Hello there...

So I haven't been feeling like blogging lately. As I am sure you can tell!

Ever feel like that? Sometimes life gets too crazy and the last thing I want to do is upload pictures, sifting through the hundreds that I take, narrowing it down to the faves for a blog post. I am feeling very overwhelmed seeing as I still have yet to upload all of my Christmas pictures. I took WAY too many. So that task just seems daunting. So I am procrastinating. Slowly but surely more and more pictures keep adding up on my camera. Sigh. I will get to it. Eventually. So I apologize to those of you who check in here consistently looking for updates. By those of you, I mean Mom and Amy. Sorry guys!

Isaac is doing well. We have been going through some stages recently. By stages, I mean trying Mommy and Daddy's patience. For about 2 weeks, lasting through Christmas, Isaac refused to eat. Our little man has been an eating champ ever since we introduced solid foods at 5 months. But, for whatever reason, I'm guessing exercising independence, he decided all of a sudden that he wanted nothing to do with it. He would shake his head no every time we offered it. He'd hide his face, cover his mouth, shove food away from him. We tried letting him feed himself. He would grab the food and chuck it quickly onto the floor, or he would grab it and hold it over the tray of his high chair while staring at us, almost as if we were daring him to do it. Well guess what? He did. Over and over again. We tried feeding him. When we would manage to get some food into his mouth, he would spit it out immediately. Such short lived satisfaction. Sometimes we would get all excited because he would chew a couple of times, until he would realize that we were excited. Then he would remember he was eating, also synonymous with losing, and he would promptly spit out his partially chewed up food. :( We were getting super frustrated and exhausted. Then we made the decision to stop. He would eat if and when he was hungry. We would go through all of the motions. Preparing food, sitting in the highchair, offering it etc. We would give him a few chances to eat. If he wouldn't, we would say that mealtime was over and let him go play. We would then offer his meal at snack time. We resisted offering him any junk food, and tried to keep it as healthy as possible. Guess what? He's eating again. Is it because we are such amazing parents, and because we figured him out?

Nope. He's moved on. Now he's not sleeping.

Such is life with a toddler I guess. Extremely trying. Thankfully I think that this sleeping boycott may be just about over. I don't want to get too excited though. You know what happens when we go and get excited. Isaac spits out all of his chewed up food all over the place, sometimes if you're lucky he'll pick it back up again and chuck it across the room. :i

From what I have been reading, this is all completely normal behavior. His aversion to sleep may be based on insecurity and trust. He starts screaming the moment we try to leave. So we have spent a lot of time reassuring him that we are right there. A lot of hours in his bedroom during what is supposed to be "family nap time". I miss family nap time. But as I said, we are doing better. This phase seems to be shorter than the food hating phase. I am thankful for that.

Dan has an out of state gig coming up. He is leaving this Thursday. I am dreading it. :( We make such a great team, it's gonna be hard not having him around to yell, "Tag, your it!" and escape for a well needed 5 minute break. Just me and the bean. Pray that we have the best time ever. I am going to try and keep us busy so that we don't focus too much on missing the best daddy ever.

xo