We had a fantastic weekend because my best friend in the world, Hannah, came to visit from Arkansas!!  This was her first time to meet Maxwell and they instantly got along like best buds.  I expected nothing less.

Since Hannah is mom to super cutie 18 month old Joshua, she was full of tips and helpful advice for us.  It’s always good to get a fresh perspective on how to do things!  She recommended the football hold when Maxwell is acting like his tummy hurts.  Let’s just say he’s a big fan of it and I’ve been doing it constantly for the past 2 days!!

Happy little guy getting carried around on his belly…

We’ve had a few rough nights in a row with Maxwell not sleeping much.  Unfortunately, Hannah got to witness one of Maxwell’s roughest nights yet.  I don’t know if it was being overtired, a hurting tummy due to reflux or what, but our little guy SCREAMED and WAILED for basically 3 hours straight Friday night.  Hannah didn’t know what she was getting into!  We tried everything, including a drive around town with Dad, and finally got him to sleep around 9:30 (partly thanks to a little baby Tylenol!) and he slept on me all night in the chair in his nursery.  Not the most comfortable night of sleep for me but I was more than happy to do it to get him to stay snoozing.

Not wanting a repeat performance of Friday night, we tried a few new things on Saturday and had HUGE success.  We got Maxwell to sleep at 8:00 with only 10 minutes of crying and he only woke up at 1:00 am to eat and then at 6:00 am!  WOOHOO!!  We are definitely going to be doing everything exactly the same tonight to try and replicate the success!  What did we do?  Well, we…

• Made sure he took really good naps during the day so he wasn’t overtired.
• Gave him some gripe water (I’m still skeptical on that but, hey, you never know!).
• Elevated part of his crib to help with the reflux.
• Most importantly, at Hannah’s suggestion, we swaddled him with his arms in like I did when we first brought him home from the hospital.  I had gotten into the habit of wrapping him up with his arms out because I thought he liked to have them free.  I really think those free-flailing arms were keeping him awake though.  When I swaddled him up super tight in one of the velcro swaddle blankets, he instantly seemed soothed and, when he did stir in the night, would just go right back to sleep.  Hannah swore by swaddling Joshua up super tight and I think she’s right!  We’ll be swaddling with arms in every day from now on!

We even swaddled him up for a nap today and got him to sleep in his swing for the first time ever.  Up until now, he’s taken all of his naps in the sling attached to me.  Here’s my little mummy all swaddled up for a nap.

Funny, right? Robert likes to call it a straight jacket…but I think it might be the only thing keeping him and me out of straight jackets in the psych ward due to exhaustion!

I used this swaddle blanket if you’re curious.

We also got a fun new toy out of the closet while Hannah was here.  Maxwell had a great time exploring his little farmyard fun play mat!

Reaching for the birdie…

and getting a little cross-eyed again!  🙂

Maxwell also rolled over on his play mat today…I think it was more like he fell over but still, he was on his back and then he was on his tummy!  A first!

Hannah – we’re so glad you got to come visit and hope you get to come back soon!   Thanks for all the mom advice and for reminding me that “he won’t go to kindergarten in a sling!”  🙂