Tomorrow I will be bigger...

(wearing his sailor suit in honor of the Jimmy Buffet concert that the rest of the family attended)

I've discovered that motherhood is different than I thought it would be! In some respects, it comes easily (how can you not love on this sweet boy!)...and in others the job of being a mommy (sterilizing bottles, doing laundry) is much more time consuming and demanding than I anticipated. Nor did I anticipate the internal struggle that comes along with always striving to do what is best for your baby (should I let him cry it out for a bit or does he need to be held?)...these kind of decisions seem easy until you are faced with actually making and implementing them.

Being the type A person that I am, we decided to implement the "BABYWISE" system at our house. For those unfamiliar, Babywise is based around the premise that baby eats, plays, sleeps on a routine basis in order to get their bodyclock and metabolism on a schedule, this in theory promotes healthy eating and sleeping habits and helps them sleep thru the night. I am a fan of the routine this system provides and John was on board with anything that helped baby (and thus us) sleep thru the night!

So far we have been pleased with how well Lincoln has acclimated to his daily routine. He is always ready to eat right on schedule and we have seen glimpses of how wonderful a full nights sleep is going to be with the little one sleeping 8 hours at a stretch a couple of nights this week. His weight gain is back on track and he is working hard to grow into his big hands and big feet...already at a whopping 10 pounds! In the last week we have packed up all of his newborn clothes and transitioned to a bigger diaper! (I may or may not have shed a tear over packing these things away...isn't it funny how you can want your children to grow and be healthy and yet at the same time be a little nostalgic about how fast they are growing?)

(Lincoln loves his rainforest mat...but isn't a huge fan of tummy time)

Our downfall in this whole eat/play/sleep routine is the nap! Lincoln has decided that napping is excellent cuddle time (and he is right!), but when mommy uses nap time to take care of everything else (laundry, dishes, work...or maybe even (gasp!) a shower, his preference for being held while napping becomes a bit of a challenge...and the internal debate over how to properly handle this begins!

(Napping with his daddy in mommy's favorite pirate sleeper!)

Most of the time I am a stickler for following our house napping rules: baby naps IN his crib when MOMMY decides that it is nap time. But as with all rules, there are exceptions! So, on days like today, when every bottle in our house is dirty, there are loads and loads of laundry to be done, I haven't made it out of my pj's by noon, and Lincoln decides that the ONLY way he will nap is if he is being held...I remind myself that our sweet little boy will only be this small today. Tomorrow he will get bigger and learn or discover something new, so I let myself off the hook on the laundry, on the dishes, on the napping rules, and on worrying whether or not I am spoiling him by giving in...and just enjoy the cuddle time.