Month: June 2014

Leave a comment Posted on parenting, Storytelling

Getting My Infant to Sleep through the Night

August 8, 2011 at 9:29 pm , by 

Eight months.

“Crying it out” plus “cold turkey” equals “everybody’s happy!”

It was only pretty recently (the beginning of July) that I was able to master getting my infant son Jack to sleep.  After he learned to crawl at six months old, my wife nor I were no longer able to get him to sleep without him (and us) getting extremely upset.  So I tried my own version of the “cry it out” method and it has worked great.  I highly recommend it.

Unfortunately, we soon realized that the getting to sleep was only the first half of the problem.  Even though we could get him to fall asleep, he was not able to remain asleep for more than a couple of hours.  That meant that none of the three of us were ever getting enough sleep (especially my wife and my son).  Additionally, it meant our son was drinking at least three bottles of formula during the night and therefore needing three additional diaper changes.

After a decent amount of research, and obviously acknowledging the immediate effectiveness of the “cry it out” method, my wife gave me the green light to apply the “cold turkey” method to get him to sleep through the night without needing to eat.  So I did.  And it is so awesome.  Life is beautiful, now.

Here’s what I did the first night of applying the “cold turkey” method: When I put him to sleep for the night (around 7:00 PM), I closed his bedroom door most of the way, then I didn’t come back until the morning when he cried after 6:00 AM.

On the first night of going “cold turkey,” he woke up after an hour and cried for 30 minutes straight, but then fell asleep for two solid hours.  Then he woke up and cried for 10 minutes and fell asleep for three hours.  Next he woke up and cried for 5 minutes, then another couple of hours.  As the night progressed, he continued to sleep longer and cry less.

We heard him cry at 5:40 AM, but knew not to go get him yet since it was still before 6:00 AM.  So we waited, and the next time he cried it was an hour later, and we went to go get him.

I can honestly say that the three of us were never happier to see each other in the morning.  Jack had survived his first night without eating since his dinner meal; plus, his diaper was dry.  And we, the parents, both were able to sleep more solidly than any other night while being in the same house with him.

More than a month has passed since that first night; this system has been so good for all of us.  Now when he does wake up in the middle of the night it only takes a couple of minutes for him to get back to sleep- on his own.

We had been hindering his sleep by continuing to feed him through the night; preventing him from progressing deeper into his sleep cycle because we would comfort him not only with food, but with additional soothing. Therefore we fed him too often and he never learned to fall asleep without parental help. We had been enabling him to overeat and under-sleep.

Have you half-way considered this technique, in your desperation to get your infant to sleep, but just felt that A) it was too cruel, B) it would mess up your kid psychologically, and/or C) you never knew any nice, normal parents to ever do this method?

Well, I am indeed a nice, normal parent who believes in the importance of raising my son in the most positively reinforced ways possible. I came to the conclusion I was hurting him more by not teaching him to fall asleep on his own.  And I can obviously see that, so far, I have not messed him up psychologically and he still treats me the same.

But if you should have any doubts, continue reading The Dadabase every day.  That way, you can still check in on my son to make sure that both the “cry it out” and the “cold turkey” methods are not only effective, but for my son at least, they are also a good and necessary thing.

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting

These are the Days We Will Remember Forever

August 7, 2011 at 12:15 pm , by 

Eight months.

In April 2007 after dating two months and having already gone to meet my parents, I flew to Sacramento to meet my wife’s family- all of them. That meant not only her parents, but also her two sisters and most of her seven brothers along with all their kids.

I was the new boyfriend.  There was no guarantee that any of the family members would ever see me again.  I could have simply been a single-serving special friend that ultimately disappeared from most peoples’ memories.  At best, I could have been, “Hey Jill, whatever happen to that guy from Alabama with dark hair?”

Instead of becoming a blurry memory, I proposed the following January and we were married seven months later.

Over the past four years, I have really grown closer to my wife’s family.  But during my most recent visit, there was a new closeness I felt to them all because now that my wife and I have our son, it has never been more official that I am grafted into the family tree; though our family branch is labeled “Shell” instead of “Tuttle.”  Though I obviously am not kin to them by blood, I am part of their family and have helped it grow.

The gathering place for all my wife’s family in Sacramento is her mom’s house.  Today I took a few pictures of some of the signs hanging on the walls there.  I have written before about how people show what they value through the art they create.  In my mother-in-law’s case, the decorations she hangs on the walls help serve as art.

My favorite sign at the house reads “These are the days we will remember forever.”  That motto is so much more clever than it may appear to be.  With me being such a desperately nostalgic guy, constantly yearning for the best of my life’s warmest memories, that sign reminds me that when I go out to California with my wife, and now my son, that I don’t have to wish for a moment in the past.  Instead, I get to enjoy warm fuzzy memories as they occur in real time.

Even though I do my darndest to capture all these stories and conversations with my wife’s side of the family, who I typically only see once a year, it must be my obsession with nostalgia that causes me to be one of the official photographers of the family.  Because even though these are the days we will remember forever, my memory is only so good.  Digital cameras definitely help.

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Finding My Son Up in the Family Tree

August 5, 2011 at 12:51 am , by 

Eight months.

Coincidentally while here  in Sacramento, which is known as “The City of Trees,” I have been doing a little bit of “family tree climbing.”  We are staying at my mother-in-law’s house along with a couple more of my wife’s siblings and their families.  Many of the walls are as thoroughly decorated with family pictures as John Mayer’s arms are consumed with tattoos.

I have been closely inspecting these retro pictures for signs of my son’s looks.  The only time I really see myself in him is sometimes when he cries and laughs.  So knowing that it was my wife’s genes he mainly inherited, I decided to find out exactly where his features came from.

This first picture features my mother-in-law’s grandparents, as well as, her father who is featured far right.  His name was Waldo Tocchini- I definitely see some “Jackness” in his nose and the shape of his head.  I often think of Jack as a 1940′s wrestler.  Seeing Jack’s great-grandfather as a five year-old boy in 1920 only solidifies that old-timey wrestler idea in my head.

I have written before about how Jack reminds me of my wife’s dad- as an adult.  Here is a picture of him when he was a little boy.  We shall see if this is a hint of what Jack will look like.  Also, check out the picture in the far left botom- that’s my mother-in-law as a baby; her nose and mouth look a whole lot like Jack’s!

Here is a more recent picture of one of my wife’s nephew.  For a nanosecond, I had to ask myself if I had somehow teleported into the future and was looking at  a picture of Jack.  Several of the family members have also noted the resemblence between Jack and this first cousin of his.

This is my favorite picture in the house- it’s my wife’s family portrait from 1983.  She’s the two year-old sitting there in her mom’s lap.  This is just simply classicly awesome.

Then I look right next that photograph and see my own family’s portrait from St. Patrick’s Day.  Though my wife and son are related by blood to the Italian-French-Croatian-Norwegian people in all these pictures, I have been grafted into the vine, adding my Italian-Mexican-Scottish-German genes into this new branch of the tree.

So what if my son ends up never really looking much like me.  Chances are, his first child will be a splitting image of me.  Because that’s evidently how things work in this family tree of ours.  I say that, but the truth is, our next kid will probably look the opposite of Jack; like me.

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Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, parenting

Surviving My Infant Son’s First Plane Ride

August 4, 2011 at 1:27 am , by 

Eight months.

I think the best way to begin is to share a few things that I would rather do than take an eight month old little boy on a plane from Nashville to Sacramento:

1) Be forced to watch a 24 hour marathon of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant, sending out a Tweet every 15 minutes praising the show, though I despise it more than the awful movie Something Borrowed;  which is the worst movie I’ve ever seen- and that’s saying a lot because I’ve seen When in Rome.

2) Shave “racing stripes” into my hair until they grow out and when people ask me why I have resorted to a hairstyle trend that was briefly popular in 1988, I could only respond by saying “Cut… it… out!”, along with doing the accomanying hand motions, made famous by the character Joey Gladstone on Full House.

3) Walk barefoot on broken glass like Bruce Willis did in the first Die Hard movie.

When taking an infant on a plane, you must provide proof that your child is less than two years old.  I know this now because we did not.  (Dave Stanley, if you are reading this, I’m going to need you to email Jack’s birth certificate to me so we can leave Sacramento on Sunday…).  The lady was nice and let us board the plane anyway.  Thank God.

I’ve never seen my son pee so much, in a reasonable amount of time since his diaper was last changed, that I look down and see a puddle at my feet while standing in line to buy a snack before boarding the plane.  And I didn’t even care that I didn’t have time to wash my moistened hand before boarding the plane.

A guy who looked just like “Comic Book Guy” from The Simpsons brought his Shih Tzu dog on the plane, hogging up the front row of seats; when my wife and I tried to sit in the remaining two seats next to him, he responded sarcastically with, “Uh, sure, I guess it wouldn’t be a bad idea for both a dog and a baby to sit in the same row.”  It wasn’t worth it; we ended up settling for having to sit in the middle of the plane; my wife was in front of me and I was in the row behind.

The flight involved Jack sleeping as long as either my wife or I held him while standing up in the aisle.  My arms are still sore from that.

Of course, Jack won’t remember any of this along with how much he didn’t enjoy the flight.  But at least he can read about it in a few years.

Ah man, there for a minute I actually forgot… We still have do this whole thing again when we fly back to Nashville.  Shazbot!

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Not Being Disappointed by Lowered Expectations

August 4, 2011 at 1:20 am , by 

Eight months.

It’s no secret that part of my “gimmick” as a parent blogger is to simply maintain a positive outlook and tone.  In fact, my optimistic attitude angered and frustrated dozens of people with g>one blog in particular, which caused a brief uproar on Parents.com’s Facebook wall. But while I choose to be Mr. Positive, I also choose to be real; I don’t sugarcoat anything.

One of the major ways I am able to remain positive, as a dad who is potentially always in a situation where I could easily be frustrated simply because of the fact that I am dealing with an infant who has a reputation of being illogical, is to keep my expectations low.  Because with reasonably low expectations, it’s much more difficult to become disappointed.

I personally am more likely to experience an ongoing sense of well-being when my expectations are consistently met; even if those met expectations don’t include a decently positive outcome.  I guess it just feels good to be right about something; especially regarding the uncontrollable and often unpredictable future.

Therefore, our recent flight from Nashville to Sacramento with our son went better than I expected; for the fact that A) our luggage didn’t get lost; B) we didn’t miss our connecting flight in Denver; C) Jack didn’t vomit all over me during the middle of the flight; and D) I wasn’t aware of how hungry I was from not eating dinner before the flight because I was too preoccuppied with my reasonably low expectations about Jack not doing well on the plane ride.

One of the things that being a dad has taught me is that I am the kind of person who has to be (or at least feel) in control of the things in life that I think I am supposed to be able to control.  And when I can’t control certain situations as a parent and am aware of how not in control I am, I get really stressed out and anxious.

So perhaps the worst parts of flying to Sacramento were actually just in my head.  Still though, in reality, it wasn’t a smooth and seamless transition.  Instead of continuing the entertaining details and stories of the trip in this post, I will instead tell all about it in the following post.