December 2014 Recap and Photos

December was a month of transition since I had to go back to work in mid-December. In early December, William's skin started to get really red. It would come and go, and was mostly on his face. We had to have this checked out come the end of January and our pediatrician had us get William tested for allergies...more on that later since at this point, the poor kid just had red skin. :(

William was still super colicky. We finally took him back to the doctor since he was also throwing up a lot for a baby, like projectile vomiting. We just thought that was normal, but turns out it's not. After putting William on acid reflux medication, the change was almost immediate. Yay, no more washing the sheets at 2 a.m.! He also seemed slightly happier after the medication. Still a fussy baby, but not as bad as he was.

The first weekend in December, Matt and I joined my college friends for our annual Friends-giving. William pretty much cried the entire time, but hey, we were out and he got to meet my friends!

We managed to get some Christmas decorations up! Yay, it is possible to get stuff done with a colicky baby. William it turns out loves lights and so the Christmas tree was an amazing distraction. We put his glider right next to the tree. This allowed us some quiet dinners.

Also this month, we attempted to transition William into his room. We originally had William in a rock n' play in our room. It worked well, but in order to get more sleep, I wanted to transition William to his room before I went back to work. We thought it might work in early December (I did sleep in his room on the floor for half the first night!) and we tried, but I don't think any of us were really ready. So we tried for a few nights. It didn't work too well, so William came back into our room. We tried again at Christmas time since this was the next time we had more time off work to deal with possible lack of sleep during the transition and it worked well! William has been in his room (for the most part) ever since (there were some rough nights during some 3-5 month sleep regression!).

I will say what helped us the second time trying to transition was that we spent more time in William's room between the two tries. We didn't really spend too much time in his nursery before then. So we started playing in his room more and feeding him in his room more. I think getting used to the room helped. We also started a nighttime routine which we still roughly follow so William knows when it's time for bed. Now that he's older, we play in his room for a half hour before bed, get him ready (sometimes we to bath time before play time) for bed, read a few books, then I rock him and feed him before putting him down.

Update on Will's hair: He started to lose all his hair on the sides, but still had a little duck tail in the back. haha. My poor bald kid! Toward the end of December, he started to get some more hair all around, but he was still pretty bald for most of the month (other than his duck tail!).

In mid-December, I went back to work. My mom watches William during the week. I am so thankful for this because I know he's in good hands. She loves the little guy to pieces. I'm pretty sure Matt was jealous for a while because mom is so good with William. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to do half days when I started back to work. This helped sooo much! The first day was hard for me to leave William. Confession: to this day, I rarely leave William with anyone else, including Matt, unless I have to go to work. So the first day was hard being away from him. I did half days for the first week with one full day and I went back on a Tuesday (since William's two-month checkup was on that Monday) so really it was an odd week, but it was a good transition. After that we had all the holidays. Again, great timing to go back to work because I didn't have full weeks of work for a while and yet didn't have to take too much vacation time! Have a kid in October. It's great timing!

My first day back to work (literally), I got a cold. This stupid cold lasted more than a month! This made the holidays and my birthday a bit difficult because I just didn't feel well and was soooo tired! I felt bad because I gave the cold to my mom and my dad. My dad was still sick when he was supposed to have ear surgery and it had to get postponed. :( New mom + back to work + long-last virus = a very tired and blurry winter.

A few notes on William's growth: He weighed 11 lbs. 7.4 oz. (28th percentile) and was 24 inches long (89th percentile) at his two-month checkup on December 15. Still in some three-month clothes, but mostly three-six months or six-month clothes. Still long and lean.