so there was nothing more we could do for her. And when there's nothing more we can do, that means it's time for her to cry it out. But Kaylani decided that Daddy and Mommy had enough for the day, and promptly passed out. So after a night of crying, she's asleep. Hopefully she's down for the night. If she's not, then we're going to need to find somethign much stronger than a turtle rattle...for us!

Right or wrong?

Last night was one of the more trying nights we've had with Kaylani. We thought we had put nights like that behind us when we survived sleep training 3 months ago, but we were wrong. Our first attempt at sleep training was nothing compared to what we went through last night. And we're hoping that was the last of it.

After surviving the cows during the day yesterday, Kaylani gave us all the signs that we were in for a good night. She nursed well, she burped well, and she was sleepy but awake when we put her down for bed. She even played by herself for 10 minutes before falling asleep all on her own around 8:30pm. So for awhile, Kaylani looked like she was back to her good sleeping habits.

But then 12:45am rolled around. We woke up to Kaylani crying, but we held off on doing anything. We had to break her of this crying for someone to get her habit she was getting into because she was just manipulating us. If she would just re-learn how to fall asleep on her own, we'd be okay going forward. After an hour, I went in to turn her around and calm her down, which didn't work. After two hours, we were on the verge of giving in but had to stay strong. Our pediatrician urged us to stay strong so she didn't learn that crying gets results.

After two and a half hours we were at our breaking point. Mommy had to get up and leave the room. She resorted to the computer to help distract her from running into Kaylani's room and picking her up. Daddy sat on the edge of the bed for awhile and stared at the video monitor while listening to her cry. 15 minutes later, or two hours and 45 minutes after Kaylani started crying, she fell silent. She finally fell asleep.

Mommy couldn't even come back to the room right away. She needed to calm down just a bit more before she could even think about sleeping. "Why did we have a baby if we're going to let her do that" was the only thing she could get out of her mouth before breaking down. "Because we're teaching her to sleep in the future" was the only answer I could give, and last night, even I wasn't convinced. It was a tough night, but we survived. Barely, but we survived.

Now many parents will probably tell us we were wrong to let her cry for so long. That we should run to her and comfort her because she needs our support and she's too young. Others will tell us that we did the right thing, and that it really will pay off in the future. Right now, we're not sure if we did the right thing or the wrong thing yet. We do know that she cried again tonight for an hour before finally falling asleep, but she fell asleep on her own, and that's what matters.

If she cries again in the middle of the night, I'm not sure what we'll do. I'm not even sure what we can handle at this point. We're just hoping that we don't have to make that decision again tonight. We're hoping that what we went through last night will prevent us from having to make that decision for a long time. We'll know what happened in the morning, and I sure hope that morning comes quickly because I won't have any answers to give otherwise.

Seat's Taken

It's been 52 hours since we left home on Friday night to head up to Boston for the weekend. And of those 52 hours, Kaylani spent 23 of them in her carseat. To put it in Asian/mathematical terms, she spent nearly 50% of her time away from home (okay fine, it's 44%) in her carseat. 12 of them are accounted for in the drive between NJ and Boston. But where did the other 11 come from?

We drove around quite a bit while we were in Boston, but everyone we visited was within a 15 minute car ride. So the fact that we made 5 different stops, most of them being back to back instead of roundtrip, totals to just about 2 hours. That leaves about 9 hours that Kaylani spent in her carseat, and none of those 9 hours were actually in a car.

Being away from home meant that we were limited to the places we could put Kaylani down. Sure she could lay on a couch or a bed or even a blanket on the floor while we were out, but there was little possbility that she would have napped in any of those places. That meant Kaylani's naps while we were out (which was all the time) were in the comfort of her carseat. And I use the word "comfort" in the loosest of terms because each time went something like this:

Go in the carseat and look around. Get out of the carseat and get held by people. Get real tired and get put back in the carseat. Cry a bit and get swung around in the carseat. Time to go and get put back in the carseat. Fall asleep in the car for about 5 minutes. Get woken up because we're at our next destination and start the cycle again.

On the rare occasions Kaylani would fall asleep because she was so tired from us screwing with her nap schedule, it would be in her carseat. Since it's not particularly comfortable and she's used to moving around in her crib, each nap lasted no more than an hour in length, and more often than not, lasted about 5 minutes. So 9 hours of Kaylani's weekend were spent napping, swinging, or just sitting in her carseat. Sounds like a blast right?

After Kaylani finally fell asleep on our ride home (after Mommy nursed her because she cried for the first 30 minutes), she woke up 2 hours later which was great, except we were still 2 hours from home. We did our best to distract her, but when she cried the last 40 minutes, even after we stopped for a quick dinner because she was crying already, we didn't complain. I would have done the same thing if I was in her position. But now we're home and we promised Kaylani that she wouldn't have to go back in her carseat again...until Tuesday.

Anyways, I'll try and post pictures from the weekend tomorrow. It's pretty late for all of us and I have to wake up Mommy and Kaylani and put them both to bed. Hopefully I can do it gently since Kaylani and Mommy are both sleeping while nursing. Luckily for Kaylani, she gets to sleep in her own crib tonight. Hopefully she'll actually sleep for a long time so Mommy can sleep in her own bed tonight too. But whatever happens, it's still better than being in a carseat.

Let Her Be

For the last 3 months we babied our baby. Sounds kinda like an obvious thing to do to a baby, but we over did it when it came to bedtime. Our typical routine would be to nurse her, and then bounce her, sway her, or whatever her so she would almost fall deep asleep in our arms. And then at the last minute (sometimes after the last minute when she was really fussy), we would put her in her crib and hold her there until we were confident she was asleep before we snuck out.

On good nights, she would be so sleepy after nursing that she would go happily into her crib and fall asleep after a quick bounce or two. On bad nights, we would bounce and sway her for up to an hour (alternating turns of course). The unpredictability that bedtime brought, as well as the uncomfortableness on bad nights, led us to try "sleep training" now that Kaylani is 3 months old. And we figured if she could learn to roll over, she could learn to sleep on her own.

There are many different methods of sleep training, and after reading through a few of them, we decided on the "gradually leaving" technique. The premise of this technique is to put her down (you're small!) right away, say goodnight, and then leave the room without picking her up or doing anything. On the first night, if she's still crying after 5 minutes, go back in, calm her down without picking her up, say goodnight, and then leave the room again. After 5 to 10 more minutes, do the same thing. Then, you increase the time by 5 minutes every day. It also says that this technique could take awhile to work, but we gave it a shot anyways.

So last night, Mommy put her down (you smell like a baby!), said goodnight, and left the room. After 5 painful minutes of hearing his little girl cry (not a full out cry, but more like a whine/whimper), Daddy went in, put a reassuring hand on her chest, kissed her on the forehead, said goodnight, then left. The next 5 minutes were even more painful then the first. I sat on the edge of my bed staring towards her room, and listened to her while trying to restrain myself from going in there to pick her up. It was tough, but I sat there on that bed for 6 whole minutes (Mommy joined me halfway through).

After 6 minutes, there was silence. Another minute went by and there was a trace of a whimper, but not a strong one. Few more minutes went by and there was nothing. Only the sounds of Daddy and Mommy sitting on the edge of the bed breathing quietly together could be heard. 10 minutes had passed since Daddy last went in there and there was only silence coming from Kaylani's room. Hooray!

Of course, the first thing Daddy wanted to do was go in and check on her to make sure everything was alright, but he didn't out of fear that maybe she was awake and staring at the door wondering why her parents had abandoned her. Mommy did take a peek in her room an hour later, and she was sleeping. She didn't even look like she was sad, so that was a relief. I completely expected her to be asleep with a big ol' frown on her face. Luckily, that was not the case.

So that was "sleep training" day 1. Tonight will be day 2, although Mommy tried it this afternoon with successful results again at nap time, so maybe this won't be as bad as we thought. Well it's about time for us to give it a try, so while she's sleeping (or staring at the door wondering why her parents abandoned her), you can look at a few pictures from the last 3 days. Or, even better, you can check out this video of Kaylani rolling over! Mommy got it on tape today and Daddy even got to see it live! For us though, it's now time to just let her be.

The Kitty Cat

Babies supposedly give you signs and little clues as to what they want. It's our job as parents to pick up on these clues and translate them. And when that doesn't work, you go through the checklist of things they could be trying to tell you. Is she hungry? Is she wet? Is she poopy? Is something pinching her? Is she gassy? Or does she just want to cry? Well she's got a tell, and it's something Mommy calls "the kitty cat."

Now she doesn't always do "the kitty cat", but it's happened enough that we can officially call it a tell. Some of you can probably already guess what it tells us, but for those who can't, here's a little description.

Picture a cat, lying on her back. Now picture a string dangling in front of her face. What's the cat gonna do? She's gonna swipe at the string, usually with one hand, then the next, again and again. For those of you cat owners/lovers, picture that same scene, but when your cat is actually sleeping, so everything kind of just happens in slow motion. Well that's what Kaylani looks like, except she also turns her head to the side a little bit and opens her mouth too.

So, mouth open, alternate arms swiping at the air, is what we call "the kitty cat," and she does it when she's hungry. 10 times out of 10 if we see her doing that, it's time to nurse. 10 times out of 10, if she doesn't nurse immediately, she's going to cry.

We figured that one out a few days ago. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 1 point for Mommy and Daddy! Now all we have to do is figure out the rest of what she's trying to tell us, and we'll be just fine. And we'll get there, I know we will. All we need is a little more time, and that's not a problem, because we're just at the beginning of a lifetime.

And as is customary here at The Daddy Diaries, new pictures from the last 2 days are now available for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy! And don't forget to come visit for a live viewing. We're always happy for the chance to show off our baby girl!