Bye-Bye Swing....

You served us well.

It wasn't that long ago that I posted a blog about our favorite baby things. The items we couldn't live without.

I came home from work yesterday and found the bulk of them in a pile by the back door -- Jim's staging area for eventual removal to the storage shed. It's quickly becoming full of all of Scott's outgrown "baby stuff."

Among the pile of soon-to-be-shelved gear was the Fisher Price Ocean Wonders Swing.

Such a sad end for so many great pieces of baby equipment.

Scott virtually lived in it until about three weeks ago. He napped there, played there...for a couple of months it was literally the only tool we had that was guaranteed to stop his fussing and crying.

But as he's grown, he's become more destructive. One by one, we were forced to remove the toy fish that circled over his head on a mobile. He kept grabbing them, thereby stopping the whole thing from turning and prompting the entire contraption to make an ugly, grinding sound.

Dead fish

A couple of weeks ago, he figured out how to pull himself up on the housing mechanism himself. And then finally, I came into the nursery, to find him flailing, half in, half out of the swing, trying to reach a toy or a security blanket he had dropped on the ground.

I am not quite sure how Tank managed that last feat - he was strapped in, but had somehow scooted down, loosened the belt and flipped himself over on his stomach. Then he got stuck.

So the swing (along with the bouncy chair, floor mat, and various other items) are being retired for safety reasons. Our big boy is just too mobile.

I honestly wasn't sure I'd ever see the day. Ocean Wonders Swing: thank you for your many months of hard service. We salute you.

Mommy, I am on the move...and way too big for some silly baby swing.

Embracing the crib - for real!

We've had a momentous development here in the Rough household -- one I didn't think I'd EVER see.

Scott has learned to sleep in his crib. 

Now... I should clarify. Scott learned months ago that bedtime = cribtime. He's been very good about putting himself to sleep each evening and staying there until the wee hours of the morning.

But for some reason, he's been a bit learning impaired when translating that lesson over to his two or three daily napping sessions.

It usually goes something like this. Mommy or Daddy puts Scott in his crib. Scott screams. Then Scott rolls around and talks to himself. Then Scott cries. Then Scott slams both of his legs repeatedly against the crib mattress. Then Scott cries again. Then, finally, after about 30 minutes of us ignoring him, Scott finally sleeps.

All is blissfully quiet. For about 25 minutes. Then, Scott awakes. And refuses to go back to sleep.

As an adult, I don't really understand this. I would PAY for someone to force me to go to sleep two or three times a day. But I just can't seem to reason with him and make him understand how lucky he is.

Stubborn child. I think he takes after his father.

Since Scott was about two months old, the only way we could get him to take a decent nap (that's code for anything lasting an hour or longer) was to put him in his Fisher Price Ocean Wonders Swing. Dear readers of this blog might remember that this is our Holy Grail of baby items.

Put the Tank in the swing and he is guaranteed to sleep for at least an hour, and sometimes as long as three.

I wish they had one in my size.

But as much as I enjoy having a happy, well-rested baby, I've been actively trying to break him of the swing/sleep habit. This is primarily because my cherubic munchkin is now tipping the scales at 21 pounds and 6 oz. The swing has a maximum capacity of 25 pounds.

The swing says its good for babies and toddlers "up to two years." Yeah right. Somehow, I don't see us making that. I am not sure we'll make it to July 4.

So clearly, we had to make adjustments.

I'd love to take credit for it. But I don't think I did anything. For some reason, Scott simply decided that he could -- and would -- nap in his crib.

He first did it last week in the morning. I put him back to bed after an early wake-up call (on a Saturday  no less) at 6:45. He slept until 8:30. Unheard of!

I see the sleeping baby on the monitor, but I don't believe it!

It's true! Incidentally, I woke him up by taking this picture, but he'd already been sleeping for two hours, so I didn't feel too bad. Okay, I felt kinda bad.

The next day, he slept for an hour and fifteen minutes in his crib. Later that week, he took a three-hour marathon snooze at the crib in my mom's house.

Mid-way through the 3-hour marathon. Grandma is a stealth photographer. She didn't wake him up.

It's not foolproof yet - he still prefers to take his late afternoon, 30 to 45 minute power naps in the swing.

But it foolishly has given me hope that someday - hopefully SOON - he'll sleep through the night.

Silly mommy.

Our favorite things

When I first found out I was expecting, I couldn't WAIT to register.
I spent literally hours online, scrolling through baby gear and reading reviews.

Items of interest generally fell into one of three categories:
a) absolute essentials
b) those things I thought would be fairly useful but could probably live without if needed
c) super cute stuff that served no function other than to make my son look even more adorable (as if that were possible.)

Now, six months in, I realize much of this was guesswork. There were many items I was sure would be critical in those early weeks/months that turned out to be completely useless.
We got dozens upon dozens of adorable baby outfits -- many of which Scott never wore because he was just too little. My mom had to go to the store and purchase preemie clothes for him, and all those cute onesies and jumpers went straight to the storage shed. I also stocked up on a nursing pillow, a very expensive breast pump and a slew of Dr. Brown's bottles, only to discover that I wasn't producing much milk and Scott much preferred the Playtex brand of bottle for his formula.

But there are those items that have turned out to be utter lifesavers. The "oh-my-God-I-would-never-have-made-it-this-long-were-it-not-for-xxx" items. In most cases, they've earned such a distinctive place of honor simply because they've kept Scott happy, quiet, and/or asleep.

This list of golden items, I've learned, is different for every parent, because every kid is different. But for us, it includes:

The portable bouncer/rocker chair.
Scott lived in this thing for the first two months of his young -- and what will surely be fruitful -- life. He didn't like sleeping in his bassinet, and he was too little for his crib, so we used the chair. We slept on the couch so he could rest undisturbed in it. The chair moved from room to room, it went with us to other people's houses...it got us through those first few sleep deprived weeks.
Scott won't sleep in it anymore, but he still loves sitting in it and playing with the toys. And anytime you can find something in "baby world" that last six months or more, you know its golden.

Almost every picture of Scott from his first months of life has this chair as a backdrop.

Hmm. A perfect place for a cat nap.

Months later and still enjoying the chair. We have to strap him in it now; otherwise he'd wriggle out.

Our Dr. Brown's Bottle Warmer.
I know, I know, a lot of people think its totally unnecessary. But Scott still isn't sleeping through the night with great regularity, and there's nothing better than knowing you can have a warm bottle of milk in less than four minutes -- especially if your kid wakes up hungry at 3 a..m.

The Baby Bjorn.
When Scott was tiny, he hit his fussy period without fail, every night around 5:30 or 6 p.m.. I couldn't rock him to sleep. I couldn't feed him. I couldn't walk with him and calm his down. But many a night, I put him in the Baby Bjorn and made a fool of myself grooving and rocking out to Dancing with the Stars, and for 20 or 30 precious minutes, I had a super content baby.

(Side note: I quickly discovered that Tank didn't much care for the waltz, but was a big fan of the Samba and the Cha-Cha. Jennifer Grey's routine to "Mercy" was DVR'd and replayed multiple times.)

Unfortunately, Scott weighs too much for me to carry him around in the Bjorn now, but Jim totes him all over the house and straps him to his chest while he does yard work. And Scott just chillaxes in it the whole time.

And that brings us to the biggie. It is our Holy Grail of baby items:

The Fisher Price Ocean Wonders Swing.

Literally, I wish this thing came in infant, toddler, and school-aged styles, because I know Scott is going to outgrow it soon, and I think the kid would seriously take it off to college if he could.

He naps in it, he plays in it, he catches an extra hour of sleep or two in the morning in it. He loves the rocking motion, the flashing lights and the moving crustaceans.

And we love that he loves it as much as he does.

Mommy, don't be jealous of my swing. Seriously, you guys should get one of these.

Fisher Price, if you make this swing in a bigger size, I will pay any amount of money for it. Really.